Personal Best Wild Trout

Short post today, but it's one I'm proud of.  I got out to chase wild trout over the weekend, and decided to revisit a small but nice stream I hadn't fished since the pre-runoff conditions.  I really like the lower sections of this stream because it has all the challenging characteristics of a typical small stream, with one major difference: as it enters the lower section, the stream widens and passes through some mature forest, meaning there's plenty of room for casting.  This is a luxury that a small stream fisherman doesn't often enjoy.

Still, that isn't to say that the stream is easy, by any means.  A good one to take a beginner to?  Sure.  There's no shortage of textbook riffles and pools.  But between the obvious spots lie some tricky undercuts with low-hanging branches, hard-to-reach seams, and those drifts that would be easy, except you can't position yourself in the logical place because you've got to be stealthy.

I was working my way up to a pool that had a pool that was long enough to create one of those stealth-related difficulties.  The head of the pool has a few boulders scattered through it, making for great fish-holding water, but while it'd be easy to cover that water from up close, you'd spook every fish to get there.  So the alternative is fishing from the bottom of the pool and making 35-45 foot casts (do-able, but a tricky proposition with a short 1wt nonetheless) up into the boulders, making 2-3 foot drifts, and casting again.  Making things even more interesting, most of your drifts here are only visible for a foot or two before the current takes your fly to the opposite side of a rock from where you're standing.

It was on one such drift, toward the outside of the pool, that my fly drifted to the opposite side of a moss covered boulder.  Just as I was about to lift my line for another cast, I noticed a few drops of water and ripples coming from behind the rock, so I set the hook with a quick snap and my hunch was proven by the resulting head shake.

The head shake assured me of something else, too: this was not another 5" native, which usually come splashing across the surface.  No, this fish immediately pulled me the the bottom of the pool and stayed there, the green blank of my 1wt flexing deeper than it has in months.

After a spirited battle, I pulled the fish up to a partially submerged rock for a few quick photos...

And soon after, his release...

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Icelandic Sheep Dubbing Product Testing (Part One)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I'm currently a product tester for Tie the Fly.  The man behind the site is considering carrying a new type of dubbing, and put out the call for tyers interested in using some samples to tie up some flies.  Just a few days after getting in touch, I received a small package with nine tiny baggies of dub inside.

As luck would have it, I didn't get to sit down and really work with it for a few days, but when I finally did, I made a commitment to rigorous and scientific research, and tried to tie a few of several different flies, representing all major categories.

When I opened the dub and handled it, it reminded me vaguely of mature seal, except less buggy, less translucent, and not sparkly at all.  Now that may sound like a complete put down, but it isn't.  The texture is very similar, though less slippery, and therefore easier to work with.  The fibers are long, but soft, meaning the dub can be as buggy or as smooth as you like.  The lack of flash makes it less eye-catching than seal or synthetics, but for day to day fishing, that might be a desirable characteristic.  In any event, the best way to see what you've got it to tie with it, so I quickly got out some hooks.

First up was dry flies.  Now with the knowledge that this was icelandic sheep dubbing, I figured this material would behave like wool and become waterlogged and sink.  Still, in the interests of objective review, I decided to at least give it a shot.  Also, the fact that I'd been tying stimulators the night before and still had all the other stuff out on my bench also helped influence my decision.

A few tense minutes later, and I snapped this picture at the vise:

In this fly, I was going for a nice tight, even dub, and while it was a bit of a challenge, it didn't disappoint.  It's bulkier than a typical dry dub like superfine, but probably about the same as the poly yarn I sometimes use for these flies.  The hackle stem also buried itself nicely into the dub, which helps with durability.

While the dubbing will probably absorb water, I'm banking on it also absorbing plenty of floatant, in order to stay up top.  Once I test these flies on the water, I'll know for sure.

Next, I decided to try tying a small nymph.  I don't typically fish nymphs, but lots of people do, so as a tester, I felt I should try it out.  I came up with a quick pattern in my head and got to tying it.  I believe this one was tied on a #16, 1x long nymph hook.

Nothing too fancy here.  I used a looser rope dubbing method than I did for the dry, and used a bit of fine wire to rib the abdomen.  It's a bit hard to tell from the photo, but those are goose biot tails, starling hackle, and a black bead.  I will probably be trying this one out over the weekend, and giving a report soon thereafter.

After that, I wanted to see how the dubbing would take color.  Since the color selection provided was severely lacking in the earth tones department, I decided to try an olive soft hackle.  After tying the body of the fly using white dubbing, I grabbed an olive prismacolor marker and went to work.  After coloring the body, I finished the fly by adding the soft hackle and tying it off.  The hackle I used here was a Coq de Leon Hen saddle.

The dubbing took the dye from the marker very well, and the color seems true.  A day in the water will determine whether or not it is color-fast, however.

After that, I was still in the mood for soft hackles, so I tied another, smaller example, using one of the colors of dub I hadn't yet opened.  Here's the starling & purple:

After this, I wanted to see how well the different colors of dubbing would blend together, so I tried tying a second, larger nymph.  I mixed the black and the burnt orange dubbing and achieved a sort of dark brown.  The dubbing took some time to mix evenly, but once mixed, it had a very nice effect.  Once I had a nice small pile of the tone I wanted, I built my larger nymph (stone?  hex?  mostly just an attractor) with a lead underbody, and a body dubbed with a dubbing loop.  Overall, I was very pleased with how this nymph turned out, and might even tie more of these to fish with, as they just look like they'd be a good pattern for larger trout in swift water.

That's the majority of what I've tied so far.  I'll have some streamers to tie over the next few weeks, and I'll be fishing these flies as well in the mean time.  If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments, or email Tie the Fly directly, via the site linked above.

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6 Key Features of a Small Stream Dry Fly

Fishing small streams for wild trout presents a different set of challenges than most typical fly fishing: the casts are short and the drifts are shorter, the conditions are crowded, stealth becomes a huge factor, and often a decent cast will involve throwing line across three or four separate stream features and currents, to deliver a fly within a few inches of a rock, under branches hanging just a foot or two over the water.

This type of fishing places many additional demands on an angler, but also affords him the opportunity to meet those challenges by giving him freedom in other areas.  Fly selection shows this better than many other aspects of fly fishing, and a blueliner's fly box, while it may look fairly standard, is carefully tailored to this kind of fishing.

In simplest terms, there are six essential elements that make any dry fly great (or not so great) on a small stream.

6. Buoyancy

This may seem like a no-brainer, but it's an extremely important feature.  By saying that a small stream dry must be buoyant, I'm saying it needs to float on the water, not in it.  You want your fly's body to be totally up, out of the water, seemingly bouncing across the surface.

Compared to a standard catskill tie, this Adams has an extra helping of hackle.

There are a few ways to accomplish this, using foam or other buoyant synthetics, using a hollow hair like deer or elk, using a heavily greased fly, or, the most common method: tying your normal standard dry patterns with extra heavy hackling.  Much like 'western-style' dries, a small stream dry benefits from a few extra turns of hackle.  Flies like the Bivisible, which incorporate a lot of hackle just from the pattern are also great choices for small streams.

Also incorporated with buoyancy is making sure that the materials will accept a healthy dose of paste floatant as well.  Hackle will soak up it's fair share, as will most dubbings and hair.  Things like foam, quill/biot bodies, and most synthetics don't accept much floatant.

5. Water Resistancy

With all the currents and obstacles in a small stream, any dry fly is going to get dunked from time to time, regardless of how high it rides.  Its resistance to the water is what will set a great fly apart from one that is more trouble than it's worth to keep it floating properly.

This property depends on two things: the way the bodies are tied and the material used.  For materials, you want things that won't wick moisture into the core of the body.  Things like foam, antron, or naturally water-resistant fur like muskrat or beaver.  As far as method, you want a body that is wrapped or dubbed as tightly and evenly as possible.  Bushy, buggy dubbing will allow the fly to soak up water through capillary action, which will eventually sink it.

4. Quick Drying

No matter how high your fly rides, or how waterproof it is, at some point (probably sooner than you think), that fly will be completely waterlogged.  At this point, you'll have to dry it out again before it'll float correctly.  Of course, a few good crisp false casts will wring a good deal of that water out of your fly, but after that, you've got a few options.

First, you can try any number of fly-drying products: amadou pads can squeeze a fly and absorb the moisture that comes out, powdered desiccants (like Frog's Fanny) are brush on powders that do a great job of really pulling every drop of moisture out of your fly, and recently, I've started seeing a few 'spray-on' drying agents, that come in a pump bottle.

All of these products work, to an extent (I carry powdered desiccant and have been trying a few spray-ons as well).  Try the false cast until it doesn't work, as its the fastest method, then after that, I usually dust it with Frog's Fanny, false cast it again to knock excess powder off, then spray a shot or two of a liquid dryer/waterproofer on, and false cast again a few times, then reapply my paste floatant.

Eventually, however, the water will work its way down to the thread and the insides of your fly, and no amount of false casting or chemical will revive it.  At this point, clip it off, hang it on your fly patch, and let it air dry, while you tie on a fresh one.  Naturally, it's a good idea to have several copies of each of your best patterns.

3. Durability

Another great reason to have multiples of your best flies is because if you're on a small stream, you're bound to surrender a few flies (or a lot of flies) to trees, rocks, bushes, fallen logs, and whatever else happens to be close at hand.  The ones you do manage to recover often are a little worse for the experience, with messed up wings, twisted hackle, and crinkled hair.

On a good day of fishing, the fish themselves will shred a fly to bits, too, and a well-chewed fly is a thing of beauty.

The best way to delay the inevitable is to concentrate on tight ties at the bench.  Practice technique, use minimal thread, use a drop of head cement if necessary (but if your technique is good enough, you shouldn't need it).  In short: you want bulletproof flies when you start out.  There's nothing you can do to increase the durability of a fly once you're on the water.

2. Bugginess

I know I said up above that a buggy-dubbed fly would absorb water.  That's true, it will, but there's other ways to get that look that won't turn your fly into a sponge.  Hair wings, heavy palmered hackle, and materials  like peacock herl that will break up the outline of your fly are all safe bets.

The reason for this is because you want to be able to minimalize your fly selection while making sure you're covered for most situations.  In this way, you can tie an elk hair caddis in light tan, olive, medium brown, and black...all in a size #14, and be covered for tan caddis, early stoneflies, mosquitoes, BWOs, and olive caddis.

When you're on a small stream, it's usually good to dumb down your entomology skills, and instead of thinking in terms of 'isonychia', 'october caddis', and 'baetis', start thinking in terms of 'little', 'big', 'light', and 'dark'.

1. Visibility

The most important aspect of a small stream dry fly is that it is visible.  To you, not the fish.  The fish will be able to see any fly, no problem, but in the twisting, tumbling currents of a mountain stream, it's easy to lose track of your fly.  You want to make sure that you're looking at the fly when that brookie rises to it.

In this vise, this means light colors and bright colors.  For any hair wings, I use bleached elk or deer.  In other flies, you can use antron yarn in fluorescent green, pink, and orange, as well as brightly colored foam.  For parachutes, both bright and bleached white turkey flats and calf body hair are used with great results as well.

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Fly Tying Tutorial Link: CDC & CDL Caddis

Great looking, simple fly that promises to be light, easily floatable, and easy to tie.  I will be tying up some of these to try them out this spring and I'm sure they'll work out.  Check out the full step by step tutorial for tying two variations of this interesting fly on Passion for Fly Fishing.

Please note that the site is written in Spanish.  My browser (Google Chrome), offers to translate the entire page and does a pretty good job, though if your browser doesn't offer this option, the efficient photography should really be all you need.

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Lime Trude Step By Step Fly Tying Tutorial

Lime Trude

The lime trude is a classic attractor pattern that doesn't really imitate and particular stage or insect, but rather just looking like something that fish can't help but to sample.  It incorporates peacock herl, a proven fish catching material, a bright 'hot spot', and a highly visible wing.  It's an excellent choice for pocket water fishing and wild trout.  It's also a pattern that is fairly beginner friendly, allowing for some imperfections in proportion and alignment.  Dry flies tend to be among the trickier flies to proportion exactly right, and even this one won't allow for serious errors, but the fly doesn't use any especially difficult techniques such as upright divided wings or parachute hackle.

Hook: Standard Dry Fly hook, TMC 100 in size 12 shown

Thread: Any lightweight thread.  Benecchi 12/0 in black shown

Tail: Golden Pheasant Tippet

Body: Peacock Herl with a band of green uni-stretch

Wing: Calf Body Hair

Hackle: Brown, standard sizing

Put the hook in the vise and start the thread about 1/3 of the shank back from the eye.  You can place the hook pretty deep in the vise with this pattern, so don't worry about getting it way out there at the tip of the jaws.  You can see in this shot that I have it down in the hook pocket of my Regal.  I like to start the thread at a significan transition point of the fly.  In this case, the point where I started the thread marks the point where I want my body to end, where I want to tie in the wing, and where I want to start wrapping my hackle.  A pretty major transition point of the pattern.

Choose a golden pheasant tippet feather.  Since you're only using a few individual fibers at a time, it's not important to choose a top quality feather.  If you have any with chunks missing, shafts bent, or otherwise slightly mangled, now's a good time to get them out and use them.  Just find a spot on them where the individual fibers are more or less unharmed.

Peel off 5-10 fibers from the feather, making sure to keep them all pinched together so that the black bands stay aligned, and tie them in as a tail, making the tail about as long as the hook shank, or slightly shorter.  Wrap your thread up to bind the fibers to the hook shank, then trim them, at an angle, just behind your transition point and tie down the butts.

Tie in a single long (6-8") peacock herl at the base of the tail.  When I'm tying in herl, or any other feather for that matter, I like to strip the fibers from a small area of the feather where I plan to tie it in.  This reduces bulk at the tie in point, and makes for a stronger tie-in, and by extension, a more durable fly.

Mentally divide the body area of the shank (the part covered by thread) into thirds.  The front and rear thirds will be peacock herl and the middle will be your lime band.  Wrap your herl up to the 1/3 point, them make an additional wrap or two.  When you add the lime band, this will give you a little 'wiggle room' when you wrap the uni-stretch.  After you finish wrapping, tie down the herl, then tie it down to the 2/3 point of the body, as shown.

Tie in your green uni-stretch at the 2/3 point, then tie it back to the 1/3 point, as shown.  Then clip the tag end.

Using tight, overlapping wraps, cover the middle third of the body with lime uni-stretch.  Tie it off at the same point where you tied it in, then trim it.

Continue wrapping the herl, making sure to cover the tie in point of the uni-stretch as well as the tag ends.  Wind it up to your transition point (where you started the thread, 1/3 back from the eye).  Tie off the herl and trim.

Trim off a small bunch of calf body hair to use as a wing.  Pull out the smaller under fibers (calf doesn't really have fuzzy under fur), stack it, and tie it in like a caddis wing.  I like to take one wrap around just the hair, then use my second wrap to bind it to the hook.  If it is lying too flat against the body, take another wrap around just the hair, at the base of the wing to lift it up.

The traditional recipe calls of calf tail here.  While you can certainly use it, I generally prefer the body hair because it is straighter, and stacks easier.  It also allows you to use more hair, to make a denser, more visible wing, and is highly visible, even in low light conditions.  The downside of calf body hair is that it is more of a pain to work with, as it is much shorter, and I've often lost it in the bottom of my hair stacker, only to have it dump out in a useless pile.  It takes some getting used to, and it is kind of a pain to work with, but for me, the increased visibility and better stacking properties are work the extra fuss at the vise.

Trim the butt ends of the calf hair off just behind the eye, at an angle to avoid any abrupt step-down effect.  Build a tapered, smooth thread body as a platform for you hackle.

Tie in a single brown saddle hackle, sized appropriately for your hook at the base of the wing, wrap forward in close turns, taking care not to trap the hackle fibers under the stem, then tie off and trim, leaving a little room (about the length of the eye) for a nice small head.  Whip finish and trim the thread and you're done!

Fishing the fly: Fish the lime trude just like you would any other typical dry fly: upstream and drift.  This is an attractor, not meant to imitate any insect, so it's a good choice when there's no obvious hatch for the fish to key on.  I suppose it could function as a darker colored mayfly dun (in small sizes a BWO, in larger sizes, maybe an iso) or a caddis emerger.  It's also a good fly to use on very shady streams, slightly stained water, or in choppier riffles and pocket water, where it's colorful iridescent body and bright white wing make it highly visible to both fish and angler.  When I see this fly, I immediately imagine a small high-gradient stream full of hungry brookies, lined with big hemlocks that keep the stream cool and dark even at noon on a sunny day in July.

As you can see, like i said at the beginning, this pattern uses fairly straightforward technique to create a nice, all purpose dry fly.  No tricky wings to divide, no winding hackle at odd angles or around a wing, and no fussy body materials.  For an extra touch of durability, you could even coat the thread base of the body and hackle with a very light coating of head cement or CA glue, then wrap the herl, uni-stretch, and hackle on top of it.  I generally avoid glues unless absolutely necessary, though, seeing a torn and tattered fly as a sign of good fishing, rather than poor tying.  As long as it doesn't unravel without help from fish teeth, it's done its job.

Thanks, and I hope you enjoyed this tutorial!  If you have any suggestions for future tutorials, feel free to voice them in the comments!

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Fly Tying Tutorial: Stimulator

While it's still possible to take a trout on a dry fly here in Pennsylvania, most would agree that dry fly season is over for this part of the world, or at very least, winding down rapidly to its end.  I caught many fish on a wide variety of flies this year, but one specific pattern stood out from the crowd this year, establishing itself firmly as the pattern of the year: the venerable stimulator.  While top honors last year were shared by the parachute adams (which positively knocked trout sideways all spring), and a green emergent sparkle caddis (quietly representing with impressive numbers of fish in any water condition short of blown out...from late August till the first frost), this year saw the stimulator out-perform both of these.

I will qualify the above by fully admitting that a big part of this probably had to do with my increased focus this year on tiny streams, ultralight gear, and wild trout.  In this game, a fly that floats high, looks generally buggy (rather than specifically buggy), and is highly visible becomes an automatic winner, often regardless of color, and usually without much of a strict limit for size, so long as it fits into the mouths of the trout you're targetting.

That said, a stimulator, tied on a #14 long curved dry hook, took a ridiculously large number of fish for me this year.  50 fish days, while not exactly common, did indeed happen, and more than once.  Several sub-50 days could have been, if I'd have been ambitious enough to get on the water earlier, or fish through dusk.  On several days out, I used nothing but a single #14 stimmy, re-dressed with floatant as needed, and caught fish, regularly, for as long as I cared to move upstream.

Without further talk, let's get to the tutorial.  Please remember that, as always, you can click on any picture to be taken to a larger version.  (For tutorials like this it might be a good idea to simply open the image up in a new tab, so you don't lose your place in the tutorial.)

Stimulator

Hook: Dai-riki #280, size 14

Thread: Sheer 14/0, Tan

Tail: Elk, bleached

Body: Sparkle Yarn, Orange Rear, Lt. Green Front

Hackle: Grizzly Rear, Ginger Front

Wing: Mongoose

Disclaimer: I'm not one to be too pedantic about strict adherence to the pattern, but neither am I one of the camp that argues that all tying materials are more or less interchangeable.  As we go through the tutorial, I'll explain where I deviated from the norm, as well as ways you may consider customizing the tie, cutting corners, or sticking to the classic recipe.

Put your hook in the vise and start the thread, just a bit forward of halfway up the shank.  As far as hook choice, I've been using these Dai-riki #280's, but any long, light wire dry fly hook will work.  I do think a slightly curved shank improves appearances, but again, the extra length is the only important difference from a standard hook.

Tie in a small clump of elk hair as your tail.  Tie it in at the top of the bend, extending just over the back of the bend.  This is a bit of a tricky placement on a curved hook, but just eye it up.  If anything, err on the side of getting it too far back.  You'll want the hair to flare, so pull down your wraps tightly without pulling the hair around the hook.  As you can see in my picture, two of the hairs are either in there backward or got clipped somehow.  Ideally, remove these, but it's just for looks, not fishability.

With a good bit of tension in the thread, wrap forward up over the hair, causing it to flare out to the sides.  As you wrap, work your thread up through the ends of the hair, ideally, ending up with all of the ends wrapped over by the time you reach the point where you started your thread.  You can even sweep the hairs back slightly if you need to, the main idea here is to spread out the hairs across the back half of the body to create a smooth transition rather than a bump where the butts of the hairs end.

After this, trim the butts of the hairs as close as you can get them with your scissors.

Return your thread to the tie in point of the tail, and tie in a dry fly saddle hackle, the smallest you've got (that's smallest in terms of barb length), by the butt, concave side of the curvature facing forward.  The curve direction isn't super critical on a fly this heavily hackled, so don't get discouraged if your hackle is being unruly.  The hackle I used here is from a Whiting Midge saddle, and although I didn't size it, it'd typically be appropriate for a #18-22 dry fly.

After that, tie in a length of sparkle yarn about 3-4" long, in the color you want for the rear half of your fly.  If you don't have sparkle yarn, you could get some (its cheap) or use dry fly dubbing, peacock herl, mylar tinsel, or any other typical material for a dry fly body.  With yarn, popular colors are yellow, orange, red, green, and brown, though I could certainly see black, white, blue, or any other color working as well.

Wrap the sparkle yarn forward to your original tie in point, tie off, and trim.  You can either twist up the yarn for a segmented appearance as I have here, or leave it as it is, for a smoother, flatter appearance.  Frankly, I don't think it matters in the slightest.  If your sparkle yarn is especially 'fuzzy', go ahead and trim up some of the unruly fibers.

Palmer your hackle forward to the same point and tie it off and trim it as well.  Palmering means simply to wind the hackle along the length of the body, nothing fancy.  A few tips here would be to use a good bit of tension.  Don't break the feather, but wrapping over the yarn body won't splay the hackle barbs as much as winding them about a bare hook shank, so some added tension will help them spread apart for a bushier, more evenly hackled fly that will float higher.  Also, try not to trap barbs under your hackle stem.  If they're getting trapped, back up, sweep them back with your fingers, and continue.

Select and prepare (by pulling out underfur, and evening in a hair stacker) a clump of hair to use for your wing.  Traditionally, elk or deer hair is used...usually matching whatever you used in the tail.  I've also seen stimmies tied with squirrel, woodchuck, and other hairs.  In this tutorial, I found a small clump of mongoose hair on my tying bench and decided to try it instead, having never seen a mongoose stimmy before.  Mongoose, as I discovered, behaves more like squirrel than elk.  It's hard, solid, not inclined to flare, and slippery as hell.  It isn't necessarily wrong for this fly, but it's suited far better for use as streamer winging.

Tie in your wing at the point where you started your thread (and tied off the yarn and hackle of your body), and use the same method of flare & trim as you did with the tail.  (For me, using the mongoose, my hair simply would not flare, so instead I lifted the butts of the hairs and trimmed them at an angle, smoothing the transition in that way.)  You'll want the trimmed butts to end about 1 eye-length behind the eye itself to give yourself room to finish the fly without crowding.  All these steps are why a 2X long hook is nice; it gives you the room to do all of this.

Just like the back half of the body, tie in your hackle and yarn.  Unlike the rear half, you'll want this hackl slightly longer (again in barb length), about the same size as the hook...even a size or two bigger.  You can use any color hackle for any part of the fly.  Really.  Though I tend to use grizzly in the rear (mainly because that's the only color midge saddle I have) and some other color in the front.

Wrap your yarn forward, tie it off, and trim it.  Then, do the same with your hackle, again, try to leave some space for a head.  I struggle with this on dry flies more than streamers, but if you can do it, it really does make for a better looking, stronger fly.  You can see the lack of flare in my mongoose wing pretty clearly now.  If it was elk, it would be flaring to about 3-5x the width of this wing.  The way this one looks doesn't necessarily make it wrong, or any worse of a fly, but may reduce visibility by a little bit.  The biggest problem I have with it is just that I like the look of the big, flared wing, so it's subjective.

Whip finish and trim the thread.  For a fly like this, I find it beneficial to use a Thompson-style whip finish tool like the one shown above.  You can use any method you like, but I find this tool better for crowded conditions.  While it doesn't seem like there's a lack of space at the eye of this fly, I just feel more comfortable using it with this tie, so I do.  Normally, I go with my Matarelli style tool for 90% of my whip finishing needs.

The completed fly.

Front view.

The stimulator is an extremely popular attractor pattern, not meant to match any specific hatch, but rather imitate nearly any hatch generally.  It also makes an excellent hopper as well as a stonefly adult if the trout happen to be taking a few downed adults off the surface.  Being this heavily hackled, the stimulator rides extremely high in the water, not making any kind of a clear body impression in the surface film (as befits an attractor pattern).  This, combined with the large wing, means that it floats on any water, even the turbulent riffles and rapids common to small streams and pocket water.  Also, this big, buggy tie is easy to spot in nearly any conditions.  If you find you still have trouble spotting the fly in choppy water, it's a simple thing to add some hi-viz antron in hot pink, orange, or green to the wing, for an even more visible fly.

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