The JGR Dispatch Needs A Fly

I've been reading a lot of other blogs out there and I see that most people come up with some kind of fly that they tout as being the "bee's knees." I just don't have one that's wholly mine. I tend to read Fly Tyer magazine, visit Fly Tying Forum, and then pull details from flies I like and put them together with whatever materials I have at hand.

However,  I think it's time to get into the lab and see if I can come up with one that works for me.

My favorite flies tend to be what's already popular. I love anything with rabbit fur, that's colored olive, or is fashioned after a wooly bugger. I fish a very wide range of species, but when I step out I'm hitting up smallmouth bass.

It's true, trout fly fisherman alone have generated at least 12,304,498 different fly patterns that are essentially the same thing with slightly varying materials, but smallmouth fishermen tend to concentrate on a handful of patterns that are pretty stripped down. In general, if it resembles a crawfish, you're GOOD. And of course, we all know how much fun fishing poppers can be in the summer.

My process:

My fly tying is really erratic. I'll try a new material out, and then that leads me to want to tie a new pattern which leads me to having to purchase another material I don't own. The next thing I know I have a dinner table stacked up with shit and my wife is asking me to pick it up so we can eat dinner not standing up.

Many times, once I get all the materials together, I say screw it and move onto the next project I'll half ass because of my short attention span. I guess I need to change this paradigm.

I'll admit, I'm grossly inefficient. I'll want to tie up some flies for a trip and find myself staying up until 2 a.m. the night before just to get something into my box. When I then start tying, I'll have at least one bad fly up front.

If I was smarter, I'd tie in bigger batches and reduce those prototypes.

And then there's the island of misfit flies, a bucket of flies in the basement that were cast aside because their tails were wrong, or the weight off, or they just didn't catch anything. I hold onto them for whatever reason, maybe to remind me of how inefficient I am.

It's hard to settle on just one fly that's novel and works well for me and my area. While some people live deep in trout territory, and others in the salt, I happen to live in the no man's land between cold water fishing to the North and South and warm water fishing nearer to home. My fishing is kind of whatever's in season, if the temps for the Ohio River are right, I'm hitting up hybrids. If the days are warm and sunny, carp. If it's mild and slightly cloudy, smallmouth. If it's getting cold, trout. Maybe that's why my boxes are stuffed and make no sense, and I struggle with developing a simpler system.

Or maybe, I'll just keep tying all the cool stuff that is being shown out there on the internet.

Thanks for reading,

Josh Rust