Freshwater SRC flies

Dave Westburg

Fish the classics
Forum Supporter
I like to fish classic wet flies for freshwater cutts. Haig-Brown's Silver Brown is good.
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as is the Lady Caroline but stay away of big steelhead sized hooks which can kill cutts if they hook the fish in the base of the tongue.
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These Silver March Brown, Peter Ross, Woodcock and Yellow, Mallard and Claret, March Brown and Teal and Red wet flies work fine for me on the Stilly and the Cowlitz. I mostly tie them on size 8 and 10 short shank hooks to minimize mortality.
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ABITNF

Steelhead
In the Fraser backwaters and sloughs and the Stave River always did good on simple shings like Mallard and Silver or a tied down minnow with a mylar piping body and either peacock herl or two or three strips of yarn tied down front and back with that and some unfurled mylar extending for the tail. Building the shank up with yarn and slathering it with head cement before sliding the mylar over made them a bit more durable.
 

Creatch’r

Potential Spam
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I like to fish classic wet flies for freshwater cutts. Haig-Brown's Silver Brown is good.
View attachment 13399
as is the Lady Caroline but stay away of big steelhead sized hooks which can kill cutts if they hook the fish in the base of the tongue.
View attachment 13402
These Silver March Brown, Peter Ross, Woodcock and Yellow, Mallard and Claret, March Brown and Teal and Red wet flies work fine for me on the Stilly and the Cowlitz. I mostly tie them on size 8 and 10 short shank hooks to minimize mortality.
View attachment 13403
That’s what I’m talking about there!
 

GAT

Dumbfounded
Forum Supporter
No need for a photo but I've found, at least in Oregon, known streamers like Muddler (previously mentioned), Purple Joe, Silver Hilton and a Royal Coachman Streamer can be very effective in the lower sections of the rivers. If you like making modifications, pink patterns for SRC are quite effective down here, so for the heck of it, tie a Royal Coachman Streamer with a pink instead of red floss body belt. Us pink dubbing for the body of a Silver Hilton instead of black.

You'd be surprised how changing some material colors to pink makes a huge difference in your success rate.

Of course upstream egg patterns, green butt pinks and Borden Specials are the big hitters.
 

DerekWhipple

Steelhead
Forum Supporter
My favorite is muddler-style flies, last year it was Bruce Berry's euphoric muddler. Works skated on top, in the film, wet, or down deep on a sink tip. Also as a bonus, muddlers are great at catching steelhead!

I really should start throwing bigger stuff though. I've seen some bruiser cutts as steelhead bycatch, and on social media occasionally see big ones caught on big leech type flies.
 

Creatch’r

Potential Spam
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I'll do a step by step on how Mike K tied his reversed spiders when I get home later today.
I refreshed my memory before I started with a SBS online from Preston, who I believe learned the fly from Mike but I’d be happy to learn any new tricks along the way. Still tough for me to really nail it clean, but I’m glad the cutts don’t care. I don’t think I’ve ever tied one I was proud of lol.

I was gifted some old up eye irons that are tiny, like size 8, so I started tying some mini hair wings last night on those hooks and will do some more today. I like the way they look and they are more fun to tie.
 
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