Steelhead flies for cloudy water

[Dave Westburg]

Divad asked what what flies I fish when the water is high with poor visibility. For really murky conditions I fish 3-6 inch tube flies.. Here's the British Willie Gunn pattern that started the tube fly revolution. It's about 3-4 inches.



And my own bright 3 inch tube fly in steelhead colors.



Some big temple dog tubes. They are 3-5 inches



And some black tube flies 3-6 inches long. I like to dress them up with jungle cock and a little flash. I carry the patterns on copper, brass, aluminum and plastic tubes and vary the tube based on how deep I want to fish in the water.

 

[O' Clarkii Stomias]

View attachment 1943

Divad asked what what flies I fish when the water is high with poor visibility. For really murky conditions I fish 3-6 inch tube flies.. Here's the British Willie Gunn pattern that started the tube fly revolution. It's about 3-4 inches.

View attachment 1944

And my own bright 3 inch tube fly in steelhead colors.

View attachment 1945

Some big temple dog tubes. They are 3-5 inches

View attachment 1946

And some black tube flies 3-6 inches long. I like to dress them up with jungle cock and a little flash. I carry the patterns on copper, brass, aluminum and plastic tubes and vary the tube based on how deep I want to fish in the water.

View attachment 1947

Badass!

 

[Dr. Magill]

You like tying with buck tail?
Stuff rocks

 

[Dave Westburg]

I use bucktail for General Practitioners, some large tube flies, streamers like the Magog Smelt and Mickey Finn and for saltwater clousers and saltwater baitfish patterns. This salt water streamer is tied mostly with bucktail with a little fishhair laid on the top.

 

[Tom Butler]

One thing I've noticed lately, that may help newer tyers, is how sparse many of the patterns are, especially the baitfish imitations. I can see I used to try and get way to much material on the hook. Even something like the partride and orange, a fly with 1 or 1 1/2 turns of a half stripped hackle works better than a version with 3 full turns. I know it varies with pattern, but just an observation.

 

[brownheron]

I like to tie PNW 'steelhead spey' flies but I don't particularly like to fish them. I tend to give them away or they gather dust in boxes.

I've only fished one fly in two color patterns for the last 3-4 years for all my anadromous fishing including WA, OR, Skeena and Kodiak. This is in all water conditions. Ed Ward's comments back in the day about lashing a rabbit strip to a hook and calling it good were inspiration but I'm too OCD to just do that and nothing else. I change the weight a bit by using plastic, copper or even tungsten tubes. I also tie 'guide fly' versions that take about 4minutes and 'pretty' versions that take a lot longer but that are still basically the same flies.

My catching hasn't gone down at all by limiting myself to a couple flies, if anything it's gone up. I'm spending more energy on fishing the right water and not futzing around changing flies. Over that time I've caught Fall chinook, Summer Chinook, Coho, Steelhead, Resident Rainbows and Coastal cutthroat (bycatch) on the same fly. Boring, but it works for me.

The fly is what I call the Foxy Alicia Leech, named after my wife. Full story in the America's Favorite Flies book if anyone has seen it. It's a basic collared leech pattern like the very cool black fly Dave posted above. For the fancy version, I use three separate dubbing loops with fox hair in graduated colors of blue, long with jungle cock and collar accent. The version below is kind of the middle of the fancy scale.

My second fly is just an all-black version of the same fly with an orange bead instead of pink. I use the one below 90% of the time 'cause everyone knows "black and blue makes them chew"...

FAL1 by Thomas Mitchell, on Flickr