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
