Flies for put and take

You do not need a fly box with a hundred patterns to catch fish in a put-and-take lake. A few reliable flies and a feel for when you should switch between them take you further than most people think. The basic rule is simple: a streamer when the fish are hunting or freshly stocked, and a nymph or pupa when they have grown fussier. And the nice part is that the same handful of patterns works more or less across the whole country.

Four fly types are enough

Learn to recognise these four and you understand most of what is going on in the fly box:

• Streamer looks like a baitfish or a leech and is fished with a retrieve. Your best searching fly. More on streamer fishing.
• Nymph looks like an insect larva under the surface and is fished slowly, often deep. See nymph fishing.
• Pupa and buzzer look like hatching midge larvae and are fished near the surface, for fish that take small stuff.
• Dry fly floats, and comes out at a clear hatch.

In practice streamers and nymphs do the bulk of the work. Dry-fly fishing belongs mostly to the warmer half of the year, when insects hatch and the fish start to rise.

Where the fish hold

Before you pick a fly, read the water. Rainbow trout like to move along edges and depth breaks, around inlets where fresh water comes in, and on the windward side where the surface is aired. On a warm day they go deeper and cooler; on a cool morning they can stand high and hunt in the surface. Putting the fly where the fish actually hold matters more than which exact pattern you knot on.

Colour matters more than the exact pattern

The fish usually care more about colour and movement than about the fly being a perfect copy. Two modes to keep an eye on:

1. Freshly stocked fish or coloured water? Put on something that shows: orange, pink, chartreuse, flash.
2. Clear water and fish that have been in a while? Go muted: black, olive, brown.

A tip is to start dark and step up to a signal colour only if nothing happens.

How you change fly

Let the fish’s behaviour decide, not the clock. If the searching fly does nothing after ten to fifteen minutes of active fishing at different depths, make a deliberate change instead of just casting on. If the fish hunt but miss, try a size smaller. If they stand deep and passive, go to a heavier nymph and slow down. If they nose the surface without taking, try a pupa that is allowed to sit almost still. One change at a time, so you know what made the difference.

Size

Stay around size 8 to 10 for streamers and nymphs. Smaller pupae and buzzers can go down toward 12 or 14 when the fish are nosing the surface.

Patterns worth a place in the box

Woolly Bugger in black is the safe start. Montana Nymph takes over when the fish stand deep and passive, and a Booby fished on a sinking line is the trick when nothing else will work. If you want to widen the box, Zonker and Muddler Minnow are two versatile streamers, Cormorant a slim lure fly for cautious fish, Cat's Whisker a deadly attractor on freshly stocked fish, and Adams and Red Tag classics for surface fishing when the fish are rising. For imitative fishing there is Damsel Nymph in summer, San Juan Worm in coloured water, Diawl Bach as an all-round nymph, buzzer on fish that take small stuff and Klinkhammer when the fish take hatching insects in the surface film. Gammarus imitates the freshwater shrimp and Corixa the water boatman in shallow water, both natural food for fish that have been in a while. An egg-fly is the trigger fly to reach for when the fish need persuading. If you want to pick patterns by species you find a short list in flies for rainbow trout, and for brown trout in flies for brown trout. How you present them, and which fly rod you pick, sits under fly fishing.