Best way to fish a wooly bugger

[hunter1]

Question ? when fishing a wooly bugger do you use a strike indicator . or just the wooly bugger . Thank's.

 

[afishinado]

hunter1 wrote:
Question ? when fishing a wooly bugger do you use a strike indicator . or just the wooly bugger . Thank's.

There's no "wrong way" to fish a bugger. You can use a strike indicator, but generally you fish it without one.

If you haven't already, click back to the first page and read all the posts with tips for fishing the bugger.

It's one of the most versatile flies for catching just about any fish that swims.

 

[hunter1]

Thank's. Iv'e caught fish a few time on a woolly bugger, but I think I just got lucky. I use a T & T 8'6" 5 wt. This would be a good outfit for Buggers ?, if I use a smaller size. That's why I love this forum, no matter how long you FF, you learn something new.

 

[afishinado]

hunter1 wrote:
Thank's. Iv'e caught fish a few time on a woolly bugger, but I think I just got lucky. I use a T & T 8'6" 5 wt. This would be a good outfit for Buggers ?, if I use a smaller size. That's why I love this forum, no matter how long you FF, you learn something new.

It's really up to the fish to decide the "right way" to fish it.

From my earlier post:

Cast upstream and dead-drift your bugger, when it passes your position let it swing across (sometimes animating the fly on the swing works) and let it hang downstream after the swing for a bit, and strip-strip-strip it in.

Keep trying all the above - dead-drifting, swinging, hanging and stripping and cover all the water to let the fish tell you which presentation they are looking for that day.

Good luck.

 

[tomgamber]

I've caught fish on buggers more than any other fly. Depends on the color, size or weight, you can use therm in every single situation you could imagine. I have even had fish take unweighted ones off the surface before I had a chance to strip them. But they can be streamers, nymphs or even terrestrials if you present therm as such.

When I was young and poor, chenilles, black thread and a cheap grade 3 grizzly neck made it easy to crank out a lot of good, durable and effective flies. Sometimes I would trim the long hackles streamside to get it to look more like something on or in the water or make it move a different way.

I fished out of a float tube a lot in Idaho and even as I became a decent tier, buggers were and are still one of my favorite flies. Unless something obvious is showing I will still tie a bugger on first most days.

Once while fishing grannoms on the little J with "Albatross" from the board, I was having trouble getting fish to take my dry imitation. I quickly tied a big tan bugger on just before a burst of grannoms ended and stripped it through the film as if it were feeding. I got two huge browns to take before it ended. One missed and I broke the other off since I just hurried the fly on and left the light tippet from the grannom I was previously fishing. But I found out what I wanted to know.

I once even met a man they called Mr. Wooly Bugger at an outdoor show in Boise. Listened at that table for hours.

With wire and beads and the endless colors and sizes of chennille and saddles available now you could conceivably fish nothing but buggers and do very well. But even I wouldn't do that. I do think using basically the same fly as a beginner, in a lot of different situations, taught me a ton about presentation.

 

[Dave_W]

Hook_Jaw wrote:

I checked it hook was broken off.

Afishinado was doing exactly this with his Wooly Bugger the last time we were fishing the Susky.

After missing many strikes, he showed me the fly. Of course, I had to explain to him that the fly's hook was broken off and that this was why he kept missing fish. He might not remember it happening exactly this way....but trust me, this is exactly what happened.

 

[afishinado]

Dave_W wrote:

Hook_Jaw wrote:

I checked it hook was broken off.

Afishinado was doing exactly this with his Wooly Bugger the last time we were fishing the Susky.

After missing many strikes, he showed me the fly. Of course, I had to explain to him that the fly's hook was broken off and that this was why he kept missing fish. He might not remember it happening exactly this way....but trust me, this is exactly what happened.

Actually I was using the hookless fly as a teaser to locate a pod of fish, and waiting for you to return to put a hook into them....my recollection, anyway