Favorite Dries...

[gaeronf]

What are your 5 favorite dry flies and in what size? The recipe would by nice too

 

[evw659]

i fish nymphs about 70 percent of the time, (except for brookies) but here are mine.

- royal wulff size 14 and 16
- quill body sulphur parachute size 14
- Gray Wulff for slate drakes
- parachute ant sz 16-20
- adams size 14 and 16

 

[gfen]

The Royal MF Wulff.
The Usual.
Parachute whatevers, including black fur ants.

Mostly the first two.

 

[wsender]

Parachutes in various colors, Elk Hair Caddis, Klinkhammers, XCaddis

 

[PaulG]

Orange ant
Crowe bettle
Elk hair caddies
Adams parachute
Black parachute Ant

 

[MKern]

Generic mayfly parachute size 14
Black ant size 16
Foam Hopper the bigger the better
Foam Frog the bigger the better
Cluster midge size 18

 

[RLeep2]

Searching flies, non-insect or hatch specific:

1) large deerhair ant, usually a #10. If you paint the tops of them with Hard As Nails, they'll last for 8-10 fish. If you don't they'll usually last for about 5. But you can tie 25-30 an hour. Probably more, actually. I have 10 thumbs.

2) Hare's Ear Parachute - #14-18, with #16 being the workhorse size. Just an Adam's parachute with a hare's ear body.

3) Deer Hair Caddis - #12-20, with #16's being the workhorse again. Natural deer hair downwing. Good combos of body/palmered hackle are: hare's ear/brown, peacock/cree (or Adams mix), tan (more like a camel color)/dark ginger or ginger variant, an almost black shade of dark brown/dark dun (this is the grannom), olive/medium dun and my current favorite, wound pheasant tail reinforced with 3/0 rust thread/brown hackle.

4) Deer Hair Delta Caddis - This is the old Solomon/Leiser "The Caddis and The Angler" delta wing caddis with a deer hair rather than hackle tip wing. Start the body at the rear and bring it about 2/3 of the way up the shank. Tie in about half as many deer hair fibers as you would for a regular deer hair caddis and then split them and figure-8 them out to a 45 degree angle with a few wraps of thread, tie in a hackle and leave it for later. Add more body up to the point where you'd make the head, making your first wrap of body material another figure 8 to anchor the wings. Then wrap hackle over this front portion of the body in front of base of wings. Clip hackle flush on bottom and finish head. Best combos: hare's ear/brown, tan/ginger, grannom (almost black/dark dun). Best sizes are #14 and #16. This is a very, very versatile fly that will float like a cork in the runs and lay flush on the slower pools.

5) Ausable Wulff, some with rust bodies and some with natural Australian Opossum bodies. Sizes #14-18

Honorable Mention: Grizzly Wulff in #12-18 and a green-bodied Stimulator tied on a standard length dry fly hook in #14-16.

 

[BrookieBuster101]

Well I dunno I can do 5 b/c I really only use one or two searching patterns when im not fishing a hatch.

I like my Coastal Deerhair Caddis, Wulffs, and Klinks the best

However im getting into the CDC scene and i think that some of those patterns are moving up the list.

 

[dryflyguy]

#20 BWO - I've caught fish on this fly in every month of the year. Although spring and fall is definitely the best time to hit small olive hatches.

#14 sulpher - Because they have such a long hatching season - all of may and thru most of june

#16 tan caddis - I've found these flies hatching thru out most of the season. And have also caught fish on them when nothing's hatching - just using it as an attractor fly.

#14 crowe beetle - this is my go to fly all summer and fall, unless I see something else hatching that I'm sure that the fish are keyed in on.

#16 & #18 deer hair ant - if the fish won't hit the crowe beetle, my next offering

 

[jjsjigs]

cigarette butt fly for panfish... LOL!

Then maybe a White Bomber for summer steelhead.

No, No... my favorite is a glo-bug with floatant put on it.

 

[afishinado]

dryflyguy wrote:
#20 BWO - I've caught fish on this fly in every month of the year. Although spring and fall is definitely the best time to hit small olive hatches.

#14 sulpher - Because they have such a long hatching season - all of may and thru most of june

#16 tan caddis - I've found these flies hatching thru out most of the season. And have also caught fish on them when nothing's hatching - just using it as an attractor fly.

#14 crowe beetle - this is my go to fly all summer and fall, unless I see something else hatching that I'm sure that the fish are keyed in on.

#16 & #18 deer hair ant - if the fish won't hit the crowe beetle, my next offering

I'm right with DFG. I would vote for exactly the same flies but I use a foam beetle and ant instead of the the crowe beetle and ant which are tied with deer hair. Same flies but different materials.

 

[pcray1231]

1. Parachute Adams - My go-to brookie buster, and also works just fine on larger streams to match the hatch, just get the size right. Better yet, I can reasonably fish it as an emerger, dun, or spinner. Get a good bushy one and glob a lot of floatant on there, and I can skate it to represent caddis. Honestly, with this one pattern in a good range of sizes, I think I could reasonably cover 95% of my topwater fishin nearly as well as I do with more exact matches. Terrestrials is about the only place I'd run into trouble if I took this approach.

2. Spent wing mayfly spinners - name your size and color to match hatch. What can I say, I'm a spinner fall junkie, and they're soooo easy to tie. I even use them for midges, with a thread body and no tails.

3. Catskill tie - name size and color to match hatch. I like skating them around, and those explosive, fish leaping out of the water takes. Skating is tough to do with a no-hackle dry. EHC and stimulators work well for this too, but often I feel its the mayflies they're after and the catskills work a tad better.

4. BWO thorax tie, size 18. Best in March, and those first good rises of fish to mayflies always make my year. They seem to hit this pattern especially well, and it's become kind of my personal tradition to kick off my dry fly year in March on Spring Creek using this fly.

5. Comparadun - its an easy tie, and its pretty much my go-to for dead drifting mayfly duns (except the BWO, see #4).

 

[BPS]

Parachute Adams

Parachute Ant

Royal Wulff

EHC

Orange Ant


Edit- Shoulda Just Copy and Pasted PaulG's response.

I do wanna try some beetles this year. Never fished them. I do so well with the ants I never really cared to try something else.

 

[troutpoop]

Usual, Ants and BWO comparadun

 

[PA12pt]

1. size 14-16 black elk hair caddis.
2. size 14-18 sulphur
3. size 10 extended body green drake/size 8 poly wing coffin
4. size 12-16 BWO

Those are about the only hatches i like to fish otherwise i fish nymphs