WHITE Rubber/Silicone Legs..???..your thoughts please

[BruceC2C]

I recently started to tie my first batch of Pat's Rubber Legs.

Scrolling thru various recipes , some tied with White Legs.

For the life of me, NO WAY I can get myself to even think about using White Legs... compared to a multitude of other color options ( amber, olive, copper, ginger,etc)
,...that r more representative of colors found in stream bed life.

I know I can use a Sharpie to customize the white color.
That is not an attractive option for me.

Pretty accurate to admit there r tons of quality fish caught on flies with White Rubber Legs...

With your input & experience, please to tell me what I am missing
with my Myopic view on White Rubber Legs.

 

[The Angler]

I recently started to tie my first batch of Pat's Rubber Legs.

Scrolling thru various recipes , some tied with White Legs.

For the life of me, NO WAY I can get myself to even think about using White Legs... compared to a multitude of other color options ( amber, olive, copper, ginger,etc)
,...that r more representative of colors found in stream bed life.

I know I can use a Sharpie to customize the white color.
That is not an attractive option for me.

Pretty accurate to admit there r tons of quality fish caught on flies with White Rubber Legs...

With your input & experience, please to tell me what I am missing
with my Myopic view on White Rubber Legs.

you're not missing anything. Use what color(s) you are confident in.

 

[sandflyx]

white works well

 

[nfrechet]

for me, a girdle bug is tied with white rubber legs

and a pat's rubber legs is tied with brown or maybe black rubber legs

 

[poopdeck]

I like fly tying because I get to do what I want to do and I rarely follow a pattern exactly. With that said, I do believe Pats rubber legs are historically tied with spanflex. I could be wrong about that because I also don’t care much about fly history and those who tied them. Use white, black, pink, round square, flat or whatever makes you the happiest.

 

[Sylvaneous]

I'm tying these in 14. 3.3 coffee tungsten bead. Some legs are Grizzly micro legs in rootbeer and MFC small barred sexi-floss in golden yellow. The sexi floss is tougher, it will not snap, but the silicone micro legs are tough enough. Further, if you're interested, the under flash is Glitter Thread Drk Brown, 07 and the wrap is Wapsi stretch tube in tan or D rib medium tan. SLF squirrel brown with pheasant ice dub mixed in. I like it a lot and it works when gray foxes and chills are about

 

[laszlo]

You have a long and heathy future (reading your palm)

 

[Bamboozle]

I tolerate rubber or silicone legs on bass & sunfish poppers, mainly because I buy them and they aren't usually available without.

However having passed through the era of sheet latex, I don't tie or fish a single trout fly with rubber legs or use any rubber materials because of durability issues. I also just don't like the way they look, even if they are effective.

YMMV

 

[Nocktavius]

I tolerate rubber or silicone legs on bass & sunfish poppers, mainly because I buy them and they aren't usually available without.

However having passed through the era of sheet latex, I don't tie or fish a single trout fly with rubber legs or use any rubber materials because of durability issues. I also just don't like the way they look, even if they are effective.

YMMV

Spanflex and MFC barred sexi legs are what you’re looking for. The term “rubber legs” is a misnomer bc they’re not rubber at all. Girdle bug I believe stems from the days when a gentleman angler would remove the spandex waistband from his lady’s unmentionables in order to add some interest to his stonefly patterns.

Anyways ive got Pats kicking around in my boxes from 2 seasons ago+ that have handled more than their share of big ole wild browns and bows. Some of them might be missing a leg, but fish can’t count. Usually though I tie them by the dozen before a big trip and plan to lose most of them to the river bottom (they’re my dropshot with a hook) by the end of my trip

 

[mt_flyfisher]

I recently started to tie my first batch of Pat's Rubber Legs.

Scrolling thru various recipes , some tied with White Legs.

For the life of me, NO WAY I can get myself to even think about using White Legs... compared to a multitude of other color options ( amber, olive, copper, ginger,etc)
,...that r more representative of colors found in stream bed life.

I know I can use a Sharpie to customize the white color.
That is not an attractive option for me.

Pretty accurate to admit there r tons of quality fish caught on flies with White Rubber Legs...

With your input & experience, please to tell me what I am missing
with my Myopic view on White Rubber Legs.

I’ve got to agree with what others have said about using Spandlex, Sexilegs, Spanflex, or whatever the distributors want to call it. It’s very durable, and personally, I’ve never used it in white.

If you want to see some of the most popular (and in my experience, productive) colors, just go to one of the popular fly shop websites.

Here’s a copy of a page from Galloup’s Slide Inn website for example: (you can see pretty good pictures of the various leg and body colors on his website, none of which have white legs)

Here’s a box of my Rubber Legs in some of the colors that I found productive.