3 Flies for the Week: July 16
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Time to read 3 min
Fishing continues to get better and better as the days go on, but be careful with rising water temperatures. Although things are still safe right now for the fish, with the recent heat wave things could be on the verge of dangerous temperatures for the fish. The fish certainly survive high water temperatures, but being caught in these conditions can cause fatal results. Be sure to have a thermometer with you and get off the water once it reaches 65.
Enough with the PSA though, dry fly activity has been fantastic lately. Depending on where you’re at, you may see PMD’s, tricos, green drakes, gray drakes, BWO’s, pseudos, caddis, yellow sallies, golden stones, and maybe a random salmonfly. Fish are more than willing to look up for adult insects right now, so take advantage before the winter blues come rolling back in and the indicator is our best friend. Nymphing always seems to do well, as always, but if you’re going to be throwing a nymph on we recommend doing it under a dry of some variety. When throwing dry-droppers keep in mind that heavier flies require bigger dries to support the weight. Heavy jigged flies are best fished with a foam hopper of some variety, whereas lightweight, standard beadhead patterns can be done under a standard dry. Streamers have been doing great as well, right now we’d recommend fishing white or olive. Now let’s talk about our top flies for this week!
#1: Chubby Chernobyl - Royal sz8
Quickly after its development, the Chubby Chernobyl became arguably the most popular dry fly on the market. Much like many of our favorite flies, this fly looks like absolutely nothing natural at all. Rather, it just looks ultra buggy and the fish just can’t resist. The Chubby is awesome fished solo when hammering the banks in hopes that a fish will come up and smack it thinking it’s a grasshopper. Additionally, we really love this fly because it holds a ton of weight and is the PERFECT fly for fishing a hopper-dropper. It also does great when fishing two dries, which we certainly love to do. Generally speaking, when we’re fishing two dries we don’t use a sz8 and opting to a sz12 in this case will result in more luck. But, for everything else we like the sz8!
The beautiful thing about this fly too is that you can fish it absolutely anywhere. I’ve had some of the most fishing fun ever when I was watching 24” cutbows from Spinney come from the depths and absolutely annihilate the biggest Chubbies we had in our box. Absolutely have this fly in your box, and you better have the Royal coloration. For some reason the Royal coloration of attractor dry flies seem to produce the most success for me. It could be from the contrast within its coloration, or may just the red center, who knows but it works!
#2: Parachute PMD - sz16
Like we’ve mentioned the past few weeks, PMD’s are hatching statewide and fish are loving it. For some reason, mayflies drive trout crazier than any other bug out there. I don’t have a science on it, but I’ve had more spectacular dry fly fishing days when there’s some form of mayfly hatching over anything else. Now that doesn’t go without saying that I’ve absolutely had amazing days when fishing caddis, stonefly varieties, midges, and hoppers. Regardless, the bigger PMD’s are still around in the right areas so fishing a sz14 or 16 is a better choice. Whereas in other areas the smaller PMD’s are hatching, so the sz16 or 18 is more appropriate. This is the exact reason why we recommend the sz16 right now to fit the best of both worlds. PMD dries are rather simple just because when fish are keyed in on them, they’ll eat just about anything, this is why we chose the simplest version of a PMD dry.
#3: Perdigon - Quill/Fl. Orange sz16 3.3mm
Perdigons have been beaten to death getting talked about in this shop, so I’ll keep this one very brief. Fish eat perdigons and you can fish them anywhere and at any time. Hopper-droppers, indo rigs, euro nymphing, whatever, they’ll work!
Best of luck on the water this week and we hope these 3 Flies for the Week: July 16 catch a fish or two for ya. All three flies are available on our website and in the shop.
Xavier Puls
If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to reach out to Xavier on email at xavier@goldenflyshop.com, or call the shop at 303-330-1292. Thank you!