Flies Are Meant to be Fished

Something that I hear a lot on message boards is that some folks don't think they could fish a fly that was "too pretty." They would rather keep it as a display piece.  For me, that thought has never crossed my mind.  When I sit down at the vise, I do not do it to make something to look at.  Yes, I tend to put a lot of time and detail...most of which I admit is not necessary...into a fly, but the last thing I would do is put the fly on a shelf and never use it.  As a new father, my time has become increasingly limited at the bench.  If I sit down to tie a fly, you can bet it is going to get fished.  One of my favorite "niche" fly styles to tie is small deer hair bigs for panfish and creek bass.

I had sort of an epiphany a few winters back, that I tied a lot of nice, big, deer hair bass bugs, but ended up not getting to fish them as much as I would like.  I do not get to fish a lot of prime bass ponds, nor do I have real consistent topwater bites on my local lakes.  I wanted to catch fish on deer hair flies, so I started downsizing and also tying more small streamers and subsurface flies using deer hair.  The small stream behind the house has been a great place this summer to fling tiny surface bugs for hungry and colorful panfish.

Yesterday, I wanted badly to test out the little yellow size 10 sliders pictured above, so I took an hour to get them wet in the creek behind the house.  I used my trusty TFO Finesse 1wt setup, and had lots of action in the short trip.  I caught several creek chubs, and two more pretty little longears.

Another comment I get a lot in fishing circles is "I'd love to see your fly boxes." I think most people have this thought that I have rows and rows of pretty deer hair bugs and streamers, which isn't true at all.  My boxes are full of used, beat up, water-soaked then dried in ugly positions, working flies.  In my opinion, if your fly box looks like something from a magazine spread, those flies are probably not getting fished enough.