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3. What's your favorite colored woolly bugger?

A fellow I met a few years ago told me the "You only need two colors of woolly buggers: black and olive."

Doesn't this seem a bit restrictive? Chartruese is a KILLER color for me! I've also had considerable success with yellow, purple, brown, hot orange, hot pink, etc. And my favorite variant is to use grizzly hackle in place of matching.

So, fellow flingers of flies, what are your favorite (and most successful) colors? AND not just for trout!

Just thought I would throw that one out there and see what happens.

Tight lines to all!

Jonathon

Jonathon

Black marabou tail, olive body, black hackle is my favotite followed by all black. Chartruese is a very good color for steelhead. I use to dead drift one in pools and riffles on the Salmon River and catch numerous steelies up to 16#.

Exact same as Wbranch! Hey, Starlight, PA... ain't that next door to Hancock, NY on the Delaware River?

Thank you, sir. I'll be sure to have some tied up for this winter!

Jonathon

P.S. One wacky color combination I had success with is bright blue marabou tail topped with silver Krystal Flash, body of silver sparkle chenille (this stuff is getting hard to find!), and bright blue hackle. I came up with this as the fly fishing alternative to the Little Cleo spoon of the same colors. At least warmwater species like it!

What are you fishing for carp? :)

I've caught one carp on a fly rod in my entire life. It took a
CHARTRUESE (see? it works for everything!) woolly bugger in a creek in Missouri. It also happened to have a spinal deformity, which I somehow thought was rather appropriate.

I don't mean to put down any carp flyrodders out there - to each their own.

Bluegills, warmouth, rock bass, and I think redbreast sunfish liked that combination. I caught some nice bass on hot pink, too.

I always say, whatever works...

Jonathon

I caught a nice sucker a week ago on a all black woolly bugger. I was using a sink tip trying to entice a large trout below the Lake Pacwawong bridge (that's for Jason). I snagged the large sucker sitting on the bottom by accident right in the back. Fought pretty good too! :)

Hi all,
By far, the best for me has been this:

Hook: standard streamer-size of your choice
Thread: Brown
Tail: The soft marabou-like feathers from the body of a Cock Ring Neck pheasant. They are somewhat brownish gray in color. Or just good old brown marabou.
Body: Peacock herl tied like chenille.
Palmering and hackle: soft red-brown hen spade hackle.
Simple and effective!

For an extra little "umph" use red thread instead of brown. There's something great about red with peacock herl.

Mark

Softhackle, I'll try that! Thanks for the recipe.

Jonathon

Starlight, PA is just across the border from Hancock, NY. I have a cabin on the PA side of the WB about a mile below Caucci's Delaware River Club.

Very nice! I love that river! I imagine the Delaware gets a lot of fishing pressure.

Mark, I've found the ringneck maribou to be far better for nymphs and wets than any dyed maribou. That brown/gray color is very realistic. I think the reason many tiers don't use maribou on nymphs and wets is because the dyed colors are so flat and unrealistic - not so of the ringneck maribou, and I use it all the time for a lot of things. Action of materials is so important (though a soft-hackler like yourself doesn't need me to tell him that), and nothing beats maribou for action.

By the way, Mark, try tying a softhackle this way sometime: Tie the body as you normally would. Then, clip off a clump (10-20 barbs) of ringneck maribou with the tips roughly aligned. Tie in the clump at the thorax with the tips pointing forward, leaving them the right length to later form the legs. Then wrap the maribou clump around the hook a few times until the thorax is as bushy as you want it (the more you wrap the barbs, the longer the furry maribou fibers sticking off the barbs get). Then tie back the barb tips for legs and you've got a softhackle that will swim with almost no help from the water (I dead-drift flies like this all the time). For a bulkier fly with thicker legs and thorax, clip the tips off the maribou barbs before you use them and start the tying process with the thicker portion of the barbs.

-Shawn

Hi Shawn,
I will definitely try your fly. Here's one I use that has a tailing of the grayish brown Ring Neck maribou.

http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a222/Soft-hackle/FuzzPup-1.jpg

Not the best photo, but you get the idea.

Mark

Very nice fly, Mark - I'm sure it does well. I also love the name, which matches the fly perfectly.

The fly actually comes close to realizing a perverse fantasy of mine, to impale little annoying dogs on fish-hooks. Until they change animal abuse laws, though, I guess I'll have to settle for tying an artificial.

-Shawn

P.S. I hope everyone knows I'm kidding. I would never actually think about impaling dogs. Unless they happened to be barking at me while I was trying to enjoy the serenity of a trout stream. But that would probably never happen.

So, this might be hard to believe, but I have had very little success with Woolly Buggers in general. Everyone else I talk to seems surprised to hear this, so maybe I'm doing it all wrong. With respect to trout fishing, I've had no success, but I did catch some smallmouth bass just a few days ago that couldn't get enough of them.

I will back Mark up on the peacock herl though! They seemed to respond to it much more than my wife's standard issue olive woolly bugger. The one I was fishing had a black marabou tail, grizzly hackle and a peacock herl body. I am definitely going to give the brown marabou tail and brown hackle version that Mark suggested a try though.

Chris.

Hi Chris,
I wanted to add, here, that I use Buggers, generally in the spring, when the water is a bit faster and not as clear as it gets as the season goes on. I have the most success with them at that point in time. Same with the Fuzz Puppy I tie. It seems the trout, at least where I am, don't go for them after the water starts to clear off. I generally tie mine in about the size 10-12 range. I add a split shot about an inch above the Bugger on the leader, and fish it by stripping in working the rod in a jig -like motion so the fly moves up and down in the water column. Perhaps a standard strip-in might work better as the season progresses. I use the same technique with the Fuzz Puppy, only no weight is needed because of the bead chain eyes.

Mark

Chris, I must admit that I myself don't often throw woolly buggers at trout, though when I have - and its usually either black or olive - I've had some pretty big fish pay attention. I love dry fly fishing, and if I can do that and catch fish, that's what I prefer to do. Try them at night if you fish like I do - dry-fly my way upstream and throw a bugger on the way back down. The biggest browns come out after dark so you might be in for some surprises.

In warmwater, though, at least for me, they are almost second to none! Try them again when you are in smallmouth country or if you get to fish a well-stocked farm pond or small lake.

Jonathon

For trout -----> All Olive (dark and light equally effective for me)

For salmon ----> All Chartreuse or All Black (same success rate on each)

For steelhead ---> All White

A buddy swears by a mixed black and white tail, dark grey body and grizzly hackle for everything.

man, you have no idea how delighted i am that you posted that statement. i have never ever caught a fish on a wooly bugger. last spring i caught my first fish on a streamer, a little bitty sparkly white mini-bugger invented for stocked fish by a member of our TU chapter, but that is the only one. until i caught that fish, i could not really believe that it was possible. drys, wets, nymphs, yes, yes, yes, but not buggers. thank heaven for Softhackle's wets. now they work as advertised! and they are a darn sight simpler and easier to tie. and more elegant sitting there in the box.

Hi folks...My first post...I have had no success with Buggers as well. Without question I have caught more trout on Hornbergs that anything else, unless there is a hatch of course.For me, the Buggers can stay at home. According to the other posts, it must be my operator failure.In addition I have never, ever, ever caught anything on a Muddler Minnow...Again...Operator failure I guess.I have tried many color combinations of Buggers and they all produce the same...Nothing!!! I take my hat off to you who do well with them!
Stay well and as always...Be safe!! Whitie