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3. What one fly??

I'm just curious here...for you moving water trout fishermen out there, if you had to choose one fly to fish for an entire calendar year, what fly would you choose? I live and angle in Colorado's Gunnison Valley and I think I would choose a Pat's Rubberlegs Stonefly Nymph. Specifically a size 8 chocolate & black version. This nymph catches trout from mid-February all the way through mid-November throughout the Gunnison Valley and easily catches most of my fish each fishing season. If I'm nymphing, at least one of my flies is always a Pat's Rubberlegs. I'm interested what fly you would fish if you had to choose only one for an entire year?

While I prefer to fish dry 95% of the time if I was limited to one fly/size all year it would be a red bead head #6 Black Woolly Bugger. I can strip it, swing it, or fish it dead drift like a hellgrammite, leech, or crayfish.

Im in agreement with Matt in that I prefer dryfly fishing. The one fly that seems to work well in the general area I fish is EHC or some version of it. But I love tying many of the famous Michigan patterns, and lots of other stuff, its all good!

A tough one. Probably some version of a Walt's Worm--with a beadhead. Or a size 18 blue wing olive comparadun.

Royal Wulff, size 10 or 12. The EHC is a very close second though, Mike...works everywhere all the time...choice #3 would be an Adams in size 12.

Jonathon

One year I did a challenge between all my favorite dry flies. I too am primarily a dry fly fisher.

What I did was take two different flies and fished each fly on each side of the rivers I fished. What ever fly won the first day kept in play till it was beaten by another fly on another day. But near the end of the Summer going into Fall, I took the best dry flies and did like a championship round.

The flies I fished with were:

Delaware Adams
Para Adams
Renegade
Griffith's Gnat
Elk Hair Caddis
Winged Ant
Royal Wulff

The winner was the Delaware Adams, followed by the Winged Ant. It was close between first and second. Third was the Renegade.

This was a really fun experiment and I will probably do it again. But because of that year, I'd have to pick the Delaware Adams above all others.

By the way, the Delaware Adams is the one fly I caught over 100 fish in one day; so why fish anything else?

Interesting. http://www.johnkreft.com/delaware-adams-tbt/

That was a fantastic little article. Thank you for sharing that Martin.

And to think that it works in the Rocky Mountains as well as back East.