Like many things, successful fly fishing takes confidence. Confidence in your cast, the tippet size and especially the fly. I have my favorites and rarely stray too far from a pink squirrel or a bead head prince nymph. I like thick dubbed flies and sizes 12-16. Maybe an 18 if nothing is biting. I fished for 3 hours on Saturday and caught one fish on a prince nymph. Everyone seemed to be real chatty on the river and very nice, which was good because it was crowded. Someone was fishing in almost every spot. I was walking back to the car when I saw a guy pull in a nice trout fishing a nymph rig with an indicator. Just what I was using but with no luck. He was an older guy with a TU hat and enough tippet spools hanging from his lanyard to let me know he was serious. He waved and I walk towards him. He asked if I saw any surface action and I said I hadn’t. I asked what size nymph he caught his fish on and he walked towards me and wanted to show me. He actually walked half way across the river and showed me his setup. To say the flies he was using were small is an understatement. They were tiny, nearly microscopic. The body of the flies was no more than thread or a little pheasant tail wrap. Super sparse and a tiny thorax to match. He pulled out his fly box and gave me two flies, one with a reddish body and one black one. I felt like I had just met my fly fishing guardian angel. He was a really nice guy and told me to go upstream and kick his buddy out of the good spot he was hogging. I didn’t kick him out when I walked by, instead I went up to my favorite spot that happened to be empty. I tied on both of the flies he gave me in a two-nymph rig with a tiny split shot just like the old guy had. The first cast I hooked a little trout and got him in. The next cast I hooked a bigger one but broke him off. Two casts two fish on the little red looking pheasant tail nymph. This is after not catching a damn thing for hours. Not even a bite and I get two in two casts with this little fly I would never have thought to use. I tied on the smallest pheasant tail I had, which looked huge compared to the one I had just lost. A few more casts and I had another one. This time on the other fly he gave me, not the one I tied on. A few more casts and I hooked a big one. He took me up and down the pool three or four times but I finally got him in. He was about 15 inches and had some serious girth. He was developing a nice hooked jaw like the huge browns have and had a brilliant yellow color. I guess I should get to work tying some tiny flies. I ended up losing both that he gave me but you can see the black one in the corner of the big trout’s mouth so I should be able to replicate it. I guess I should always bring extra so I can pass on the knowledge to someone else. I wonder how many fish I would have caught if I had those flies all day...
