The basics friends...
Fishing flies are bait designed to imitate insects, invertebrates, baitfish, crustaceans, small animals, and other fish food. Typically flies are tied with natural materials like feathers, thread and animal fur or hair. Recently, a range of synthetic and natural materials are used to create a plethora of flies in all forms, colors, shapes and sizes.
It is imperative to the fly fisher to know what you are trying to imitate when fly fishing to step into the mind of the fish you are targeting. There are so many categories and subcategories of different flies, but a majority of them fit into five major categories: Dry flies, wet flies, nymphs, streamers and poppers.
Dry Flies
Dry flies represent the purest form of fly fishing for trout. Dry fly patterns are tied out of any material that floats. The feathers of them will come from animals like ducks and chickens, while the main bodies of them will be composed from things like fur and foam. All of these materials are designed to make dry flies float, which makes them a very exciting way to fly fish.
Dry flies typically imitate adult or emerging insects like mayflies, caddisflies, stoneflies, midges, grasshoppers and damselflies. Flies are tied in patterns, general recipes for specific types of imitations. Dry flies are thought to be as good as it gets in fly fishing because the fish’s take is visual, requiring accurate casting and delicate presentation. Medium to slow action rods put dry flies on the water more delicately than faster actions, and so a growing number of dry-fly purists prefer bamboo rods.
Wet Flies
Fly fishing with emerging wet fly patterns is an excellent and proven way to catch trout feeding just below the surface. Some flies begin to hatch below the water surface. Some up-winged flies swim or crawl beneath the surface as adult spinners in order to lay egg. Often duns & spinners are swamped by the current and forced under the water surface. Wet flies are tied to imitate things like aquatic insects, scuds (freshwater shrimp), fish eggs, worms and crayfish.
Wet flies are versatile patterns and make excellent dropper flies on a dry-dropper setup or traditional nymph rig. They’re ideal for anglers who enjoy swinging wet flies on large rivers and small streams for picky trout; add them to your fly box and be ready to match the hatch.
Nymphs
Nymphing is a type of trout fishing using flies suspended in moving water with weight added to sink the rig to the fish’s feeding depth. The strike happens below the water’s surface, so the fly fisher must see or sense the strike by using a strike indicator or watching for line movement at the surface or fish flashing below the surface.
Casting nymph rigs is not usually graceful; because of added weight and strike indicators. Trout spend most of their time feeding underwater, so nymphing is often the most effective technique for catching fish.
Streamers
Streamer fishing is a method of fly fishing using a submerged fly called a streamer. A streamer is built to imitate a “bait-fish”, or a smaller fish that larger fish generally like to feed on, such as sculpin and minnows.
Streamers are typically fished like lures; the fly fisher retrieves or strips in the lure to imitate prey. Fish hit streamers hard; strikes with streamers tend to be territorial or predatory, and usually violent. Streamers are fished with one or two handed rods, and can be effective for essentially any type of fish in almost any condition. Even in the most technical dry-fly fishing, most fish will give a well-presented streamer a good look, especially larger, predatory fish.
Poppers
Poppers are blunt or scoop headed flies fished on the surface of water with quick strips and twitches, imitating wounded baitfish, frogs, mice and other small prey animals. Poppers were borrowed directly from the baitcasting crowd; bass and warm-water species love these flies. Largemouth bass are known for their explosive takes on poppers.