Fly Tying-Woolly Buggers

I spent some time the last few weeks tying up some Woolly Buggers. The Woolly Bugger is by far the most recognized fly in all of fly fishing. The basic bugger is a classic streamer fly and not very hard to tie. It is effective because of its ability to imitate so many of the different food sources on which fish feed. The wooly bugger can easily imitate damsel/dragonfly nymphs, crawfish, baitfish, stonefly nymphs, leeches, salamanders, sculpins.
There is a limitless amount of variations you can make to the basic woolly bugger. I wanted to try to keep it simple for now, so I decided on a size #6 hook, 6 traditional colors (black, brown, olive, tan, gray, and white), 6 nontraditional (midnight fire, maroon, red, chartreuse, orange, and purple), no weight, beads or legs, but I did want a splash of flash, so I added flashabou in the tail and used tinsel chenille for the body. I also choose to use long saddle hackle to give it more movement in the water.

Provo River 8-12-2010

Linda and I arrived at our camp site in the Soapstone campground in the afternoon on Thursday, the day before the kids would start arriving with their families. After getting camp set up Linda kicked back to read a book and I waded up the river behind camp throwing a hopper and dropper rig.














I fished for a couple hours, enjoying the clear cool water, and caught one Brown, a few Rainbows and some Brookies.














On Friday the girls started showing up with their families and I waded up the river with Dusty while he fished. He had a good time catching Brookies and Rainbows.

















Sam came up after work on Friday and fished Beaver Creek on Saturday, I didn’t go with him, so no pictures, but he caught some Cuttroats.

South Slope of the Uinta Mountains 8-7-2010

While Dusty was in town he wanted to do some fly fishing, so Sam and I thought we would take him to some spots on the south slope we have been wanting to fish. We also thought that this would give us a good chance at a Grand Slam, four species of trout in one day (Rainbow, Cutthroat, Brook and Brown).

Our first stop was the North Fork of the Duchesne River.














The first fish I caught was a Rainbow, and that was a good thing because it was the only one I caught all day and proved to be the most difficult specie on our list to catch. With the exception of that Bow and a Cutthroat that Dusty caught, all we caught were a bunch of nice little Brookies.














Sam giving Dusty some tips.














One of Dusty's Brook Trout.














Another little Brookie.












We saw evidence of a stonefly hatch (shucks on rocks). And this half dead adult.












Next we went to the West Fork of the Duchesne River to try to knock the Cutt’s off the list. Sam caught the first Cutt then Dusty. I believe they ended up catching a few more Cutt’s each. I was only able to land one. Sam also caught one Rainbow (his only one for the day) and a Cuttbow (not on the list). When we saw the moose down stream, we decided to head upstream.

















With only a Brown left on mine and Sam’s list and a Brown and Rainbow on Dusty’s list, we headed for Rock Creek. Not far up the 17-mile dirt Blind stream road it started to rain hard and a lot of water was running down the road. Up on top we could see that a hail storm had passed through ahead of us.












We fished Rock Creek a few miles below the dam for awhile. Sam was able to catch one Brown and achieve his grand slam, but with the fishing being worse than we expected at this location, we decided to try the lower end of Rock Creek.














Can you guess what these two are up to? I will let you know at the end of the post.













On lower Rock Creek I was glad I had my waders on, but opted not to tell the boys that when Flint and I had taken the scouts fishing at this same spot a couple years ago, three of the scouts wading in shorts ended up with leaches attached to their legs. At this spot we all caught some Browns. Now all we needed was to get Dusty hooked up with a Rainbow. When we got in the truck to leave I told Sam and Dusty to check for leaches, there were none to be found, but I couldn’t help but notice that Dusty kept looking at his legs and seemed a little fidgety.












The last stop of the day was the upper stretches of the West Fork of the Duchesne. This location was very overgrown with willows, and their were several beaver dams. We didn't have much time, because it was late, but we all ended up catching a few Cutt's each.

















Last off all the pictures of Sam and Dusty bent over in the water was because Dusty had lost his shoe to the mud. After 10-15 minutes of searching it was found.
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