Fish Food

Spring's Glory Hatch is the Skwala Stonefly, but the March Brown Drake could be your big winner. Greg Thomas shares the secrets to timing the spring hatch, what to throw, and how to be successful during pre-run off in the northern Rockies.

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In his words: Phil Rowley's must-have Spring stillwater fly patterns. To avoid the skunk, Phil doesn't leave the house without these bugs. 

These are our top choices for online fly shops and buying quality flies.

Back near the Dawn of Time—the 1950s—a chap named Esmond Drury designed a shrimpy-looking Atlantic salmon fly in response to a ban on prawns as bait in salmon rivers. He called his fly The General Practitioner and the name stuck. Over the next few decades, as flyfishing for steelhead took hold in North America, fly-fishers looked to the Atlantic salmon traditions for guidance and inspiration, and the General Practitioner—now known more simply as the GP—found its way into the fly boxes of Pacific Northwest steelhead anglers.

Every time I fish, the first trout to hand (as long as it's big enough) will get throat-pumped, no matter if caught during spring, summer, or fall. A quick pattern switch made for an extremely productive morning bite.

The Trico, or "Trikes" as anglers often call them, are small mayflies that hatch prolifically between early July and early September, and may last as late as October. They are commonly referred to in angling circles as the "white winged curse.” The defining characteristics of freshly hatched duns are dark bodies with white wings. The curse portion of the equation is that they are tiny, typically represented by hook sizes ranging from #22 to #26. When I show anglers the flies we use to represent Tricos, they often get mad. "How can I even tie it on? I can’t see it."

Currently, fewer than a dozen outlets are licensed to sell his flies, one being—yours truly—House of Fly. If you buy Game Changers outside this network, Blane has a question for you: Are you pitchin’ real Chocklett? The answer: Probably not.

Whether they eat the dry or chow the nymph, trout run large during salmonfly time.

Whatever you call them, blue-winged olives are an important part of a fly fisher’s yearly playbook.