Babysit Your Flies

Babysit Your Flies

So much is made of the notion that once you drop your flies on the water, you don’t want to mess with them, lest the trout see you tinkering about and refuse to eat.

A trout won’t eat it unless it looks just right, and natural. If you need to make a few tweaks to make the fly look natural, make them. 

For goodness sake, don’t simply float a whacky, abnormal, obviously counterfeit fly over a feeding trout just because you were lucky enough to put it there in the first place.

I want my flies looking right, even if I have to tweak them, or babysit or whatever, whenever they are in the zone. A perfect natural pattern that looks absolutely false is far less effective than the kinda-close pattern that behaves like a real bug as it rides the water.

If you know (or think you know) where the fish really is, be sure the fly is riding right and looking like something a trout wants to naturally eat before it floats over its head. If it takes twitches and tweaks before you hit the bona fide feeding zone, fine, make them. 

But make all your tweaks right before you think that fly rides through the zone–and once you are there, don’t move a muscle. 

Play the hand you’ve dealt yourself. Tweak before the zone, but don’t futz around once you get there.