Pattern Database

A midge larva pattern so simple and effective it transcends its humble origins. Copper wire builds a segmented, durable body that sinks fast. Add a peacock head and you have one of the great tailwater nymphs.

The F-Fly was developed in Europe as a highly impressionistic mayfly and midge imitation, designed specifically for pressured trout and technical water. Rather than imitating exact details, the pattern relies on profile, posture, and movement—key triggers that trout respond to when insects are trapped in the surface film. Using only CDC for the wing, the F-Fly excels at riding low, mimicking spent or emerging insects that trout feed on confidently. Its simplicity allows it to match a wide range of small mayflies and midges, making it a favorite on spring creeks, tailwaters, and slow glides. The F-Fly's minimalist design and effectiveness have earned it a permanent place among modern dry-fly staples. This ultra-simple recipe creates a low-riding silhouette with exceptional natural movement—perfect for selective trout feeding in calm, clear water.

Ants blown onto the water surface trigger some of the most selective feeding trout exhibit all summer. Two foam bubbles — abdomen and thorax — perfectly suggest the pinched waist of an ant. Black is most common; cinnamon matches carpenter ants; red imitates flying ant swarms that trout gorge on in late summer.

The egg fly, perfected in the 1970s on California's Sacramento tributaries. Spun-and-flared egg yarn clipped to a perfect orb, with an optional contrasting blood dot. During any spawn — suckers in spring, browns and brookies in fall — drifting eggs are simply what the river serves.

Southwestern Pennsylvania's gift to everyone who just wants to catch trout: a chartreuse chenille loop tail and a chartreuse chenille body. Inchworm, caddis larva, egg — the fish decide, and in Appalachian freestone water they decide fast. No apologies necessary.

George Griffith's cluster midge pattern has been fooling trout for decades. The palmered grizzly hackle through peacock herl perfectly imitates a clump of midges on the surface.

Inch worms drop from overhanging trees onto streams in spring and early summer, and trout key on them heavily. A bright chartreuse-green body on a hook is all it takes — simplicity at its best.

Pat Dorsey's South Platte staple, named for the silver-lined glass bead that glints like the gas bubble of an emerging midge. White thread and a copper rib — that's the entire fly, and on technical tailwaters it is quietly devastating.

A North Country spider fished on Yorkshire's rivers for the better part of two centuries, and brought to American attention by Sylvester Nemes's soft-hackle revival. Nothing but a slim orange silk body and a turn of speckled partridge — the sparse collar pulses in the current suggesting legs, gills, or a drowned emerger.

The third of the great North Country spiders. Yellow silk and gray speckled partridge cover the pale mayflies — sulphurs, cahills, pale wateries — anywhere they hatch. Fish it upstream dead-drift like a nymph, then let it swing up at the hang.

The Pheasant Tail was developed by English riverkeeper Frank Sawyer in the mid-20th century for the chalk streams of the River Avon. Sawyer's original used only pheasant tail fibers and fine copper wire — no thread at all — to imitate the baetis nymphs his trout were feeding on. The American version, often credited to Al Troth, added a peacock herl thorax and a defined wing case and legs. That's the dressing most tiers know today, and it's the one we're tying here.

A micro-zonker that fishes like a nymph and swims like a streamer. One strip of pine squirrel — finer and livelier than rabbit at small sizes — plus a bead, and you have the most dependable small leech going. Dead-drift it under an indicator, then let it swing.

The Bighorn's famous sowbug, named because it is so simple even a blind man could tie it — and so effective nobody minds the joke. Three materials: ostrich herl for the legs-everywhere silhouette, a pearl flash back, and a red thread head as the trigger.

Rim Chung's impossibly simple tailwater nymph — gray dubbing and snowshoe rabbit wing, nothing more. The RS2 consistently outperforms more complex patterns on heavily pressured tailwaters where fish see everything.

Named after the San Juan River in New Mexico, this simple worm pattern represents aquatic worms that get dislodged in high water and during runoff. Controversial in some circles, devastatingly effective in all circles. Red is the most popular color, but pink and wine produce on pressured fish.

The Madison River's twisted-yarn midge, popularized by Blue Ribbon Flies. A cord of twisted Z-Lon makes the segmented abdomen; a clipped tuft of deer hair makes the emerging wing bud. Red, olive, and brown, sizes 16–20, cover most of what a Western river calls midges and small caddis.

Waterhen Bloa's dark companion: purple silk and a snipe hackle, nothing more. The North Country's Iron Blue pattern — when the little dark olives with the slate wings are on the water in cold, blustery weather, this spider swung across the current is deadly.

Controversial in some circles and devastating in all of them, the Squirmy Wormy uses a silicone worm material that moves seductively in current. Particularly effective in high, off-color water after rain when actual aquatic worms wash into the stream.

Peacock herl and a tiny iridescent starling hackle — the small dark soft-hackle for smutting fish. When trout are on little black stuff and refusing everything, a size 18 Starling & Herl swung or dead-drifted in the film is the old, quiet answer.

The mid-Atlantic's egg cluster — rows of soft yarn loops suggesting a drifting clump of sucker eggs. Born in Pennsylvania steelhead country and equally at home on Appalachian trout streams every spring when the suckers run gravel. Cream and orange, dead-drifted on the bottom.

Fran Betters's Ausable River fly, named for his answer when asked what they were biting on. Nothing but snowshoe hare's foot — tail, wing, and the rusty-cream underfur dubbed for the body — on hot orange thread. It floats like a cork through pocket water, refuses to sink, and imitates whatever the fish decide it is.

Walt Young's impossibly simple nymph — just a curved hook and rough hare's ear dubbing. The shaggy, segmented appearance imitates sowbugs, caddis larvae, or whatever the fish imagine it to be.

The most famous of the North Country spiders, fished on Yorkshire rivers for two centuries and still the best Large Dark Olive pattern going. Yellow silk barely shaded with blue-gray fur, and a turn of soft waterhen hackle that breathes in the current like a drowning dun's wings.

René Harrop's WD-40 is a masterclass in minimal fly design — wood duck legs, dubbing body, and snowshoe rabbit wing suggest a midge pupa or BWO emerger just below the film. One of the most effective tailwater nymphs ever created.

Ted Welling's Zebra Midge is the go-to tailwater midge larva pattern. Two materials — thread and wire — tied on a beaded hook. Deceptively simple and devastatingly effective.