It’s the time of year when those too lazy to shovel snow who live in warmer climates start chirping about spring, yet in the mountains, March is more promise than actual delivery.
The Upper Sacramento is typically running high (with temps in the mid-50s forecast this week, it’s going to run even higher), real spring weather can be more than a month away, and you can still deceive yourself into thinking you’ve got time to tie that hundred dozen flies you planned for the winter.
OK, I’ll be up front: I’m not going to make it to one hundred dozen. In fact, because I’m writing this instead of tying those, I’ll be lucky to make it to a couple dozen, which makes the following fact a good thing: I like simple flies.
Really simple flies.
The Annual Fly Freak Out
Not only am I forced to confront my essential laziness, it’s about this time of year that my love for simple flies is taken to absurd new heights; every late winter, I find myself idly toying with the idea of stripping my fly selection down to a mindlessly bare essential – like fishing a whole year with flies tied from nothing but grizzly hackle and Hare’s Ear dubbing.
That’s something I probably couldn’t get away with, but I bet I could get away tying and fishing nothing but soft hackles.
One fly, all year? Could a lazy/greedy fly fisherman survive one year on a steady diet of soft hackles?
You can effectively fish soft hackles as everything from tiny midge nymphs to mayfly emergers to caddis to small streamers, though most people don’t – a reality which suggests soft hackles need a better publicist.
It’s an interesting idea (and the materials would be wildly affordable), but it’s just something I threaten to do in front of my friends (“Just put the hackle pliers down and back away” Dave Roberts will say, “and nobody gets hurt.”).
I haven’t yet pulled the trigger, and probably never will.
After all, I’m lazy but I’m also greedy, and while I’ve successfully whittled my fly selection down to a handful of simple flies, I haven’t yet worked myself up to what would amount to a fly fishing stunt (though it would make interesting blog fodder).
Still how little could I sneak by with that wouldn’t amount to a stunt? Let’s see:
- Parachute dries (size & color to match the handful of mayfly hatches in this part of the world)
- Stimulators (from small caddis sizes to the big, deadly dark numbers)
- A small handful of soft hackle patterns (PTs to Hare’s Ears to biot bodies, they’re the force multiplier of the fly world)
- Woolly Buggers
Sure, there are big gaping holes in that list, but you’d be surprised what you could accomplish by stretching the definition of “soft hackle” even a little.
In fact, soft hackles could cover everything from midge pupae to stonefly nymphs with a detour into emerging caddis, PT nymphs, and emerging, in-the-film mayflies.
I think I could pull it off.
The flies in the minimalist ointment here are the patterns sent to me by well-meaning friends, apparently unaware I’m trying to kick a bad habit.
Dave Roberts keeps waving innovative March Brown patterns under my nose, and [name redacted] keeps contributing BWO patterns that seemingly never fail (the Roy Palm soft hackle emerger rarely fails either, but it’s hard to see).
Then there’s my growing interest in streamers, and while I could get by with Woolly Buggers in two colors (black & silver/white), a plain brown package just arrived from Ian Rutter’s end of the country stuffed with what may be the perfect streamer, though more (and serious) testing on smallies, rainbows and big brown trouts is desperately needed (yes, I know where a few lurk).
In short, I may be simultaneously lazy and greedy, but when it comes to slimming down my fly selection, I’m also apparently weak (Hi, I’m Tom, and I’m powerless in the face of free flies).
See you at the vise (barely), Tom Chandler
Then the Day Tripper 
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