For my birthday I've recieved $250 in gift certificates to Sportsmans Warehouse and I was trying to decide what to spend my new found fortune on and I need some help. I'm need to invest in some flies and a few new lures. The lures I can handle but I'm fairly new to fly fishing and I was wondering if anybody has a favorite fly that I can buy or tie? Also I could use some advice about what kind of tack would be handy to have in my tackle box or vest.
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If I could only have 1 fly to fish with the rest of my life, it would be a #6 Olive Wooly Bugger! With that I'd die a happy camper. It doesn't always work, but I could count on 1 hand the number of times it didn't
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I am not the biggest flyfisherman (prefer my secret worm technique and jigs and spinners for trout), but I can help you with a few guaranteed patterns that work in the grand junction area and surrounding 150 miles.
If you wanna fish the frying pan or taylor, smaller misis shrimp patterns are the key.
If you wanna fish the gunnison river, the big hatch is the salmon fly hatch in late may. They are about 3" long if that helps.
On the colorado river, there are green drake hatches in which the whole river goes nuts.
For any lake you will want a variety of nymphs and some small mosquitos, along with midges. Midges are more common in the winter, and mosquitos are dynamite on high mountain lakes for brookies.
PMD and baetis are also common hatches during the year on the main rivers. (colorado, roaring fork, gunnison, fryingpan, blue, taylor)
Besides these, you will want an assortment of nymphs of all sizes and colors; nymphs will be your best friend as a flyfisherman, particularly on the roaring fork they do well on them.
That's for trout, if you like the huge bluegills at reservoir X near grand junction, you'll want large pistol petes and silver doctors, and maybe tie yourself a pattern that looks like a dragonfly for bluegill or bass anywhere. They love dragonflies.
The cicada hatch at juniata reservoir was last week, but there are probably a few strays left. In particular, The walleyes were feeding on them (the cicadas) very heavily.
A few other guaranteed bets are some adams flies, a few terrestrials like small grasshoppers and crickets,which work extremely well in any creek especially during the warmer months, and a few red and black ants. (those work especially well for brook trout)
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Welcome aboard daveycrockett. Nice to have you here!
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Maverick71-
What do you prefer to fish for? Trout? Bass? Walleyes? Wipers? Anything that swims? Still water? Streams? Big rivers? A little more info might help us help you. The first 2 responses are pretty good ones for trout in Colorado.
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I'm mostly fishing for trout and a little bit of bass/blue gill. I'll fish anywhere I can. I'm out mostly around the Golden area and Ft. Collins area. Hope this helps
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