Gettin' Ready

Well, I haven't gotten much fishing in over the last several weeks, but I have managed to spend some time filling the fly boxes for an upcoming trip to the South Holston River. We've got a multi-day excursion planned for the end of October in the hopes of meeting up with some large pre-spawn browns and I'm hoping to show them something just a little different. Some of these flies are standard Holston patterns, some are proven fish getters and some are experimental.


Sulphur nymphs aren't yellow like the duns but this yellow nymph has worked well for me on the Holston in the past:

Swinging soft hackle flies is quickly becoming one of my favorite ways to fish and this partridge and yellow should do the trick:


This CDC Sulphur emerger has taken a lot of fish for me on the Holston. I usually fish it as a dropper off of a parachute or comparadun pattern and the fish probably take the emerger more often than the dun:

And now for the Sulphur duns: This is a divided wing parachute pattern I've been experimenting with that takes me a long time to tie. I've never done extremely well with hackled patterns on the Holston but I'm anxious to see if the realistic wings will make a difference to the fish:

A Sulphur CDC comparadun followed by a deer hair comparadun. Both are definitely proven producers on the Holston:


A new pattern I've been working on - a burned wing Sulphur no-hackle. I'm excited to give this one a workout.


If we happen to catch a spinner fall, hopefully these burned wing rusty spinners will do the trick:

Besides the Sulphurs, which pretty much always seem to be hatching on the Holston, we've got a good shot at seeing some Blue Wing Olives. Most of these are the same patterns I tie for the Sulphurs except in Olive instead of yellow and one to two sizes smaller.

Olive nymph:

Partridge and olive soft hackle with trailing shuck:

Olive CDC emerger:

Burned wing olive no-hackle:

Olive CDC comparadun and deer hair comparadun:


One thing's for sure, even if these patterns don't work worth a hoot, at least I can keep myself busy changing flies.