Egg patterns, more times than not, blur the line between food and triggers. Among the most important triggers are the color, shape, and size. Egg patterns are, of course, a great imitation of an important food source, but spawning and migratory fish go through weird and unique changes that make these fish receptive to bright colors and imitations that are not exactly perfect egg imitations. In other words, you don’t have to have a perfect round egg pattern to catch fish. In fact, there are times when you need to add more than just the round shape, and there are even times when less round patterns will be more effective than perfectly round egg fly patterns. This does not take anything away from the round shape as the round shape is extremely attractive to these fish as well, and if the fish is feeding strictly on eggs, then you want to imitate an egg as closely as possible. The dubbing egg fly allows you to be versatile with your patterns. You can create less exact egg imitations, or you can create perfectly round eggs with the dubbing egg technique.
Because there are a lot of patterns (and beads) out there, it helps to know what this pattern offers you. With this technique, you can really control the size of the egg and tie micro eggs very easily. You also have less waist than you get with other egg yarn patterns, but you can still use the entire color spectrum of egg yarn and other dubbings. You get some cool translucent qualities, and overall, this is just another solid technique for producing egg-style flies and not just strict egg imitations. The pattern that I tie for lake-run brown trout and steelhead normally has a little piece of white egg yarn coming out the back while my trout patterns are normally just the egg shape in small sizes. Trout in particular see very small eggs, since smaller trout and whitefish have much smaller eggs than salmon and larger steelhead and trout. This pattern excels in finesse situations rather than when you are searching, but if the fish are receiving a bunch of pressure and you know there are fish through the system, then this pattern can really do the trick. See how it works on your waters.
- Hook: Hook of choice (#10 Daiichi 1530 in the video)
- Thread: UNI-thread 8/0 (fire orange)
- Egg: Egg yarn or McFly Foam cut into dubbing (apricot supreme, Oregon cheese, pink lady etc.)
- Wing: White egg yarn
- Lacquer (if used): Zap-a-gap (brushable) etc.
What type of streamers do you suggest for swinging for steelhead in Ohio
Hey Wayne,
I am by no means the swing king. I know guides and other anglers who are nearly strictly swing fly anglers, and I would be happy to recommend them to you if you want to go more into depth with swinging. Also, flies for swinging seem to be very much based off of the angler’s pride and confidence in a certain fly pattern. That’s why there are thousands upon thousands of flies for swinging. Tying is a huge part of swinging flies.
I keep things simple myself, and although I have a ton of flies for swinging, I would choose maybe seven patterns to simplify my selection. These are smaller bugger-style tube flies in white, light olive, and black/purple. Two more are Greg Senyo’s Artificial Intelligence in copper/green and silver/white. The final two are a larger black/purple fly like a reverse-tied marabou fly or a black/purple articulated/intruder style pattern and finally a sculpin-style pattern like the Nutcracker Sculpin (with a stinger-style hook though). Three books are pretty good for flies in general: Senyo’s Fusion Fly Tying, Nagy’s Steelhead Guide, and Kustich’s Advanced Fly Fishing for Great Lakes Steelhead. We’ll be having some articles on swinging in the near future. Good luck, my man!
Thank you Justin for your insight on this matter tight lines
Anytime, and same to you!