My Salmon Flies and my method.

When it comes to selecting flies for Salmon fishing, I am no different than anyone else. I sometimes try something new but now days I pretty much only fish with 4-5 different flies. If you have read "my theories" page then those flies will probably make sense to you.

The last few years me and my fishing buddy Joe Davant from Charlotte NC have somehow developed this system or procedure when we approach pools. We don't spend a whole lot of time in each pool but rather fish it systematically with 3-4 flies and here is how we do it:

1) We always, and I mean always start with Micro Hitch with #18 hook. This is a very small fly that disturbs the pool very little (I think and please remember it's just what I think!) but it is super effective. Some pools may not be suited for this fly specially if it has pretty fast current and lot of ripple but then you can also try using a little bigger hitch. We run the hitch over the pool in about 20 minutes (we try to stick to 20min the best we can). If we don't get any action out of the hitch we move in with number 2.

2) Sunray, we strip the Sunray through the pool at the same pace. This fly will for sure get some fish moving around and lot of times we see Salmon start jumping when this fly goes into the water.

3) If we don't get any action on the Hitch or the Sunray, it's time to bring out the "gimp"...the Snaelda. We use only the black, orange and yellow Snaelda with or without a cone. It will for sure totally crash the pool.

Now, if we get action on ether the hitch or the Sunray we stick with it! The Snaelda only goes in after we have got everything we can with the hitch and the Sunray as those two are the most fun flies to catch salmon on. We did quite well last year by adding the Red or Black Frances Cone head after the Sunray but the basics of our Salmon fishing is built on these 3 flies.

We never spend more than an hour in any pool (unless we have some action) but rather move over to the next one and let it settle down. I used to do this when I started fishing for Salmon, stand in the same pool for hours casting on Salmon I could see, go though my whole box and nothing happened. I don't do this anymore as I firmly believe that if you don't get any action with the 3 flies above then it's more than likely that you won't see any. They are just not going to take it. They are ether spooked like hell and move away from anything that comes at them or...it's just "turned off"!

4) It's what I call the "AOD" (act of desperation...). When you 'we tried everything, you are the last one in the pool for the day and have fished yourself down the pool with the Snaelda, you turn around and cast the Snaelda upstream and have it dead drift down...try it, it might just work...

So, my method and my flies:

If you look at my statistic page, you will see that almost half of all the Salmon I have caught in 11 years is caught on #1 and #4, but I only started using the "system" couple of years ago and I only started fishing the Hitch for real about 3-4 years ago.