Squeeky’s Trico Box

Squeeky’s Trico Box

Top row left moving right…

1. Sinky type Trico’s. Glass beads, silver beads, o beads. Sunken Trico Spinners.
2. More sinky flies and an Adams.
3. A couple King’s River Caddis and a spinner or two.
4. Harrop’s Hi-Viz Spinners and Quigley’s Cluster Peacock. Flies you can see.
5. Tiny H & L Variants and CDC Griffith’s Gnats. Now Harrop calls them CDC Clusters. Back in the day we called them CDC Winged Griffith’s Gnats.
6. Tiny Wulff’s, H 7 L’s, Adams.

2nd Row left moving right…

1. Large LaFontaine Buzzballs.
2. Double Winged Trico Spinners. Some with white bodies. That can be key when the trout get really smart. Like right now.
3. Some techy single winged Trico Spinners with a pink flag. They certainly work. Have not had to employ them yet. But the day is coming. I generally refuse to stoop that low. Drift is King.
4. Buzzball’s, some single winged spinners, a few CDC Trapped Duns and emerges.
5. Small Parachute Duns.
6. Less orange colored Buzzballs.

Third row moving left to right…

1. Buzzball’s and Quig’s clusters.
2. Small double winged clusters, a couple Rusty Spinners.
3. Griffith’s Gnats.
4. Tiny single winged spinners.
5. CDC Topped Griffith’s Gnats. A couple CDC winged emergers.
6. Buzzballs.
7. Various clusters including black posted Griffith’s Gnats. Yep, some secret stuff there man.

Fourth row left to right…

1. Large Clusters from Quigley and Stalcup. Flies you can see!
2. Griffith’s Gnats.
3. Adams type flies. Generic small attractor patterns.
4. Bunny Foot Posted single Midge patterns. 

Some good stuff in there. Most of which are attractor type Trico patterns.

No longer do I fish the single Trico spinner. Really not much in the way of the double wing Trico Spinner either.

Now I primarily fish the Buzzball, Quigley’s Peacock Cluster, or some sort of caddis pattern to the Trico feeding fish.

I guess I never really fished the Trico stuff to Trico fish. Maybe back int he day I did fish a CDC Trico Emerger once in a while. Or some sort of CDC Hanging Cripple pattern. Some sort of bastardized Harrop deal.

But now I am such a believer in drift that the pattern has become secondary.

Shoot, I don’t really care about placement as much either. It is far more important to me that the drift is consistently good, and placement comes second. Placement will come. But bad drifts destroy any chance of greatness.

Good drifts near fish.

Drift is King.

Everything else is secondary. The fly is moot is the drift is shitty. No?

So check out the box above. Years of working on this 10 week seasonal box. I do have all the techy flies in there and they do work. I just believe in a larger pattern that the fish will eat. Missouri River guides do believe in drift. Flies? Sure. But the feller who tells you you gotta have his perfectly tied something or other…I’ll listen if he is handing out free Silver Bullets!

Drift is King

IF you do not catch the trout my first guess to anyone I speak with is that the drift is poor. Dragging flies do not get chowed on often when the fish are eating dead flies. Most anglers are sliding slightly or dragging the pattern over the feeding trout. And then the trout become aware that there is a predator int he area. They cannot rationalize that there is an angler near, but they are aware that dead flies don’t swim and do not seat that fly. They just do not. It is not generally a pattern issue.

Drift is King.

But if you think it may be, stop into the best fly shop in Craig and we will set you up with a box full of kick ass patterns. We got ’em.

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