5 sure bet flies for the Missouri River for the next week or so

Heavily used Firebead Soft Hackle Ray Charles

The Ray Charles is the perfect top fly for the double nymph rig.   It was extremely effective yesterday in the wind and sun.  Your nymph rig will need to be deep and have split on it.  6-8 feet from bobber to splitshot.  I used 1 or 2 BBs for weight.  Fish the slow inside curves and pocket water at the tail-outs of the swirlies. The big swirly just downstream from Craig is fishing great, just be careful in those hydraulics; it would not be the best place to fall out of the boat or drop an anchor.

Rainbow Czech Nymph

The Rainbow Czech was the perfect bottom fly in tandem with the Ray Charles when the baetis stuff wasn't working so much

Beerhead nymph/emerger

Although there were no massive baetis hatches over the past couple of days, the trout were onto the nymphs during certain times of the day.  Sometimes they would eat the baetis nymph, almost exclusively, over the others.  In the current conditions on the Missouri R., you'll want to have this as your bottom fly in a double nymph rig.  Sometimes I'll have a size 18 as a lead and a size 20 as a dropper.  The Beerhead is super versatile though and its specialty is as an emerger on a short leash or in the film with a greased leader.  It is one of my favorite flies of all time.  I'm a BWO guy through and through.

Firebead Soft Hackle Sow Bug

This egg pattern also worked as bottom fly.

Black Conehead Bugger

The Mo is one of my favorite places to fish with streamers.  I love slow swinging a bugger through the runs and feeling it get whacked a couple times as it glides through the zone and finally gets grabbed by a mean old brown.  You can get as technical with streamers as you want but a green, black, or white weighted bugger will fish as good, if not better, than anything else.


I have got a couple good stories and pictures of my Missouri trip to come soon.

Is the most effective egg pattern not even an egg pattern?

The pink "soft hackle" sow bug

• Size 18-14 scud or 0XL nymph hook
• Pink UV shrimp dubbing mixed with a little white rabbit dubbing
• Soft chicken hackle tips
• painted orange fire-bead
• pink or orange thread (I use 8/0 because thread buildup behind the bead grosses me out) 

It is no secret that Montana trout eat this tailwater fly in the winter.  Some agree that the fish are probably taking it for roe because generally, anything small and pink works especially well during this time of year. You will see this fly used in almost every tailwater however, I think that this fly has yet to see its day in the sun as a staple freestone fly!  

Over the past couple of winter/springs, I have tested this fly out on Western Montana's freestone streams and not only does it work, it out-fishes flies like the worm, rubber-legs stones, and even pink glo-bugs in the same size!  This really gives weight to the argument that trout are taking these for eggs because although sow bugs do live in freestones, they are in too low of numbers to attain this type of a response from the fish.  Also, they would be in a dormant stage in the winter.

The most damning evidence that this fly is being taken for an egg is that the soft hackle sow bug doesn't look like, or resemble anything close to, what a natural sow bug looks like.  Sow bugs look like potato bugs (otherwise known as rolly-pollies) and have flat bodies.  They are never pink in nature (that I know of).  Another strange thing is that the fly is called a soft hackle and is tied like one, but you don't fish it that way.  Tying a soft hackle sow bug doesn't make sense anyway as they don't really swim around that much and they definitely don't emerge to the surface to hatch.  Lastly, there is something odd about adding an orange bead to this already strange pattern.

My theory: 
The soft hackle sow bug was intentionally designed as a roe fly.  Its name is simply an attempt to clear the consciences of the people who use them.  For instance, it is looked at as "hacking" for a guide to put a client on fish with glo-bugs but it is highly commendable to fish a "soft hackle."

An actual sow bug fly

The dirty glo-bug in pink

So, if you don't have a problem fishing eggs, tie up as many of these as you possibly can.  I bet they work on every trout stream in America.  I've even used them ice fishing.

If you are the kind of person to give someone shit for fishing eggs, yet you fish these on your local tailwater -well, looks like you have egg on your face!