Wooly Colors

[mic]

What are your favorite Wooly color combinations (tail, body, and hackle)? I'm tying up a batch and looking for suggestions. Right now keeping it simple with all black and black tail/body with grizzley hackle. I've heard all white for smallmouth and purple works but know one knows why? Do you use mulitiple hackles?

[Zach Bearden]

Olive is big and so is plain white. I like both.

I've never used multiple hackles on a single fly but if you wanted to give a contrast in the fly I could see that being a pretty cool idea. As for purple, I know it shows up really well in muddy water and instead of a fish just seeing a bunch of black things float by him there's suddenly a bunch of color. Something new to try.

Also, rather than using the plain old colors, I like to throw a hot spot on there. Try putting a bright bead on or maybe a streak of color through the tail.

[Guest]

And don't be afraid to mix and match colors. I like to use a olive tail with black chenille and brown hackle. Or black tail, white chenille, and black hackle. I also like to use peacock herl rather than chenille, and sometimes I just twist the marabou after I tie in the tail and wrap it like I would chenille. I usually wind the hackle back to front.

[Gavin]

Most of mine are mixtures of several colors...Browns, Olives, and Blacks primarily...with some contrasting colors...yellows, blues, orange, reds, and varying degrees of flash. Black & Olive versions look & work great with a peacock herl body..Hackle...I tie it in at the front & wrap it back, then counterwrap with wire most of the time. Cheers.

[Wayne SW/MO]

I would have say, with reservations and subject to change, ginger, crackleback, yellow grizzly, black, brown, and grizzly, in that order. You never know, but in Missouri ginger is my most consistent color in the larger nymph style flies.

[timsfly]

Olive/Grizzly hackle is my all time favorite, but I carry about 40 different colors all the time.

Black, dk. Brown, tan, and gray have always been good for me also.

I tie some on heavy hooks and some on light dry fly hooks, add weight to some, they are such

a versitale fly.

[Geoff]

olive tail, olive crystal body, natural grizzly hackle, tied with orange thread. they just look buggy and i have 4 of them on my tieing desk that need to be put back together

[Zach Bearden]

Tim, I understand that the wire can make the flies sink rate less or whatever. But, I would be really skeptical to tie a bugger on a light wire hook. I know you're able to catch large trout on a light wire hook but I feel kind of bad doing that.

Can you give an example of which dry fly hooks you're using? The lightest I usually go is about a tmc100

[3wt]

Olive and Ginger. Sometimes white. Appearently I need to branch out.

[mic]

So just to follow up:

1. All black
2. All white
3. All olive
4. All ginger
5. Ginger tail, olive body
6. Olive tail, olive crystal body, grizzley hackle
7. White tail, white body, grizzley hackle
8. Olive tail/body, grizzley hackle
9. All dark brown
10. All grey
11. Crackleback (I don't know what that is)
12. All yellow
13. Blue, reds, and orange
14. Black and olive with peacock
15. All purple
16. Misc with different hot spots and tails.