Michael White is back today with another fly lineup. Having spent approximately 300 million days fishing for trout around the Southern Rockies, Whitey is a good guy to listen to when it comes to advice on trout flies.
After he joined us on an epic trip to Chile West, we asked him for his top fly picks for trout fishing in Chile, and he obliged.
5 Flies I’d Bring To Chile
Last year, I had the pleasure of going to Chile West with Andrew and a few friends. As a fly rep for Idylwilde, I felt it was my responsibility to not only bring some flies to stock the boxes of my travel mates, but also to test fish. If pressed to answer the often asked question “what would you bring”, I would respond with the following 5 flies as must-haves:
1. Chubby Chernobyl: More and more imitated but never quite duplicated, this fly just crushes. It’s the perfect combination of buggy attractor, terrestrial imitator, large stone floater…you get the point. Use by itself or to support a dropper – it floats all day, fishes like mad and is easy to see out there on the water. A perfect fly for pounding the banks out of the boat on those long Chile floats.
2. Tungsten 20 Incher: A go-to fly all over the Rockies, it became our go-to dropper off the Chubby. A great attractor nymph, with definite Golden Stone overtones, it lit the fish up from Palena all the way to the smaller waters outside Coyhaique.
3: Yeagers Tantrum: New for 2011 from Idylwilde, this fly is a hybrid of the Turk’s Tarantula and a Chernobyl Ant. Combining foam body, rubber X’d legs, elk/deer hair wing and head and topped in pink for easy visibility, this fly will have all your buddies asking “whatcha throwing”? Easy answer…A Tantrum!
4: Space Invader: I like streamers. I like fish that eat streamers. I like big Chilean browns that eat streamers! We fished a ton of streamers and, if you’ve been reading other posts from Chile, you know that Trevor loves streamers. We played with a lot of different streamers to quite a bit of success, but personally I kept going back to the Space Invader. Both the Brown & Yellow and Olive & Black got chased and inhaled by more than a few fish. This is a great all around streamer pattern.
5: Hickman’s Mini-Hankey: Mousin’s not just for Alaska. Where’s there’s big browns, there’s bound to be one that can’t resist a mouse just trying to get back to his home. Leave his wife and children wondering…”what happened to daddy?”
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