A question to all the tiers/flyfishers.

How do pick your go to patterns? Easy to tie? A couple of really awesome days success? Test and compare over weeks or years?

I am curious how those flies each of us consider must haves got into our boxes.

Great question!!

I pick my go to patterns according to how consistent they are out on the water. If they work well, I'll usually tie a couple dozen and fill up my boxes. In the summer my go to pattern is the Green Weenie. In the winter, it's the Copper John.

I have the privilege to know a lot of great tyers and outstanding fly-fishers. A lot of great flies have been shared with me over the years. I am pretty open to try any fly recommended and want to learn to tie em. So with that said I've tried and continued to try many various patterns. When I get a pattern that's really produced for somebody else I study it on and off the water. Learn how it's tied, with what materials, and what mods have been applied. After several chances with a fly that proves to be a good one for me, I unknowingly reach a point of confidence. With that realization I find a place for it in a box. I have too many boxes. Some I'll share and some you'll have to be around awhile to get into for a peek.

Periodically I have those epiphany moments when a group of memories and situations come together and something new is born. Not really a new fly but a confidence in some better parts of other flies. This fly gets wet a lot and probably flops to the why did I do that pile. But every once in a while something meshes and magic happens.

Guess it boils down to every fly somebody shares or I find in print deserves the commitment of learning to tie it. Only of all those vise exercise gains that personal confidence to put in a box for a stream, lake, ocean, or river.

Even though I have been fishing for a few years I haven't refined my skills enough to have a real go to fly yet. In the last couple of years I have learned a bunch and refined my skills a lot. I am trying to be smarter about choosing my flies based on the environment and conditions as opposed to grabbing something out of the box and giving it a try.

So far my "go to fly" has been an Adams or Hare's Ear Parachute. I am trying to get better at nymph fishing but find it to be less than productive for me. My second "go to fly" would be a Woolly Bugger or Crystal Bugger fished in a deeper run.

I think for me it is a matter of what has worked the most consistantly over the years. I have a couple patterns that usually catch good numbers which are my own patterns. I do however, find that some of the standard patterns are standard for a reason.