Staging Coho

4115 Views 30 Replies 16 Participants Last post by dryflylarry, Oct 14, 2016

Stonefish

Discussion Starter · Oct 3, 2016

Saw quite a bit of staging type activity while out cutthroat fishing this weekend.
Jumpers, rollers.....even saw a rare jumping SRC

Might be worth having some California Neil's and Croft's Spider in your box if you find yourself in MA's 12 or 13.
I had a bunch of spiders, but can't seem to locate them, so I'll need to by some Mustad 3399's.
Some past threads on both patterns.
SF

http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/forum/threads/successful-flies-for-staging-silvers.16374/
http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/forum/threads/california-neil.93535/#post-878287

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Tacoma Red

· #2 · Oct 3, 2016

Many of these patterns from our BC cousins work very well for estuary salmon.

http://ospreyflyfishers.com/Salmon.htm

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Stonefish

Discussion Starter · #3 · Oct 3, 2016

Tacoma Red said:
Many of these patterns from our BC cousins work very well for estuary salmon.

http://ospreyflyfishers.com/Salmon.htm

Very nice Red.
Hadn't seen some of those before, eh.
SF

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Chucker

· #4 · Oct 3, 2016

Tacoma Red said:
Many of these patterns from our BC cousins work very well for estuary salmon.

http://ospreyflyfishers.com/Salmon.htm

"Works very well" is a gross exaggeration for any staging coho fly. "Might possibly work every now and then" is as good as it gets!

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Tacoma Red

· #5 · Oct 3, 2016

Chucker said:
"Works very well" is a gross exaggeration for any staging coho fly. "Might possibly work every now and then" is as good as it gets!

Like anything else at the right time and the right place, and it's not been a "gross exaggeration" in my experiences.

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Kfish

· #6 · Oct 4, 2016

Catch fish or not, that California Neil looks fun to tie. The color and compactness of it is awesome.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Jeff Dodd

· #7 · Oct 4, 2016

Kfish said:
Catch fish or not, that California Neil looks fun to tie. The color and compactness of it is awesome.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yea, that and the Green Machine. I will add a few to my box

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SaltyTippet

· #8 · Oct 4, 2016

Tacoma Red said:
Many of these patterns from our BC cousins work very well for estuary salmon.

Many thanks for reminding me about the Green Machine man.... possibly an early ancestor if the Cali Neil not sure about that but the additional red in there is a great thing.... my B.C. buddy has a "one fly for life" type fly and it is basically that fly although he calls it a Jolly Green... thanks for the reminder about these wonderful tidewater flies for coho as well as SRC and beyond....

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SaltyTippet

· #9 · Oct 4, 2016

Jeff Dodd said:
Yea, that and the Green Machine. I will add a few to my box

Totally....

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SilverFly

· #10 · Oct 4, 2016 (Edited)

Stonefish said:
Saw quite a bit of staging type activity while out cutthroat fishing this weekend.
Jumpers, rollers.....even saw a rare jumping SRC
Might be worth having some California Neil's and Croft's Spider in your box if you find yourself in MA's 12 or 13.
I had a bunch of spiders, but can't seem to locate them, so I'll need to by some Mustad 3399's.
Some past threads on both patterns.
SF

http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/forum/threads/successful-flies-for-staging-silvers.16374/
http://www.washingtonflyfishing.com/forum/threads/california-neil.93535/#post-878287

Fun reading those old threads. As a follow-up to my past query, I've since had some good success with coho and steelhead at the fishery mentioned using very small reversed spider patterns.

Granted this is freshwater but I'd think that would make the fish even more difficult to hook. These reversed spiders were pretty small and tied sparse in sizes 8 and 10 using spikey marabou tips for the reversed hackle with bodies of metallic dubbing and a sparse marabou tail. All in flame red, but that's just a color I have a lot of confidence in. Basically I was going for something small, buggy-looking, with maximum movement. It's been a few years since I've gotten into the coho up there but the patterns did work pretty well at times.

Hard to see the fly in this pic, but this fish ate a red reversed spider as described above:

The small and buggy theme worked last year off the jetty when a nice little coho surprised me when fishing for rockfish. Not quite a staging fish but still within a few miles of freshwater. I think this fly was a size 6:

See less See more

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skyrise

· #11 · Oct 4, 2016

If you could find a fly that worked for Snohomish river fish, even just 20% in the fall. Oh wait that's to optimistic, maybe 5%.

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Chucker

· #12 · Oct 4, 2016

Speaking of bugginess (is that even a word? Well it is now!), something that is mentioned by people using yarn for steelhead is that when the fish take the yarn it can get caught in their teeth and that can give you an extra second to set the hook before they spit it out. I actually have no idea whether there is any truth to this theory or not, but I think it's worth keeping in mind for staging coho flies. The ability of coho to take a fly and spit it out again before you feel anything is amazing.

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dryflylarry

· #13 · Oct 4, 2016

Chucker said:
Speaking of bugginess (is that even a word? Well it is now!), something that is mentioned by people using yarn for steelhead is that when the fish take the yarn it can get caught in their teeth and that can give you an extra second to set the hook before they spit it out. I actually have no idea whether there is any truth to this theory or not, but I think it's worth keeping in mind for staging coho flies. The ability of coho to take a fly and spit it out again before you feel anything is amazing.

I've tied a number of flies a number of years ago with that very thought in mind. Using polymarabou. I figured if something got tangled in their teeth, well......sweet!

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Tom Bowden

· #14 · Oct 4, 2016

I had good success last year with a couple of old school, locally developed patterns: Les Johnson's Beach Fly and Al Allard's Allard Orange pattern. The key to these patterns is the fluorescent orange body and long, sparse wing. I like #8 2xl hooks on both patterns.

Tom

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skyrise

· #15 · Oct 4, 2016

common practice when fishing eggs to use yarn so fish dont spit them as easy. drift fishing yarn is very catchy on almost anything. many times while fishing the eggs would fall apart and it was the yarn that caught the fish.

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Thrasybulus

· #16 · Oct 4, 2016

After many hours of trying to hook staging coho over the years, my solution became relocating to find newly arriving chrome biters.

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Greggor

· #17 · Oct 4, 2016

skyrise said:
If you could find a fly that worked for Snohomish river fish, even just 20% in the fall. Oh wait that's to optimistic, maybe 5%.

Heck! I'd be happy if 5 out of 100 hatchery Coho were just 'Looky-loos'(seemingly interested in making a purchase, but whose actual intention is only to browse).

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SilverFly

· #18 · Oct 5, 2016

skyrise said:
common practice when fishing eggs to use yarn so fish dont spit them as easy. drift fishing yarn is very catchy on almost anything. many times while fishing the eggs would fall apart and it was the yarn that caught the fish.

Always good to carry a few colors of yarn on the water. A very effective fly can be fashioned from a short strand of egg yarn on an octopus hook. Split out a thin strand, lay along the shank with a tail extending about a hook length back. Then wrap the yarn over itself starting behind the eye to the tail and back to the eye, tapering as desired. Throw a couple half-hitches and trim off the tag extending underneath for "legs". Not fancy but it works in a pinch. Basically a yarn version of a Teeny nymph.