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Kreelex
A streamer, tied #2–8, carried year round. It is tied against 1 named insect in this book, and stands in when nothing is hatching — all year.
Flash and nothing else: a streamer tied on a streamer hook in sizes 2–8 whose wing is gold and silver Kreelex flash set top and bottom, with painted dumbbell eyes at the head and a body that is red 6/0 thread and no more than that. There is no dubbing, no hackle, no attempt at a profile. It imitates nothing in particular, and that is the fact of it — the pattern is tagged for no hatch at all, a searching fly that goes on when nothing on the water suggests anything better. It is carried all year and fished for trout, smallmouth bass and steelhead. The conditions it is built for are off-colour water and low light, where the fish has to find the fly before it can see it, and days when a subtle presentation simply gets ignored. Under those circumstances the two-tone flash is the entire argument the fly makes.
- #2–8Hook size
- streamerType
- AllSeason
- 1Hatch matched
What it looks like
A drawing, not a photograph, and not traced from one. Its proportions were read off 5 independent reference photographs of the pattern and written down as 5 measured characteristics — wing angle, tail length against the shank, how far a hackle fibre reaches — every one of which had to hold across more than one of them before it could be drawn. What survives across many photographs of a fly is the fly.
What it imitates
Each of these is the same hatch record the app's own panel reads, so a pattern recommended on a river card in the app is recommended for one of the insects below.
It is also tagged for no hatch at all — a searching pattern.
Tying recipe
In tying order. This dressing is the standard one — these patterns have been in the publicrecord for decades — and materials substitute freely: the proportions and the silhouette are the pattern, not the brand of dubbing.
| Hook | Streamer hook, sizes 2–8 |
|---|---|
| Thread | Red 6/0 |
| Wing | Gold and silver Kreelex flash, tied top and bottom |
| Eyes | Dumbbell, painted |
| Body | Thread only |
When to fish it
Flash and nothing else. Off-colour water, low light, and days when a subtle fly gets ignored.
Carried all year. The insects it matches are active all year, in water from 35°F to 78°F.
Target species
- Trout
- Smallmouth bass
- Steelhead
Rivers it fishes well
Rivers with a page here that sit in the regions where the insects this pattern imitates are recorded. It is a claim about coverage, not a report of a fish caught.
- Au Sable River northern lower Michigan · July mean 72.1°F
- Catawba River the North Carolina mountains · July mean 76.7°F
- Jackson River the Virginia mountains · July mean 66.3°F
- Muskegon River northern lower Michigan · July mean 71.0°F
- Escanaba River the Upper Peninsula · July mean 68.3°F
- Saint Croix River northern Wisconsin · July mean 77.2°F
- Smith River the Virginia mountains · July mean 51.9°F
- Tygart Valley River the Virginia mountains · July mean 74.6°F
- Kalamazoo River southern lower Michigan · July mean 71.3°F
- Aaron Creek the North Carolina mountains · July mean 76.7°F
- Aaron Run the Virginia mountains · July mean 77.1°F
- Aarons Run the Virginia mountains · July mean 74.2°F
Related patterns
Same type of fly, or tied for the same insects.
- Black Ghost streamer · #4–10 — A classic bucktail for stained water and low light.
- Mickey Finn streamer · #4–10 — Red and yellow, no pretence at imitation. Works on dropping water after rain.
- Muddler Minnow streamer · #4–10 — Sculpin sunk, hopper skated. Older than the sport's opinions about it.
- Woolly Bugger (Black) streamer · #2–12 — If you could only own one fly. Leech, sculpin, big nymph, all of it.
- Zonker streamer · #2–8 — Rabbit strip that breathes at rest. Deadly on the pause, not on the strip.