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Orange Scud
A nymph, tied #12–18, carried year round. It is tied against 1 named insect in this book — all year.
A weighted scud pattern in the colour a scud turns when it is dead or gravid, tied on a scud hook in sizes 12–18 with orange 8/0 thread. The body is orange or pink scud dubbing under a clear Scud Back shellback, ribbed with clear mono, with lead wire to sink it. It imitates the scud, Gammarus spp., which is present all year in water from 33 to 70 degrees, and it is carried in every season for that reason. The colour is the whole argument: living scuds are grey-olive, but the dead and the gravid ones go orange, and on spring creeks a trout sorting through a drift full of grey ones will pick the orange out of it. That habit is common enough that this version often outfishes the natural grey. A nymph for trout.
- #12–18Hook size
- nymphType
- 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.
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 | Scud hook, sizes 12–18 |
|---|---|
| Thread | Orange 8/0 |
| Body | Orange or pink scud dubbing |
| Shellback | Clear Scud Back |
| Rib | Clear mono |
| Weight | Lead wire |
When to fish it
The dead or gravid scud, which turns orange — and the one trout pick out of a drift full of grey ones.
Carried all year. The insects it matches are active all year, in water from 33°F to 70°F.
Target species
- Trout
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
- Jackson River the Virginia mountains · July mean 66.3°F
- Muskegon River northern lower Michigan · July mean 71.0°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 Run the Virginia mountains · July mean 77.1°F
- Aarons Run the Virginia mountains · July mean 74.2°F
- Abb Run the Virginia mountains · July mean 77.1°F
- Abes Run the Virginia mountains · July mean 71.1°F
- Abram Creek the Virginia mountains · July mean 57.7°F
- Acme Creek northern lower Michigan · July mean 67.1°F
Related patterns
Same type of fly, or tied for the same insects.
- Grey Scud nymph · #12–18 — The living colour. Weedy, watercress-lined spring creeks, every month.
- Hare's Ear Nymph nymph · #10–18 — Looks like everything and nothing. The other half of a two-nymph rig.
- Olive Scud nymph · #12–18 — Live-scud olive. The colour to fish where there is weed; grey and orange are the dead and gravid ones.
- Ray Charles nymph · #14–18 — A grey shellback sowbug with no legs and no tail. Named because it is tied blind-simple, and it outfishes elaborate sowbugs everywhere they both swim.
- Sowbug nymph · #14–18 — Flat, grey, unglamorous, and the main food item in limestone water.