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Woolly Bugger (Brown)

A streamer, tied #2–12, carried year round. It is tied against 4 named insects in this book, and stands in when nothing is hatching — all year.

The brown-and-copper version of the marabou streamer, a colour scheme that reads as crayfish and sculpin along a stony bottom. It is tied on a 3X long streamer hook in sizes 2 through 12 with brown 6/0 thread: a tail of brown marabou with copper flash, a body of brown or amber chenille, brown saddle hackle palmered over it, and lead wire or a cone for weight. Weighted at the front, it hops rather than swims, which is the action the fly is after. It is tied against the crayfish, Orconectes spp., from May through October in water between 55 and 78 degrees, and the sculpin, Cottus spp., available all year from 33 to 72 degrees, and it also serves when there is no hatch to match. It is stripped along the bottom, downstream and across, for trout, smallmouth bass and steelhead, and it is carried in every season.

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.

The brown dressing is the crayfish and sculpin one. Same shape as the black and the olive — half tail, palmered body — but brown is what the bottom of most rivers is. Drawn at #8 — 23.3 mm of shank and 7.0 mm of gape on a Tiemco 100.
#2#4#6#8#10#1210 mm
The bare hook at every size this pattern is tied in, all to the same scale. There is no industry standard behind a hook number, so these are Tiemco 100 measurements and another maker's 2 will differ a little.

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.

Hook3X long streamer hook, sizes 2–12
ThreadBrown 6/0
TailBrown marabou and copper flash
BodyBrown or amber chenille
HackleBrown saddle, palmered
WeightLead wire or cone

When to fish it

The sculpin-and-crayfish colour. Strip it along the bottom, downstream and across.

Carried all year. The insects it matches are active all year, in water from 33°F to 78°F.

Target species

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.

Related patterns

Same type of fly, or tied for the same insects.

Open the trout map →Every trout stream near you, coloured by today's water temperature.