Thursday's Fly | The Rainbow Warrior

I have a great spot for the early spring.  The river comes up a foot, the water looks a little dirty from all the winter run off, the redhorse stage for spawning, and the fallfish stack up behind.

It is a scenario I hear about a lot in the flyfishing podcasts on salmon and steelhead.  Only replace all the highly sought after species with what most consider garbage fish.  The highly underrated sucker spawn.  I say it is a great time to find feeding fish and work out the winter rust.

This time of the year presents a couple of problems.  The water is dirty, the flow is faster, not much is hatching and the fish are sometimes, ummm, otherwise occupied.

Normally my fly box is pretty tame. The patterns are mostly in natural colours. But this year I am going to try the shiniest brightest flies I can find for the spring.  Pinks, oranges, and a fly almost completely built out of flash - The Rainbow Warrior.

The Rainbow Warrior is a fly the pros use for competition fly fishing. I think it just might make a sucker out of a redhorse.

Some size 12 and 14 Rainbow Warriors

Check out this video by Tightline Productions.  These guys make some of the best fly tying videos around.

Do you use attractor flies?  If so which ones?