It happens all the time. I'll ask one of the anglers in my drift boat to tie on a March Brown or Stonefly nymph. They'll tie it on and show it to me and there on the end of their tippet will be this pretty little #14 nymph. I'll grab my clippers, hand them their fly back, and tie a more approriate #10.

It's not that I don't like small flies or even that I don't think they're necessary at times, I do, but the fact is that many anglers have just become conditioned to going smaller and smaller and most never even think about increasing the size of their offerings. Think about the food item that you're trying to imitate. Search out the nymphs in the stream and observe them. My personal first rule for selecting fly size is to choose as large a fly as I think the fish will be interested in given the food items in the body of water in which they live and how they're feeding at the present time. Did you ever use a Clouser Crayfish pattern for trout? If not, why not? Trout eat crayfish. They also eat mice, hellgrammites, and other fish. That fancy giant wooly bugger that Orvis sells called a Tequeely imitates a baby Tanager that has fallen from it's nest into the river. That's right, trout eat birds too. Trout are starting to sound a whole lot like bass huh?

This rule of mine doesn't just apply to big, rolling rivers like the Lehigh, it works just as well on spring creeks like the Little Lehigh or Letort Spring Run. That doesn't mean that the first fly that I tie on is a double articulated leech but if it's hopper season in PA and it's a nice warm day you can bet that a hopper of some sort is probably my first choice. Trout are opportunistic feeders and most can't pass up the opportunity to eat something big like a hellgrammite or stonefly nymph. Before I fished large flies on a regular basis, I still fish flies down to #20-22 with regularity, I was surprised to catch a 7" brookie on a hellgrammite tied on a #4 6X long hook. On a recent trip to the Little Lehigh I tied on a #6 Black Articulated leech, almost 4" long. I had at least four fish under 10" try to eat it but it was just too big. They'd gnaw on it a few times, then try to find a different piece to gnaw on and spend up to a minute trying to figure out how to eat it. I retired the leech and tied on a #12 Patriot with 4X tippet and caught a nice fat brown after just a few casts. A sizeable brownie on the Little Lehigh in January with a #12 Patriot dry fly? Yep, I know it sounds ridiculous but it was a warm day and I just couldn't resist. I didn't catch another fish on that fly that day but I have caught trout on the Little Lehigh with #16 Patriots during the trico spinner fall. Most of the time I think it's easier to catch trout on anything but a trico pattern during the spinner fall. You have all these trout in a feeding frenzy, even if they are selective, and often they're so worked up they'd turn and eat a big foam beetle just like that, probably because at that point they're metabolism is telling them to eat and their learned feeding behavior takes second seat to good old instinct. Maybe I'm just a terrible trico fisherman and don't like to bother with them.

Large flies have just as much use in the fly box as small flies. When fishing in the evening I find it easier to see or hear the landing of a Club Sandwich Hopper than a little midge, the fish do too. The evening or early evening is a time when a trout's method of locating food begins to be limited by available light at which time silhouettes and sound/movement become more important. Throw a big foam terrestrial out as it's getting dark and skate and twitch it across the water, if you have never done this you would be surprised at how many fish fall for this. The big piggie trout are suckers for this during the summer when hoppers, moths, cicadas, and other big food items accidentally fall into the water. I try to carry a few large #6 Stimulators around with me from late-spring to mid-autumn in case some big stoneflies are hatching or returning to the water to deposit their eggs. You only have to be fishing one time and watch a trout lunge at an adult stonefly several times as it skitters across the water to know that it's something you should have in your box.

Hopefully this article has given you a little food for thought. Some people will read this and try the approach out for themselves and discover a new tool for their angling arsenal and some will run in terror and hold their boxes full of tricos close and apologize to the fishing gods for reading such a preposterous article. As for me, well I'm hooked and will continue to hurl big wads of foam, hair, and fur onto the water for the rest of my fishing days. I'll see you this summer on the Little Lehigh for the tricos, I'll be the one whose #10 foam beetle makes a splat with every cast.