Late Summer Off-Season Part 2: Confidence Flies

Article by Devin McPhillips

Fly-tying is a great way to do something fishing-related with 20 spare minutes on a weeknight, or anytime fishing isn’t possible. My son embraced tying as soon as we started tenkara, and we’ve had fun reproducing whatever patterns we find on YouTube. It’s always fun to catch a fish on a fly that we tied ourselves. My flies aren’t often elegant, but I can be prolific, especially in the off-season.

The surfeit of flies initially created a challenge. During my first year or more of tenkara, I typically went fishing with five new patterns and caught two or three fish. It was difficult to evaluate which flies were most successful, and even harder to untangle the role of fly choice from presentation techniques, rod and line selection, and location. I struggled to collect enough data to improve as an angler. Although the one-fly ethos within the tenkara community was appealing, I had also developed enough experience to believe that there is sometimes a wrong fly for the situation, even if many other flies could succeed. I needed to find a few flies that would catch fish in a wide range of conditions—a set of confidence flies.

Gradually, over the last year or so, I’ve begun to settle on some of these flies. The book “How to Fool Fish with Simple Flies” by Paul Gaskell and John Pearson has been essential, but the process has been uneven. I needed to learn to read the water and cast reliably before I could implement the book’s insights. The book emphasizes that successful flies need not replicate real bugs precisely and a handful of characteristics can be tuned to match the conditions. The flies I adopted are my versions of common patterns, and these patterns seem to catch fish reliably in the waters I fish most: the mountains of Southern California and Central Colorado. They don’t always succeed, but when they are all failing, other flies usually fail too.

Here are four flies that I almost always carry. They are distinguished by the hackle style and the presence or absence of a bead. As Paul Gaskell and John Pearson point out in their book, these are the differences that support a diversity of presentation techniques. I do vary the color—I usually have light and dark versions, for example. And, Although I rely on flies like these to catch most of my fish, I also carry a tiny box of “irregulars”: typically a mini-leech, a Griffith’s gnat, a perdigon nymph, and a foam beetle. Perhaps, as I improve, I will whittle this set down further.

Sakasa Kebari

For this tenkara classic, I use a turkey biot body and a bright orange hen hackle, on a size 14, extra-long hook. I like that I can see the fly easily in the water, and the biot makes a lifelike ribbing. On windy days, I use a version tied with extra wraps of cheap genetic saddle, instead of hen, to anchor the fly in the current.

Jun Kebari (Small beadhead)

I use a tiny 1.5 mm tungsten bead on a size 14 nymph hook with a single-ply yarn body. Starling hackle has great mobility but very little resistance in the water. this was my first confidence fly, and it works great in small mountain streams. I needed something with a low profile that could enter the water delicately and also get a bit of depth—the fish spook easily and aren’t always willing to rise.

Futsu Kebari

Instead of a classic, straight body, I tie mine with two lobes, to make an Ishigaki/drowned ant mash-up. It works great in bright sun. Maybe the typical Ishigaki version would work just as well.

Jun Kebari (Large beadhead)

The key elements are a size 8-ish stimulator hook and a 3-4 mm tungsten bead. This is a knock-off of the larger “honryu” kebari or killer kebari. I use it most often in lakes and deep, slow pools.

In the end, confidence flies aren’t about finding the one perfect pattern, they’re about building trust in your own approach and simplifying the decisions you make on the water. By narrowing down to a few versatile flies, I’ve been able to focus more on presentation, reading the stream, and enjoying time outside. While my fly box will always have a few “experiments” tucked in, these core patterns give me the assurance that I’m never walking to the water unprepared.

Read Part 1 of Devin’s Late Summer Off-Season observations, “Reflections on Casting“, HERE.

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Devin McPhillips and his son, Owen, are tenkara anglers and fly tiers in Southern California. 

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