Fly of the Week: Pat's Rubber Legs

We are trying out something new this year.  Each week, we'll post a fly that we use during the season.  We'll include a picture of the, a list of materials so that you can tie it, what the fly is supposed to imitate, what species it fishes best for, and sometimes we'll post a video of how to tie it.

Pat's Rubber Legs

The Pat's Rubber Legs fly is deadly in the spring and early summer for trout, salmon and smallmouth bass.  Typically the fish that we catch on this fly are not small fish.  This fly produces so well for us that we've named a spot on one of our favorite rivers "Pat's Hole".  While this fly is known to imitate stonefly nymphs, we've found that on rivers where cased caddis are present in large numbers that it works really, really well.  

We fish the Pat's RL dead drift as the lead fly in a two-nymph rig setup.  We usually add splitshot about 8 inches above the fly to keep it down.  The fly itself is tied with lead wire, so this is clearly not a fly you want to fish in the middle or the upper part of the water column.  Clients landed some of the biggest brook trout of the season on this fly.  At times, we'll fish two of them in tandem.  This fly has quickly become my favorite nymph fly, and has inspired me to tie rubber legs on some of my smaller nymph patterns!

Materials
Hook: Any 3 or 4XL nymph hook sizes 6 - 10
Thread: Black UTC 70
Weight: .015 or .020 lead wire
Body: Variegated Medium Chenille in black/coffee
Legs, Antenna & Tail: Black or Barred Brown/Black Crazy Legs