Dentry: Book hits on all things Woolly

Published January 31, 2006 at midnight

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It isn't just a fly, but a family of flies. And a huge family at that, it turns out: Woolly Worms, Woolly Buggers and their variations - big, ugly creations that catch fish beyond all expectations.

Trout, panfish, bass, carp, even albacore and tarpon. There probably is no fish species that won't eat a Woolly this or that. Which is why, in various incarnations, the Woolly family has been around for centuries.

Put a tail on it, and you have the ubiquitous Woolly Bugger. Rare is the western trout angler who doesn't pack at least one Bugger box.

Chances are, if you tie flies, your first creation was a Woolly Worm. Of all the flies in your boxes, the ones you mostly tie yourself probably are Woolly Buggers.

They are versatile and easy to spin off the vise. Often, they are the go-to fly when fish aren't feeding.

The Woollies are everywhere. But who'd have thought there were enough patterns to fill a 232-page book? At first, you might suspect well-known fishing writer Gary Soucie, author of Woolly Wisdom ($35, Frank Amato Publications, Portland, Ore.), went off the deep end.

After all, you wrap some chenille around a hook, add a maribou tail and palmered hackle. Fish it dead- drifted or in short strips. End of story, yes?

How many Woollies could there be? In fact, Soucie packs recipes and color photos for 400 patterns in his new book, along with historical information, credits to pattern originators and fishing and fly-tying advice.

He traces the first Woolly Worm to Charles Cotton, whose palmer fly with black wool body appeared in the 1676, fifth edition of Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler.

A mind-boggling array of Woolly Worm variations covers virtually all salt- and freshwater, surface and subsurface application. If you think about it, Soucie writes, the tiny Griffith's Gnat, a popular midge cluster imitation, is nothing but a Woolly Worm.

Those ever-popular Woolly Buggers that seem to be ingrained in our fly-fishing heritage descended from the Woolly Worm. But they didn't come on the scene until 1967.

The credit for the original Woolly Bugger goes to Russell Blessing, of Pennsylvania, who had been experimenting with various patterns for smallmouth bass that would imitate the hellgrammite, that hideous (and biting) larvae of the Dobson fly.

Blessing told Soucie he intended to trim the fly's hackle, but it "looked so ugly and undulating . . . that I decided to leave it alone."

His original, tied in Sizes 4-14, used dark olive chenille, a black marabou tail and black saddle hackle.

The Bugger subfamily is said to resemble leeches, crayfish, baitfish, tadpoles, shrimp, crabs and even squid. Buggers are more suggestive than imitative, however.

Sometimes, they simply suggest something edible.

That often is enough to persuade the most discriminating fish to throw caution to the winds and give chase. Among my fishing partners, it is axiomatic that the predatory reflex of a big, snooty trout can be triggered with a Woolly Bugger. In his forward to Soucie's book, Lefty Kreh tells of finicky bonefish, conquered with a sand-colored Woolly Bugger.

Variations in color, style and size are limitless. You can wrap bodies of chenille, fur, ostrich herl or synthetic materials. The hackle can be trimmed, left long or tied very long, as in Spey flies. Heads can be plain or adorned with bullet weights,dumbbell eyes or bead-chain eyes.

Mostly, the Woolly family is a rough-and-ready breed of all-purpose fly, with colorful names. A few favorites: Chile Pepper, Murray's Road-Kill Nymph and, that old favorite, the Egg-Sucking Leech.

For saltwater, a category Soucie calls "Briny Buggers," there are dozens of fish and crustacean patterns, including Cactus Baby Tarpon Fly, Redfish Bugger and Standing Yabby (an Aussie Bugger).

Fly tiers will find plenty of off-beat ideas in a section of the book on Hybrids, Mongrels, & Other Bugger- Based Beasties. Prime examples: the Chihuahua Bugger (a reduced-hackle Bugger), Itty Bitty Bugger and Purple People-Eater Bugger.

Having proved there are way more Woollies than we ever imagined, Soucie is said to be working on an entire book about Muddler Minnows.

dentrye@RockyMountainNews.com

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