Fly Fishing - Purists frown on Glo-Bugs

Fly-Fishing: Purists frown at using Glo-Bugs, but they sure work well in winter
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Morgan Lyle

There’s a certain kind of fisherman who spends a lot of time, especially in the off season, hanging around fly-fishing Web site forums, reading and sometimes participating in arguments about what is and isn’t “real” fly-fishing.

I know this kind of angler well, because I’m one of them. I realize what time-bandits these Internet yak-fests can be, but I just can’t resist. In some ways, these forums are the 21st century version of hanging around the counter of the local fly shop, except the shop is open 24 hours a day, the arguments often go on for weeks and you can partic­ipate from your office — to the great dismay of both your boss and real fly shops.

Anyway, the latest spat I stumbled upon was about whether fishing with flies that imitate fish eggs — notably the pattern known as the Glo-Bug — can be properly called fly-fishing.
This got my attention because Glo-Bugs are most often thought of as late fall and winter flies, and I have made sort of an early New Year’s resolution to go trout fishing this winter every chance I get. Glo-Bugs are used this time of year because many species of trout and salmon spawn in the fall, depositing thousands of eggs, some of which drift out of the spawning bed and down the current, where other hungry trout and salmon gladly eat them. This phenomenon is probably finished by Thanksgiving, certainly by Christmas, but the reasoning seems to be that trout remember how tasty the eggs are right through the winter.

The school of thought that Glo-Bugs are “cheating” seems to have its roots in the early 20th-century English tradition that casting a dry fly upstream to a rising trout was the only form of fishing that was cricket. Back then, the British attorney G.E.M. Slues took a lot of flack for fishing with a sunken nymph pattern.

Today, of course, most people consider nymphing a legitimate way to fish (although it’s strictly a method of last resort for some anglers). But some folks who are perfectly comfortable dead-drifting a Pheasant Tail nymph through a deep run consider it “practically bait fishing” (horrors!) to drift a Glo-Bug through the same spot.

“When I used to guide, if I got a real idiot behind the fly rod, I’d tie on an Oregon Cheese [a popular color for Glo-Bugs] and make his day,” wrote one Internet angler. “Sure, they catch fish after fish after fish. But where’s the challenge?”

I was a little stung by that comment, having fished Glo-Bugs many a cold miserable day on the Salmon River, and caught absolutely nothing. But I got over the sting, went downstairs and dug out my old box full of Glo-Bugs, and tonight, I’m going to root through the Tupperware and see if I’ve still got any Oregon Cheese Glo-Bug yarn, plus some red yarn for the dot that looks so cool on those flies, and tie up some fresh ones just for fun.

Yes, I consider Glo-Bugs flies and fishing with them fly-fishing. As long as it’s delivered by casting the line, rather than by throwing the lure itself or its sinkers, and as along as the fly is made with more or less traditional methods and materials, it’s cricket, as far as I’m concerned.
As another patron in the great electronic fly shop noted, “If stoneflies where caught, preserved and sold in little jars for bait fishermen, an imitation of them may become somewhat taboo or ‘less pure’ for fly fisherman to use, as well.”

Not to me, they wouldn’t. As an angler of average-at-best skill who can’t get out as often as he would like to, “fish after fish after fish” sounds pretty good, especially in January. I guess if Glo-Bugs ever do become so effective as to be boring, I’ll up the ante a little with a stonefly — an artificial one, of course.