Ice Fishing Flies

[rider pride]

I was reading in the December edition of the magazine and the article was talking about using different flies for ice fishing trout. What does a backswimmer fly look like as well as a Prince nymph and how do you fish them in the winter. Do you still jig them or just let the flies sit still in the water? Thanks for the help.

[Bigtoad]

I was reading in the December edition of the magazine and the article was talking about using different flies for ice fishing trout. What does a backswimmer fly look like as well as a Prince nymph and how do you fish them in the winter. Do you still jig them or just let the flies sit still in the water? Thanks for the help.

Just go to your local fishing shop and they'll have some of both. Make sure the Prince has a bead head to allow it to sink. The boatman/backswimmer might be out of foam so might not sink. If you put that as your top fly on a 2 hook set-up and the bottom one a jig of some kind, you should be golden.

Backswimmers move in a dart/stop/dart/stop twitching motion so I would think that would work best. Prince is imitating a variety of critters so it really depends. Try twitching, try sitting, try bouncing off the bottom, try vibrating gently (hooks not anything else...) and see what works.

Small leech patterns are also great in green, brown, black, purple, white.\

Wire San Juan worms work well also.

Cheers.

[ericlin0122]

google water boatman
I was at PCR last weekend, there were lots lots of boatman.

[tacklerunner]

Click on Icky FlyWorks ad at the top of this page and go thru his catalouge. Pay special attention to his "winter pack". You'll learn what you need to know about any fly.

ickyflyworks.ca

[crazyfish]

flies also work great on whites ! especially the finicky ones. If you learn to tie them , just do it so the hook is upside down ( point up) ... also any shrimp pattern will work great in most alberta lakes !

[rider pride]

Thanks for the advice!!

[Dust1n]

boatmans and backswimers will not work as great as they would for fall whitefish mainly because they dont key in on them on any other season stick to a prince nymph.