I’ve had a lot of success with perdigon nymphs (primarily Devin Olsen’s Butano), plus CDC jig flies (primarily Devin Olsen‘s Blow Torch (though with red wire ribbing as in his book) and Soft Hackle Carrot Fly). I get most of my material from his site, Tactical Fly Fisher.
Meanwhile, I’ve had a bunch of glitter thread type material laying around for a year. So I tied some flies combining perdigon-style flash and resin, plus CDC collars and ice dub (kind of like Mike Mercer’s Jigster Nymphs). For the tag flies I used marabou. Who knows what the best color schemes are that trigger trout, but for a few I used components of the secondar colors (e.g., red and blue wiht the purple body, black and white with the grey body). My evolving appreoach was to employ two ice dub collars for each fly: the back one is generally light colored to emulate an emerger bubble beneath the CDC, and the front one is darker to create contrast. I have no idea if it will all work, but they look buggy on the table.
Here is a closeup of the second one from the left. Below it are the two key materials. The wine thread has been catching my eye so I finally used it.
I think I found this pattern online yesterday and modified it slightly: hare’s ear body with opalescent tinsel and wired ribbing. Behind them are some small relatively lightweight rubberlegs with small coffee/black chenille. I think it was a Lance Egan pattern and he recommends Sulky tinsel because it’s stronger than most. I don’t have that so I used normal tinsel and counterwrapped with wire.
