Do trout take flies because they resemble naturals in color and texture or do they simply strike at flies based on their general outline? Will a precisely tied Blue-winged Olive out fish an Adams that is in the ballpark in terms of size? These are questions fly anglers have been pondering since Dame Juliana recommended a dry fly pattern using wool and blue jay feathers in her "Treatyse of Fysshynge with an Angle"
We probably won't know in this life. So why not tie up a pattern that resembles no known trout food, but instead is a symbolic representation of pipe smoking? Bass fishermen take out their humorous mini Budweiser cans with treble hooks affixed when nothing else is working. We might as well get in on the fun.
The pattern is called the Churchwarden Woolly Bugger. Patterned after one of our favorite pipes, the Churchwarden Bugger resembles a normal Woolly Bugger but instead of the usual natural colors, we substitute representative colors to resemble the elements of a fine briar.
Tied on a size 10 or 12 Mustad 9672 for trout, larger for smallmouth bass, the Churchwarden Bugger resemble a pipe in the following manner:
In tying the Churchwarden, the only step that differs from tying a regular Woolly Bugger is the transition from the brown chenille of the body to the orange chenille of the head. The trick to this is to leave yourself enough room to tie in the orange head and still have room for a whip finish. Wrap the brown chenille about two thirds of the way up the shank and then tie off the brown and tie in the orange. You'll only need one or two turns of the orange chenille. Tie off the orange chenille and palmer wrap the grey hackle from the tail to the head, and whip finish. For the hackle, I prefer to tie in the hackle tip first--just behind the marabou tail--and wrap it up to the head of the fly instead of tying in the butt of the hackle at the head of the fly and then wrapping it back towards the tail, where you have to figure out how to finish it off. Tying the hackle in behind the tail allows you to finish everything off at the head with one whip finish.
Reports from the field claim that trout actually seem to like this pattern! Perhaps this indicates that trout are taking the Churchwarden in response to the size/shape outline of the fly. Perhaps they ignore the strange coloring, or possibly, underwater the churchwarden resembles a dislodged hellgrammite or small crayfish. Or else, trout have an appreciation for fine briars that we don't know about...
Editor's note: There's nothing new under the sun, and every new trout pattern in the 21st century eventually proves to be little more than a modification of something older , tried and true. The CW Bugger was an idea I conjured up early this year, but originality obviously resides solely in the symbolic color scheme. A Woolly Bugger is a Woolly Bugger no matter how it's dressed. Nevertheless, I asked Reed to tie up a few for me, which he graciously did. All I can say is that the pattern is very effective.
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©copyright 2003, Perry S. Fuller
