Emerger
Emerger
Barr’s Emerger
John Barr’s blue-winged olive emerger — the fly to tie on when trout are eating something you cannot see.
$18.99
$1.58 per fly
Available at Amazon
- Hook size
- 20
- Imitates
- Mayfly
- Best water
- Spring Creek, Tailwater
- Colour
- Gray
- Pack
- 12 flies
Fishes for
Brown TroutRainbow Trout
How to fish it
Fishing notes
Grease the leader to within six inches of the fly and let it hang in the film. If you cannot track it, drop it 18 inches behind a parachute dry and watch that instead. Take the fish that eats the dry as a bonus — most of them will take the emerger.
About this fly
John Barr’s blue-winged olive emerger — the fly to tie on when trout are eating something you cannot see.
Barr’s Emerger solves the most common refusal on a tailwater: trout rising steadily to a blue-winged olive hatch and ignoring the dun on the surface. They are taking the emerger hung in the film, and this is the pattern that imitates it — a slim, sparse silhouette with a trailing shuck and a thorax that sits half-drowned rather than proud of the water.
It fishes from the first cold-weather BWO hatch in autumn through to spring, and works as a general small-mayfly nymph in between. Sparse is the point; a heavily dressed emerger is the wrong fly.
Key features
- Imitates the blue-winged olive emerger, the stage trout key on during a BWO hatch
- Slim, sparse profile that hangs in the surface film instead of riding on top
- Size 20 matches autumn and spring BWO hatches on tailwaters and spring creeks
- Fishes equally well as a small mayfly nymph between hatches
- The answer when fish are rising steadily and refusing your dun
More patterns
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Emerger
Dry Fly
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