The Best Flies for Great Lake Salmon

When fly-fishing for Great Lakes Salmon there are so many factors to be considered. Possibly the most important is what fly to use. With the thousands of options out there, most die-hard salmon fishermen will tell you there are go to flies. The top three that always seem to come up are egg sucking leeches, egg flies, and comets.

Egg sucking leeches are great patterns for numerous reasons, but first I'll describe them. Basically an egg-sucking leech is a wooly bugger with an egg pattern at the head. They come in multiple color combinations, but I have found that black and purple bodies with either a pink or chartreuse head are hard to beat. The best sizes range from a size 4 to a size 8. Now the great thing about these flies is that there is no wrong way to fish them, fish them on a swing or a dead drift and they will produce strikes.

Egg flies are exactly what they sound like, flies that imitate eggs. The two main types are glo-bugs or estaz. Basically the only difference between the two flies is the materials used to tie them. Glo-bugs are tied with a yarn type material and estaz flies are tied with estaz yarn. No matter which one you choose the main thing with egg flies are the size and color. Again, there are numerous combinations, but I prefer colors of orange, blue and yellow in sizes 8 to 12. Egg flies should be fished dead drift and are great for those tough to catch fish.Finally we have comets.

A comet is a type of streamer with weighted eyes and tied with flashy material. There are many variations of this fly but a basic comet has weighted eyes, some type of tail a flashy body and a hackle dressing. The most popular colors are pink, orange and purple in sizes 4-8. Comets are great because they get down to the bottom very easily and like the egg-sucking leech, there is no wrong way to fish them.

As with anything there are obviously other flies that will work to catch Great Lakes salmon. However, if you told me I could only choose three styles of flies to fish for salmon, these would be the three. These flies have all been around for a while for those willing to chase salmon with a fly, and the reason they have stood the test of time is that they work.