Walleye Fly Fishing Master List

When you think about fishing for walleye, fly fishing is probably one of the furthest tactics from your mind. However, you can use sinking lines, streamers, and some conventional techniques like vertical jigging to make walleye fly fishing work for you. Keep in mind, however, that fly tying is an art, and you'll have to learn each pattern one by one before you can put the flies into practice. The first thing to do is learn the basics and build upon that knowledge as you progress in your walleye fishing activities.

There are several types of flies that can be used in walleye fly fishing, including a wet fly, a caddis fly, a mayfly, a nymph, and a streamer. These are the basic types, and when you decide to delve into the art of fly fishing, you'll probably want to stick with these basics for a long time, getting them down before moving on to any other kind of pattern (there are thousands of patterns that you don't even want to think about at this point).

You'll need to learn about appropriate sizes of flies to use before beginning, so compare them to typical baits and lures that you would use for walleye. The equipment you'll need to get started is quite basic. You'll want to have an inexpensive but sturdy vise, a bobbin that rolls smoothly, a set of hackle pliers, scissors, and a bodkin. It is more important when creating your fishing equipment to have quality materials than to have lots of them. However, when you become an expert at creating a tied fly, you can use a cheap feather and still come out with almost equal quality.

To get started, you only need one brown and one black-and-white grizzly feather. You may be able to find a package with half a brown neck and half a grizzly together by companies such as Metz, saving you money and providing you with enough feathers for a starting point. Now it's time to really go shopping. Here are your other basic needs to begin your project: deer, elk, and muskrat hair; a squirrel tail; a hare's mask; a couple of turkey feathers; two packages of marabou feathers, one black, one brown; a spool of black thread; brightly colored chenille; two spools of tinsel, one flat silver and one gold wire; some lead wire; a cake of dubbing wax; and standard-shank hooks in sizes 10 to 20, as well as long-shank hooks in sizes 4 to 10.

With these items, you have everything you need to tie the five basic patterns you should start with for fly fishing.