Fishing Egg Patterns

 April can be a tough month on the trout stream, but there is one pattern in particular that will up your odds of success from late fall through early spring.  The mighty Egg, a naturally occurring, high calorie trout food, that stands out and draws fishes attention. When presented properly, this fly will be the most consistent pattern in your fly box at a time when trout are still quite lethargic from cold water temps. I’ll explain how to fish these flies as well as the colors I prefer.

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My eyes were opened to the egg this past March at the US Fly Fishing National Championships, I was forced to commit at least half of my time to fishing eggs due to cold winter weather. Eggs were accounting for a majority of the fish caught, and for some competitors, eggs were the only fly they fished.  I had to become and egg fisherman fast, a fly I’d fished sparsely on my home waters.​

The most important part of fishing eggs is the drift.  Eggs are located on the river bottom, bouncing and rolling along the substrate SLOWLY.  Your egg fly must do the same if you are to have success.  Throwing an egg under an indictor and hoping the distance from bobber to fly is the same as the water depth is not going to be very effective.  Most of the time the fly will be suspended above the river bottom and drifting at the speed of the surface current and not the natural eggs.  Lethargic trout just are very unlikely to eat this type of presentation.  Your best tactic will be to euro nymph the egg with a direct connection from leader to fly.  I found out the hard way that just because you have an egg tied onto a euro leader, does not mean it will look correct to the fish.  The strike zone and mid column drifts that work so well for much of the season when bugs and trout are active will not be as effective. The absolute key is slowing down the drift.  I discovered this could be done in two ways and some days fish preferred one drift over another.  The first is to slow roll the egg along the river bottom by ever so slowly leading the flies.  This works much better when you can see the egg in shallower or clear water.  The second is to invert your drift so that as the fly drifts past you, your rod tip is upstream of the fly and the leader is imparting almost no drag on the egg whatsoever, allowing the egg to bounce along the bottom naturally.  You are then looking for a subtle tightening of your leader above the water to indicate a trout has eaten the egg.  For some readers this may be too far “into the weeds” to understand but if you can simply slow your drift as much as possible you will have more success.

Egg color is another important factor.  I found that that fluorescent orange, yellow, and salmon pink are three must have colors.  Some like white, pink, blue, and reddish orange as well. I prefer to stick to three so that I am not spending half my time rotating colors.  On some days you’ll find that it matters a lot, and they will be keyed into one color.  I also like the material to have UV glow when you put it under a UV light.  One day, while practicing for the competition, my teammate and I fished the same egg leap frogging each other up the river.  I caught around 45 to his 5 or 6.  When we got back and compared the eggs, which looked identical, my material had a UV glow under a light, while his did not.

Lastly, weight is required to get the egg to the bottom.  I prefer to tie eggs with copper or pink tungsten beads in a few different weights depending on depth and river flow.   Another option is an unweighted egg behind some split shot or a heavy nymph.  Either way that fly needs to attain depth quickly.  

Coming back from nationals last year I was excited to try eggs on my home trout. I picked a small stream with pocket water leading up to a water fall.  Never had I caught a fish in the pocket water at that time of year, but could usually get one below the falls.  With an egg I caught 3 in the pocket water and 2 at the falls.  I repeated this success over and over throughout the month of April, and cannot wait to get out and “egg up” more wild trout in 2025.