Eggs over hard made easy


There was a time, in the history of me, that I took a few grenades for giving out to much info. I worked in and around a fly shop for gods sake....I thought that was my job. Just because I give some dude a college education doesn't mean he gets the diploma. I just figured a little good info would bring people back. Luckily that's not the way things work around the current shop I work for. I'm not saying this hair brained idea is going to change fishing or that I'm the first to think of it,but I've got my flack jacket on anyways.
Anyho, I was chatting a few weeks ago about Great Lakes Steelheading regs, specifically the one hook rule. Don't miss read me here, I'm not looking for a return of the treble hook, I just feel a little cheated with just one fly. We began to wonder how many people peg eggs above a nymph. Seemed like a good way to double up legally to me. My boy Doc has been pegging eggs every summer here in Colorado since I met him, it's deadly, but then again so is his "jig fly". So since I'm on the shelf with a hammer right now I got to thinking......Why not paint your split shot.
This time of year we live and die by the egg midge combo. While the fish eat the egg pretty consistently all winter long (all year for that matter) they really key on the midge. I've found when you take the egg off, the midge take actually can decrease. Are the fish just seeing the combo better with that bright offering included in the mix? Probably. So i dug around my pile of junk and found all the round shot I could find. I didn't want to use tin dinsmore because they were oblong, you have to match the hatch even with lead after all. I used a few different colors including oregon cheese, peach, pink and orange. It took a few coats and could probably use a clear coat of sally hansens, maybe next round.
So I used my little science experiment a little bit this weekend on an excursion with J Knight and low and behold I hooked a few trout on the outside of the mouth. I ran my everyday normal 2 fly rig, a knot at the end of my leader to hold my shot, 10-12 inches of 5x to my first fly and 18 inches to my last fly. Obviously there is more data to collect but it seemed that my rig was flossing fish just like pegging eggs. I've always thought yarn eggs didnt sink far enough and lets face it, they are a pain in the ass to tie. My normal 2 fly rig just turned into a 3 fly rig with just 2 hooks. The Moffit System with a Colorado twist. I just hope the fish don't mind thier eggs over hard.