Fish, friends remind you that old flies may be best flies

Chester Allen | The Olympian • Published February 29, 2008

I caught my first-ever sea-run cutthroat trout in 1986 on a yellow Knudsen Spider fly cast into Oregon's Alsea River.

The fly, which was first tied by an Everett angler named Al Knudsen, has fooled fish since the 1920s.

But I forgot about this terrific fly during the past few years — mostly because I started tying sea-run cutthroat flies to match the little fish and crustaceans in Puget Sound.

But a good friend — fishing wizard Greg Cloud — reminded me of the fly after I wrote a whiny column a couple of weeks ago about getting skunked on a local beach.

You might remember Cloud from columns I've written before. He fishes even more than I do, and he invented the deadly method of fishing anchovies under a bobber for chum salmon in Puget Sound.

Anyway, here's part of an e-mail he sent me:

" 'I only need 4 flies.' Hah!!!!."

Cloud was making fun of me for trying to whittle my sea-run cutthroat fly selection down to four flies.

I admit that was a dumb move. Cloud went on to recommend trying a Knudsen Spider.

Bells began to ring inside the big empty space in my skull.

"Sometimes the attractor is the way to go," Cloud wrote.

The Knudsen Spider isn't an exact imitation of any critter in South Sound. Then again, the long, flowing mallard duck hackles give the fly lots of life and movement in the water, so it probably looks like a lot of tasty things — shrimp, baitfish or even a marine worm — to a cutt.

I dug out my old box of Knudsen Spiders — and tied up a bunch more. Then I started fishing them. The fish started whacking them — especially when I was casting into moving water, such as a rip, which is the current line between fast and slow water.

I fished the falling tide on a favorite beach Thursday, and bright, beautiful cutts — and one finclipped resident coho salmon — walloped the fly. Catching was so good that I tied on an olive wooly bugger to see if the fish cared. They did. I got two strikes and one hookup on the wooly bugger in 20 casts.

I tied on the Knudsen Spider and fishing got hot again.