While guiding in Chile a few years back I decided to stop fishing “traditional” trouty flies. The fish were as far from picky as you could imagine. Looking past the normal trout patterns, I experienced plenty of success with bass poppers, size 2/0 royal wulffs, giant pike flies, hunks of elk hair tied to a bare hook, 4 inch long chernobyls, etc…
Some of my favorite non-trouty patterns ended up being more of an arts and crafts project as much as tying a trout fly. I have always enjoyed the versatility of tying with foam…
I was basically taking a simple chernobyl and “spicing it up a bit.” The extra dumb south american trout attacked my new cutting-edge flies with reckless abandon.
I especially enjoyed informing my anglers that we’d be fishing with pizza and hot dogs for the day. That would usually get a laugh as if I were joking… Then I’d tie on these awesome flies and my anglers would doubtfully start off the day fishing my creations. Typically, that doubt would be replaced by laughter and fish in the net within sight of the put-in. After those initial doubts we’d spend the rest of our day feeding those extra dumb trout, extra dumb flies. Pizza, hot dogs, little people (think “Oh no, Mr. Bill!”), hamburgers, and other dumb foam creations were all on the menu.
In 2008 I became interested in being affiliated with Idylwilde because I had heard they were typically the most cutting edge fly brand on the market and produced as high quality of flies as anyone. I knew that they would be more than thrilled with producing my secret foam creations. So I put together an assortment of flies that I thought were worth sharing with the world and right in the center of the box I put the pizza and hot dog flies. Idylwilde has done a fantastic job with my more traditional foam flies, but they have yet to pick up my pizza or hot dog fly. Maybe one day.
If you’re interested in feeding dumb flies to dumb trout (or just learning to tie dumb flies to go feed to dumb trout on your own), Andrew Grillos can be contacted at www.andrewgrillos.com for guide trips and fly tying lessons.



















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