Top 3 favourite flies and why? Realistic flies?

Kebari & Flies
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I’m trying to build out a beginner’s inventory of flies…just ordered a bunch from DragonTail based on Skiddy Fishing top 5 on YouTube and some dries from Realistic Trout Flies | ReelFlies. The latter have a 15% off Canada Day sale going, with free shipping over $60, so was a good deal for me. I am waiting for ReelFlies to offer a realistic mayfly assortment, but that hasn’t landed yet.

So…two questions:

1 - What are your top 3 favourite/most productive flies and why?

2 - What do you think of the realistic flies concept? Will fish be able to tell the difference? Best thing since sliced bread or marketing hype? Here is an example: Realistic Adams Dry Fly | ReelFlies

Not trying to start a religious war here…just curious what people like and have success with, trying to learn.

Thanks!

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  1. My most productive changes by water type. My main river has sparse hatches and few risers so dredge nymphing is the name of the game. For that I like a size 16 jig hook perdigon, usually in green. For traditional tenkara, I like to use a grizzly hen hackle and the Shetland’s Grouse yarn for a body, tied so that the hackle is not too extremely reversed. It’s easy to tie and see for me, and I like grouse hunting which is why I ordered the yarn in the first place. If reminds me a bit of dark pheasant tail. For fishing dries I like hoppers because they’re easy to see and don’t usually use rooster hackle which is expensive, plus the fish demolish them.
  2. Daniel Galhardo had an interview with Morgan Lyle, author of Simple Flies. I think realistic flies are for the tyer and artistic purposes, but don’t do much for fishing. Fish don’t have great eyes to begin with which is why impressionistic flies fork, too! As Morgan put it, fish take the fly that looks like it could be a mayfly, not the fly that looks like a statue of a mayfly. I’d rather have movement than exact detail, so that “life” is communicated to the fish.
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I’m throwing a lot of variations of the Killer Bugger. It’s my top pick in recent years.

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