Royal Wulff
The Royal Wulff imitates nothing and catches everything - a peacock-and-red attractor with white calf wings, built to float mountain pocket water and be seen doing it.
Nothing in nature is peacock-green with a red belt and white wings - and trout in fast water don't care. Lee Wulff's hair-winged development of the Royal Coachman is the definitive 'attractor' dry: visible to you at forty feet, buggy enough to suggest food generally, buoyant enough for the tumbling water where fish decide in half a second.
What it imitates
Nothing specific - 'strawberries and cream for trout' (Wulff's phrase): a caloric-looking SOMETHING that fast-water fish can't afford to inspect.
When & where it wins
Pocket water, mountain streams, freestone riffles - anywhere current gives fish an instant to decide. Prospecting water with no hatch showing.
How to fish it
Pound the pockets: short accurate casts to every seam and cushion, 2-3 second drifts, pick up, next pocket. Cover water; the fly's job is being findable.
Sizes & variants
10-16; the whole Wulff family (Grey, White, Ausable) shares the hair-wing buoyancy in different suits.
Tying notes
Calf-tail wings try souls - buy your first dozen and learn the wings later; the peacock-red-peacock body must stay slim.
Common mistakes
Fishing it slow and flat where fish get a long look (they refuse), and mistaking refusals for wrong fly instead of wrong water type.