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Some sneer at them as too basic. Others, such as myself, leverage them for every swimmy fiber of fish-catching glory they possess. The venerable woolly bugger is virtually unrivaled in its simplicity and versatility. A true classic that ALWAYS has a spot in my streamer box.

A finished woolly worm fly. — A finished woolly worm; the resemblance to the woolly bugger is immediately apparent. This particular example was tied by Mark Cline in 2008.

Sources tend to differ on how and when the woolly bugger originated, though it would seem that the precise pattern –with a marabou tail and hackle-wrapped chenille body– emerged at some point in the US during the 1970s. Don’t let that that lull you into believing that it’s a relatively new creation, though. Indeed, the essential elements of the woolly bugger have been in development for some 400 years or more.

Certainly, the one of the fundamental design concepts behind the woolly bugger can be traced back to the “palmer-worm”, a long-shank, hackle-wrapped fly that was in popular use during the 1600s in England and described by Izaak Walton in his famous work, The Compleat Angler. The palmer-worm was already a well-established fly at that time, so it’s easy to imagine that it originated much earlier, probably in the 1500s.

During the intervening centuries, many wet flies were developed that we could arguably point to as transitional steps between the palmer-worm and the woolly bugger. But most seem to concur that the development of the “woolly worm” was key. Author Ian Whitelaw, writing in The History of Fly-Fishing in Fifty Flies, traces the woolly worm back to 1920s fly anglers in the Ozarks. The hackle-wrapped chenille body of the woolly bugger was firmly established in this pattern, though the tail of the woolly worm was a stubby piece of yarn rather than a generous sprig of marabou. Within just a couple decades, the addition of trailing marabou would impart an undulation to the woolly worm and give rise to one of the most ubiquitous and celebrated patterns in fly fishing.

Like so many trout anglers, my introduction to the pursuit centered squarely upon the use of earthworms as bait. And for a good number of years, that is precisely how I continued to pursue trout, even though I had abandoned worms as bait for warmwater fish as a child and used lures for them exclusively. Throwing bait for bass was, in my view, the domain of novices. Yet I compartmentalized these two pursuits: still/warmwater fish on lures, coldwater trout on worms. I was always aware of the contradiction, but it never bothered me, at all. I just accepted it; it was just how it was done.

Specifically, the technique I was taught in the beginning was to seek out pools, runs and seams, affix an appropriate amount of split-shot to the baited line, cast slightly upstream and keep tension on the line as the current carried it down through the prospective run of the river. This, I learned only later, was known as the “dead drift” presentation, a method relied heavily upon by both bait fisherman and fly-fishers alike.

It’s easy for me to forget that it wasn’t exactly eons ago that I made the switch to using flies exclusively for trout, and yet it feels like it’s been so very long since I stopped reaching for that classic, round container of damp soil whenever I was ready to wet a line at the river.

But why all this rambling?

Well, while browsing through H. C. Cutcliffe’s Trout Fishing on Rapid Streams, published in London in 1883, I came across a quote I quite enjoyed. And before I offer you an excerpt, consider that H. C. Cutcliffe was an accomplished fly-fisherman in his time and dedicated several chapters of his book to detailed discussions of catching trout “with the artificial fly”. This was not a man to whom the subtleties of fly-fishing were lost. And as concerns those who he observed fishing earthworms under bobbers, he expresses great disdain, going as far as to say that “with [such] anglers and their occupation, I can hold no fellowship.” Harsh words, indeed! But here are the lines that stood out to me:

“I could not consider any man a perfect disciple of our art, if he were not a good worm fisherman; he may be good with the artificial fly, natural fly, beetle or minnow, but if he is not far advanced in the art of worm fishing, I hold that man to be very limited in his education, and I would recommend him earnestly to pay attention, without further delay, to the subject…”
H. C. Cutcliffe, from Trout Fishing on Rapid Streams, 1883

While Cutcliffe passionately loathed bobber-fishermen, he was eager to dedicate a whole chapter of his book to what he felt were the comparatively noble techniques for dead-drifting earthworms on the river, even outlining what we would think of today as “high-sticking”. Would you believe that?

In truth, it’s refreshing to read the words of an angler such as Cutcliffe. Despite growing advanced enough in his learning to become a 19th-century authority on the art of trout angling, he remained a versatile angler and a man flexible in his technique. He refused to become so preoccupied with one particular approach that there might cease to be room for having the utmost respect for the others.

So while I always reach for a fly box these days instead of a carton of red wigglers, I don’t feel the least bit out of place among friends who are threading halved nightcrawlers on a #8 baitholder. That is the technique from whence I came, and without that foundational education, I’d scarcely stand a chance at one day becoming a “perfect disciple” of this fine art of trout fishing.