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| ~ Rim Chung ~ |
The RS2 pattern was developed nearly 40 years ago by
Colorado angler and tier Rim Chung. The name of the fly is short for “Rim’s
Semblance 2,” and it fishes well as either a midge or a mayfly emerger. The
original version featured natural beaver fur dubbing and saddle hackle for the
wing. Many more modern versions appeared as newer materials were available to tiers,
while maintaining the profile of Chung’s original pattern. As with many great
patterns that have stood the test of time, you can fish the RS2 in many
different ways. It can fished on the surface, in the film, subsurface, or as a
dropper off another emerger pattern. This multi functional fly kicks ass!
My first introduction to the RS2 was from Abe Chavez who
owned Abe’s Motel and Fly shop in 1992 on the San Juan River in New Mexico.
Having lived in Breckenridge and Alma from 1991 to 1996, The Juan was only a
mere 5 hours away through beautiful country like the San Luis Valley, with
spectacular views of the Sangre De Cristo Mountain range, and over Wolf Creek
Pass (headwaters of the San Juan River) down through Pagosa Springs, and in
route to Navajo Dam – Where the motherlode of tail waters lives. I always
brought a crew of dudes down there, all professional snowboarders who I had
taught how to fly fish, and they had the fever! Abe loved it when we would
visit his shop for flies and materials. It was our youth and enthusiasm that
got him amped up and willing to share. He would pull us aside and show us his
favorite flies, like the atomic worm (orange Annelid) which we caught most of
our fish on.
I only used the RS2 on The Juan back in those days after Abe
shared it with us. It shined on those side channel surface feeders up near the
cable below the dam. Being a native Northern Californian, I was taught at an
early age how to tight line nymph by my father, and I craved pocket water in
canyons lined with polished granite (think North Fork Feather, Upper Sac, The Truckee,
and the West Branch Feather River). It’s all I wanted to do at the time, and
small tiny dry flies were not the norm back then. As fly anglers, we all go through phases in
our lifetime of fly fishing. As you can tell from my Lower Yuba River reports
from the last 10 years, the Skwala game and technical dry fly
first presentations on the Lower Yuba River to wary trout, is hard to beat.
Fast forward to September of 2019 when I returned to
Colorado some 22 years later, and went on a 10 day adventure with a longtime friend
who had recently got addicted to fly fishing, Cat Toy - https://flyfishingwithcattoy.blogspot.com/
We ventured up to the Yampa River below Stagecoach Reservoir, which she raved
about for days before we left. I was pretty excited! Like any new fishery, it
took me awhile to learn its rhythm. Cat was big on the RS2, so I tied one on
she gave me and started to fish it once again on one of her most favorite home waters. That
little speck of a gray and flash in the drift was well received by my intended
quarry. Bent rods and fish in the net is the tell all.
Having
had so much fun on that trip, I returned in December just before Christmas. It
was a hell of lot colder, but nothing like Cat endured months later with subzero
weather, and deep snow in the canyon of Yampa Land. In the short time since I
had last saw her, she was now tying – as much as she could. Like REALLY into
it. We sat down at the table the day before leaving for a trip to
Stagecoach, and spun up some bugs. One of her ties of course, was the RS2.
As tiers, we all have our own style and signature to the
patterns we learn to tie. Cat’s RS2 was a little different. Most anglers fish the
RS2 on the surface or in the film. This particular fly was tied on a heavy pupa hook. The TMC 2457
#18-22, and fished near the bottom with additional weight, using an indicator rig.
Being winter, the takes were super subtle, and this presentation was best. Cat
also used natural fibers like wood duck for the tail instead of microfibbets.
She also has a version of the RS2 named “Cat Nip”, which I’m sworn to secrecy
to.
That covers the sub surface side of the multi functional RS2.
The surface and in the film aspect of this fly does require different materials
like a straight eye hook, the TMC 101
#16-22, and super fine dubbing spun tight as to not let the water soak in as
easily. Using the natural floating properties of Cul de Canard (CDC) for the
wing does wonders. There is something about CDC that the fish really like, maybe
it’s the air bubbles that get trapped in the fibers resembling the natural
emerging insect rising up into the meniscus. One thing with CDC though, after a
lengthy battle with a trout, it is tough for your player to be ready to play
the game again. Yes, using your desiccant helps, but I’d rather tie on a fresh
fly. So, make sure you have multiple patterns of the same style and size for
the hatch you are encountering. For the tails on your surface pattern, using microfibbets is the way to go because it is so identical to the natural, and
maybe a detail the trout key in on. I learned from master tier Bud Heintz that
using double sided microfibbets gave the fly more stability when floating on the surface, especially in
choppy water.
In the last couple of days I’ve been filling up my “small
ball” box with all this “free time” I have at home now, both sub
surface and floating styles of Rim’s fly. The RS2 is not as easy as one would
think, unless you’re tying tiny stuff every day. The biggest problem to solve
is the correct proportions. I was taught a long time ago to vary your ties to
be regular, chunky, or sparse with the same pattern and hook size, because you
never know which style will be the one the fish will want that day (or that
hour of the day). If your RS2 does not look like something you saw on the
internet from Joe Pro, fish it anyways. Cat proves that time and time again
with her own way of tying the different patterns she has learned so far. The
thread trick, using a short piece of extra thread to splay the tails is really
cool (video link below). It is a valuable technique that will help you tie other small flies in
the future. Make sure the piece of thread is of good length to be able to grasp
with your hand easily, and I found it much simpler to split the tail if I
twisted the piece of thread into a single rope. As for the dubbing noodle, keep
it extremely sparse, and carefully build the body as you go. It’s really easy to put too
much dubbing on, and have a fly that looks WAY out of proportion.
A big part of a successful fly in our modern day of fly
fishing is using different materials the trout are not use to seeing, or a
combination of newer materials. I proved that in Colorado from my last two
trips using Hogan Brown’s S&M pattern with some very unusual material
substitutions. Those Colorado trout had never seen anything like it before. They
ate first, and asked questions later. For my sub surface RS2’s, I did something
similar using a buggier florescent UV dubbing in black, dark brown, and gray
for the body, and a whitish blue UV yarn for the wing. There are some time
tested patterns that are commercially and readily available, and for whatever
reason, they keep on producing. I swear though, on pressured waters it pays to
think outside the box. If you haven’t sat down at the vice and started spinning
dozens of bugs yet, well… `tis the season of self-quarantine and fly tying.
RS2 Videos & Websites:
This video, by Tim Flagler of Tightline Productions, offers step-by-step directions for tying this pattern by Matt Grobert,
who shows off several neat tricks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=27KQ6pDnLFM
Colorado angler Ferenc Horvath maintains a website devoted
to the RS2, you can see it here: https://www.rs2fly.com/RS2/Welcome.html
the site contains lots of great information, as well as a chart of good color
combinations.
See you on the water…hopefully soon.
