One of the most popular flies to fish today, John Barr created a keeper with this pattern.  The secret to this fly's success is the fact that the heavy weight allows the Copper John to remain at the bottom of streams and rivers when fished.  I recommend having the Copper John in a variety of colors of sizes throughout your nymph box.

The Psycho Prince is another fun fly to fish and tie!  Mike Mercer created this pattern with modern materials, though maintained the integrity of the original Prince nymph.  In this tutorial, I also offer some variations to the pattern, and recommend fishing this fly through faster water currents.

This variation of Frank Sawyer's Pheasant Tail is very fast to tie, yet effective as a nymph.  I vary the thorax color of the Hot Belly Pheasant Tail, though typically will stick with fluorescent colors.  By selecting those, this fly remains an attractor pattern that I've had good success with over the years.

This is an effective caddis that utilizes Hungarian Partridge fibers for legs.  The Bird of Prey Caddis is intended to represent both the caddis pupa and emerger stages, and variations are discussed in this tutorial.  When John Anderson created this pattern, he kept everything simple, easily one of the reasons this fly works so well!   

This jig nymph, created by Kevin Compton of Performance Flies, fits in line with other European nymphing flies.  The Ginger Snap has a very slender body, with a buggy thorax that utilizes a dubbing loop.  This fly is primarily fished as an anchor fly, due to the heavy tungsten bead added.

Josh Williams of Dead Drift Flies created this pattern, which has been catching on with many as an attractor fly used to entice large trout.  Josh's story is possibly better than the fly, as discussed at the beginning of the video.  Josh's White Lightning performs well in many water types, though I prefer to fish this fly in faster currents.  

The Spider soft hackle is a fly that always seems to produce, thus I varied it slightly with a hot spot in the thorax area of this fly.  Using Glo-Brite for that hot spot really gives the fish something to key on, especially when using this pattern in a high-pressured area.

TC's Caddis Pupa is a fly I created to represent the pupal stage of caddisflies.  The pattern is relatively straightforward, and has performed well for me over the years.  I recommend tying this in colors that represent the natural caddis on the rivers and streams you fish, with my popular ones being tan, brown, gray, and olive.

The WMD nymph is a simple tie, falling into the "guide style" category.  As experience has taught me, simpler flies like this do a great job of representing so many insects in the water.  With that said, there are many possible variations to this effective pattern, including the tailing material, body color, and addition of a hot spot.  I typically will tie the WMD in smaller sizes and fish it below an anchor or heavier fly.  When I am not incorporating a hot spot, I will place this fly below an attractor pattern.