Designer: Kayla Fleetwood

Pattern: Honey Hole

Kayla grew up in Southeast Alaska, where she spent her time camping, fishing, hiking and hunting in the wilds of the area. Kayla has worked in the fly fishing industry for nearly a decade, from being the fly shop girl, to working in fish conservation, to encouraging women to join the sport of fly fishing. Kayla’s favorite fish to chase is the mighty King Salmon. She says there is nothing like the pull of a chrome bright Chinook straight out of the ocean on the end of her line.

While Kayla is still an Alaskan gal at heart, life changes have taken her to new locations with new adventures.  She now calls Tucson, Arizona home. You can find her exploring the Sonoran Desert and the White Mountains, where she now enjoys chasing wild Gila and Apache trout and quail.

Honey Hole

About the Honey Hole

I came up with the Honey Hole pattern because I was sick and tired of drifting beads under an indicator for trout in Alaska. It's pretty well known that the way to "match the hatch" when trout fishing in Alaska is to match the salmon fry, egg color, flesh color.  This is what entices a char, grayling or rainbow to eat. Well, I was intent on designing a fly that could out-perform a bead.  It also had to be barbless and harm less trout. Enter: The Honey Hole.
The Honey Hole is tied on a barbless 45-degree hook and tungsten bead head.  It dips and dives through the current grasping the attention of feisty trout. The original color scheme was an orange/pink combo with just the right touch of shimmer in the body. This is by far my favorite fly color scheme to swing or drift behind spawning salmon in the creeks.  Regardless of the time of year or species I'm after, the Honey Hole is my go-to lake fly.  I even threw this fly on in Iceland and caught a couple of hungry Char on it! Over the years, the Honey Hole has been tied in a variety of more salmon fry colors for early season, or as "searching" patterns, when you are trying to figure out if you should be fishing a small or large streamer.
If you haven't fished the Honey Hole yet, try it out and let me know what you think!