I want to dig out my fly rod and do a little bass fishing with it. I don't want a large assortment of flies. Somewhere around 5 kinds should be enough. At least to let me get into the sport. What flies do you guys and gals consider must haves? Clouser Minnow and Wooly Buggers are two I am thinking about starting with.

What size hooks? What colors? Etc. Thanks.

EDIT: BTW, it is an old GL3 9' 8wt so I should be able to use some decent size flies.

Gotta have an assortment of poppers for topwater IMO. I also like conehead buggers like the autumn splendor and in olive and black. Rubber legged buggers are good too. Deer hair divers would work as well. 4-8 hooks on these. Your 8 wt is perfect.

Wooly buggers, frogs, poppers, foam gurglers, maybe a minnow or baitfish pattern.
A wide range of hook sizes will catch bass but for an 8 wt a 2 or 4 will work better. Maybe a size 6 wooly bugger with a bead head as well.

I agree with all the above recommendations. Only thing I can add is some sort of a crawfish fly that you can fish along the bottom. Something like Matt Bennett’s Carp-it Bomb in sizes 4-8 should work great since it immitates both a crawfish as well as a bigger nymph.

Solid as I did not think of that when I responded. Great advise.

I spent the first year of fly fishing focusing mainly on largemouth bass. All great advice. I would only add that I spent a lot of time throwing black crystal wooley buggers and the Tedrick Froggy flies during that period of time. They worked great for me.

I will from time to time catch them chasing shad. I'll either throw a bead chain clouser of a popper dropper setup during those times.

I now fish mainly for sunfish, white bass and hybrids. I catch a lot of 2.5 lb plus bass on a size 10 gold bead chain crawfish colored Briminator variant while fishing for sunfish, I caught one 4.25 lbs in a creek a couple months ago. I second that a crawfish pattern is very successful. I've used Skip's Dad crawfish pattern before and been very successful. I used it mainly because it was such an easy tie.

Excellent thread, thanks for posting

Here is a few I carry in my active fly box. I have caught bass on most of them. I really enjoy catching schooling bass on the poppers.

Nice looking flies. I currently am not tying my own. I may start. First I would like to purchase a few to get started. Where are a couple good places to purchase bass flies?

Also I've been researching fly tying vises. I have no place to use a C-clamp so I need a pedestal mount vise. Right now I am looking at the Peak Rotary. Seems to be highly rated in several reviews. I want to eventually be tying flies for bass and panfish. I am open to any other suggestions. Would prefer not to spend more than $250 max. Less than $200 is better...thus the Peak. For you guys that have been tying for 30-40 years please do not tell me about $20-$30 vises you are still using.

Not really a trout fisherman at the moment. Years ago I purchased a used 3wt off this site. Made the mistake of buying a DT line for it. Couldn't cast it worn a darn after using the GL3 with WFF line. Not only a lighter line, but a lot slower action rod (and 7'6" vs 9') so my timing sucked. I have a WFF coming for the 3wt. Also have an Echo Carbon XL 4wt and 5wt on the way. As you can see I plan to do some fly casting for panfish as well as bass. But that is probably another thread.

Thank you for all the fly suggestions.

Cabelas has a decent enough selection of flies. That or look up your local fly shop.
Personally, I started out about a year ago with a cheap vise kit for about $30. Even though the vise itself sucked it was actually worth it because the bobbin, etc that it came with were pretty decent. I found a pedestal renzetti a while back on sale for $160. That’s what I use now with the old tools.

I might suggest to someone starting out to go with a cheap set same as I did until you know for sure it’s something you want to get further into.

Also, for ordering materials online I like Avidmax or Spawn Fly fishing. Both no tax to TX customers and free shipping for $25 and over. Good luck.

I buy 90% of my stuff from EBay. I do not tie technical flies. I just try and throw something together to catch fish. But I have come up with some interesting patterns. There are some experts on the site with lots of information available. It is much more fun to catch fish on a fly you made yourself.

www.bigyflyco.com has all the flies you will ever need(plus some).

Also their prices are great.

Looks like you are in Pennsilvania? I would also recommend an Orvis or other local fly shop. They should be able to give you more personalized and local advice on flys.

Assuming you are in Pennsylvania: I grew up in PA and had a lot of success using a Clouser crayfish (size 6, 8) in the smallmouth streams. Never really experimented with other flies. Probably the biggest smallmouth I caught was while trout fishing - it took a blue-winged olive dry fly (funny how things work out that way). Good luck!

Crawdads are my go to.

If you want better fish get below the surface. Poppers are fun, but you’ll catch more quality bass if you get the fly off the surface. I mostly fish salt water now, but I used to chase bass with a fly rod quite a bit. Streamers worked well for me, and around vegetation rabbit strip flies worked well for me.