I am trying to assemble a decent fly box for fishing lakes throughout Washington.

Short of the basic midges and mayflies, wooley buggers and wooley worms, what are flies that a well prepared angler would have?

Scuds? Caddis? Damselflies? Alderflies? Water boatmen? Other attractors?

Rob

Leeches,chronomids, bead headed nymphs,shuld be added .

You have a nice start for the list. I would also include elk hair caddis, various sizes / colors and scuds. There are, of course others, the these and the ones you mentioned are a good basic start.

Here are a couple of things that I've found to work particularly well: A floating Callibaetis emerger pattern will usually outfish an imitation of the dun and may frequently be used all the way through the hatch. I've read that adult damselflies are not commonly taken by trout, but a good dry damsel imitation can often be surprisingly effective, even when there aren't very many naturals in evidence.

An assortment of woolly buggers is good. Colors I like are olive, maroon and chartreuse.

Don't forget the mini-leeches either. I had a real good time on a seep lake about two weeks ago using a maroon mini-leech. The fish stripped almost all the goat hair off of it leaving mostly the crystal flash dubbing loop.

Shiny chironimids are also very useful. These are what I use most of the time. I call them "shiny" as they're tied with a flashabou body and then covered with nail polish for protection from teeth.

For fishing lakes with fathead minnows in them, I'd add a few weighted muddler minnows in various sizes and hues.

"Basic mayflys" seems like an oxymoron--fish can be quite particular as to what they shove down their throat. I've had luck with a #16 olive paradun when a #16 grey paradun wouldn't do the trick...would suggest tying up paraduns in #12-#18 in black, grey, olive,and brown to match the majority of Western WA lake mayflies...

ANTS. Look for ants to swarm here in the next couple of weeks--probably once we get a couple real warm days. Tie some big carpenter ants--I'm yet to find ones in the store that are large enough. Most of mine are #10, bodies about 3/4 of an inch long and wings 1/2 to 3/4 of an inch long...with a black abdomen ribbed with a single strand of crystal flash and covered with black deer hair ("humpy" style), a pair of longish blue dun hackle tips for wings, black hackle, a thorax about 1/3 the length of the abdomen and again covered with black deer hair, a couple more turns of black hackle, and a smallish head.

Good fishing!

hey guys,
I use Mosquito flies and March browns and have never been skunked.Sizes 10 and 12.