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35 or so years ago, when I was really getting into fishing the White and Norfork Rivers in Arkansas, one morning I got into a conversation with a bait fishing trout guide and he told me that while they fished corn and worms a lot, the really big trout they caught were caught on crawdad tails. Well that got me to thinking, and I started tying some crawdad imitations and fishing them along the bottom. Well, that little change in my tactics was responsible for my beginning to catch larger fish on the fly. I have taken some 4 and 5 pound rainbows on dries over the years, but crayfish imitations fished with a short jerky stripping action have accounted for probably 75 per cent of all the bigger trout I have caught since then. I came to the conclustion that the bigger fish are meat eaters, and if you want to have a better chance at catching them more consistantly, you have to fish larger, meatier flies, like crawdads, streamers and goold old wooly buggers. So I seldom fish anything less than a 5 weight, and many times a 6 or even 7 weight rod for heavier, weighted crayfish and streamers in a full loading, progressive taper. I just think they work better, more often on the larger fish. That's just my 2 cents worth. I'll still fish the itty-bitties, but I really prefer the larger flies when conditions are right. To me, the crawdad is probably the number one fly for larger trout and large mouth and small mouth bass. Arkansas and Missouri streams are loaded with them, and no hungry trout or bass can resist one, in my opinion. If you notice, the small stocker sized trout usually have a whiter flesh, while trout that have been in the stream for some time, usually have a pinker flesh. A biologist once told me that is because of the chiton in the flesh which is obtained when the fish begn eating crustaceans, like crayfish. The crayfish, he said, are the main source of this material, which colors the flesh of the fish pink. That really convinced me that I was on to something. That's the main reason wild salmon also have pink flesh, while salmon raised in a pen have whiter flesh...they are fed commercial feed, while the wild fish feed on a much wider diet, which includes crustaceans.