Category 3 Hare & Copper - Gold Tungsten Bead

The standard, and still the one that gets the first cast

Gold is the bead most nymphs are built around, and there is a reason it has not been displaced: it throws a genuine flash that finds fish in broken and slightly coloured water, and it works across wild and stocked fish alike. Use it as the searching version of the pattern, on the point of a two-nymph rig where you want the weight and the attention in the same fly. On very hard-fished clear water it can be too much, which is when the copper or black bead earns its place.