GAUDY FLY RATES HIGH WITH HIGH SIERRA FISHERMEN.

Byline: Brett Pauly Daily News Staff Writer

For fly-anglers, there might be no better symbols to represent the Sierra Nevada mountains than the golden trout and the Sierra bright dot fly.

Both are endemic to the range - the fish is native only to the upper Kern River basin in Tulare and Kern counties; the fly is used almost exclusively here - and are closely tied together.

In the high country - elevations of 10,000 feet or better - where the intensely hued trout has been introduced and is frequently restocked, it gobbles down Sierra bright dots like M&M's, perhaps faster and more often than any other dry fly tossed. If you carry only one pattern into the backcountry, make it this unbeatable beauty with the telltale pink middle and the grizzly hackle fore and aft.

No need to worry about matching the hatch or otherwise deceiving your game with flies that imitate their prey. This attractor pattern is like nothing found in nature, yet its delicious colors prove just too tempting for the curious Oncorhynchus aguabonita.

``It's my favorite fly because it's the fish's favorite fly,'' said Mammoth Lakes fly-fishing guide David Moss, who has dubbed it ``the magic fly of the west.'' ``Why be a genius if you don't have to be?''

Its success is its simplicity.

The florescent pink floss or tinsel (less often red or red-orange) center is so gaudy it borders on the ridiculous, but it attracts the trout's eye like a bull to a matador's cape. (Red in any shade apparently is an aggressive color in trout.) The grizzly hackles - employed in bivisible fashion (front and back) like its forerunner fly, the renegade - are thought to suggest movement to the fish. The golden pheasant tippet for the tail is the same used on many other popular dry flies, such as the royal coachmen.

``It's a little of this. It's a little of that. But it's incredibly effective over fish that don't see a lot of action,'' said commercial fly-tier Tom Ishkanian of La Crescenta. ``If you went to the Lower Owens River or another highly pressured area, like Hot Creek, you aren't going to catch fish with it - unless you fish it in a very small size, like a 24, to imitate a midge. Those fish won't be fooled.''

But in the backcountry, where goldens are much less discerning, anglers use larger sizes - 14 to 18 - that are easier to follow and make strikes unmistakable.

Like many flies derived from several established parts, its origins are difficult to track.

Some assume that Bright Dot Lake, a high-country site south of Convict Lake, might provide some answers. But Mammoth Lakes fishing guide Fred Rowe found nothing to suggest the fly and the lake are connected when he researched the name of his fishing service and former tackle shop, the Sierra Bright Dot.

``It is such an awesome fly, I assumed it would be so worldly. But it turns out it's a really local fly,'' said Rowe, who had his company's namesake fly and a golden trout emblazoned in its logo.

``It still hasn't gotten national recognition, but my clients do bring it home and say that they do catch fish. On a fishless day, they remember how it performs here and toss it out and catch fish back in Michigan.''

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2 Photos

Photo: (1-2--color) The Sierra bright dot, left, is an i rresistible lure to golden trout in the Sierra.

Phil McCarten and Brett Pauly / Daily News