Tungsten or Brass Beads?

Tungsten or brass beads?

I often get asked that question during my tying classes and demos and my answer is that it depends.  

With the cost of everything going up around us except our pay checks, it's hard to encourage people to splurge and spend the extra money on tungsten.  But there are times that it is important to do so.  I tell people that if I know I will be nymphing with split shot on my leader, I can adjust that weight to get those flies down deeper where I want them to be.  If I lose them to fish or rocks, it's not as painful on the wallet.  

When do I use tungsten then?  When I know I will be using a certain pattern as a dropper off the back end of a hopper or a big dry.  I want that pattern to drop like a rock and stay in the zone for as long as it can.  I have to make sure I use a big, buoyant dry fly to do this.  On a lot of rivers, there is plenty of pocket water, especially if the water is on the high side.  I want the nymph to get deep as soon as it hits the water and stay in the zone.  If the nymph is too high in the water column, the fish may never see it.  If the fly is right in front of their mouth, they only have two choices and at that point, you have a chance.  If I know I will be using a BHFBPT(try to figure that one out) as a dropper, I will make sure to tie some with tungsten beads.  Since I am blessed to be a part of the MFC team, I can get tungsten beads at a really good price so I usually tie almost all my nymphs with tungsten.  

I still have and tie plenty with brass beads, but I have decided to make the change.   So think of the patterns you fish the most as a dropper and make sure you tie those with a tungsten bead.  Other patterns you fish with that won't be used as a dropper can be tied with a brass bead.  

A 2 Bit Hooker is a great dropper pattern that should be tied with tungsten beads.  A regular Hare's Ear is a pattern that I normally don't use as a dropper, so I would tie that with a regular brass bead and fish it deep with split shot and another fly.  If you are trying to figure out what patterns to use tungsten on, just remember, if you want to catch fish on droppers, use tungsten.  

If you nymph a lot, regular beads will work well and losing them on rocks and snags doesn't hurt as much.   Now remember that there are exceptions to everything and I do use a lot of tungsten beads on my nymph rigs.  I mostly use them on bigger stoneflies and anything I need to get deep in higher water in addition to split shot. 

The costs are high, but the fish are deep and to me, it is worth having tungsten beads on most of my patterns.  I recommend that you ask your local fly shop (not a big box store!) if they carry either Flymen tungsten beads or Montana Fly Company tungsten beads.