Of the thousands of patterns out there for winter runs, I think it can be boiled down to a few generalizations...summer run fishing adds some more variability, as does targeting multiple species, but I'll keep it on native winter runs.

A few different sizes, of a few different colors.

Small, medium, and large sizes of blue, purple, black, and combinations of those three colors, tied in either marabou, bunny, or both.

That's about it...these are very aggressive fish, and they like the swimming action that the bunny or marabou provides.

Weight them differently for different depths and current speeds, and/or carry different sink rate lines for the different depths.

I'm not a hard core flyfisher, but even my hard core flinger friends agree that when all the arguing and tying is done, the above will still account for the great majority of fish.

Fish on...

Todd