From late June through September, the most productive fly fishing bench is not the one stocked for hatches. It's the one stocked for what falls into the water — hoppers blown off grass banks, beetles that lost their footing on streamside vegetation, ants caught in the film at the wrong moment, crickets after dark. Terrestrial season and warmwater season overlap almost completely on the calendar, and the materials that build terrestrial patterns and warmwater flies overlap almost completely on the bench.
Foam, flash, and rubber legs are the core of both categories. Getting those three materials right — knowing which specific products to stock, in which formats and sizes — is the difference between a bench that produces quickly across a wide range of patterns and one that requires a separate shopping trip every time a new pattern comes up. This is a stocking guide. It covers what to keep, what to know about each product, and which patterns depend on it.
Foam: the full fly tying material picture
Foam in terrestrial fly tying covers more applications than most tyers realize until they start working across the full range of terrestrial and warmwater patterns. Popper bodies, hopper backs, beetle shells, ant bodies, extended dry fly bodies, foam cylinders for poppers built from scratch — each application calls for different foam density, thickness, and format. Stocking foam intelligently means keeping multiple formats rather than defaulting to one.
Pre-formed bodies — poppers and sliders
Pre-formed foam bodies are the most efficient starting point for bass bug and panfish construction. The cup-faced TCS profile of Wapsi Soft Foam Popper Bodies produces the characteristic pop on a sharp strip and reverses into a slider profile for calmer, pressured water. Wapsi Hard Foam Popper Bodies offer a denser, harder version of the same profile — sharper pop, more durable finish, better suited to heavy-duty surface fishing for larger bass and pike. Fulling Mill Popper Heads provide a high-density option engineered for maximum surface disturbance on larger hooks, the right choice when the target species demands an aggressive, audible topwater action.
Keep at least three colors of each across the yellow, chartreuse, white, and natural frog spectrum. Color consistency is less important for warmwater poppers than for trout dry flies — largemouth and smallmouth are not inspecting the hue — but having the right size range matters. Stock bodies in sizes appropriate for hook sizes 2 through 1/0.
Sheet foam — terrestrials and custom work
Hareline Fly Foam in 2mm and 3mm are the foundational sheet foam products for terrestrial tyers. The 2mm thickness is the right format for beetle backs, small ant bodies, and the foam posts that make parachute terrestrials visible at distance. The 3mm sheet builds hopper backs, larger beetle shells, and the foam cylinders that form extended ant and cricket bodies when cut and shaped. Both thicknesses cut cleanly with scissors and shape easily with heat from a lighter applied carefully — the technique for producing rounded beetle backs from flat sheet foam rather than buying pre-cut shapes.
Chocklett's Loco Foam adds a metallic or pearlescent surface coat on one side — the underside of a beetle or the top of a crease fly body — that contributes flash at the material level rather than requiring a separate flash application. Particularly effective for beetles fished in slower water where the subtle underside shimmer can be seen by a trout holding on a surface examination.
McMurray Ant Bodies solve the most technically demanding terrestrial construction problem efficiently. The extended ant body — two rounded foam sections connected by a narrow waist — is one of the more fiddly builds in terrestrial tying when produced from sheet foam, and the pre-formed McMurray bodies eliminate that construction step entirely. Tie them onto the hook with a few thread wraps at the waist, add hackle, add legs, done. Black and cinnamon cover the vast majority of ant pattern applications.
Foam cylinders
Pre-cut foam cylinders — available in a range of diameters — make hopper body construction faster and more consistent than cutting cylinders from sheet foam by hand. Hareline Fly Foam Cylinders in tan, yellow, and olive are the core colors for Rocky Mountain hopper patterns. For tyers who work Dave's Hopper, Parachute Hopper, or Chernobyl Ant variations in volume, having cylinders pre-sized to the hook range eliminates the cutting step and standardizes body proportions across the batch.
Flash: terrestrials and warmwater applications
Flash in a terrestrial fly tying materials or warmwater fly is doing slightly different work than flash in a saltwater baitfish pattern. The saltwater application is primarily attraction at distance — a flash that can be seen by a predator before the fly is close. In terrestrial and warmwater applications, the primary job is reflectivity at close range and movement on micro-currents, suggesting the wing membrane of an insect or the scale flash of a small baitfish in still water.
Standard Flashabou
Hedron Flashabou in pearl, gold, and copper is the foundational flash for both categories. In hopper and cricket patterns, two or three strands of copper or gold Flashabou along the wing suggests a natural insect wing without adding visible bulk. In warmwater poppers and sliders, six to ten strands in the tail provides the lateral line flash that gives the fly optical presence without loading the tail with weight. Pearl works across both applications as a neutral, high-visibility option when water conditions are unclear.
Hedron Holographic Flashabou adds a prismatic, multi-tone shimmer that standard Flashabou's flat reflectivity doesn't produce — more effective on overcast days and in low-light warmwater conditions where the prismatic behavior catches available light more completely than a single-plane reflector.
Krystal Flash
Hareline Krystal Flash occupies a different space from Flashabou and earns specific mention in the terrestrial category. Where Flashabou is flat and highly reflective, Krystal Flash is crimped and twisted, which creates a diffuse, scattered light behavior rather than a direct reflection. In hopper wings, Krystal Flash suggests the translucent, slightly iridescent membrane of a real grasshopper wing more accurately than straight Flashabou does. Pearl and gold are the core colors for hopper applications; the full color range extends into warmwater attractor patterns where more aggressive flash colors — chartreuse, pink, orange — are useful for panfish and bass visibility.
Lateral Scale and wider-strand flash
Hedron Lateral Scale — wider-strand, crimped flash that produces a scaled baitfish flank appearance — is the right flash material for the tail of warmwater sliders and baitfish-profile poppers tied to suggest shad, perch, or bluegill. The wider strand and crimped profile creates a fluttering action on the pause that standard Flashabou strands don't replicate. For bass bugs targeting largemouth that have been feeding on bluegill throughout summer, a slider tail built with olive-over-pearl Lateral Scale in the tail reads as exactly that baitfish profile.
Rubber Legs: the full range and what each product does
Rubber legs are not interchangeable across hook sizes and pattern types. The diameter, stiffness, and action of the leg material needs to match the scale of the fly and the species being targeted. Stocking the full useful range means keeping three or four distinct products rather than one universal option.
Round rubber — the workhorse
Hareline Round Rubber Legs in medium diameter are the most broadly useful leg material on the bench. Medium round rubber works across the full warmwater bass bug range — hook sizes 2 through 1/0 — and handles the larger hopper patterns on sizes 4 through 8. The round profile produces consistent 360-degree movement in all directions rather than the planar movement of flat rubber, which generates more vibration frequency per unit of leg material. Stock in barred olive, barred black, and tan as the core colors for both terrestrial and warmwater applications — barring adds visual segmentation that reads as more lifelike than solid-color legs in clear water.
Centipede legs — the precision option
Montana Fly Centipede Legs in medium are the refined version of the round rubber category — slightly finer diameter, more supple material, more responsive to micro-currents and the lightest surface disturbance. For hopper patterns on size 10 and smaller hooks where standard medium rubber legs are slightly overscaled, centipede legs produce proportionally correct action without dominating the fly's visual profile. Also the preferred leg material for smaller warmwater patterns — panfish bugs, bluegill flies, smaller surface crickets — where the finer diameter matches the hook scale more accurately.
Silicone legs — the clear-water choice
[Hedron Perfect Rubber Silicone Legs offer a refinement in leg material that earns its place on any bench regularly fishing clear water for pressured bass or selective trout taking terrestrials. Silicone is more translucent than rubber, which produces a leg that catches and diffuses light rather than blocking it — closer to the appearance of an actual insect leg than any opaque rubber alternative. The movement behavior is slightly different from round rubber: silicone legs are more responsive at very low current speeds and in still water, which is exactly the condition where clear-water warmwater fishing typically occurs. Fulling Mill Tri-Color Legs extend the silicone category with a three-tone color shift in each strand — a dynamic color variation that produces depth and visual complexity in the finished leg that single-color silicone doesn't achieve.
Pre-formed hopper legs — the realism option
Wapsi T.N.T. Hopper Legs are pre-molded rubber legs with jointed segments replicating the natural kicking leg of a grasshopper. For realistic hopper patterns where the leg silhouette is part of the imitation — a Dave's Hopper or a Letort Hopper for selective late-season trout on spring creeks — the molded joint and natural color of the T.N.T. legs produces a more convincing presentation than round rubber in an approximated kicking shape. Eight legs per pack covers several flies and the durability of molded rubber means they outlast most other components in the pattern.
A note on leg placement
Across all leg materials and all pattern types, the placement principle is consistent: four legs — two per side — splayed outward at approximately 45 degrees produce more independent movement and a more convincing silhouette than eight or more legs crowded around the hook shank. Fewer legs with room to move independently always outperforms more legs that collapse against each other on the pause. For foam-body patterns, thread the legs through the body using a large needle or Hareline Leg Puller after the body is mounted on the hook — cleaner placement, better symmetry, and a more secure connection than thread-tied legs on foam.
Terrestrial Fly Tying Materials Shopping List
A bench stocked to cover the full range of terrestrial and warmwater patterns across summer and into fall:
Foam:
- Hareline Fly Foam 2mm — beetle backs, ant bodies, parachute posts
- Hareline Fly Foam 3mm — hopper backs, larger beetle shells, extended bodies
- Hareline Fly Foam Cylinders — pre-sized hopper bodies in tan, yellow, olive
- Wapsi Soft Foam Popper Bodies — bass bug poppers (soft) and sliders (reversed)
- Wapsi Hard Foam Popper Bodies — heavy-duty bass and pike surface work
- McMurray Ant Bodies — black and cinnamon
Flash:
- Hedron Flashabou — pearl, gold, copper
- Hareline Krystal Flash — pearl and gold for hopper wings; chartreuse and orange for warmwater attractors
- Hedron Holographic Flashabou — low-light and overcast conditions
- Hedron Lateral Scale — baitfish-profile warmwater sliders and poppers
Legs:
- Hareline Round Rubber Legs medium — barred olive, barred black, tan
- Montana Fly Centipede Legs medium — for smaller hooks and precision applications
- Hedron Perfect Rubber Silicone Legs — clear-water bass and selective trout terrestrials
- Fulling Mill Tri-Color Legs — depth and visual complexity in clear water
- Wapsi T.N.T. Hopper Legs — realistic hopper patterns on spring creeks and tailwaters