Common Imitator Patterns

If posed the question:  Do you tie flies to catch fish, or do you fish to test out your flies, I would be hard-pressed to answer – honestly it is a stupid question – but I feel that the most truthful answer is I fish to test flies.  I love watching a fly in the water, the way it gently sways with a subtle current or pulses against a strong flow, the chaotic dart when stripped, or the gentle glide atop the surface film.  Watching a fly you tied perform the way you imagined it would gives you the Hannibal feeling.  No, not the feeling of riding an elephant across the Alps, but the satisfaction of knowing a plan has come together. 

This naturally ties into my favorite aspect of sight fishing.  Consider the following if you will:

You are on a sandy flat; the sky is perfectly blue the warm sun is directly above you.  The tide has just begun to rise and you have positioned yourself near a slight point on the flat, your knees get wet only because of a slight gentle chop to the water, there is a distinct but slight drop that follows the contour of this bar. About 40’ directly in front of you, there is a swarm of stripers.  They are following the contour of the sand in a roughly oval shape about half the size of a football field.  One part of this circuit brings the fish in easy casting range to you. 

Sounds pretty nice…and it is pretty nice.  In many ways this is the best situation you can reasonably hope for, there are fish, there are conditions that allow you to spot them, and you don’t have to move to get to them.  This is key.  No matter how many “American Ninja” movies you watched, not matter how many times you crossed the rice paper and left no trace, if you are moving the fish will more than likely detect you.  They may not spook, they may even rush up to you.  (It is a common occurrence on the beaches of New England for a child to get scared because a large fish is following him.  Stripers routinely come to beaches where people are swimming because the activity will stir up the bottom and present a feeding opportunity.) Keep in mind that just because you didn’t see a fish spook, doesn’t mean they didn’t.

Hmmm…so what about the fish I see on the flats that rush up and then refuse my fly at the last second.  This is common source of frustration for sight-fishermen, but doubtful that it is unique to them.  How many flies fished in waters where the angler can’t always see the fish get the exact same treatment?  This idea more than anything has been my fascination the bulk of this season.  Are the failures and frustrations of sight fishing quite possibly the best teachers for all fishing?  Or are the behaviors of fish in one environment completely different from the behaviors of the same fish in another? Or – as is so often the case – is the reality somewhere in the creamy middle of these extremes?

Before we get into that, however, we should consider a few basic principles of flats fishing.

First – the fish are on the flats to feed.  This may seem simple enough but it is often an over looked point.  The flats are generally warmer, the water is shallow, and the sun is out – when you figure that stripers are a nocturnal fish that generally prefers cold, deeper waters this becomes a highly significant point.  A fish on the flats is there to do business; this is a good thing for an angler.

Second – Stripers are (or at least seem to be) spooked far more by what is above them than by what is below them.  I personally believe that this is a response to the fact that birds are likely the primary predators of young fish.  It could also be a simple observation due to nothing more than the fact that most of the stupid things we fishermen do to spook a fish occur above them.  Still it is worth considering that dragging an anchor seems to spook less fish than a single false cast over them.

Third – In order to catch a fish you must either present a fly in a manner that corresponds with how the fish is behaving, or you must present a fly that changes the manner in which the striper is behaving. 

Say what?   

On a few more frustrating days on the flats this year I did something smart – nothing.  I anchored my yak, and just observed the fish.  Most of the fish would never veer from the course they were swimming (though the course was rarely straight,) if a baitfish, crab, shrimp or whatever happened to be in their path they ate it.  They almost never slowed down to do this; their speed was constant, with the occasional quick dart or flash to finish something off.  When fishing with an imitator fly (generally something fairly small, sparse, and colored similar to the bottom) the presentation will slow the striper, move the fish to the fly, and more often than not the fish will stop or even follow the fly before either taking it or refusing it.  The only exception to this is when conditions allowed for the angler to present the fly to a fish cruising directly at him…only then would the fish take (or not take) the fly the same way the observed fish behaved, with a quick take rather than slowing down.

What did this mean?  Nothing more than the fish were breaking behavior; the presentation caused the fish to stop doing what it was doing and respond with a different behavior.  May seem minor but what it meant was the imitator patterns weren’t doing what they were supposed to – or better stated the presentation had to be so exact that the majority of the opportunities would be missed.

Not-so Common Attractor Flats Flies

So for a few days I fished nothing but attractor patterns.  This is considered a big no-no, but so is frying mashed potatoes in lard.

 “A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.”

 George Bernard Shaw

 I would only add this to Mr. Shaw’s observation.  Doing the same thing as everyone else will only get you as far as everyone has gotten.  Thats right the Flyosopher doesn’t play that…and guess what I make S’mores with Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups – I’m a dangerous rebel who plays by his own rules, and occassionally I break my own rules.  I stick it to DA MAN, even when I am said MAN…Good thing Shaw is dead, that would have killed him. ( Never liked him anyway I’m glad your dead. )

You never learn if you don’t try.  Attractors are something of a faux pas on the flat, but they were somewhat effective.  Only somewhat though, I caught far less fish than the imitators did, however, I also managed to learn something.  

 The interesting point was when the attractor fly was being retrieved and a striper would break off to inspect the fly it became apparent to me that I could read the fish’s body language and know almost instantly if they would take or not.  Fish that rushed to the fly quickly generally turned off or followed it until my ugly mug spooked them.  Fish that hugged the bottom and moved with haste but not speed would take the fly (speeding the retrieve encouraged this, but stopping spooked the fish – stripers are not like largemouths.) 

Then I decided to try something slightly different. 

Attractor not Attractive

The flounder fly is a keeled tube fly, so it will sit on the bottom.  Given its cumbersome size I could cast it well enough, but timing was an issue.  I decided to fish it like an ambush predator, in that I would cast it out, let it settle to the bottom and then wait for a fish to swim within range.  Once the fish was within a few feet of the fly, I would twitch it hard to upset as much sand as possible and then strip it with a two-handed retrieve.  The results were encouraging if not great, with a very high percentage of the fish taking the fly.  What interested me was that the fly seemed to take the fish out of its behavior, which moved the fish to the fly, and then promptly put the fish back into its feeding routine – with a quick strike (or if the fly was to be ignored it was quick as well.) 

 When the fly was fished “normally” with a cast and retrieve the fish responded to it similar to any other attractor…in that most would follow it with very few striking and a few spooking.  It was clearly the combination of the presentation and the fly that produced what I now consider the ideal fishing response.

To define this response: when a fly can move fish towards it like an attractor, but fish take it like an imitator.  An attractor on the flat gets the fish’s attention.  An imitator – when fished with an exacting presentation gets taken by a fish effortlessly.  A fly/presentation that has the ability to capture the attention of the fish, and then elicits a natural feeding response is the best of both worlds.  Now the fly is only one part of this the presentation is at least as important perhaps more so.  I tried the flounder ambush presentation with both sand eel and crab imitations and found they worked very well. The rustling sand served as the attention getter, and then the fish would take the fly without the often deal-breaking vigorous inspection.

Now a question to close…can this principle (if it is true) be applied to other fly fishing venues.  Imagine a spinner fly that could stand out from a thousand naturals, yet be taken as a natural, or an anchovy that gets singled out from a school of a million yet doesn’t raise an unnatural red flag to the fish.  Would that not be a better fly than even an exact imitation?  Is there any need for attractors at all?  Could all the attraction come from a presentation technique?  Or is this observation just something that I noticed this season on a few flats on a small area of a single species’ environment, a pattern which may never repeat again?  I can’t answer these questions.

 Yet…