Now that we are coming to a close I was wondering what everyone fished as a fly or flys this summer, but I am more interested to have people share what they changed in mid stream... What was your most productive fly and was it part of your inventory when the season started. I know that for me my Crab Apple proved extremely succesful on North Monomoy. My flounder was not tested out simply because I did not see any small flounder this season, and my fishing locations led to other flys...although I did get reports from others, especially on the North Shore who used it successfully. The Feather Brain bait fish, in small size worked well in the spring. I did not get a chance to fish it during the summer as I stuck mostly with the deep eel, the FeatherBrain eel, and a couple shrimp patterns. Dave Pearson's shrimp and Bob Pop's shrimp worked well. Even when the Bunker were in I stuck with the eel pattern since they were still in and I caught fish, especially on the Ocean side of south beach. I used the deep eel in various sizes and colors, but mostly with Juro's recommendations. I used three sizes of Feather Brain eels all in olive and white. No squid fly this year...a first. I did change the deep eel slightly by mid summer . I epoxied the head down the shank to minimize fouling and used alot of Fiber blend instead of Super or Unique hair. The Fiber Blend.. also called slinky blend or slinky fiber or flouro fiber now comes in some very usefull colors... Along with the usual chartreuse and olive, new colors I just picked up are excellent---Chartreuse mottled, Silver back, Natural, Seaweed, and Misty green. There are a number of basic other greens. Should make a great variety of eel back colors. PS--Just moved the thread to the main striper forum...from the striper fly archive forum.
Most success came with deep eels, half and halfs with thin chartrues grizzly hackles and other clouser type flys. My fly of the year was a clouser tied on an offset hook (jig or sluggo type hook?) that was one of the fly won in the show raffles. Who tied that - yellow/chartrues over white bucktail? It caught a lot of nice fish in June on the bayside including my fish of the year.
Fished flatwings more than usual with success on small fish. Fun to tie but for where I fish, shallow water and fish with red lips from grubbing, the sand eel clouser type flys work best. Also, I tend to miss a lot of hooksets with down facing hooks - can't seem to break the tendency to lift the rod on a hit. I think the up facing hooks on clousers, etc. are more forgiving of this fault.
For me it was the standby olive-over-cream unique hair eel. Like Striblue I experimented with different eyes, hooks and use of epoxy and am pretty pleased with the final result. This was my go-to all summer. Also a very small scaled-down version to "match the hatch".
Tied and caught fish on McCrabs and a crab pattern of my own creation. Also tied and caught my first fish on the Pop-shrimp and Jim Bender's juvie shrimp pattern.
Started tying crease flies and Cowen's baitfish patterns which i had luck with on the north shore and south county beaches. Learned a few new techniques, refined some old ones, but most importantly caught lots of fish and hardly blew any money on SW flies all summer!
I concur with the flies already mentioned, but I did have a few good days last summer on the skinny waters of N. Monomoy with the a green body/orange tail "crazy charlie" type tie in an 8 on the linesides, when they got in their "picky" mode, after I threw everything else I had. Seems like I used more larger flies (ie deep eels) and more smaller (bonefish sized) than in the past.
Penguins' "special marabou squid" did pretty well, also.
Have a good winter, spring is coming!
DK
I only got to fish for a week(last week).My best results was with olive clousers about size 2.Best fish took a clouser with white,bit yellowand olive.My most productive flies had red eyes.Yellow eyes not so productive.Also had good results with beastmasters.
My best fly was the Tuttie Fruity clouser. Its basically a clouser with pink in it. Had my best season ever with this fly. Pearson's shrimp and Gartside soft hackel were the hot flies on the flats for me.
FishHawk
Most productive flies: deep eel, lady crab, juro's juvie once bunker arrived
Most interesting new discovery: sandworm fly of red and green yarn, worked like crazy during worm season!
Most satisfying accomplishment: closing the book on years of pursuit on the saltwater two-hander thanks to Nobuo
Next year's goal: Finding a 40 pounder to land on the beach with the new beachtamer
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