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07/14/13

bonefishing hawaii:

"crap in the fish tank" and the clouser minnow.

 

when it comes to choosing a fly to use for a specific target fish (oh, i don’t know,  let’s say hawaii bonefish for example) most people have a “match the hatch” philosophy.  anglers will try to figure out what prey the fish of choice predominantly feeds on.  then they try to look for flies that resemble these types of forage... at least to themselves.  when it comes to bonefish people tend to focus on prey like crabs, shrimps, gobies, mantis shrimp, clams, snails, the list goes on and on.  they observe these prey creatures on the flats while fishing.  some even go as far as studying the stomach contents by cutting it out of the dead or pumping it from the living.  all in an attempt to purchase or tie the fly that will get them bit more often.  obviously if you fish a fly that looks like what the fish eat the fish should eat it.  makes sense right?  while i do think this is true to a certain extent, i tend to look at things a little differently.  perhaps a little more broadly than most.

 

 

when i go to choose a fly to fish i have my own philosophy.  i call it the “crap in the fish tank”.  perhaps other anglers out there have thought of this too but  so far i have not met any. the “crap in the fish tank” philosophy comes from observing the fish tanks i had as a kid growing up (mostly guppies and medacca or mosquito fish).  whenever a fish took a crap, without fail, every other fish in the tank that came across that piece of crap would suck it in and spit it out.  as far as i know fish crap is not on the list of forage and you’ll not find crap in the stomachs of fish (unless you dig way back beyond the stomach).  so why do the fish feel compelled to suck in the crap of others just to spit it out?  i’m no scientist, but i think it’s because they don’t have hands.  fish have no hands to pick things up to touch it, or feel it so they have to use their mouth.  as an angler, my goal is not to provide fish with the nutrients and calories it needs to survive.  all i want is for that fish to put my hook into its mouth.  so while others are concentrating on what exactly these fish are eating, i am just looking for anything that a fish finds interesting enough to check out.  i don’t care if a fish thinks my fly is a crab or a mantis shrimp or a rock or a piece of freshly made crap descending to the bottom.  as long as it puts it in its mouth... that’s all i need.  so when i am tying a fly or looking at flies, i am rarely thinking “this looks like a mantis shrimp” or “that looks like a goby”.  what a fly looks like to me is irrelevant.  what a fly looks like to a fish is all that matters, but  i can barely understand how other human beings think.  how am i even going to come close to figuring out what bonefish are thinking?  fortunately for me, i don’t need to know what a bonefish thinks my fly is to catch them.  experience has given me a fairly good idea of what a bonefish will put in its mouth and that is all i am thinking of when i tie a fly or check out a fly.  will a fish put this thing in its mouth?  “that will bite” is a phrase you will commonly hear from me.

 

 

now there are flies that are designed to resemble specific prey (at least to us) and flies that don’t really look like anything but kind of look like a lot of things.  the ones that look like specific prey are cool looking, fun to tie and fish, and they do work, but if my life depended on getting bit i would take a more nonspecific fly any day.  these types of flies don’t have crazy "realistic" color schemes, fighting claws, or anatomically correct wiggly appendages.  most of these flies are not very sexy (borderline ugly)... but like the crap in the tank fish, for whatever reason, just gotta check them out.  the wooley bugger is a great example of this type of fly in freshwater (and saltwater, check out the 3/25/12 blog) as is the fly doug and i decided to use exclusively this week to illustrate the point.  the clouser minnow.

 

 

originally tied by bob clouser as a baitfish imitation (which it does a bang up job imitating)  it has transcended the baitfish category and is one of those flies that fish (of many different species) just feel compelled to put in their mouth.   the clouser minnow is one of the easiest flies to tie (instructions can be found all over the internet).  it is definitely one of the all time most popular flies and for good reason.  they just flat out catch fish.  just about any fisharound here some may say it looks like a lizard fish, oama (juvenile goatfish), or a darting mantis.  if you ask me, i’d say i have absolutely no idea what bones think it is  but the thing gets bit.  that’s good enough for me.

 

 

on monday, i grabbed a few clousers from the shop and gave some to doug to fish this week.  doug doesn’t share quite the same “everything works” for bonefish attitude that i have.  this is probably because he doesn’t fish different flies all the time like i tend to do.  so i tied him a couple of clousers that were to his liking (more like his favorite orange and tan charlie) so that he could fish them with confidence which is always important.  that's why i try to have confidence in everything.  we fished two days.  the first day was pretty windy so i used my g loomis classic glx 8wt and abel tr3, later in the week the winds calmed down a notch and i fished my g loomis classic glx 6wt. with the same abel tr3 reel.  we mostly sight fished but caught some fish bombing as well.  despite some tough light, spooky fish (i have a feeling there has some pounding going on out there), and a barreling fast new moon tide, doug and i were able to conk a bunch of fish on assorted clousers for the blog including a couple of piggy’s.  not surprising to me, and not half bad for a hook, lead eyes, a few strands of flash and a couple of clumps of bucktail.  next week i’ll probably be on to the next fly.  i’m not sure what yet, but that’s just how i like to play the game.  if you are like most and are on the never ending quest to get bit, the clouser minnow is a pretty damn good choice to be chucking at fish around here (or anywhere for that matter).  i’ll see you, and your clouser minnows, on the water.

 

clousers come in a multitude of sizes, weights, and colors.  some, like these, are pretty dang boney.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

pics from this week's clouser pound.

 

piggy... oink oink oink!

 

papio (trevally) sometimes find clouser minnows worth investigating too.

 

the one that got away.  it flipped out of my hand and gave me the tail.  a tail or a fin is all they can give you, they don't have hands.

 

the clouser minnow fly... that will bite.  good times.

 

clay.


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