Killiefish/Mummichog imitations?

[bobtheflounder 0]

Hi,

 

I mostly fish saltwater in the northeast and am pretty new to fly tying. I buy the majority of my flies but supplement my flybox with some homemade flies. Recently, the area I fish in has been overflowing with striped killiefish and I was wondering if anybody had any recommendations for patterns that have a similar profile to a killiefish.

 

Thanks

[chugbug27 0]

J case be

[islander727 0]

You should check out "Fly Fisherman's Guide to Saltwater Prey", by Dr. Aaron Adams. He lists six pages of patterns that imitate those.

 

One is an olive seaducer. Very simple.

 

Another one is the mangrove muddler (a scan from the above mentioned book):

 

There's more info on his site. You can order his books there. http://fishermanscoast.com/flies

 

 

[Fisherboy0301 0]

Scroll down to killifish

 

 

http://www.rockportflyfishers.com/flies/flies.html

[bobtheflounder 0]

thanks!

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

Great fun... went to the Rockport site, scrolled down to killifish - and found on of my own Speed Bugs being used to illustrate poppers... small world indeed. My last charter caught a tiny tarpon (about 15") on one of them at dawn in Coot Bay out of Flamingo... just a few days ago.

[Peterjay 0]

This one works. I didn't have any decent spinning hair in the right color, so I used body hair on this particular fly. Sometimes I put oversized eyes on them, sometimes not. Whatever fits the mood I guess.

 

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

That will work - anywhere there's small fat baitfish - from killifish to small finger mullet. Great looking bug!

[Peterjay 0]

Thanks, Bob. Everything eats mummies around here. Stripers, reds, flounder, even crabs. I like to sit on a school at low tide, when they're huddled up against the shore. Sooner or later, something will show up and take a whack at 'em.

[Mudskimmer 0]

Peter, I like your mummichog fly. Have you seen any reds in your area yet? I did some exploring out of Wise Pt Boat Ramp a week ago and although the fishing didn't pan out i accidentally stumbled onto a real nice flood tide spartina grass flat. It was loaded with life but the only fish i could positively ID were juvenile sharks. I've got some learning to do on poling and casting on those flats. I pretty much spooked everything I encountered. Lots of "V" wakes so some could have been reds. Anyway, hope the fishing picks up soon. The spring rains put a real hurting on my local fishing spots. We got blue cats everywhere but SW fish have been hard to find.

[Peterjay 0]

John, I have seen anything up this far yet, but I've been meaning to get down that way and check out some of the flats I've found on satellite maps. There's a state wildlife management area adjacent to the National Wildlife Refuge that has some likely-looking spots, and I hope to hit it as soon as the holiday's over with. (Hard to believe, but I was actually stuck in a traffic jam out on Rte. 13 the other day.) I'll keep you posted; there are some other promising spots down there that I want to check & see if there's public access. Info has been hard to come by; I asked on Tidalfish if anybody'd seen any pups south of here, but nobody's responded, far as I know. Speaking of sharks: I went over to the Machipongo at Quinby Bridge last week to swim a few new flies, and as soon as a cast hit the water, I thought somebody had dropped a cow out of a helicopter. I mean, the water just exploded 30 feet in front of me. Two big dorsals popped out and disappeared behind the crab shacks before my jaw had time to drop. That was a real knee-shaker. I know bulls and sandbars come in there often, but I've never witnessed anything that violent before, and I check that spot virtually every day. I won't be swimming there any time soon. As soon as I learn anything, I'll give you a holler.

[Mudskimmer 0]

That'll test your ticker. A lot of hungry mouths in those waters. And with the dingy water clarity, you never know what is lurking a foot below the surface. I had a blacktip shoot out from under my boat a couple of years ago to take a swipe at my bunny fly. Didn't see it until I lifted the fly out of the water. Other than the everglades, perhaps, I can't imagine a sharkier place.

[Peterjay 0]

Luckily, they weren't after my fly. It was just one of those cosmic convergences that happen once or twice in a lifetime. If one of them had grabbed the fly, I probably would have fallen off the rocks. The Coast Guard guys from the Wachapreague station used to swim off a dock at the abandoned facility out on Parramore Island, until the day they were sitting around out there and an eight-foot tiger swam by. That was the end of the swimming excursions.

[Capt Bob LeMay 0]

Folks get all wobbly the first time they see a tiger up close - even a small one.... One day a few years back we had a chumline going out near marker # 6 (the closest Park boundary marker to the entrance to Lostman's River.. all of the boundary markers sit in only 8 to 10 feet of water - exactly four miles off the beach...) hoping to draw a cobia or two in for a fly shot.... I see a medium sized shark coming up and it's an 8' tiger (that's small for a tiger - it was a young 'un...) and noted it to my angler without saying what it was. He got a good look at it as it approached and said "Is that what I think it is"? I replied, " yes sir - that's a tiger --the real deal..." He responded by making a single backward jump off of the bow platform back towards my center console... It spooked him that badly... Needless to say he didn't want to cast at it either...

 

Many years ago I helped hoist dead tigers up to 12-14" long at the charterboat dock I worked at -but the biggest I've seen along the 'glades has only been about 11 feet long... I always tell my anglers that they're designed to eat turtles, shell and all...

[Peterjay 0]

Bob, that's not exactly encouraging. The only turtles we've got in the estuaries here are terrapins, and if a small tiger ever figures out that the best way to become a big tiger is to eat outdoor enthusiasts, the demand for prosthetic limbs is gonna skyrocket. Seriously, there's a sandy island in the middle of the Wachapreague inlet that's one of the few accessible beaches in the area. A lot of people swim there, but the bottom quickly drops off to 60 feet, and absolutely anything is apt to come close to shore. I'm not particularly paranoid about sharks, but I'd think twice about getting in the water. We've got a mainland-marsh-shallow bays-barrier island situation here, and the water inside the islands stays in the 80s all summer. Once the warm-water critters get inside the islands, they tend to stay until September. When we first moved down here in 2012, I made it a point to ask the folks who were fishing the tidal creeks what they generally catch, and the answer was invariably "sharks." We sure have an interesting mix in these waters.

 

Hey John; I was talking to my doctor Monday, and it seems a friend of his was fishing for stripers on the east side of the upper bay, where he saw quite a few puppy reds. I don't know what it means, but the source is reliable. If they also come up the seaside, we should see something on the flats in a couple of weeks. We'll be getting some good tides early next week - it might be a good time to take a hike out there and see what I can see.