I like a little fly that I designed. I was fishing on the Myakka River near my home in Sarasota, Fla. Bass and bluegill were busting schools of small minnows. Usually in this situation all you have to do is get a fly to them quickly and you'll hook up.
But I found when they're keyed into something that small that you'd better be casting something that size. My No. 10 poppers evidently were too big.
So, when I got home, I sat down at my tying table and came up with an inch-long minnow imitation. After several tries, I finally had something I liked. I took a couple of them with me the next time I went to the river and I caught a lot of fish: bass, bluegill and tilapia. I dubbed the fly the Myakka Minnow, and it has been producing for me ever since.
On a recent trek to The Everglades, the topwater bite ended early. We started casting Myakka Minnows on No. 12 hooks and caught the heck out of oscars, Mayan cichlids, bluegill, stumpknocker, bass and gar.
Key to fishing it is to retrieve it slowly, with pauses. The slower the better.
You can tie it on any hook size, and it appeals to a variety of fish. In addition to the above fish, I've caught speckled perch (crappie), channel catfish, snook, spotted seatrout, jack crevalle, ladyfish, mangrove snapper, pinfish, Spanish mackerel, little tunny and bluefish on it. Oh, yeah, last spring I visited a place north of Okeechobee that offers barramundi fishing. The fellow who runs the place didn't know much about fly fishing, but advised us we should use sinking lines with a fly that would get deep. We started out with Clousers and did nothing for a half hour. I put a Myakka Minnow on (tied on a 2/0 Mustad 34011) and caught an 8-pound barramundi on my first cast.
It's not a magical fly, but it does catch fish.
