Catchy Ideas: Livebait

forage forage
Conventional forage-fish imitations — streamers and such — tend to move in an unnatural manner when fished, and if upsized to attract large predators like striped bass, can be difficult to cast well. Robert Ketley’s innovative Livebait pattern behaves realistically in the water and casts easily for its shape and size.

Spend enough time fishing around conventional-tackle bass anglers, and you are bound to hear about big swimbaits. These lures, made from silicone, plastic, or wood, have become a popular way to target big bass. The same is true with folks hunting stripers in the surf. Get to the beach just before sunrise, and you’ll likely see one or two anglers launching them into the suds.

The popularity of big swimbaits really isn’t too surprising. Largemouth bass, as their name suggests, are well equipped to consume a lot of calories with a single bite — planted trout, bluegills, crappies, birds, rodents, snakes, and frogs are all on the menu. And stripers of any size are seldom shy about tackling large prey. Shad, mackerel, smelt, herring, and surfperch are all fair game.

The most sought-after swimbaits are incredibly lifelike, and dedicated big-fish anglers are willing to spend hundreds of dollars and wait months to get their hands on them. These are serious lures for serious anglers. The obvious question (at least for me) is whether you can make a fly that’s like a big swimbait. You know, nothing complicated. . . just something that measures from 6 to 12 inches, is super light (wet or dry), has nearly neutral buoyancy, is relatively easy to cast, and that looks and swims like a real fish.

I decided to f ind out. After nine months of research, design, testing, and fishing, a prototype finally met all of the criteria. It looked and swam like a fish, and a 10-inch version could be cast on an 8-weight without inducing profanities or pain. Real fish liked it, too. The pattern will no doubt have some folks questioning if it is actually a “fly.” That’s a fair point. Perhaps a classy name would help make it more acceptable.

How about Livebait?

Tulle

Creating really big flies you can cast reasonably far presents a couple of interesting technical problems. To begin with, the sides of big flies present a large surface area, which can cause aerodynamic issues. You won’t cast far if your fly is flapping like a flag or spinning like a propeller. The other issue is weight, especially wet weight. Casting a fly that adsorbs a lot of water is unpleasant, and as with the aerodynamic problem, can limit distance. As is often the case with new designs, the solution to these problems was not found in a fly-tying catalog. Tulle (pronounced “tool”) is a nylon mesh you’ll find at craft stores. You are probably familiar with its use for bridal veils and Halloween ghosts. Tulle doesn’t adsorb much water, and what little it does is quickly shed. Because it’s a mesh, any differences in air pressure across the fly are quickly balanced, so it doesn’t flap too wildly when cast. Fold the material, and it forms a tube that can be turned into a pretty convincing fish profile with scissors and stitches.

Motion

If you pay close attention to underwater videos of many species of fish, you’ll notice they move by flexing the back half of their body, with most of the movement concentrated at the tail. This is called subcarangiform motion and is relatively subdued unless the fish is swimming hard or turning. But if you look at underwater videos of many streamers, you’ll either see a relatively inflexible body or one that wiggles from head to tail. You will also notice that fish don’t swim with the bobbing head motion common to many streamers. Finally, when they stop swimming (or are stunned by a predator), fish stay where they are, but if you stop retrieving most streamers, they drop headfirst to the bottom.

The key to getting subcarangiform motion from a tulle tube is to modify its flexibility with strategically placed stitches. For versions under eight inches long, stitching alone usually does the job. Bigger f lies work better when you slightly decrease the flexibility of the front two-thirds of the body with a thin plastic coating. The easiest way to do this is to spray it with Plasti Dip before you begin painting it to look like the baitfish you’re imitating. Clear Plasti Dip provides a translucent base that’s good for silvery or semitranslucent fish such as herring, shad, or smelt. White Plasti Dip is better for fish with more color, such as trout or bluegills. Just don’t get carried away. If you clog the mesh, the fly will have awful aerodynamics.

Velcro Attachments

Unlike conventional flies, the Livebait is not tied on a hook. Instead, it is tied on a heavy mono loop (see the instructions on the next page), which provides an eye to attach it to the tippet with a Loop Knot. Thin strips of One Wrap doublesided Velcro are then glued to the bottom and top of the tulle, starting near the nose and extending back about one-third of the body length. These act as mounting strips for a hook and for action-modifying elements. Make sure you use One Wrap or another high-quality Velcro. Cheaper brands, along with Velcro that comes on one-sided adhesive strips, won’t hold glue as well as One Wrap Velcro.

The hook is superglued onto a short length of Velcro, which, you guessed it, mates with the mounting strip. The hook/Velcro combination is tied to another loop of strong mono that the tippet will also thread through. This setup allows you to use much smaller hooks than is typical with big streamers. For example, a size 1 hook provides ample gap and strength, but weighs just 0.2 grams — 10 times less than the 4/0 to 6/0 irons you’ll often find on other big patterns. Hooks in sizes 4 through 1/0 are well suited to Livebaits from six inches to a foot long.

You can, of course, skip the Velcro and attach a bare hook directly to the tippet Loop Knot. This results in a free-swinging hook that causes the fly to move very erratically. This can sometimes trigger a reaction bite, but it can also cause the fly to spin with anything other than a slow retrieve.

Plug and Play

In addition to providing mounting points for hooks, the Velcro strips also provide a platform for action-modifying elements, such as foam or lead. Like the hook, these are glued onto pieces of Velcro and can be added to or subtracted from the fly as needed. This makes the Livebait a multipurpose, plug-and-play pattern.

Mounting a hook with a short mono loop to the lower Velcro strip gives the pattern a slight forward weight bias. This causes it to sink headfirst, which is similar to how most streamers behave, but the rate and angle of descent are much less aggressive. A longer loop places the hook farther back on the Velcro strip, resulting in a fly that sinks horizontally (at one to two inches per second) and stays level between strips. This is a great setup when fish are tearing through schools of baitfish and returning to pick off injured or stunned individuals.

To convert the Livebait into a topwater fly, just add a foam element to the Velcro strip along the top of the body. A small piece of 2-millimeter sheet foam creates a subtle V wake, while a larger one makes more of a disturbance. One word of caution when fishing the Livebait this way is that gulls, terns, and pelicans will also attack the fly. If these birds are working the water, be prepared to rip the fly away quickly.

additions
Create plug-and-play additions by gluing foam or smashed splitshot to Velcro.

Fishing the Livebait on a fast-sinking line with a small foam element on top allows you to swim it just above the bottom. This is really helpful in waters with a lot of weed or debris on the bottom. Another option is to place the hook and a foam element on top and a lead element (flattened BB shot) on the bottom. The fly will sink, but stay hook-point up, reducing the risk of snagging debris. Combine this with a f loating line and a suitably long leader, and the Livebait performs long, slow hops across the bottom.

Hook Selection

I strongly recommend going barbless with the Livebait. I’m not sure if it is the realism or the flexibility, but deep hooking can sometimes be an issue, especially with largemouth bass. While I know it’s not something most fly fishers are comfortable with, barbless circle hooks are a good solution to this problem. Most fish make a sharp turn after they’ve clamped down on a fly, which draws the circle hook safely to the jaw line. The biggest problem with circle hooks is actually human: our conditioned response to anything that feels like a fish is to strike. That costs fish with circle hooks, because we typically strike before the fish has turned far enough to ensure the hook point is perpendicular to the jaw. The key is to just keep retrieving until everything goes solid. You may have to swing and miss a few times before finally getting the message.

Heads, Tails, and Pectorals

While it is not strictly necessary, lightly filling the head section of the fly with small (half-inch) bits of chopped up tulle or with polyfill fibers (from an old cushion or pillow) makes it much easier to align and glue the Velcro mounting strips. It also gives the fly a better profile. The filling is held in place by a seam of vertical stitches, which also doubles as a flex point that helps induce the correct body movement.

Tails can be crafted from tulle or Flashabou, depending on how much realism or flash you want. A Flashabou tail sends out pulses of light with each pull on the line, which can really help attract attention in turbid waters.

Some baitfish, such as anchovies, mackerel, shiners, and smelt have highly reflective sides. A good way to mimic this is to add long Flashabou pectoral fins. Run a few strands of Flashabou through the tulle body using a needle and secure with a couple of drops of superglue. In the hand, these make the fly look like a psychedelic flying fish. Underwater, they resemble the flash from a baitfish turning in the water.

Pointillist Painting

The tulle tube is turned into a lifelike representation of a fish with fabric paints and Sharpie markers. These come in a wide variety of colors, so you shouldn’t have much trouble matching anything that swims.

Start by adding a background color scheme with markers. If you make a mistake, the ink is easily removed with rubbing alcohol. When you have the background sorted out, add paint with small, nonoverlapping dots in a pointillist style. You can be slightly more generous with paint on the head section, but the rest of the fly should be somewhat spotty, or it will be a pig to cast. Don’t worry if you screw up. Fabric paints dissolve in water as long as the paint is still wet.

Your first few Livebaits will probably take about thirty minutes to get to the painting stage. That should drop to around fifteen minutes once you get the hang of things. How long you spend on the painting stage really depends on how realistic you want the fly to be. Even folks who have no artistic talent (like me) can turn out pretty convincing patterns. I imagine anyone who actually knows how to paint is going to create some amazingly lifelike Livebaits.

Fishing the Livebait

One of the hardest things about fishing the Livebait is slowing down your retrieve. While you can rip the fly back at warp speed, I’ve found a steady one-strip-per-second retrieve is usually better. This mimics the relaxed kick-and-glide swimming style exhibited by many species of fish, especially predator-naive planted trout.

If you are fishing in rivers or the surf, stop retrieving every few seconds and let the water work the fly. Even gentle currents will cause it to flex and move up, down, and sideways through the water column. Type “Ketley’s Livebait Fly” into YouTube, and you’ll find a few short videos showing this movement.

Rods and Lines

These flies are so light you don’t need a superpowerful rod. A 7-weight will handle flies up to eight inches, and a 9-weight can easily manage versions measuring a full foot.

Bass-style fly lines and integrated heads work just fine for most freshwater venues, especially those where 60 feet is a long cast. If you are fishing a big lake or the surf, where distance often matters, use a line with an aggressive weight-forward bias (an example is Scientific Anglers Titan lines).

I should warn you that fishing Livebaits is likely to garner some odd looks and the occasional remark, especially from other fly fishers. It’s hard to be inconspicuous when you appear to be false casting a wriggling fish.


Constructing a Livebait Trout Pattern

Most step-by-step tying instructions refer to established fly-tying techniques familiar to people who tie flies — these are procedures they’ve performed many times before. That’s often not the case with the Livebait pattern. Refer to the accompanying photos if the descriptions here seem opaque.

1. Fold a short length of 20-pound to 30-pound test monofilament (I use two inches for the Livebait sizes I fish ) and whip the ends together with thread. Run the thread forward to create an eye with a diameter of about one-eighth of an inch. Whip finish and apply superglue to the thread. Set aside.

2. Pull on the tulle to find the orientation with the least stretch. Make this the horizontal alignment of the fly, so the fly keeps its shape. Fold the tulle over a template (cardboard or two-millimeter sheet foam work well) and hold it in place with a chip bag clip. The open side is the bottom of the fly. The next page has a sample cutout that you can use to create a trout-sized Livebait.

3. Thread a needle, and using the edge of the template as a guide, make a stitch and a Half Hitch at the midpoint of the bottom of the body, then sew together the two sides of the tulle. Run the stitches close to the edge of the template, terminating a quarter of an inch behind the nose. Finish with another Half Hitch and add a drop of superglue to both knots. Trim off the excess tulle and remove the template.

4. Turn the tulle inside out by pulling the nose through the body. This is easy with long-nosed forceps.

5. Insert the mono eye into the nose hole. Align the eye and secure in place with thread wraps and superglue.

6. Lightly pack the front third of the tulle tube (head and gill plates) with small pieces of chopped tulle or polyfill fibers. This is also easier with forceps.

7. Run a seam of vertical stitches behind the head section. Secure both ends with knots and superglue. These stitches will hold the filling in place while also providing an action-inducing hinge point.

8. Run stitching along the bottom of the body from the halfway point back to about a quarter inch from the tail. Knot and superglue both ends of the thread and then trim off the excess tulle. With patterns over 10 inches long, another set of vertical stitches one-third of the body length from the tail can help enhance body motion.

9. Superglue the hooky side of a one-quarter-inch wide strip of double-sided Velcro to the underside of the head section (fluffy side facing out). On patterns over eight inches long, this may need reinforcing with thread. To do this, melt holes at either end of the Velcro with a hot needle. Glue the strip to the tulle and then run a couple of stitches through the holes and tulle. Finish with knots and superglue. Add another Velcro strip, fluffy side out, on the top side of the head section if you want all the plug-and-play options.

10. Place a tulle tail onto the end of the tulle tube and secure with flexible adhesive (Aquaseal or E6000). For Flashabou tails, simply tie a few strands onto the tulle with thread and add a drop of superglue. (See images on page 35.)

11. Place a hook in your vise. Fold a six-inch piece of 10-pound to 20-pound mono and run the ends through the hook eye (over the eye for straight-eye hooks). Hold the mono in place with a few wraps of thread. Place the Livebait on top of the hook and adjust the length of the mono loop so the end of the loop and the heavy mono eye line up. Run thread down to the hook bend, fold the mono tags back toward the hook eye, and run thread back over them. Secure the thread with a whip finish and snip off the excess mono.

12. Cut a piece of double-sided Velcro to size. Add superglue to the top-shank threads and push the Velcro’s fluffy side into the glue and threads (hooky side facing out). Trim a point on the front end of the Velcro.

13. For action-modifying elements (superglue closed-cell foam or flattened BB shot to the fluffy side of bits of Velcro.

14. Start painting and allow it to dry for 24 hours before you go fishing.


Experiment!

I mostly fish lakes and the surf, which means I tie large Livebaits. If you mostly fish rivers for trout, you might want to experiment with smaller Livebaits. Note, though, that six inches is about the lower limit for tulle in terms of generating subcarangiform motion. There are other types of mesh that are softer and might work well for smaller imitations (mosquito netting, for example). I just haven’t put a lot of time into them, because they were a bit too soft for the big swimbait pattern I was working on. That said, I did experiment with a small single-ply version to mimic the translucent body of pond smelt a few years back. It looked good in the water. If you’re interested in creating, say, a minnow only a few inches long, you might want to try different materials to see how they perform with the basic Livebait concept. There are a lot of long, dark fly-tying nights before most trout fly fishers get back on the water….

Robert Ketley

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