Sacramento is “The City of Trees.” Come spring, it is also the capital of pollen and Sudafed. With the opening of trout season, many fly fishers flee this city of runny noses, itchy eyes, lobbyists, and honking vehicles. Pedal to the metal, they ascend high into the Sierra in search of trout, peace, and solitude. But come May and June in the Sacramento Valley, a snowlike fall from the cottonwoods wafts to the valley floor and rivers. That brings to mind the adage, “When the seed of the cottonwood falls, the shad are in.” And so it is that some fly fishers return to the hazy valley. With a pocket full of Kleenex, they forgo solitude and line up waist deep, shoulder to shoulder, friend to stranger, to cast their sink-tip lines and favorite flies to the migrating slippery shad. The Sacramento Valley hosts some of the best shad fishing in Northern California. This member of the herring family, transplanted from the East Coast in the late 1800s, has inspired hundreds of fly patterns in every color of the rainbow. Some come and some go, but in the last four years, one pattern has found a permanent home in many fly boxes. It is called the Bloody Maria. My good friend Jeff Ching is its creator, and the annual shad run is his obsession. I fondly call him “the Shadi Master.”
Here’s how to construct this simple, but effective fly. Start with a size 10 TMC 2457 hook and crush the barb. Choose a 3.2-millimeter gold bead and slide it up to the hook eye. Insert the hook in the vise and attach red Danville Flymaster Plus thread behind the bead. For the tail, choose 24 strands of pearl UV Krystal Flash and a small hank of pearl UV Ice Dubbing. Tie the two behind the bead, wrap neatly and smoothly back to the hook point, and leave 3/8 to 1/2 inch of Ice Dub and Krystal Flash extending beyond the hook bend. Advance the thread to the bead and tie in one strand of small pearl Flashabou on the right and left sides of the shank. Wrap tightly to the tail, then trim the Flashabou strands so they extend the length of the tail. Wrap the thread back to the bead and attach a strand of chartreuse “Brassie” size Wapsi UTC Ultra Wire on the underside of hook. Wrap the thread back to the tail, covering the wire, then forward again to just behind the bead. Now wrap the wire forward to the bead and snip off the excess. Finally, tie in some white Antron yarn about an eighth of an inch down from the bead and make a turn or two, creating the white collar. Tie off and, voilà, that’s it!
Try this fly on your favorite shad run. I think you will be pleased.
