If you haven’t done this lately, let me remind you what you’re missing. You come out of the high country, transported by some sense of purpose, one no deeper perhaps than a wish for beer or maybe, just maybe, a longing for home, when suddenly you find yourself, in quick succession, along the shores of a broad impoundment, then skirting a dam, then tracing at length the banks of a tumbling stream or river all but hidden below a road or highway by a tangle of brush and riparian willows. Immediately you stop — or at least duck into the first pullout you can find. Below you, the water runs cold and clear, spilling out from the depths of the reservoir above, and the question before you now looms as large, in context, as any other question in your life.
Are there trout down there?
The answer is obvious if you can see them. But really, how often is that? Trout, we know, enjoy the capacity to vanish, or to remain invisible, while in plain sight. Don’t ask me how. What’s important when looking for them, especially where we’re uncertain if they actually exist, is a way to entice them to reveal themselves, a straightforward ruse that puts the question to rest and may well prove, for the moment at least, all the answer you really need.
The Muddler Minnow is such an iconic fly pattern, the perfect tool for exploring rough-and-tumble new water that I’m surprised how rarely I see the fly in other anglers’ boxes. I know flies go in and out of fashion. This column is often dedicated to patterns I sense have all but vanished from the lexicon, patterns that anglers of a certain age or breadth of experience might reject as Old School. Or, worse, they may have never discovered the fly in the first place or — worst of all — they have no clear notion when and how actually to fish it.
Streamers, as a whole, seem to have fallen out of favor. I get it. In many waters, especially those that receive heavy pressure from the bobber-and-nymph crowds, swinging a downstream streamer or launching the same fly tight to shore from a drifting boat or raft can wear out your arm while producing nothing in the way of meaningful results. For reasons I still can’t explain, streamers rarely work on my home river. Over nearly three decades, I’ve caught fewer fish there on streamers than I can count on one hand, although this probably has something to do with the fact that I never tie on a streamer unless everything else has failed, a moment of resignation that all but ensures the next option won’t work, either. Of course, I do know local anglers who have taken to swinging streamers for trout with two-handed rods. I’m all for that. Nothing is more pleasant than a session launching long casts with a lightish double-hander, although the problem, as I see it, is that you’ve restricted yourself to a range of presentations not nearly as broad as those you enjoy with a traditional single-handed trout rod. The Muddler Minnow, anyway, should not be viewed as some sort of specialty fly. It belongs instead in a lineup of other proven traditional patterns that work with presentation techniques they’re designed for in order to fool trout in one or many of the wide variety of situations in which we find them.
Which is no more to say than that a Muddler Minnow catches trout. And it catches them for reasons about which we can speculate, but I’m not sure we can all actually agree on. Does it matter? The common logic has always argued that the pattern imitates a sculpin, those small, big-headed baitfish that inhabit cold, shallow streams, the same environment favored by trout. No matter that on many streams and rivers, neither you nor I have ever seen a sculpin; we take it on faith they’re in there someplace, which is why our Muddler Minnow keeps getting rocked.
Or maybe it’s just a generic baitfish pattern, no more specific to small sculpins than a Gold-Ribbed Hare’s Ear is to either a mayfly nymph or caddis pupa or some other immature aquatic insect. There does seem to be a moment in the lives of many trout when they become something more than mere insectivores. We recognize this change when we witness certain predatory behaviors that leave us convinced the larger trout in a stream are hungrily chasing baitfish — or even the young of their own kind.
Return, for a moment, to our opening scene: you climb down the bank of the tailwater or tail-race stream, claw your way through the willows, and pitch your Muddler Minnow into the frothy current. What we know about so many of these below-dam, below-reservoir waterways is that they’re lousy with bait, downstream remnants of all sorts of nonsense that gets dumped into impoundments by fish-and-wildlife managers trying to improve recreational fishing. Who can blame them? Once the dam goes in, any system has been degraded to such a degree that we have, essentially, a man-made fishery. Let the managers have at it. Should the downstream fish populations include trout, we’ll often find either rainbows or browns, or both, that have keyed into the young of other species or, especially, forage fish that proliferate in seasonally warm surface waters above the dam, only to get flushed, on occasion, into the stream or river below.
Hence the efficacy of your Muddler Minnow. If there are trout below the dam, a Muddler Minnow will find them, sculpins or no sculpins in the stream. Of course, there are a host of other streamers that can work in these situations. I’m just suggesting the Muddler Minnow is one pattern you can tie and carry if you wish to be prepared for this common Western scenario.
But there’s more. In the summertime, when grasshoppers abound along many Western rivers and streams, a Muddler Minnow does a fair job of mimicking a drowned or drowning hopper. Few things are more exciting in trout fishing than seeing a big fish smack a high-floating hopper pattern, but trout anglers everywhere know of occasions when their carefully constructed grasshopper fails to stimulate a response, only to grow waterlogged and sink or get dragged below the surface, and immediately, a heavy trout is throbbing at the end of the line.
That’s a reason not to weight your Muddler Minnows — at least not all of them. Sculpins, yes, like to hug the bottom of the stream, other forage fish perhaps less so. If it’s hopper season, however, I want my Muddler Minnow high in the water column; sometimes I’ll even aim my cast directly across the stream and fish the fly on the surface on a slack-line drift along the far bank before it begins to drag — at which point I’ll throw one last mend into the line as the Muddler settles into a downstream swing.
Which sets the stage, at times, for the Muddler Minnow’s greatest glory of all. If you’re a steelheader, you’re probably already familiar with the wonders of waking flies. Trout anglers, I find, are less inclined to employ the technique. I’m not sure why. A sparsely dressed wet caddis pattern swung downstream so that it bumps up against the underside of the surface, creating a wake behind it, can be a devastating ploy as daylight fades on a summer eve; some grabs practically yank the rod from your hand, as though the trout attack the fly out of a reckless passion rarely exhibited by such skittish creatures. A Muddler Minnow, waking downstream on a taut line, can elicit a similar reaction. Sometimes these wild strikes come up short, at which point a strip or two of line, or even a slight lift of the rod, will often provoke an even more committed rise.
At the very least, a rise to a waking Muddler Minnow will offer evidence of trout in a stream. That’s a start. A big fly swimming across the current, the Muddler Minnow also has a long history of moving big fish, often the biggest fish in a given river or stream. Exceptional fish may not always be your goal when trout fishing. If so, I have but one question: Really?
Materials
Hook: Standard streamer, 3X to 6X long, size 2 to 12
Weight (optional): Lead wire approximately the same gauge or slightly smaller than the hook shank
Thread: Brown
Tail: Mottled turkey feather
Body: Gold tinsel, flat or oval
Underwing: Gray squirrel tail
Overwing: Mottled turkey quill sections
Collar: Deer hair, spun
Head: Deer hair, spun and clipped.
Step 1: Secure the hook in the vise. If weighting the fly, stop your lead wraps about one-quarter the length of the hook shank back from the hook eye. That way, you’ll have room later on to spin the deer hair for the collar and head. Frankly, if I weight a Muddler Minnow at all, it’s with thin (.010-inch to .015-inch) lead wire. An unweighted or lightly weighted fly is much more pleasant to cast than a fly that feels like a spark plug on the end of your line. Also, by employing the appropriate presentation techniques, you have the option of fishing an unweighted fly at a variety of depths, from the surface down through the water column.
Step 2: For the tail, cut a single section from a mottled turkey feather. Measure the tip of the section one-third to one-half the length of the hook shank. Tie in at the start of the bend of the hook. By using a single section of feather, you don’t have to try to match up a pair of feathers; nevertheless, the goal is to secure the feather section so that it remains positioned on edge vertically, in line with the spine of the hook shank. Clip off the butts of the tail to create an even underbody for the tinsel. At the root of the tail, tie in a length of tinsel.
Step Three: Advance the thread to the forward end of your lead wrap or to a point about a quarter of the hook shank back from the hook eye. Wind the tinsel forward in tight even wraps. Medium instead of small tinsel allows you to pull tighter on your wraps and will stand up better to toothy trout. Tie off the tinsel and clip the excess.
Step 4: For the underwing, clip a small tuft of hair from a gray squirrel tail. Before you clip the hair, align the tips by lifting the hair at an angle to the tail. The aim is to create an underwing that tapers slightly at the tip, rather than having the hair tips precisely aligned as if the hair were stacked. Measure the hair so that it reaches about the midpoint of the tail. Tie in securely at the forward end of the body. Squirrel tail hair is slippery; pay attention to lashing it tightly. Clip the butts at an angle to create a smooth taper forward of the body.
Step 5: For the overwing, clip quill sections from either a pair of turkey wing feathers or from the two sides of a symmetrical tail feather. I find the tail feather quills easier to work with than quills from wings. Align the tips of the paired quill sections; measure to a point beyond the underwing, but short of the tip of the tail. Secure the wing directly in front of the root of the underwing. Like the tail, the wing should end up standing vertical along the spine of the hook shank. Some tyers tie in one quill at a time, favoring a slightly different-looking wing. Either way, clip the wing butts, leaving a bit of bare hook shank forward the root of the wing.
Step 6: The collar of the fly is fashioned out of a substantial tuft of deer hair, cleaned and stacked and spun. Easier said than done. I hope you’ve already mastered this important technique. If not, here are a few tips. Hair should be absolutely free of underfur; it won’t stack or spin properly if those tiny kinky fibers are clinging to it. I use an eyebrow brush to comb out the fur. After aligning the tips of the hair in your stacker, measure the tuft about the length the hook shank. Now switch the hair to your off hand and clip the butts into an even edge with the butts extending something shy of a halfinch beyond the hook eye. Trimming the butts before you spin the hair makes it easier, later, to shape the head without cutting away the collar. In order to spin the hair, hold the tuft on top of the hook shank, make one or two loops of thread over the tuft while pinching the loops between your thumb and forefinger of the hand holding the tuft. Now, as you pull the thread, allow the loops to slip free from your thumb and forefinger; as the thread tightens, it will cause the hair to spin around the hook shank. If the hair tries to bunch up unevenly in spots, ease the tension on the thread and then pull tight again; you might even find you need to help the hair spin with the tip of your scissors or bodkin. When you are happy with the coverage of the spun hair around the entire hook shank, make several more turns of thread directly through the hair butts, which will cause them to flare at right angles to the shank. Finally, push the flared hair back from the eye of the hook and hold it upright with a tightly wound dam of thread wraps.
Step 7: On larger Muddler Minnows, I often add a second tuft of spun deer hair for the pronounced, bulky head we associate with the pattern. If I decide to go that route, I find it easier to use finer, Comparadun-style deer hair for spinning the head. I also like the effect you can get with contrasting shades of hair. Clip a tuft of hair and clean and stack it as before. Again, clip the butts even, but also clip the tips, so that you end up with a half inch to a quarter inch of hair in the clump. In front of the previously spun deer hair, spin this new clump just as you did the first clump. After winding the thread through the flared hair, draw back the ends of the hair and whip finish between the eye of the hook and the hair butts. You can treat these finishing wraps at this time with lacquer or your favorite head cement.
Step 8: Shape the head of your Muddler with either scissors or a razor blade. Because I don’t aim for a tight, compact head such as you might find on a deer-hair bass popper, I prefer to use scissors. I think most commercially tied Muddlers are overdressed, in fact. That tightly packed head and full skirt of collar hair detracts from the effect I’m looking for, an opinion that is based on nothing more than my preference, in general, for sparsely dressed flies.
