Let's face it sometimes striped bass, and other swimming predators, just like the meat. While those in the trout game live and die by "matching the hatch" the same can be said, in a way, for those that like to fish for opportunistic eaters like striped bass. It's hard to believe that sometimes especially when you're throwing a size 2 albie flies into snot bait the guy next to you is catching them on a six-inch pink Hogy. Or when you have a beautifully tied almost exact replication of a sand eel and the spin angler next to you is getting them on a needle plug.
While we all like to think "I'm dialed in" one has to admit that sometimes you've just tossed your offering into the path of a patrolling striped bass and they chose to check it out, which they can only do with their mouths. And if your "bait" has six or nine hooks in it there's a good chance that their "sampling" of your plug, metal, or fly, will hook them. Winning! I guess.
Big flies, let's say those tied porportionally correct on a size 6/0 hook or greater, have been all the rage for the last, let's say, eight years. Bob Popovic's Beast Fleye, which has been in the making since the early 1990's, hit the vices all across the world with some tiers maybe even surpassing, I mean visually, the Master himself. That's not disrepectful, that is what Bob would want. He would take that as a win.
Again this year at TFFS fly tier's tables were loaded with all types of big flies. Above is the lot that Brendan Gomez had readied for the show. Let's be real, his flies, along with some of the other more well known talented tiers, create beautiful pieces of art that can be displayed or fished. Of course the concern is that a 60-100 dollar fly may find its way into the fly-shredding mouth of a bluefish, or lost with a bad knot on a big fish or hard backcast.
While I have seen Bob walk the shows admiring, and respectfully critiquing, the work of tiers showing their Beast Fleyes, or large Hollows, or Bulkheads, I think he was more impressed with tiers expanding, not necessarily improving, the core foundations of what he brought to fly tying. He was, with a shred of doubt at first, intrigued with the possibility of building large flies with metal shanks, something that Blane Chocklett brought to fly tying. He was also impressed with Jason Taylor's use of different materials in building those bigger flies which was different then with only using bucktail.
While Gomez's work above is impressive in its own right, does it represent, as they say in the Capital One commercial, "What's in your wallet?" As Bob would say those bigger flies have a time and a place. If you happen upon a blitz of bass crashing through peanut or adult bunker then you're in. If you have just dropped a larger Deceiver in the current and it looks to irresistible to eat then you might get a strike. But, in order to really maximize your effort on the beach and boat being in the ballpark of "It's what's for dinner" really helps.
So yesterday after hours of schoolwork I decided I needed a break. I went into my fly tying room and placed a AHREX Bob Clouser 5/0 hook into my PEAK LIRS vice. (How's that for product placement, which does zero for me in the end). I was in the mindset that in order to do productive fly tying cranking out a large fly would be what I needed to do. But after some January practice sessions, along with time sitting at the Squimpish booth, I have enough arrows in the quiver for the start of the season.
That's not to say that when there's no bait around, but stripers are on the move, that a larger fly or metal lip won't get bit. I attribute a lot of that to reaction strikes rather than something trying to eat to satiate a hunger. Couple opportunity, with annoyance, and you're gonna get slapped. I see that moreso when fishing in rivers, where a oversized multi-hooked plug gets hit 1,000 feet from where the angler stands because it swam from in front of a holding spot to behind it where bass maybe pointed into. The bass is thinking "Get the f&%k out of here" while the angler thinks they just out fooled a 30 pound fish. C'mon man.
So if you are an early season fly fisherman and need to stock up on flies don't forget to downsize and go smaller. While yes, most anglers are trophy fish hunters, there are a large percentage of us who enjoy just fishing for fishings sake, and are just as trilled for a properly swam fly getting eaten as they are fishing for giants during a blitz.
