Bait Profile: Clouser Minnow

The clouser minnow is one of the most famous flies in the world.  Famous, not for its flash but because it simply catches fish. In fact Lefty Kreh has caught 86 species of fish on the clouser minnow and I'm making it a personal mission to catch and pass his species count.

The clouser minnow was created by Bob Clouser for Susquehanna River smallmouth bass.  I believe that from the first time he used it the clouser minnow has been a hit with bass and fly fishermen alike.  From personal experience I can to say it is the most productive smallmouth bass pattern I've ever used. In fact I've caught quite a few species on clouser including: bluegill, crappie, carp, largemouth and smallmouth bass, white bass and striped bass.

What makes the clouser minnow so effective?  The steamlined body and jigging action of the clouser minnow is what makes predator fish fall for the bait.  The bucktail of the body is just stiff enough to give the bait subtle lifelike action just like a minnow or shiner. And the dumb bell eyes cause the fly to have the jigging or darting action that mimics fleeing bait fish so well.  It's a combination of these to features that make any wary predator fish take a bite.

Clouser Fishing Quick Tips: 

• Make sure you're using a heavy enough rod to handle casting clousers.  Since they are heavier flies due to the dumb bell eyes, using a lighter weight rod will not be able to load properly to cast the fly. 
• Keep your rod tip low when retrieving clouser minnows.
• Clouser require an active strip, so accelerate and pause the stripping of fly line to give the clouser that fleeing action. What makes clousers so effective is that they never stop moving. 
• When fishing with clousers at night use darker colors like purple and black.
• When tying clousers for striped bass fishing tie your clousers with sparse bucktail.  
• Fishing in shallow rocky streams or creeks use clousers in a brown and orange pattern to imitate crayfish. 

Match The Hatch: Clousers are by far the most simple fly that matches a large variety of forage species. Why? Because they match all small bait fish with no problems.  All you have to do is match up your bucktail colors to the forage species you're imitating.

What are the materials used to tie the Clouser Minnow:

Hooks: I personally use the Eagle Claw Lazer Sharp Billy Pate Saltwater Fly Hook L067S in sizes #6 to 2/0.  However pretty much any streamer hook will work for clousers I just prefer the saltwater hooks as they are what I've always tied them on. But any similar hook will work.

Thread: Danville Flat Wax 6/0 or 140 denier

Body Fur: Bucktail, craft fur, flashabou & squirrel tail for extra small clousers

Eyes: Bead chain eyes or Dumbbell eyes

Under Body: Flashabou

Thanks for reading and tight lines everyone!

Beautiful Day for Silver Bass

This morning was an absolutely beautiful day to get in some fishing for silver bass.  As you can see from the picture above the 6am sunrise was well worth waking up and driving to Elizabeth park at 5:30.  While the sunrise was well worth the drive that wasn't the reason why I was there so I started casting a basspro 2 inch XTS Vibrator in the tilapia color.  First cast and fish on, a decent sized silver bass but not quite the size I fish for.  This went on for two hours with me catching fish after fish totaling a little over 65 fish.  On the whole I only kept 12 white bass and released all of the rest.

What's funny is while I was fishing I noticed the other anglers were catching a few fish but not the numbers I was catching. I think it's because the bass have been getting fished pretty hard over the last few weeks and they've gotten used to seeing white and chartreuse jigs with twister tails and have become a bit skittish on non-moving minnows.

At one point I had a gentleman walk up to fish along side me but he wasn't getting any bites either. So I offered to let him use my other lipless crankbait but he refused and only ended up with two fish in the time he was there with me.

My setup today was pretty simple.  I used a shakespeare outback spinning rod with a quantum triax reel spooled with 10lb monofilament baited with  basspro 2 1/2 inch XTS Vibrator.  As well I fished with a berkley cherrywood ultralight spooled with 4lb monofilament baited with a 2 1/2 inch Rebel Red Eye Minnow  The red eye minnow didn't produce as well as the lipless crankbait mostly because the fish were holding close to the bottom and the bait couldn't quite get deep enough consistently.

Here are the fish I kept.

Product Review: Matzuo Nano Minnow

Description: The matzuo Nano Minnow offers anglers the perfect downsized lure for those heavily fished waters where finicky fish prefer bite-sized baits.  The tight swimming action of theses lures resembles a fleeing minnow.  These versatile mini baits trigger powerful strikes from trout, bass, crappie and all other panfish.  These tiny floating lures are sure to become favorites among ultralight fishermen fishing tiny brooks and streams to larger ponds and lakes.

Additional Features include:

-Bright, prismatic finishes
-Durable Contoured Bodies
-Matzuo black chrome treble hooks with stainless steel split rings
-Realistic 3-D eyes
-Floating Lures Dive to 3 ft.
-Comes in sizes 2” and 2 ½”

Review:  This bait is great and will definitely be a permanent addition to my bait box.  (The color I used while fishing is the shiner pattern) The bait dives to between 3 and 4 feet when retrieved steadily.  But what is great and actually stimulated a few strikes for me is that the nano minnow suspends at that depth when you stop your retrieval.  Additionally the nano minnow has great action when being retrieved.  The bait wobbles and swerves  a bit erratically which fish can't resist.  I've seen both largemouth and crappy chase this bait down from behind structure. Over the course of two days of continual usage I caught 12 largemouth, 1 smallmouth, 15 white bass and 5 crappy. 

How I used:  I fished the nano minnow behind an ultra-light rod and a Quantum Optix 30 reel on 8lb line.  The flaw with this set up is that the line was a bit too heavy for the set up so I couldn't cast as far as I wanted with such a light crank bait.  In the future I'll be using the same rod but will switch out to a smaller reel with 4lb or 6lb line. 

Pros:  This bait catches anything and everything.

Cons: The bait job looks great but has started to come off a bit after using it.  As well because it is such a small bait even a small piece of grass attached to the hooks causes the bait to lose its action.  

Price: $3.99

Thanks for reading

Kwan