Don I use mudler alot, with good success. A size 6 or 8 is a dry fly! (hopper) and it will work for any old trout. As a streamer I fish 1-2/0 regular old Dan Baily style mudler. It is a standard Brown trout getter. The Cuts and bows don’t like them and thats fine with me.
I love fishing muddlers, especially a very effective Maine pattern call the “Brookie Muddler”. I fish this fly in early spring and Fall for LLSalmon and Brook Trout.
A very versatile fly. I use the muddler and it’s many mutant forms such as the Zoo Cougar, Kiwi Muddler etc. I use a jerk-strip retrieve and try to make them look like a fleeing sculpin.
As for the straight up muddler minnow, I fish it sometimes as a surface pattern but I also fish size 6 and 8s down and across for Brook Trout in very small streams. Every fish in the pool will chase them, but I usually only hook the bigger ones with them. I think these flies are fun to tie, and I like the ones I tie better because the sink much easier. I don’t spin as much hair as commercially tied ones and they absorb more water.
When I got back into fly fishing about 20 years ago, … I sort of turned my nose up at muddlers. They were the “standard” fly on brook trout streams and still watersover here.
The I got smart
As I wasn’t very good at matching the hatch, nor fishing a fly like it should be, … at the time, I liked muddlers as there was really no WRONG way to fish it.
Today, I’ll use classic patterns in #10-12 dead drifted on top.
I use the Marabou muddlers and rabbit strip muddlers in anything from #4-#10 dead drifted under the surface, retreived through big pools or gently swung on runs.
My favourites are the monster head ones, swung, popped or stripped for bruisers, … especially at dusk.
… some of my bigger models used to stir up the water a bit and “provoke” stikes from bruisers.
We also use muddlers, classic, but ORANGE for atlantics in high water.
There is a very accomplished angler on my homewaters here, that ONLY uses muddlers for ALL his fishing, be it for adult atlantics, grisle, adult sea run brookies or the juvi 2nd run.
I have always carried a couple…as for the fishing of them,well You’d have to ask those who’ve actually seen a reason to do more than carry em…lol
“I’ve often wondered why it is that so many anglers spend so much money on,and pay so much attention to.the details on the wrong end of the fly line.If they took as much care in selecting or tying their flies as they did in the selection of the reel and rod,They might be able to gain the real extra edge that makes it possible to fool a fish that has,in fact,seen it all before” A.K.Best
Here on the West Coast of BC, the Rolled Muddler is a very popular fly. Great fly for cutthroat and summer-runs. Throw some flash on it and it’s my go to fly for coho and chinook.
[This message has been edited by River Rat (edited 05 August 2005).]
I like floating Muddlers in size 2 or size 4 for Smallmouth. Just a great fly.
Now…to be honest I haven’t had as much luck with the weighted versions fished the way they’re “supposed” to be fished down deep. I’ve had much better luck deep with the Zoo Cougar version, FWIW.
The(Lou)Tabory Snake Fly is a muddler style fly,and is my go-to fly this time of year in the salt.
It’s a good imatation of both silversides and peanutbunker.
All white works best for me but I carry other colors as well.
“Nick’s heart tightened as the trout moved. He felt all the old feeling” …Ernest Hemingway
