Not much to it, but sometimes those are the best flies. Only thing left to do is hit the hook point with a file.
hook - Mustad 3407 #4
thread - Danville Flat-wax white
tail - marabou white
flash - Flashabou Mirage opal
body - Estaz pearl
eyes - plastic black
Regards,
Scott
Norm tends to prefer pinching the marabou off for a finished tail, but there was always Joe Bruce’s krystal bugger out of Baltimore in the 1980’s for fishing mid Atlantic rivers.
Dave,
Do you know the reasoning behind that? In one video, he trimmed the tail square with scissors.
Regards,
Scott
I like the fly. It’s a modernized version of the Shenk’s Minnow - still one of my favorite patterns to tie and fish for smallmouth bass and panfish.
Alberto
Nice fly Scott. It’d be a killer on Crappies where I fish. A fun fly…
I grinned at your final comment. I -HATE- those hooks!! Waste of time tyin’ on 'em imho. Your ties deserve better.
Oh, but Jeremy, I loved the price. Bought a bunch of boxes of 100 in various sizes about 15 years ago for $6.50 each; 5 seconds with a file is a minor inconvenience. They’ve served me well, too, catching everything from false albacore to tarpon with only one hook failure.
Regards,
Scott
I have tied on 34007 hooks for years and had not had a problem with them that couldn’t be fixed with a hook file, UNTIL I took a trip to Christmas Island a few years ago. I straightened out quite a few of these on the bonefish there. These were all size 6 hooks, but they were bending before my 0X tippet broke. I have been buying Gamakatsu SL11-3H ever since.
Ted
that’s my kind of fly
Scott, you just passed muster!!
Can’t argue with that. 
Jeremy.
The same basic fly with silver chain eyes and standard pearl rather than opal chenille and flash works well for the “shad hatch” on the White system.
Seems it’s his pinching the marabou off tying spin on feathering the tail square like how he invented the schminnow when he had returned from Germany even if there were a number of people fishing size #8-12 for bass in the Potomac & Shenandoah back in the 80’s; being adamant that estaz hadn’t been invented yet to make any schminnow. Usually had a couple Krystal Flash strands mixed in with the marabou tail, but a number of salt water tyers now tie just pearl flashabou without marabou as a tail.
Scott,
I was always taught to pinch off marabou rather than trimming with scissors or razor blade.
The reasoning is that it leaves a more natural look. A taper to the pinched marabou as opposed to a “blocky” look with trimmed marabou.
Snook candy!!!
(It’s almost April, man! This has got my blood boiling!)
Some dusty old krystal buggers for the Cacapon, Potomac & Shenandoah with a box of saltwater variations on the right.
Hmmm, no black plastic eyes, but I do have bead chain. I have estatz in different colors also. Be interesting to try.
Thanks Scott for another great pattern.
Mike
For fishing different water depths plastic eyes ( burn mono & make your own ) , bead chain & lead eyes-hour glass dumbells all work.
All kinds of craft stores have plastic “bead chain”. I couldn’t find any in black one time so I bought white and painted enough for about 100 flies in just a few minutes.
I have done this too. You need to be careful about the type of beadchain you buy though. I bought some once that had beads molded around a cord. The bond of the plastic bead to the cord was not very strong and I wound up with a lot of one eyed and blind flies after fishing them for a short time. I’ve recently been welding beads onto heavy mono for eyes and they seem much more durable.
Ted
