Muddler Minnow - Fishing The Muddler

Fishing The Muddler

Effective retrieval tactics include stripping the floating Muddler across the water surface rhythmically, imparting a "wake", or allowing the Muddler to sink and twitching or pulsating it against or across a river's current. An unweighted Muddler will float and appears as a hopper, moth or struggling mouse. With a tiny piece of split shot in front of it (or an intermediate flyline) the Muddler can be made to swim slowly over weedbeds and shallow gravel bars. With more weight, the Muddler can be stripped wildly in the shallows to imitate and alarmed baitfish, or allowed to settle in deeper water. When weighted—either on the fly itself, with split shot, or a sinking leader or line—the Muddler my be fished right on the bottom to effectively imitate a sculpin. When imitating sculpins, Muddlers must be kept right on the bottom and fished slowly, with occasional fast strips of maybe a foot to a yard, as if trying to escape a predator.

Tied on salmon hooks in sizes 2 to 10, the Muddler (and don't forget the Marabou Muddler)is an excellent fly for Atlantic salmon. It can be fished on the swing, like a typical salmon wet fly or it can be fished in the surface film as a waking fly. Use of the Portland Creek riffle hitch is desirable, but not entirely necessary, to effectively wake a Muddler. Muddlers tied on salmon double hooks are particularly good waking flies. Know that salmon will often follow the waking fly and will not take until the end of the waking drift. For this reason, it's always a good idea to let the Muddler wobble in the current at the bottom of the drift and twitch it a few times before casting again. (This is also a good technique for trout, especially large trout.)