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Page Rogers' Saltwater Classics |
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Copyright ©1998 Page Rogers |
THE CLOUSER MINNOW By Page Rogers, Contributing Editor |
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What the Deceiver was to the 60’s and 70’s, the Clouser Minnow has been to the 80’s and 90’s. Bob Clouser is a fly shop owner and one of the nicest guys in the industry. He also guides along the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania for its resident smallmouth bass, or "bronzebacks". His minnow was developed to imitate tiny shiners and take smallies in his native water. In just a few years the Clouser has become one of the hottest and most effective patterns ever developed, spinning off saltwater-sized flies that, like the Deceiver, have caught fish in every body of water in the world. The Clouser is embarrassingly easy to tie, but tying it correctly is important, and will limit your frustration when fishing. It can also be tied with synthetic materials, such as Ultra-Hair, SuperHair, Fly Fur or even FishHair. The original fly was tied with bucktail, and since this series is about "classics", I list the traditional materials below. The Clouser is especially effective on stripers, blues, albies and bonito. It has also taken bonefish, redfish, tarpon, snook, sea trout, yellowfin and shark (just to name a few). Anyone who has put their time in on the waters of the northeast, no doubt, has a wild tale or two to tell of days with double (or even triple) digit school-sized striped bass...all of them readily inhaling your chartreuse and white Clouser. In addition to chartreuse/white, some of my favorite color combinations for this fly are: all black; olive/white; all white; black/white; and "lemon/lime" (fl. chartreuse/ fl. yellow). Bright, fluorescent colored Clousers do well when the water is muddied or stained, or when blitzing fish are particularly attracted to bright flies. Deke Meyer’s book Saltwater Flies: Over 700 of the Best, lists many possible color combinations as well as many "variations" for tying the Clouser Minnow. Tie some up, and hang on!
Place hook in vise. Note that I have specified using fairly light wire hooks; light, but strong. You don’t want to use "heavy metal" hooks when tying Clousers, or the weight of your eyes may not be able to flip your fly over, the keel of the hook overriding the weight of the eyes. Attach your tying thread and tie on eyes of your choice and size on top of the hook shank. I have used Spirit River’s "Real-Eyes" in the photo. Make numerous "figure eight" style wraps working the thread across the hook shank over the stem between the eyes. Then make a number of wraps directly in front of and behind the eyes, creating thread "bumps" which will prevent the eyes from shifting up or down the hook shank. For insurance, I often put a small drop of Super Glue right on top of the thread wraps to secure the eyes. If you don’t use Super Glue, be sure to put some Flexament on the thread wraps securing the eyes. Step Two
Now flip the fly over (easier to do if you own a rotary vise) and tie in the Polarflash. I always cut a full length of flash from the hank, double the flash over the tying thread, and keeping the material taut in my left hand, tie it in with my right hand. Done this way this material cannot pull out. You can then trim it, with staggered cuts, to the desired length. You can also tie a few "figure eights" over this material and the fly eyes. Top with a drop of Flexament. Now add the chartreuse bucktail, tie this down with pressure on your thread and using some Flexament. With the tying thread, build a tapered bullet head from the eyes to the hook eye. Whip finish and tie off. |
Finally apply a goodly amount of Flexament to your thread wraps, and fill the socket of the Real-Eye with the appropriate sized prismatic eye. In the photo I’ve used a 3 mm gold eye. Clousers are easy and inexpensive to tie, so fill you boxes with lots of colors and sizes of this very effective fly and when you see him at a show, be sure to tell Bob Clouser about all of the fun you’ve had with his pattern. He never tires of great fish tales! ©Copyright: Page Rogers 1998 All rights reserved |
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Reel -Time Copyright ©1998 Reel-Time |
