A (not so) modest claim about the WoolyMugger

"pittendrigh" wrote


At the Paradise Valley Spring creeks, south of Livingston
MT, on a cloudy day and after the hatches (if there are any)
you can fish these guys in the deep fast water below the
various culverts. They'll pull up 2-3 browns over 20" long
at each culvert. You don't always get them hooked, but they
always chase and bite.


If you were going to tie such a goodie for "SINGLE barbless hook" waters ...
which hook? My guess is the rear, but I really don't have a clue where a
trout would bite such a wiggler

Larry L wrote:
"pittendrigh" wrote


At the Paradise Valley Spring creeks, south of Livingston
MT, on a cloudy day and after the hatches (if there are any)
you can fish these guys in the deep fast water below the
various culverts. They'll pull up 2-3 browns over 20" long
at each culvert. You don't always get them hooked, but they
always chase and bite.



If you were going to tie such a goodie for "SINGLE barbless hook" waters ...
which hook? My guess is the rear, but I really don't have a clue where a
trout would bite such a wiggler

In my experience (mainly in Idaho) the "single barbless hook" rule is
meant to forbid treble hooks and the like, not rigs with two single
barbless hooks. In Idaho, for example, you're allowed to use up to FIVE
single barbless hooks in one rig. (I don't recommend it, especially if
you're landing the fish with a net.)

Whether one "lure" having two hooks is a violation is an interesting
question that, AFAIK, has not been resolved.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

Larry L wrote:
If you were going to tie such a goodie for "SINGLE barbless hook" waters ...
which hook? My guess is the rear, but I really don't have a clue where a
trout would bite such a wiggler

That's an interesting question. I tried to publish an article about
soft foam
steamers a few years back. Never got any takers (was too much like
simulated bait fishing, and the editors got the shakes). Anyway, here's
a
quote from that languishing piece:

Predatory fish in general and trout in particular seldom swallow a bait
fish that isn't oriented head first. In his 1991 paper on the
'Evolutionary attributes of headfirst prey manipulation and swallowing
in piscivores,' T.E. Reimchen observes that "cutthroat trout often
attack prey near the center of mass, which tends to be closer to the
head than the tail in most fishes," and then, a few sentances later:
"prey that are attacked at mid-body are generally rotated into
headfirst alignment for swallowing."(1)

........so, the normal behavior is to attack the center of mass, which
is right behind the gills
on most fishes, and somewhere just to the front of dead center on the
Woolly Mugger.

Soft Streamers:
http://montana-riverboats.com/Pages/...z-Article.html