Everybody pretty much agrees that king salmon in the lower Pere Marquette River react most aggressively to lateral line stimulation. Throwing streamers that don’t move a lot of water and don’t put off a lot of vibration can make for a pretty slow day of fishing. The most effective method for fishing to these fresh fish is to throw Storm Thundersticks on spinning rods. These lures have a very aggressive back and forth motion. It also helps that they dive deep and stay deep.
We’ve added spinner blades to flies and that certainly helps, but then you’re pretty much just throwing spinners on fly gear, which is fine. But there’s something about spinner blades that seems distinctly un-fly-like. Of course a lot of people would say a big hunk of foam is not very fly-like, but it’s definitely better. A lot better in our view.
So Steve’s been playing around with a Wiggle Minnow pattern that seems to be attributable to Larry Tullis and is a bigger, deeper diving, wigglier version of Todd’s Wiggle Minnow. Check out the video below of one of Steve’s prototypes swimming next to a Thunderstick. The shape and angles of the foam head have a lot to do with how the fly swims and the fly in the video below has about a medium amount of wiggle. Since this video was taken a few weeks ago Steve has really dialed it in and his new flies have more wobble and wiggle. The salmon seem to like them. We’ll get a step by step up here soon.
Thunderstick vs. Wiggle Minnow from Third Coast Fly on Vimeo.