After landing the flathead catfish that I mentioned in yesterday's post, I decided to toss around my version of Shannon's Minnow that I tied last week. While I didn't catch anything on it, nothing was really biting on this particular day so it was more of an experimental session than an actual field test. The first thing that stood out was exactly what my buddy Ryan Walker mentioned to me and that is the fact that this thing is designed to have a fluke-like pattern. While it has a subtle wiggle to it when slowly retrieved, the fly also has a side to side twitch when stripped more erratically. Ryan also mentioned to get rid of the dumbbell eyes. I appreciate what he meant because I have a feeling that he is fishing shallower water for smallmouth than I sometimes do for largemouth. However, I can see additional weight on this fly having an application. As a result, this fly has a popping up to the surface motion when stripped and then a dying motion when paused.
In my opinion, I say that this was a great test. I'm going to tie some unweighted versions of this fly and play around with them as well. I would like to have some of each (weighted and unweighted) for different situations. I can see this fly eliciting bites from largemouth, smallmouth, white, and hybrid striped bass if used in the right place and at the right time. This fly has serious protentional but don't ever overlook the idea that potential simply means that something hasn't achieve anything yet!
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