For bottom dwelling creatures

I went out today to test my new shrimp imitation for catching bream. It is a generic crustacean pattern to suggest various shrimpy bottom dwelling creatures like a mud shrimp which hides in the sand by digging a hole with its big pincer (only one of its arms is big) and types of shrimps and prawns with a set of long skinny arms found on estuaries and rivers.

To make fly crawl and bounce off the bottom, I put a dumbbell eye as weight. The fly is tied reverse, so that a hook point facing up to avoid snagging up on the bottom.

Anyway, I fished a few hours in the afternoon today, and I got bream, flathead, and grunter. The fish were all small, but I was happy with the new fly manging to get a hat trick.

クロダイ用に巻いた毛鉤のテストに行って来ました。テナガエビやボケジャコなど、色々なエビの仲間に似せてフライです。

底を歩かせたり、びょんびょんとジャンプさせたりする様に、ダンベルアイのウェイトを付けてあります。それから、根掛かりを少なくするために、フックポイントが上に来る様に巻いてあります。

テストの結果は、小さい魚でしたが、bream、flathead、glounterとハットトリックを達成。まずまずの結果でした。
 
Mud Shrimp
pincers: hackle tips (light ginger) trimmed into a claw like shape.
body: goat hair and mohair (tan colour).
eyes: nylon mono painted black.
legs: rubber legs
flashy stuff: a couple of strands of crystal flash on each side

Bream will move at any water column to intercept their prey but there are times when they prefer to feed off the bottom, and when they are like that, the fly needs to go down and stay that way.

I was once standing on a jetty and watching a school of bream working in a shallow water. They were standing on their nose, and trying to dig something out of the sand. I then saw one fish grabbed something off the bottom and took off as other fish started chasing them. When the fish came pass in front of me, I could see that the fish was holding something with a big claw in its mouth. It looked me that the fish had manged to dig up a mud shrimp or something.

It was interesting to see the way other fish were chasing the fish with a meal. The fish were going zigzag like a pack of dogs chasing one with a piece of bone in its mouth. Perhaps the shrimp tasted so nice and it drove fish into a frenzy.

クロダイは、餌を捕るのに底から水面まで動きますが、ハゼやカニや底を這って生活しているエビの仲間などを選んで捕食している時は、底にべったりと張り付いて上を通過する毛鉤には反応が悪いです。

一度、アナジャコか何かを探して底を夢中で突いているクロダイの群れを観察した事がありますが、餌を捕まえた魚を他の数匹が追いかけ回していました。餌を口にくわえた魚は、右や左と泳いで追手を振り切り、他の魚が居なくなったのを確認してから、モグモグと餌を食べ始めました。その時に口から大きなハサミの様な爪がはみ出ていたのを覚えています。