Popping on Shrimp: Stripers on a Dry Fly

by Mark Gustavson

There was a post on the Stripermoon.com about stripers popping on shrimp in the surface of the water. It is a common activity. Ken Abrames recommended a number of patterns that could work, some examples were a Gartside Gurgler, Steelhead Bee, or Steelhead Caddis. These are all waking steelhead flies save the Gurgler. The idea is twofold. One, the fly stays in the surface and creates a wake by keeping a taught line or adding tiny pulls or just dead drifting it. Second, even though looking at most of these flies one would not think shrimp but when the silhouette is viewed from below, voila, shrimp.

I thought of another pattern that could also work, the Humpy. It is a trout dry fly in sizes #6-14 for rough water and a steelhead fly in larger sizes. It stays in the surface like a cork especially when it is greased. It is a classic pattern that uses moose mane for the tail, natural deer hair for the hump above the shank, the body can be any color floss, the hackle is brown and grizzly and the tips of the deer hair hump are also part of the wing. I changed some of the recipe to suggest grass shrimp. I used natural deer hair for the tail, natural deer hair for the hump, light olive or chartreuse floss for the body and 2 dun hackles on a #4 salmon hook.

On the new moon, the last one of the summer fall was ushered in with strong winds from the SSW at 15 knots with a SE swell on outgoing. The bay was rough, choppy and had small rollers. Perfect, I guess. I knew that for the prior two nights the stripers were popping on shrimp. So I fished this fly for about 80 yards as I headed towards a rip at the point of an island. Nothing, but I was not dismayed. I intended this fly for water preceding the rip at the point. It was very windy and the wind was coming across my casting arm. I would make one back cast and aim high to let the wind carry the fly about 55 feet and then I would let out more line while keeping the line tight. As this dry fly swung it entered the beginning of the rip and came to rest, SPLASH! It worked. And I left because the weather was too much and I did what I came to do. I caught a striped bass on a classic dry fly.

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