The Muddler Minnow is a popular and versatile artificial fly

Artificial fly

An artificial fly or fly lure is a type of fishing lure, usually used in the sport of fly fishing . In general, artificial flies are the bait which fly fishers present to their target species of fish while fly fishing...

 of the streamer type used in fly fishing

Fly fishing

Fly fishing is an angling method in which an artificial 'fly' is used to catch fish. The fly is cast using a fly rod, reel, and specialized weighted line. Casting a nearly weightless fly or 'lure' requires casting techniques significantly different from other forms of casting...

 and fly tying

Fly tying

Fly tying is the process of producing an artificial fly to be used by anglers to catch fish via means of fly fishing. Probably the most concise description of fly tying is the one by Helen Shaw, a preeminent American professional fly tyer in Fly-Tying....

.

History

The Muddler Minnow was spawned, so to speak, by Don Gapen of Anoka

Anoka, Minnesota

At the 2000 census, there were 18,076 people, 7,262 households and 4,408 families residing in the city. The population density was 2,709.0 per square mile . There were 7,398 housing units at an average density of 1,108.7 per square mile...

, Minnesota

Minnesota

Minnesota is a U.S. state located in the Midwestern United States. The twelfth largest state of the U.S., it is the twenty-first most populous, with 5.3 million residents. Minnesota was carved out of the eastern half of the Minnesota Territory and admitted to the Union as the thirty-second state...

 in 1937, to imitate the slimy sculpin

Slimy Sculpin

The slimy sculpin, Cottus cognatus, is a freshwater species of fish that inhabits cool, rocky streams, rivers and lakes throughout northern North America and eastern Siberia. The slimy sculpin is found in freshwater and sometimes brackish water in areas with rocky or gravel type bottoms...

. Gapen developed this fly to catch Nipigon

Nipigon

Nipigon is a township in Thunder Bay District, Northwestern Ontario, Canada, located along the west side of the Nipigon River and south of the small Lake Helen running between Lake Nipigon and Lake Superior...

 strain

Strain (biology)

In biology, a strain is a low-level taxonomic rank used in three related ways.-Microbiology and virology:A strain is a genetic variant or subtype of a micro-organism . For example, a "flu strain" is a certain biological form of the influenza or "flu" virus...

 brook trout

Brook trout

The brook trout, Salvelinus fontinalis, is a species of fish in the salmon family of order Salmoniformes. In many parts of its range, it is known as the speckled trout or squaretail. A potamodromous population in Lake Superior are known as coaster trout or, simply, as coasters...

 in Ontario

Ontario

Ontario is a province of Canada, located in east-central Canada. It is Canada's most populous province and second largest in total area. It is home to the nation's most populous city, Toronto, and the nation's capital, Ottawa....

, Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

. The Muddler, as it is informally known by anglers, was popularized by Montana

Montana

Montana is a state in the Western United States. The western third of Montana contains numerous mountain ranges. Smaller, "island ranges" are found in the central third of the state, for a total of 77 named ranges of the Rocky Mountains. This geographical fact is reflected in the state's name,...

, USA fisherman and fly tier Dan Bailey. It is now a popular pattern worldwide and is likely found in nearly every angler's fly box, in one form or another. Due to its universal appeal to game fish, the muddler minnow will remain as an integral tool in sport fishing.

Imitations

The versatility of the Muddler Minnow stems from this pattern's ability to mimic a variety of aquatic and terrestrial forage, ranging from sculpins, to leeches, to grasshoppers, crickets, spent mayflies, emerging green drakes, stonefly nymphs, mice, tadpoles, dace, shiners, chubs, and other "minnows," along with a host of other creatures.

Construction

There are limitless material and colour variations, however the essence of the Muddler Minnow is a spun deer hair head. While each Muddler may differ in colour or profile, all true Muddlers have a fore-end or body of spun deer hair that is clipped close to the shank to provide a buoyant head. Typically there is an underwing of squirrel hair and a wing of mottled secondary turkey

Turkey

Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...

 feather. Often the fly body is made of gold/silver Mylar or tinsel

Tinsel

Tinsel is sparkling decorative material that mimics the effect of ice or icicles. When in long narrow strips, it emulates icicles. It was originally a metallic garland for Christmas decoration. The modern production of tinsel typically involves plastic, and is used particularly to decorate...

 wrapped around the hook

Fish hook

A fish hook is a device for catching fish either by impaling them in the mouth or, more rarely, by snagging the body of the fish. Fish hooks have been employed for centuries by fishermen to catch fresh and saltwater fish. In 2005, the fish hook was chosen by Forbes as one of the top twenty tools...

 shank. Marabou may be tied in as a substitute wing for colour and life-like movement through the water. The head may be weighted or unweighted, according to the style of fishing, the target species and the intended imitation. The muddler has served for the basis of several patterns, including the Spuddler, Muddler Hopper, Mizzoulian Spook, Searcy Muddler, Keel Muddler, and so on, but even in its simplest and original form, it remains a very effective fly.

Besides the traditional deer hair, many Muddlers are tied today with heads made of antelope, spun wool, dubbing, chenille, or other materials. Whether they should properly be called Muddlers is a moot point.

Note that the fly pictured above, while typical, is not a traditional Muddler Minnow. The traditional Muddler uses brown mottled turkey quill segments for both tail and wing. It also seems to lack the underwing of gray squirrel tail. As originally tied by Don Gapen (and as still tied by The Gapen Company today), the Muddler Minnow's head was sparse and "raggedy," the head and collar being fashioned from a single clump of deer hair. The dense head featured on most of today's Muddlers was the invention of Dan Bailey

Dan Bailey

Dan Bailey was a fly-shop owner, innovative fly developer and staunch Western conservationist. Born on a farm near Russellville, Kentucky, Bailey is best known for the fly shop he established in Livingston, Montana in 1938...

, ca. 1950, because Muddlers were mainly used to imitate large grasshoppers out West back in the 1950s,

Target Species

Muddler patterns are generally effective when fishing for any freshwater or saltwater species in cold or warm water environments. This pattern is most often used to catch all species of trout, steelhead, Arctic char, large grayling, both Atlantic and Pacific salmon, taimen, lenok, smallmouth and largemouth bass, pike, redfish (red drum), tarpon, and almost anything else that swims.

Fishing the Muddler

Effective retrieval tactics include stripping the floating Muddler across the water surface rhythmically, imparting a "wake", or allowing the Muddler to sink and twitching or pulsating it against or across a river's current. An unweighted Muddler will float and appears as a hopper, moth or struggling mouse. With a tiny piece of split shot in front of it (or an intermediate flyline) the Muddler can be made to swim slowly over weedbeds and shallow gravel bars. With more weight, the Muddler can be stripped wildly in the shallows to imitate and alarmed baitfish, or allowed to settle in deeper water. When weighted--either on the fly itself, with split shot, or a sinking leader or line--the Muddler my be fished right on the bottom to effectively imitate a sculpin. When imitating sculpins, Muddlers must be kept right on the bottom and fished slowly, with occasional fast strips of maybe a foot to a yard, as if trying to escape a predator.

Tied on salmon hooks in sizes 2 to 10, the Muddler (and don't forget the Marabou Muddler)is an excellent fly for Atlantic salmon. It can be fished on the swing, like a typical salmon wet fly or it can be fished in the surface film as a waking fly. Use of the Portland Creek riffle hitch is desirable, but not entirely necessary, to effectively wake a Muddler. Muddlers tied on salmon double hooks are particularly good waking flies. Know that salmon will often follow the waking fly and will not take until the end of the waking drift. For this reason, it's always a good idea to let the Muddler wobble in the current at the bottom of the drift and twitch it a few times before casting again. (This is also a good technique for trout, especially large trout.)

External links

• The Trail from Gateway Lodge. - The History of Gapen
• Recipe, tying instructions, variations, uses and how to fish
• http://globalflyfisher.com/patterns/muddler/ - The Global Fly Fisher/Muddler Mania