striper flies

[boberry]

whats up guys! I live in SC and our dam on Wylie is stocked with striper. Ive caught them before on baitcasters but i wanna try to hook one on a my 8wt. If any body has any suggestions for a fly it would be much appreciated. Ive caught them before on a white bucktail jig with baitcasters. so possibly a white clouser? Tell me what you think guys. THANKS!!!
-boberry

[Rip Tide]

Clousers are good, but I like Deceivers better...
One year, that's all I used...in yellow

[FISHN50]

Originally Posted by Rip Tide

Clousers are good, but I like Deceivers better...
One year, that's all I used...in yellow

I love that fly...
I'm going to tie up some from the picture unless you give me the recipe

[Frank Whiton]

Hi boberry,

I think a white Deceiver is a good choice. Try topping one with peacock herl over the back. The white Clauser would be fine too. I would use different eye weights to vary your depth. The white and chartreuse Clouser will catch anything that swims. Here is a link that will give you a bunch of options.

Of course this good advise is given thinking you are a fly tyer. If not,you will have to buy what you need and your choice will be more limited.

Frank

[randyflycaster]

I fish mostly deceivers and poppers, on floating and sinking lines.

I don't like to fish clousers. A bad cast can break your rod tip, or end up in your ear. Also, casting clousers for a few hours is very tiring.

Randy

[jimw]

What are they feeding on shad?? Match the hatch!! A clouser or deciever will work just depends where the fish are in the water column.

[peregrines]

I'm a big fan of the deceiver too. I usually use a blue over white with a topping of herl.

Here's a couple patterns i use (colors are washed out for some reason in the pic). If I were you I'd tie these on a SW hook like a Mustad 34007 (or the less expensive 3407) if there is any chance you might be wandering near SW down the road, and these are great flies for the salt too and the hooks will work fine in freshwater, but FW hooks will corrode pretty quickly in SW.

If I've figured it out a pic should be somewhere around here.

top blue over white deceivers 1/0,

chartreuse over white clouser

chartreuse deceiver 3/0 (for murky stained water, all black is also good, I usually tie them a bit bigger than the 1/0's I normally use on an 8 for off colored water). These chart colored flies can be killer on bass that feed on silvery fish in stained water. This one has actually earned a retirement after catching a decent tarpon in a black water hole deep in the everglades backcountry

deceivers -blue over white and olive over white with a grizzly tail

Tabory Snake Fly 2/0- basically I just tie it like a deceiver with a spun muddler head and a bit of marabou behind the deer hair collar, V wake these across the surface. A lot of fun to fish, especially at night. It's a great mullet imitation too if you do the SW thing on a 2/0 hook

Bucktail deceiver, tied with a bucktail tail instead of saddle hackle 2/0 These are a quick and easy tie and work well too.

You can just whip these up in whatever sizes and colors and profiles match your bait fish, or get creative and go crazy.

The only advice I'd add is to keep them sparse (easier to cast and more action in the water).

Some other patterns you might want to try if you've caught them deep on jigs are heavily weighted Half and Halfs and some sort of rabbit strip fly (the rabbit strip flies are like casting a wet mop, but are effective). You can use these to dredge deep holes, and drag them up and over humps from a boat when you really need to get down especially if you don't need to cast far and can use the drift of the boat to cover the bottom. I like them in white, chartreuse, black and "blurple" (black rear, purple front). Black and Chartreuse seem to be the most visible in deep or colored water.

The half and half is just a love child of a deceiver (rear half saddle tail) and a clouser (front half). Half & Half / Deep Deceiver - SaltwaterFlies.com

There are a lot of flies out there like rabbit strip mega divers etc with a deer hair head, but to get deep I'd make a simple one. To sort of make it up as i go along here, something like-
-tie a heavy pair of hour glass eyes on the bottom of the shank (not on top like a clouser). The fly will ride hook point down.
-add lead wraps if you want
-tie in body material- chenille , sparkle braid whatever and a bit of flash if you want.
-tie in ribbing wire
-tie in rabbit zonker strip on top of hook shank above barb,
-work thread forward, wrap body material
-pull over rabbit strip and lock down with rib
-If you want to get fancy you can make a 360 collar of marabou, cross cut rabbit strip or a wound collar of hackle, with a contrasting color if you want to really rock it, or just fish it as is without a collar.

good luck! Keep us posted on what you come up with.

mark

[SkipS]

An all white Clouser or deciever is fine but I would add some grey/white flies also,especially a half & half.A white whistler is an excellent striper fly and was engineered to mimic a bucktail jig.

[boberry]

i will go ahead and whip up a few decievers then. i have about 20 different variations of the clouser that I tied about a week ago. thank you all for the advice. I'll post pics on the thread within the next few hours. hopefully you guys can give me some feedback? The peacock hearl sounds like a great adition. Ive done that to about half my clousers. I would imagine it gives the fish another target of attack. the water is fairly clear because it is at the bottom of a dam. Schooling shad are a huge bait fish around there and ive seen them schooling up near the shallows to all the way out in the levy areas. The striper down there seem to love the shad, because ive seen on many occasions where guys have hooked up on a stripe in less than 10 minutes on a shad with a slip sinker. Ive seen the fish just pound on the schoolies, so im thinkin if i take yalls advice and try a few different weights for the depth, i can try to stip one through the school and hook up on a nice stripe. If yall have any other ideas let me know!
thanks guys!
-bo berry