wrasse on the fly

just wondering if anybody has had much luck catching wrasse on the fly. only had limited success myself. tried permit crab style flies but only caught a dozen or so

Hi Lumpy,

I havent tried for wrasse yet but they are on the target list for the fly this year, been making some crab patterns up with tulip bodies, they look ok but only time will tell. How did you fish you crab patterns, dead drifting in the wash or twitched about?

Marty

both. fished them in the kelp beds were we get them on bait. tended to fish them in small twitches once the reached the correct dept. surprisingly i got alot of pollock on them. working on a marabu type pattern that would pulsate more in the water. gonna try fish these more on the dead drift.

Yea i reconed they could be good for pollock too in the right place, the pollock reg take small shore crabs up here when wrasse fishing with bait. Roll on the summer.

certainly couldnt believe the amount of smaller pollack we got. also had a couple of wrasse on small orange minkies. heard that wrasse are a very teritorial fish so i think they take these flies out of agression rather than hunger. not sure what others opinion is on this.

I deff think they are very teritorial, we did quite alot of wrasse fishing in a few spots last year and it didnt take long to notice the fishing going quiet if one spot was fished a bit too often, I would say this is also the reason they will attack things you wouldnt expect them too, protecting thier enviorment and all that. On several rocky marks the fish could be localised to within a few meters, being a few meters either side would see no results even though the ground was very similar. Through pics we where also able to identify the same fish for the same marks several times over the season.

I recon shrimp patterns could be worth a try for them too. I`ve knocked up a load of pink glister shrimps that I think will work in the right place. If not out of attraction then hopefully because they dont like a pink thing encroaching on thier teritory and decide to chomp it. The big ballans also seem to have a likeing for the odd corkwing and rockcook wrasse, possibly for the same reason again?

thats interesting about the shrimps because ive a few very heavy ones i use for flounder that might be worth a try. what type of line would you recomend. ive being using a fast intermediate (3.2inc/sec) but was considering one of the high floaters like they use for drift fishing for tarpon. think these may have an application for drift fishing for wrasse, abit like the way you upstream nymph for trout and grayling

Im no expert when it comes to lines etc mate, Ive only been at the swiffing since last year having never used a fly rod before that. I mainly use #9 shooting heads with 20lb gold stren as running line and simply change the head to suit the enviroment/style. Most of our wrasse fishing is done in water with a decent depth (15ft+) so I`ll prob start with an inter or fast sink head and go from there depending on how I feel about the presentation. I fancy trying the floater with the shrimps in the shallower spots allowing the fly to take some of the head under then use its floating propertys to tease the shrimp up before letting it settle again. The pink boys I have tied are not too heavily weighted with just a bit of lead wire whipped along the underside of the hook shank to try and make them ride the right way up in the water. The rest of my shrimp patterns are not weighted at all but then they where tied for bass in shallow water (hopefully). Ive dead drifted clousers and candies on the floater (full length line) before and like the way they where presented esp when in a bit of a rip so why not crabs or shrimps in the right place.

I had this pretty fish this year on a size 2 black bunny strip clouser dead drifted

A very pleasant suprise

[img]http://www.uksaltwaterflies.com/images/wrassex800.jpg[/img]

Nice fish Barra, and a very nice photo to match. I hope the lads don't give out too much abuse over the pink backing :wink: :roll:

Kev

was it taken dead drifting with a floater, i.e similar to buzzer fishing for rainbows

I was fishing for pollock up near Omey Island and couldn't get a touch, so I changed to a crab imitation and here's the result!
[img]http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y224/thornback/WrasseShindillaPointjpg.jpg[/img].

First ever Wrasse on fly - about 1 kilo - well OK, it is a little bit foul-hooked, but good enough for me :D I was stripping back a fair bit in not particularly deep water, so it was a real surprise.

Tim

nice fish about 2lb weight :?: :o :) :)

Jaysus, Wrasse on the Fly... Think I'll have to get myself a Fly Rod for Next Summer... Looks too fun to miss....

If you think wrasse are good fun on the fly :lol: :lol: wait until you get a mackerel especially on a small fly rod :lol: :o :P Lazy

if you want to have a good fight on a fly rod buy your self a 6wt and go after mackeral and pollock, fishing small heavily tinselled flies just ander the surface late in the eve. best sport i had all summer was this way, a 3 lb pollock is quite a hanbful on a 6wt. wrasse are a different kettle of fish as they are significantly harder to catce than the afore mentioned species.

ive had some mackeral and pollack on a my trout rod it was nearly bent into a complete circle with the mackeral. they jumped as well! cant ask for much more. :shock:

ya their great. got a 9ft 3 wt which i'm gonna have at them with nxt year, now that should be fun. i got a couple of flies i had alot of success with last year that i have to post a pic of when i get my camera sorted again

3wt :shock: :!: :!: should be very interesting :!: :!:

I caught a 6 1/2lb mullet on a 2/3#. It took 34 mins to land.