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The Gummy Minnow (The Poor Man's version)
I was at a local store recently to get ready for a white bass trip and thought I would pick up a couple of Gummy Minnows. A pattern by Blane Chocklett, Gummy Minnows, are more like a soft body lure than a fly. They are sometimes preferred by striped fish in certain situations. I haven't had much luck with them but my fishing partners have. Recently a buddy bummed one from me and caught one of the biggest white bass on our trip, White Bass Blitz a Flyrodders Dream. I have also watched my son get take after take from sea-runs in the Pearl by dragging Gummies on the surface of the turbulent water just below the white water. Skimming over the surface it apparently looked like an injured minnow to the stripers and clousers didn't get the same reaction. I think it was the flat solid profile of the Gummy on top of the water that looked more minnow-like than the clousers.
My own experiences with the Gummy haven't been that great. I was able to verify a club member's tip that skipjacks, for some reason, are a sucker for them, stripped quickly through a current. But I have been disappointed in the Gummy. On a trip I like to call the "Specktacular" trip, I gave the gummy a good opportunity to show it's viability compared to clousers. I was drifting clousers in a tidal flow and I was catching a speck on almost every cast. The hits would come just when the fly would swing and rise into the dangle. Nobody in his right mind changes flys when he's catching fish, but I had a moment of temporary insanity and thought I would try a gummy minnow to see if it would do as well. After about ten casts without a hit, I said "to heck with this" and put a clouser back on and started catching fish again. I think all that my test meant is that the gummy minnow is not a fly to swing through the current because it is stiff compared to something like a marabou clouser. That stiffness is probably the same reason it works in some cases when the clouser may not. For example, I have seen the Gummy Minnow catch fish by letting it fall and also by stripping it fast. And of course the injured minnow trick my son showed me which I think is something unique to the Gummy. I have always tied my own Gummies, but most of them have been loaned out to others rather than used by me.
Knowing my Sili-skin stockpile was low and buying material would be expensive, I thought I would just buy a few ready-made for my trip. Wow, did I get a surprise. In a well-known local sporting store the price of one #2 Gummy was $6.50. I couldn't believe my eyes. Smaller gummies were somewhat less expensive, like $5.95. The thought of losing flys at $6.50 a pop in the brushy structure of Chotard was making me think I could just do without. Then it occurred to me that getting the material and making some would be less expensive. But that's a catch-22 because if you make the gummy the traditional way it requires green, silver and most importantly, mother-of-pearl Sili-skin. Getting strips of all three material at $7.50 per strip was going to be expensive. I looked at the strip of mother-of-pearl on the rack for $7.50 and figured I could just get the MOP and substitute other material for the green and silver. The last few Gummies I made were after I ran out of silver and I just used tin foil instead. Though not as pretty as the store-bought, they caught fish just fine.
The gummy minnow below was made with a piece of mother-of-pearl Sili-skin and putting a piece of peacock herl in the middle as a substitue for the green Sili-skin. The silver layer was just left out completely.
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