Mata-Crappie

The Mata-Crappie

Curtis Fry- May, 2019

About 10 years ago, Cheech and I were fishing for Crappie and Smallmouth bass on Brownlee Reservoir along the Idaho/Oregon border. I had tied up a bunch of these panfish-friendly wire-bodied patterns and brought them along. As it turned out, these little bugs did some damage on the Crappie that trip. Since that time, I've used them on White Bass, Bluegills, Carp, Largemouth and Smallmouth bass as well as a few trout here and there. It's a fun pattern to tie that sinks quickly enough to get down to fish while the legs flutter and add good action to the fly. I recently made some changes to the original pattern (I get bored of tying things the same way sometimes) and took it for a spin. It ended up working very well and ended up catching blugill, largemouth and a couple of rainbow trout. I usually fish this on either an indicator rig mooched slowly along or I'll fish it with an intermediate or midge tip type line depending on the situation. The fish above took it on a vertically retrieved midge tip line just off the bottom in 8 ft of water. Give it a whirl and go chase some warmwater critters!