Spotted Grunter on the sand.  Its where they become absolute assholes.  Its where the shots are fleeting and the fish are wise.  Its right up my alley.

Ive become used to the “grunter bump”.  For the first 30 or so of these bumps I used to think I was missing the strike, but after using some seriously naughty trailing hooks I figured there is no ways these fish are avoiding a hook.

A few weekends ago in discussion with Paul Cowley, Craig Thomassen and JD Filmalter we got talking about this.  And Paul told a hell of a story.  A little grunt that appeared under an X-rap boat side off of a mud flat, which activated its tractorbeam prawn sucker and pulled the big lure completely under, from some distance below.

Ive seen it on the sand, and even on the grass in the Southern Cape, where a grunter will swim along and just inhale the crab fly with seemily minimal effort.  It just somehow ends up in its mouth.

My theory is that these clever little bastards have learnt to create a hydraulic with the weak swimming sand prawn.  A quick suck and the prawn will get stuck in this hydraulic like a toddler in a class 5 rapid.  The problem is that without the perfect buoyancy you cant take advantage of this.  Its what the JAM fly does so brilliantly.  So I’m trying to take further advantage of this with my next bunch of creations.

We’ll see…