Tiny little bait fish – bait, sprats, herring, fry or whatever you may call them –  are a staple food source in both salt and fresh water. They’re pretty generic and can be easy to broadly mimic with a fly – not also not easy to imitate exactly. “Bait” or “fry” is universally identified as small (1cm – 5cm) fish that appear, usually in shoals, in the various areas of our fisheries and at certain times of the year. While their species are varied, they are often a variation of ;round herring’.

These little guys are crucial to the food chain around the world, and it’s well worth having a couple of good imitations in your box. Even better to know what the little sprats in your local look like. 

Above are just four examples of hundreds them: even the same species subtle differences but all have similar triggers. Contrast and eyes…

But as happens in fly fishing, there are days when fish get selective and focus on a very particular prey, ignoring all else. Here in Qatar, the springtime Queenfish can get very preoccupied with the ‘bait’ that appear en masse in the inshore. So preoccupied, that I’ve had clouser minnows and poppers, pulled right through busting baitballs, be completely ignored. Finding a realistic fly imitation was a bit of an issue until I paged through Blane Chocklett’s Game Changer. The book includes a section on his Gummy Minnow. It was a no brainer that this was the fly to match this hatch. 

Gummi skin takes a little while to get used to, I found it rather frustrating in the beginning, but once you get your head and fingers around it, you can really create some specific looking imitations.