The Orvis Fly Fishing Guide Podcast with Tom Rosenbauer

I had the pleasure of appearing on the Orvis Fly Fishing Guide Podcast for the second time. In this episode, Tom Rosenbauer and I discuss late-season fly fishing tactics for panfish. The episode dropped this week, and you can listen to it by clicking the button below or finding it on your favorite podcast player.

The Micro Creature

The Creature is one of my all-time favorite subsurface patterns for jumbo panfish. The Creature is a mop fly with an extended body that imitates various aquatic foods, including dragonfly nymphs, tadpoles, crayfish, and even small bait fish. It can be tied in multiple colors, but I have always been limited in how small I could tie the fly as the standard mop fibers were too big for hook sizes smaller than a size eight.

The original Creature is a mouthful for most sunfish!

The Creature is quite a mouthful for smaller sunfish. Larger sunfish devour these flies, but small fish sometimes grab it by an appendage or the end of the body and swim off, missing the hook entirely.

The Micro Mop Fibers are thinner and slightly longer than standard fibers.

Last season I was introduced to a new thinner mop material that allows me to tie smaller versions of fly patterns that use mop materials like the Creature. These new thinner fibers also allowed me to create extended-body damsel fly imitations. These new damsel flies proved as effective as the larger Mop Gurglers I tie to imitate larger dragonflies.

A size 12 dragon fly imitation I fished last season to imitate the small brown dragonflies that inhabit my local waters

I spent the better part of last summer testing these new patterns on various flies, and I am happy to announce they passed their field trials with flying colors! I tied Creatures, Mop Gurglars, Damselflies, and many nymph and mop patterns for trout, and I have been thrilled with the results.

The Micro Creature tied as a Euro style jig pattern for trout.

These new mop fibers are available in eleven colors - Natural browns, tans, and olives and bright attractor colors like yellow, sunburst, pink, and purple. In addition, blue damsel and insect green make great extended bodies for the damselflies often found in these bright colors. The color is luminous, and the unique weave gives the fibers a segmented look.

A standard sized Creature tied on a size 8 Mustad 3366. Micro creatures can be tied down to a size 16.

You tie the Micro Creature the same as you would the standard version, but you can scale the size down with these thinner fibers. The feathers from smaller game birds like grouse, partridge, and hens can be used for the hackle. You will also want to scale down the diameter of the rubber legs to ensure the fly still has that great action in the water. The early-season panfish I am catching right now seem to prefer these flies in the 12-14 size range.

A late February bluegill caught on an olive Micro Creature

I am happy to announce that I have secured enough of this material to make it commercially available. I have a good supply of all eleven colors, so they should be around for a while, but I have been wrong about that in the past. So grab them while you can!

Micro Mop fibers come in 11 colors