September Night
HOOK: Eagle Claw 253, sizes 1/0 to 3/0.
THREAD: White 6/0.
TAIL: 30 gray bucktail hairs under two white saddle hackles tied flat under two strips of silver flash.
BODY: Silver braid.
THROAT: Sparse, long white bucktail tied as a three-quarter collar, both sides and bottom.
COLLAR: White marabou, folded or doubled three or four turns.
WING: 30 long white bucktail hairs under 15 strands of purple bucktail under two strands of blue flash under one natural black saddle hackle.
Big Eelie
HOOK: Eagle Claw 253, sizes 1/0 to 3/0.
THREAD: White 6/0.
TAIL: 30 white bucktail hairs under white saddle under 4 strands of pearl flash under yellow saddle under blue saddle under olive saddle (use pencil-thin saddle feathers).
BODY: Pearl braid.
COLLAR: Two to three turns of white marabou, tied in at the tip.
Orange Ruthless
HOOK: Gamakatsu SC15, size 2.
THREAD: White 6/0.
TAIL: 30 orange bucktail hairs under two strands of emerald green flash under a red saddle tied flat.
BODY: Gold braid.
HACKLE: Soft, webby, fire orange saddle, palmered.
September Night
It may be easy to confuse smaller baits like silversides and anchovies, but there’s no mistaking the rounded cigar shape of mullet. You find them in worried pods along the Rhode Island coast in late summer and fall. The September Night is the brainchild of Ken Abrames. Here he describes the genesis of the fly.
“I looked at a mullet, then I went home and tied the fly. I went fishing that night in Newport [Rhode Island]it was Septemberand caught over forty bass on it. I just let it swing to where the fish were holding, and they loved it. It may look fully dressed, but it’s still a sparse fly. While it’s got everything it needs, it doesn’t have too much of anything. Tie it in full silhouette, about as thick around as a man’s index finger.”
I tie the September Night from 3 to 9 inches long. Sometimes I tie it with a ginger or yellow marabou collar. This is a reliable year-round pattern that also works for trout and steelhead.
Big Eelie
I’ve caught more double-digit-pound stripers on the Big Eelie than on any other soft hackle. Another Abrames pattern, it’s a high-confidence fly that I use whenever sand eels reach the three-inch mark. What makes the Big Eelie so effective is its profile. Sand eels are a slender bait, and the saddle hackles that form the tail are pencil thin. In the water, the marabou collapses around the body like a veil, creating movement and an effect of dimensionality. I tie this fly in many different color schemes, from bright white/yellow/chartreuse to foreboding black/blue/purple, and all points in between. Stripers have said yes to all of them.
One June night on Block Island, stripers were ambushing sand eels where a sandy flat dropped off into deeper water. Their noisy feeding was clearly audible against the backdrop of rolling breakers. After three hours of virtually nonstop action, including some 15-pound fish, my thumb was raw and I was ready to call it a night. As I left, another fly angler who had been fishing 20 yards awayand not doing nearly so much catchingchased me down the beach. He had been fishing a dumbbell-eyed sand eel and wanted to know what fly I was using. With a smile, I reached into my box and handed him a Big Eelie.
Orange Ruthless
Each May, three mobs descend upon the salt ponds of South County, Rhode Island: clam worms, stripers, and fly anglers. The worms are there to mate, and the stripers, to eat. So both will be enjoying themselves as much as such creatures can. Anglers will often be a different story: angst, bewilderment, and even fury over too much bait and too few stripers that are willing to take their fly. Success boils down to presentation, perseverance, and luck. The right fly helps, too.
While Ken’s Orange Ruthless is a single-feather flatwing, I believe its real magic stems from the soft, flowing hackle palmered along its body. In the water, each fiber comes alive, even when the fly is at rest. A good fly will catch when the bait it’s supposed to imitate is present. A great fly will catch when there is no such bait close to where you’re fishing. Ken puts it this way: “Stripers see clam worms all year long, and they like them.” So do I, especially as a searching pattern on a three-fly team. And in the “go figure” department, I have done very well with this fly when small grass shrimps are swarming. While I sometimes go bigger or smaller, I like to tie the Orange Ruthless about two inches long.