Hoochie Fly Patterns

Wetswinger

Wetswinger

Beneath the surface of the mud, there’s more mud.
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Last Summer I resorted to meat fishing a few times and had good success for Coho twitching an all white 5" Hootchie on my spinning gear. I want to use the flyrod more this year and thought it would be nice to tie-up something resembling them. I know the heavy jigging weight won't be possible, but WTH. Anybody got any ideas?
 
matching the hatch is always a good idea. i tied up some flies to match the hatch one year and out fished the entire fleet for about 2 weeks. my fly boxes are packed as we are getting ready to move other wise i would send you an image, sorry. there are many very nice hootchies that closely resemble various small bait fish. i fished my line on a down rigger, no other weight needed.
 
Depends on where you are fishing, but if in the Ocean or Strait I wouldn't bother trying to match a specific hoochie and just fish a similar sized flash tail clouser. My color preference was always chartreuse and white but YMMV. Also if your buddies on the boat hook up cast near their hooked fish. If there's a bunch of feeding coho around it is pretty much a guaranteed hookup.
 
Chris Bellows said:
Depends on where you are fishing, but if in the Ocean or Strait I wouldn't bother trying to match a specific hoochie and just fish a similar sized flash tail clouser. My color preference was always chartreuse and white but YMMV. Also if your buddies on the boat hook up cast near their hooked fish. If there's a bunch of feeding coho around it is pretty much a guaranteed hookup.
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after 10 years on the strait, i have to disagree with your take on this. you can pull whatever you wish but i have found coho tend to focus on some specific bait fish which are available. the trick is to find out what they are eating. and i never found coho on the surface feeding. down at least 20' and deeper. the one day i hauled a coho on board, it belched up a ton of pilchard. i cleaned one off took and image and came home and tied something to match. silver doctor blue on top, white underneath, simple and sparse, i keep preaching that, and low and behold it was a killer fly for 2 weeks.
 
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Not sure if relevant or useful but i tie my own hoochies for kokanee. Used to use bucktail tied all around the tube but now am using ep fibers. Eyes seem to be optional to the fish. The tube length seems to matter with the two snelled hooks- if it is too short it is foulville, too long and something causes the fish to not like it. I use donwriggers but maybe a big egg sinker in front of the fly?
 
gpt said:
after 10 years on the strait, i have to disagree with your take on this. you can pull whatever you wish but i have found coho tend to focus on some specific bait fish which are available. the trick is to find out what they are eating. and i never found coho on the surface feeding. down at least 20' and deeper. the one day i hauled a coho on board, it belched up a ton of pilchard. i cleaned one off took and image and came home and tied something to match. silver doctor blue on top, white underneath, simple and sparse, i keep preaching that, and low and behold it was a killer fly for 2 weeks.
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Well I don't pull anything when fly fishing since I don't troll (at least on the water ;)). My experience in the Strait is from Port Angeles west and I have seen coho on the surface near kelp beds near Freshwater Bay but I have also fished rips off of the spit and found salmon by casting clousers. If you have aggressively feeding coho that are being caught the way the OP mentioned (twitching a hoochie) my experience is that casting a flashtail clouser will often out fish other fly patterns. It's good to have multiple patterns to try if one isn't working but often a fly that matches the profile but stands out a bit will kill.

It's also pretty easy to get down twenty to thirty feet with a sinking fly line. I rarely ever fish clousers on a floating line as the rod rigged with a floater always had a popper attached.
 
Chris Bellows said:
Well I don't pull anything when fly fishing since I don't troll (at least on the water ;)). My experience in the Strait is from Port Angeles westthe and I have seen coho on the surface near kelp beds near Freshwater Bay but I have also fished rips off of the spit and found salmon by casting clousers. If you have aggressively feeding coho that are being caught the way the OP mentioned (twitching a hoochie) my experience is that casting a flashtail clouser will often out fish other fly patterns. It's good to have multiple patterns to try if one isn't working but often a fly that matches the profile but stands out a bit will kill.

It's also pretty easy to get down twenty to thirty feet with a sinking fly line. I rarely ever fish clousers on a floating line as the rod rigged with a floater always had a popper attached.
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the kelp beds from the caves to tongue point will hold amazing numbers of chinook but i have never hooked a coho in that area. if you are not floating, this is impossible to fish from the banks.
 
Chris Bellows said:
If you do want a hoochie type fly, maybe look at something like the Shock and Awe tube fly with some added rubber legs. The weight gives it the great up and down action and the rubber legs will add some more motion.
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They do work for coho sometimes!

I think that a hoochie is actually just a really bad baitfish imitation, it‘s the action that catches the fish, not the lure. You cant imitate that action with a fly, so better to try to tie a better baitfish.
 
We seem to be talking about trolling a bunch. Is twitching a weighted hoochie on a spinning rod (which is what the OP mentioned) a trolling method? I thought he was describing a casting and retrieving method when discussing potential flies. My fly recommendations do not work trolled.

I would also add that imo flash tied longer than the other fibers on a fly often imparts a pretty damn good action on a weighted fly like a clouser, especially soft flash like Flashabou (although flies are less durable and tangle more with super soft flash)
 
You can cast (lob) 1/8 oz jighead on a fly rod.
Would probably recommend an 8 wt or up.
Just get some steelhead jig heads and tie up what you want.
You can also just buy some hootchie skirts and slide them over the jigheads if you don’t feel like tying anything up.
SF
 
A
gpt said:
the kelp beds from the caves to tongue point will hold amazing numbers of chinook but i have never hooked a coho in that area. if you are not floating, this is impossible to fish from the banks.
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I have fished buzz bombs off the rocks in that general area but that depends on bunch of yearly kelp growth. All of my fly fishing in that area was done in a kayak which allows access into areas the trollers can't or won't go. I've always found the coho not near the kelp but in the kelp. Also, kayak fishing vs trolling in a boat is like walking vs driving in the ability to observe small details. Focusing on fly fishing you look for things I never look for when gear fishing. If you're trolling off the kelp beds, especially down riggers, you likely aren't paying attention to the same things someone with a fly rod slowly working in and around the kelp does.
 
Chris Bellows said:
We seem to be talking about trolling a bunch. Is twitching a weighted hoochie on a spinning rod (which is what the OP mentioned) a trolling method? I thought he was describing a casting and retrieving method when discussing potential flies. My fly recommendations do not work trolled.

I would also add that imo flash tied longer than the other fibers on a fly often imparts a pretty damn good action on a weighted fly like a clouser, especially soft flash like Flashabou (although flies are less durable and tangle more with super soft flash)
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I’ve always thought the soft flash out the back would look like a wounded bait fish casting off scales. Just my thoughts
 
Chris Bellows said:
A


I have fished buzz bombs off the rocks in that general area but that depends on bunch of yearly kelp growth. All of my fly fishing in that area was done in a kayak which allows access into areas the trollers can't or won't go. I've always found the coho not near the kelp but in the kelp. Also, kayak fishing vs trolling in a boat is like walking vs driving in the ability to observe small details. Focusing on fly fishing you look for things I never look for when gear fishing. If you're trolling off the kelp beds, especially down riggers, you likely aren't paying attention to the same things someone with a fly rod slowly working in and around the kelp does.
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generalizing about people you don't know or have observed is always fraught with error. just sayin...
 
gpt said:
generalizing about people you don't know or have observed is always fraught with error. just sayin...
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I have never questioned your answers regarding what flies troll best as I have zero experience.

My "generalizing" is from years of reading your posts on the other forum. Maybe it's from having vastly different fishing experiences in close proximity such as what my "generalizing" post was about. You said it was "impossible" to fish from shore, and I replied that I have fished gear from shore in that area with a caveat (kelp growth). You said you have never caught coho in that area. I "generalized" why that might be since I have caught many coho in the area. I guess I shouldn't have "generalized" without asking if you fish that area later in the summer when the coho may be in the area. I shouldn't "generalize" that fishermen fishing different gear see and pay attention to different things on the water, even though my experience says that it is more often than not accurate. But I apologize and will defer to your ability to see and pay attention to the same things I do even though we're fishing different gear at different speeds and in different water. Interesting that someone with your wealth of fly fishing experience would continue trolling when seeing coho blowing up on firecracker herring deep in the kelp beds.

I "generalized" nothing about areas I haven't fished myself. Your experience may differ but my initial post wasn't a response to your matching the hatch post even though it was right after. I gave my opinion about casting flies to substitute for a hoochie targeting coho in the Ocean and Strait. I didn't state that it would work everywhere, as I'm not that vain. I'll admit that you likely have more experience in the Eastern Strait (since I have zero experience east of Ediz Hook), but the Strait doesn't end west of Area 6, and I have far more time on the water in the western Strait and Ocean and my time on the water is 95%+ actual fly fishing, not trolling flies on a downrigger. I guess my mistake wasn't saying the Strait west of PA.

I've been a long time evangelist for casting flies for coho when the common thought was you needed to troll (whether deep or bucktailing). I believe my years of guiding anglers in the Ocean and western Strait where we did zero trolling even with inexperienced anglers backs up my zeal of casting flies for coho.

Cheers-
 
Chris Bellows said:
I have never questioned your answers regarding what flies troll best as I have zero experience.

My "generalizing" is from years of reading your posts on the other forum. Maybe it's from having vastly different fishing experiences in close proximity such as what my "generalizing" post was about. You said it was "impossible" to fish from shore, and I replied that I have fished gear from shore in that area with a caveat (kelp growth). You said you have never caught coho in that area. I "generalized" why that might be since I have caught many coho in the area. I guess I shouldn't have "generalized" without asking if you fish that area later in the summer when the coho may be in the area. I shouldn't "generalize" that fishermen fishing different gear see and pay attention to different things on the water, even though my experience says that it is more often than not accurate. But I apologize and will defer to your ability to see and pay attention to the same things I do even though we're fishing different gear at different speeds and in different water. Interesting that someone with your wealth of fly fishing experience would continue trolling when seeing coho blowing up on firecracker herring deep in the kelp beds.

I "generalized" nothing about areas I haven't fished myself. Your experience may differ but my initial post wasn't a response to your matching the hatch post even though it was right after. I gave my opinion about casting flies to substitute for a hoochie targeting coho in the Ocean and Strait. I didn't state that it would work everywhere, as I'm not that vain. I'll admit that you likely have more experience in the Eastern Strait (since I have zero experience east of Ediz Hook), but the Strait doesn't end west of Area 6, and I have far more time on the water in the western Strait and Ocean and my time on the water is 95%+ actual fly fishing, not trolling flies on a downrigger. I guess my mistake wasn't saying the Strait west of PA.

I've been a long time evangelist for casting flies for coho when the common thought was you needed to troll (whether deep or bucktailing). I believe my years of guiding anglers in the Ocean and western Strait where we did zero trolling even with inexperienced anglers backs up my zeal of casting flies for coho.

Cheers-
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So Chris, I've only been out to sekiu/Neah Bay twice and not for silvers. Is it just finding rips out in the shipping lanes, or scouring the kelp beds for eaters like the rockfish on the surface?

Standard 6wt sink 6?
 
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