Long live the Muddler
Henry Clement, Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, August 2023.
By Skip Clement
I was preparing to watch Matt O’Neal of Savage Flies on YouTube tie of a Muddler Minnow variation. Mid-thought, I decided to tie it as a tube fly and take advantage of those merits. My task was what to watch. I landed on Jacklin who is anchored to ‘the way it was in the day.’
I admit there are many more great vids of tying this timeless gem
Minnesota’s Don Gapen invented the original Muddler Minnow fly. My experience with the fly followed me from trout and smallmouth bass fly fishing in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York’s Adirondacks, and West Virginia to twenty-odd years in South Florida, where it did not suffer a no-hit day. Leaving many a Cracker to “uh and ah” over a fly they thought I had something to do with. It was a good redfish and snook fly, as well as for baby tarpon erratically swum in those endeavors, and it was a largemouth bass killer when dragged over lily pads.each
Initially, Don tied the fly to encourage stubborn Brook Trout to stop by for a bite. The outcome was that they could not resist the Muddler. It has been that way with the Gapen Muddler since its first deployment in the mid-1930s.
Getting to know the Muddler
Before Matt O’Neal begins each tie, there is always a historical reference of who, when, where, and what. The Muddler Savage resourced that evening, following along was from Dave Hughes’ Essential Trout Flies (Stackhouse Books).
Matt O’Neal and several other anglers and fly tiers have mentioned the author’s book many times for at least two decades.
Fresh from the sea Coho (Silver) Salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch). The best jumper of the Pacific salmon. Illustration by world-class colorist, Thom Glace.
As you will observe, Gapen’s Muddler has many offspring—variations of his masterpiece. Some tiers credit Don Gapen with the inspiration, while others do not. Tie the Muddler for multiple outings; copies will live in your fly box forever.
My recollection of the Muddler’s universality included flats species like snook and redfish. Of the ‘other’ fly tiers I have witnessed online, at fly fishing shows, or in magazines, almost all the usual freshwater favorites come to mind as caught by their Gapen variant: rainbow, hybrid stripers, northern pike, brown trout, stripers, graying, coho Salmo, Dolly Varden, and, of course, brook trout.
The book, Essential Trout Flies
Tying Gapen’s Muddler is difficult because a tier has to use almost everything to tie this fly. A newbie might balk at tying this fly, but persistence would be rewarding.
“Study of an Arctic Grayling with Montana Local Markings” – from Photographs supplied by The Grizzly Hackle Fly Shop Staff of Missoula, Montana. Donated to Casting From Recovery in 2016 to raise funding at the Montana Auction.” – Thom Glace.
Everything from feathers to bodkins, hook setting to finding, and fly fishing how-to. It is a perfect checklist because Hughes, over time, learned that clutter and too much material are just a waste of money and time. Then Hughes goes right into all the patterns one could think to corral a trout with branding most fly tyers recognize Prince Nymph, Woolly Bugger, Muddler, Adams, and others including the better iterations that have earned a new name, but recognizable as mothered by or fathered by for example, Muddler Minnow and so many others. They have new colors and sizes of Adams’s and Prince’s by adding a feature, deleting a feature, and so on. And it is all good – nobody is bitchin’.
Innovating is the fun of tying your flies.
The remarkable measure of the book is how well Hughes calibrated his writing, explaining why a particular step is required and why. Without this, the book will not prove its worth.
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