A little background on this one: about ten years ago when I was working for Reel-Time, I called Eric Peterson down in Fairfield for a fishing report. Eric said the fishing was slow, but he "guaranteed" he was going to catch a striper over 20 pounds that week. I think it was in July or August, so I was a bit skeptical, but Eric's reputation being what it is, I asked him how he planned to do it without resorting to dynamite or poison. He told me a story about how he was fishing one evening when a guy nearby happened to catch a small sea robin and tossed it back in. The fish kind of wallowed around on the surface for a few minutes until an enormous bass came up from nowhere and gulped it down. Eric went home and designed a sea robin pattern, which he said never failed to produce a big bass or two whenever things got a little slow. When I asked him to describe the fly, he was pretty evasive, ( I think he sold them in his shop) so I was left to come up with some ideas of my own. I use a number of less complicated patterns, but this is the one I like the best, though it's a pain to tie. Kind of a wool-headed sculpin-type fly on a bigger scale. I tie it unweighted and just let it drift along under the surface on a very slow retrieve. It's a pretty effective pattern, especially in low light.
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