A New Beginning
How can a fly angler get the vibration and light benefits of modern fishing’s all-time great spinner bait lure? Several problems interrupt the fly designer, but the active mind of a fertile fly designer angler solves those problems and the problems of new anglers.
With this commitment, Brian Schmidt of Brian Schmidt Baits????, solved the problems of weight to give fly anglers the pulsing and flashing that bucket mouth bass can’t leave alone. The Scmidterbait is a bait fish imitating fly mixed with a weighted head and sprinkled with the light of a spinning blade which is suspended on a wire arm.
“I took the idea from my conventional spinner bait.” Says the Pennsylvania native, “The difficulty was in finding the correct lengths of both arms and the proper weight on the bottom to make it track true.”
Like a chef explaining the magic/important proportions of spices in a complex recipe, Schmidt explains that he had been using lighter wire on his spinner baits when he realized the extra vibration was a starting point for a fly. Replacing the blades with smaller versions and the rubber skirt of spinning tackle versions with flash and a poof of marabou and ostrich reduced the weight to a workable level.
After spending months studying his prototypes under water, Schmidt gave fly anglers a radical crossover fly, fly anglers making the switch from lures a bit of comfort food to begin their fly career and those of us who promote fly fishing a tool to attract new anglers.
In order to get these benefits, you need to make adjustments to your cast. Strip in a bit more line than usual and accelerate your rod tip over a longer path. The fly will need to turn a wide corner to wait a while on the pause. When you stop the forward progress of the cast, the fly and line will crash hard, so be ready to shoot some line in order to let the fly go farther.
