Hook Size: 2 and 3/0
The “Perfect Fly” Shad Fly is a very realistic streamer imitation of a common freshwater shad, one of the most plentiful baitfish in existence. These are called river herring by many and are members of the Clupidae Family of fish. The most plentiful species that exist in freshwater are the Gizzard and Threadfin shad. While the Perfect Fly Shad fly was designed to primarily imitate smaller size threadfin shad, it will equally as well imitate small Gizzard shad. These fish exist in just about every freshwater stream in the nation that has water that reaches above seventy degrees.
The Shad Fly Streamer is most useful fly fishing for different species of bass.
Smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, spotted bass, stripped bass both landlocked
and saltwater migratory species that spawn in freshwater are some of the fish the
fly is used for. Both hybird and non-hybrid stripped bass take the fly with
vigorous strikes.
The Shad fly is an excellent fly to use for large brown and rainbow trout that feed
on shad that get through the turbines of dams from the lakes and reservoirs
above the tailwater. This happens most often during a shad kill where the water
gets too cold for shad to live in the lake above the dam. When this happens,
large brown and rainbow trout take advantage of the huge amount of easy to
acquire food and the Shad Fly works great to imitate the dead dieing shad. They
also work in the lakes when this event takes place.
The Shad Fly can be fished several different ways. It can be weighted by adding
split shot and other types of weights in front of the fly and fished on or near the
bottom. Weight also helps get the fly down to mid stream depths in deep water
lake and rivers. It can also be fished without any added weight.
Most of the time bass feeding on shad push schools of these baitfish up near the
surface. Many are eaten directly on the surface of the water. In this case the
Shad Streamer Fly works best unweighted and fished on or near the surface. An
erratic retrieve usually works better than a steady retrieve.
