MAT1. The Black Matuka Streamer Fly

WHO INVENTED THE MATUKA?
If you know please e-mail me. The Matuka fly pattern was named after the New Zealand bird whose feathers were originally used in the construction of the fly’s wing. Matuka is the Mauri word for the Bittern bird. The idea of binding the hackle wing along the top of the hook shank originated in New Zealand over 50 years ago. The term Matuka fly has since come to mean a winging style of fly tying where the the feather is secured to the top of the hook shank by turns of ribbing. The use of such a large feather as a wing and tail was a masterstroke because when it moves through the water it wiggles and fools the fish into thinking that the fly is alive. The fly represents fry or minnows, but also makes an effective suggestive pattern of something a hungry trout would like to eat. The very robust wing that resembles the long dorsal fin of a bait fish. They were introduced to the USA and the rest of the world about 1975. They have been tied in just about every color combination you can imagine. Have the hackle wings of a streamer fly you were using ever twisted round the gape of a hook while casting? When this happens, the fly moves through the water like a propeller, instead of swimming with a smooth, minnow-like action. If this really annoys you then change to using Matuka style flies

The black matuka can be used as an imitation of a small sculpin. Many smallmouth bass rivers have large populations of sculpins. These creatures are bottom hugging minnows that live under stones in well aerated water. This means that smallmouths living below riffles often feed heavily on sculpins as the offer a substantial meal. Wade into a river just below a riffle and cast across and slightly downstream. Give your streamer time to sink and then strip the line to make your fly swim along the bottom a good six inches every five or so seconds. Make about six casts to the same location and make each one about four feet longer than the last. If you do not have any luck wade about three yards downstream and start the sequence again. This overlapping casting system enables the fly to be seen by nearly all the bass in front of you. A prime feeding location for bass is against a three foot deep shaded bank as this is where the sculpins like to live. Wade into the middle of the river and cast downstream tight against the bank. If you do not get an immediate strike move down stream about five foot. If you see minnows splashing through the shallows they are probably trying to evade predatory bass or trout. Smallmouths often patrol around gravel bars and grass beds on overcast days at dawn and dusk. Cast your fly about three feet in front of the minnow and to the side of the minnows. Aim to strip your streamer through the middle of the shoal in the hope of presenting it in front of the oncoming bass.

CUSTOMER'S COMMENTS
The Black Matuka provided its worth on a rather unpromising bright day on Blagdon Lake in Somerset, South West England. Two 2lb rainbows, lost a couple and a number of good pulls. Seemed to like a slow retrieve on an intermediate line. Small nymphs and buzzers were hopeless. Dr Kevin Brooker-Milburn, Bristol, UK

STREAMER LURES
In Britain this type of fly is called a 'Lure'. Streamers (including hairwings/bucktails) represent various small fish, and are tied on long-shanked hooks. They may be tied as deceivers, imitations of local small baitfish or as vivid colorful attractors that suggest something alive, edible or a threat. The attractors are also designed to stimulate a predatory fish's aggression. They are usually a little heavier than the nymphs, and the wind resistance can vary depending on the particular fly. A streamer is tied with soft feathers, such as cock saddle hackles or marabou, and is intended for fishing in relatively small and calm waters. By contrast, bucktails are tied with hair wings instead of feathers - originally hair from a deer's tail, hence the name but also squirrel hair. They are more suitable for fishing in broad, fast waters.

Historically, streamers belong to the American east coast, while bucktails come from the west coast. All these flies are fished in the same way. It is both the easiest way of flyfishing, and the method that yields the biggest fish! This may sound paradoxical, but it isn't. There are two reasons: you can do nothing wrong with a big streamer or buck-tail, and the fact is that big fish prefer big flies. The nice thing about small fish compared with tiny insects and crustaceans is that, to a great extent, they can oppose the current. Being strong swimmers, they commonly dare to enter more open and rapid water As a result, the fly-fisherman can fish his flies almost anywhere he likes: up or down or across the stream, either fast or slow. The fly will be equally attractive in all cases, and you need not worry about whether the fly will drag. Really large fish have long ago given up eating small insects in favor of more substantial young fish. Otherwise they would never have reached the size that makes them so desirable to us!

Trout are the commonest guests of our fly rods when we fish with streamers and bucktails. Grayling prefer insects and other small creatures, although this does not prevent large grayling from occasionally taking a small streamer When it comes to trout, one can get the feeling that not even the largest streamer is large enough. The great majority of small fish in flowing waters are definite bottom-dwellers. They not only live on the bottom, but actually spend most of their time resting on it. All this means that the flyfisherman's long-shanked flies should be fished as deep as possible. You can fish rather daringly with these big flies: fast or slow, upstream or downstream. There are unimagined possibilities of variation, in contrast to the usual fishing with wet flies or nymphs. It is more than a matter of using your imagination. If the fish does not take a freely drifting streamer, try instead taking home the line very quickly. Make your fly look like a darting small fish. Now and then you can even "awaken" a lazy trout by letting the fly splash down right on top of its head. One must admit that this is not an elegant manner of flyfishing, but it can be extraordinarily productive.

Trout are aggressive fish that defend individual territories in the stream. They are aggressive all year round, but this behavior becomes ever more apparent as the spawning time approaches and they defend their territory with fury against any intruder. The fly fisherman can take advantage of this situation when the fishing season is coming to an end and the trout's spawning time arrives. Then the fish may be hard to attract with ordinary imitation deceiver flies since, having feasted all summer, they are less interested in food and increasingly concerned with spawning. It is then time to serve a big, colorful attractor streamer or buck-tail - a fly whose size and hue can, by themselves, give the fish an impression that some possible rival is encroaching on its territory.  This method of fishing can be pretty exciting. It is important to have a good knowledge of the locality, so that you know exactly where the fish are holding. You have to seek them out with streamers and bucktails of large size, and present the fly right in front of them repeatedly until they react. Often nothing happens on the first cast, so you must continue stubbornly. For the more glimpses the fish gets of the fly, the more irritated it becomes. Finally it cannot endure the temptation and tries to chase away the fly.

At first you frequently feel only a strong blow against the fly, without hooking the fish. The fly has thus only been hit, not taken in the fish's mouth. Yet there is a good chance that one of the following casts will result in a solid strike by what may be the season's largest trout. In any case, such fishing is fascinating once the quarry has been aroused. In Alaska and British Columbia, every year sees a rather special kind of streamer fishing for large rainbow trout and Arctic char. It takes place when extensive schools of baby salmon smolt, which emerge from lakes upstream in the water system, begin their migration downstream toward the Pacific Ocean. The trout and char gather at the outlets of lakes to feast on the young salmon. If you stumble upon such a smolt migration, you are sure to have exceptional fishing experiences for quite a while. Sparsely dressed streamers and bucktails are the only thing worth putting on your leader

Towards the end of the season trout go on a feeding spree to build up strength for their annual orgy. More trout show cannibalistic tendencies at this time of the year than any other and eat trout fry (baby fish). These small fish congregate in areas that suit their needs like marginal weed beds or entrances to feeder streams. The streamer lure now comes into its own. One of my favorite use of smaller streamers is the sport of trying to coax trout that lurk in deep plunge pools to rise up to the surface and take my presentation. They normally will not do so for a dry fly. It has to be a more substantial meal to be worth the effort. I try to imitate a small fish that has been temporally stunned as it swam over the waterfall and landed in the plunge pool. Cast your streamer as near to the waterfall as you can. Give it a few moments to sink and then begin the retrieve to imitate the fish recovering and quickly swimming away from it's vulnerable static location to safety. Using the same idea look for deep slow pools near where a stream is forced to drop suddenly due to a narrow rock channel. Small fish will be forced down with the strength of the current before they can quickly swim off to the relative safety of the bank. Drop your streamer into this current and let it sink. Then start you retrieve. Trout can be teased into chasing your streamer.  

FISHING STREAMERS IN SPRING FLOOD CONDITIONS
There are two things that work in the fly fisher’s favor when fishing streams and rivers in flood in the spring. The first is that because there is so much fast moving water around the fish are not spooked by wading fly fishers. The second is that the fish are on the feed again after winter. In the early part of the season you have to select a fly which will make a trout think it is worth spending the energy to attack it. It is still very cold. Try to work out where the trout are holding up. Trout turn to eating small minnows when the water is in flood as it is hard for them to detect insects to eat. If the water is discolored tie on a dark colored streamer to lure the trout to an attack. There are a number of streamers you could try ranging from black zonkers, woolly buggers, matukas to black ghosts. Try sheltered area of the river first. Look for pockets of water that are not moving as fast as the main body of water. That is the best place to go hunting fish.

Normally I try the traditional down and across presentation when fishing with streamer lures. In flood conditions I like to try and imitate the minnow swimming upwards, pausing and going to the bottom again. I do this by using the tip of my fly rod and lifting the fly up about one meter (one yard) and then down on a streamer lure cast up stream. It looks like an easy meal to the hungry full size trout. When you get a strike you know about it and instantly get a set hook as the fish is biting on a rising hook on a tight line. In larger rivers I wade downstream slowly and fish down and across. I use a slow six inch retrieves on a fly line with a moderately fast sinking tip with a rate of about three to four inches a second. Remember always take care fishing water in flood. Wear proper wading boots and a life vest. There are too many fatalities each year. Don’t become the next statistic.

SEA TROUT
A Sea Trout is simply the migratory form of the brown trout. (Steelheads are migratory rainbow trout.). Lures and larger hook size wet flies are ideal for fishing Sea trout. The female sea trout lays her ova in October or November in the gravel river beds of fresh water streams. It is later fertilized by the males. She will lay about seven or eight hundred eggs for each pound of her weight. Only a small percentage will reach the small sea trout stage and even fewer will return to the river to spawn

The eggs hatch out into 'alevins' -small fish with the yoke-sacs still attached below their bellies. One of its greatest enemies at this stage is the Dragon fly larva. After a few weeks the fry become what is called 'sea trout parr'. They stay in freshwater for two to four years and then one spring their color turns to silver and they move down stream as a 'sea trout smolt' to the coastal waters of the estuary where they feed well and grow rapidly without moving from the coast. The smolts grow and become what is called a 'finnock or whitling'. They return to their native rivers during the summer. Some spawn and some feed on the spilled ova of spawning salmon and sea trout. Finnocks return to the estuaries at various times during the year. From there they enter the saltwater sea. Adult sea trout return to the river at any time from early summer to early winter. When the adult sea trout has spawned it is known as a 'kelt'. Most remain in freshwater until the spring when they return to the estuaries. Sea trout can live a long time and return year after year to the same rivers and streams of their youth

When fishing for salmon you will often catch seatrout. Sea Trout and Salmon differ subtly in behavior and sometimes different tactics are needed. Unlike salmon they feed after starting their spawning migration. They tend to take flies decisively and can be quick, even violent. Those that have been in a river for some time are very shy. On the first run into freshwater they may be easy to catch but only after a short while you may only be able to catch them after 10pm at night. At times a dry fly is effective for sea trout.

BLUEFISH AND STRIPED OR 'STRIPER' SEA BASS
A Matuka is ideal for Bluefish and Striped bass fishing. Striped bass can be found in many costal waters from the St Lawrence River south to Northern Florida on America's Eastern Coast and from Washington to California on the Pacific Coast where they were introduced in the 1879. They swim far upstream in rivers to spawn. The stripped bass can be distinguished from the European Bass by the seven to eight dark strips running down its body.  Stripers spend the winter semi dormant in river systems like the Hudson and Chesapeake Bay on the Atlantic Coast but when the sea temperature reaches 48 degrees F in the spring they become active and start to feed. The shoals migrate north up the coast and return in September/October. Big fish are caught deep in early winter, but in warmer places like Jamaica Bay they are still caught near the surface. In warm waters they can be fished for all year on the fly. They can feed in the roughest surf. You can see them chasing smaller bait fish along the beach until their backs come out of the water. You will also find them holding in estuaries, deep channels, and off jetties, piers or sand bars.

Bass feed by trapping bait fish against a shoreline or by attacking them from deep below. Small fish are inhaled and larger bait fish are are grabbed head first and crushed. Stripers have a dangerous spiky dorsal fins so handle them by their lower lip. Stripped bass can grow up to 70lb. A bluefish feeding melee can bring up the bigger stripped bass. Stripers can be temperamental compared to the Bluefish who are an aggressive formidable predator that have a full set of sharp teeth. They are found in the same habitat as stripers. The bass normally can be found feeding on Bluefish leftovers of dead and dying  fish after a feeding frenzy. If you are lucky you might witness one of these feeding blitz. They corral a shoal of baitfish into a big ball and then when the ball is surrounded they attack.

I was lucky to witness this on my last trip to the States last September. I was fishing for stripers when all of a sudden the captain pointed to gulls swarming around an area of water that was turning white with fish breaking through the surface. 'Bass?' I asked him. 'No those are Bluefish on the feed, change your tippet for wire. Those things have very fast teeth'. I used a floating line with a chartreuse and white 2/0 Lefty's Deceiver attached to the wire tippet. The gulls must have thought Christmas had come early. They were eating as many fleeing bait fish as they could swallow. The noise was very, very loud. We were told to cast into the center of the swirling mass of activity. I hooked almost immediately. Blue fish are very strong powerful fish. My first was a seven pounder and my second a 12 pounder. The Captain shouted at me to be very careful and use big pliers to extract the hook or end up in hospital with bluefish bite wounds. I must have caught over 12 of about the same size range that day. I had a fantastic days fishing. Later in the bar I found out that many of the locals looked down on bluefish as easy prey. I'm sorry I think they are a wonderful sporting fish.

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