They first appear in March and stay until July. They are crystal clear until they are about one inch long and then they begin to show a little color definition. Fascinating problem number one: How do you imitate something that is almost invisible?

You can see their tiny eyes and their tiny silvery gut. Their gut is shaped like the tip of a needle about 1/16 to 1/8 of an inch long. It's a tiny silver line. Their eyes are smaller than the head of a pin, and bass gobble them up. Every glass minnow fly I have ever seen looks like an aircraft carrier next to the real thing. Like fishing a midge hatch with a jitterbug. This kind of approach can solve the problem of how to catch a fish but even so, it fails to address the 'Imitating the Baitfish,' fly tying part of the problem.

There is no one size glass minnow. There are different spawns that overlap and they range in size from the tiny ones less than 1 inch long to those of up to about 1 3/4 inches long which are beginning to show the colors and shape of adult Atlantic Herring. They look like different fish. Often these different sizes are mixed in with each other in the same school and often the bass will be feeding on the tiny ones that you can not see without a focused eye within the school. This is a problem that is difficult to ascertain and is often heightened by the obvious flushing of the larger glass minnows by the bass as they rise to feed on their smaller brethren. Throw in a few spooky silversides and a couple of skittering shrimp and it's hard to know what to think about what is going on. The path of the obvious can help, try a silverside, a herring, and a shrimp fly first and if that doesn't work go home and tie an invisible fly to imitate the tiny, water clear baitfish that perhaps they may be actually feeding on to their hearts content.

Thirty years ago I took a box of size twelve long shanked hooks and had them plated Rhodium, which is a blue-silver highly reflective finish, I tied four single strands of marabou: one white, one yellow, one olive and one black in at the head. They were about one inch long. Then I dubbed a couple of strands of white marabou on the thread and wound it into a small tuft for a head. There was no body just the hook's plating. The marabou wing would foul like the dickens but it worked better than anything else I had tried at the time. It is also the best streamer fly I have ever used for trout. The idea is in the right direction and valid but I believe it can be improved and refined. I have come to learn that glass minnows, although they have no color, do have tiny scales that refract light and give off rainbow flashes when the light hits them at different angles. They twinkle under water. You cannot see this from above or when you hold them in your hand. There is something there to work with.

The little clear ones are very slow swimmers; they swim and swim and move about an inch and a half a second. The ones that are a little bigger are like speedboats in comparison but they are not too fast either. A shrimp is much quicker. They gather under the lights in harbors at night and you can see them there if you leave your eyes fixed on a spot for about four seconds or more. They first appear as a vague smokiness in the water then as your eyes adjust they become distinguishable and as you continue to look their numbers are astronomical. They mill in slow water and they are swept along by even the most gentle of currents. Stripers that are feeding on them are often very relaxed in their feeding and in slow water will simply meander and graze on them with their dorsal and tail sticking out. When the bass are in current they will hold and feed on the ones that are carried to them by the flow in their normal feeding pattern.

Trout fishermen have it easy compared to this problem. At least they can see the bugs. They do have an upper hand on us in one area though; their tackle is better suited for the finesse this kind of fishing requires.