Material List:

Hook: 253 or 254 N/A. any size. It's not the hook size that is important. Match the length of the baitfish.

Silver or pearl mylar braid.

Wing: Sparse white bucktail twice as long as the hook. Sparse yellow bucktail 2 1/2 times as long as the hook. Two to four strands of silver or pearl flashabou. Sparse olive bucktail 3 times the length of the hook.

Topping: 7 strands of peacock herl extending just beyond the wing.

A New England Classic Striper Fly

Every once in a while someone puts together a fly that is simple and easy to tie that is just right for what it was intended for. One of those flies that when you look at it you think, "Now why didn't I think of that, it is so obvious". Sometimes it isn't so obvious, obviously, and that's why we didn't.

The color olive seems like an obvious color to use in salt-water flies, doesn't it? There was a time not so long ago when it wasn't even listed as a color to use with blondes. Yellow and olive together is a recent, very recent salt-water combination. Look in all the books before the late eighties. You may find some flies tied with these colors; then again, you might not. You will find olive and you will find white and you will find them together, but olive and yellow is not in the mainstream until much later.

There is a fly that has been around for eleven or twelve years in New England that is and has been the most favored fly here since its introduction via the Rhody Flyrodders newsletter in 1990. It is not a fly that has received any press nor had anyone praising it, yet, on it's merit alone it has become a mainstay, passed on from one angler to another as the cure for the right fly blues. The reason is simple- it outfishes every other silverside fly day in day out in all types of situations. The only people who don't know this as fact are those who haven't tried it or won't try it. Other silverside flies will outfish it sometimes. Put those flies on droppers and every once in a while you will catch more stripers on the dropper flies than on a Ray's Fly. Think of it as a fishing experiment and let the fish themselves tell you what they think about Ray's Fly when they are given a chance to make a choice.

Thank you Ray Bondorew for this wonderful, "New England Classic", bucktail striper fly.

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