How to Tie a Tripled Up Baitfish

Producer: The Fly Fiend

“This right here is a Tripled Up Baitfish. It’s an awesome little pattern. It imitates a wide variety of baitfish that we’d find in the river.  I primarily fish this for steelhead; you can also use it for smallmouth bass and even walleye. We get a pretty good walleye run here in the spring from the lake and swinging anything that’s white, they just destroy it. So it’s a good little all-round pattern and you can use it for multiple species, just not steelhead

So I’m gonna get a fresh hook in the vise and we’ll get right into this tutorial.  The hook I’m using with this fly is a Daiichi swing hook. This is their Intruder hook. This is a size two. I’m going to add three little hot spots on here. This is totally optional. I just like it giving me a little bit more confidence in the fly, and it can represent eggs, they can represent eyes, or I can just represent a little attractor for the fish to key in on and just for them to commit. So what I’m going to be using is some Gulff hot fluorescent orange UV curing resin. And I’m just gonna grab a little bit here. I’m gonna put one right behind the eye, and I’m turning while I’m putting this on, and what that’s gonna do is it’s gonna keep that little hot spot nice and round. So I’m just going to cure this for about 10 seconds. Since it is pretty thick I want that UV to penetrate through there and make sure it’s nice and cured. Now we’re going to add another one right behind that. So it’s definitely important to keep this moving or you’re gonna have a lopsided spot. You can taper these down if you want….

So I’m gonna throw a shank in here and we’ll get tying the actual fly now. So my preferred shank I’d like to tie this fly on is a 25 millimeter Senyo’s articulated salmon and steelhead shank made by Fish Skull. I like to keep this on the smaller side. You can tie these up to like a 40 mil shank but I think this 25, it just gives a nice little proportion and it’s just nice little compact fly. You could also swing this for resident trout as well. I would just put on a little bit smaller of a hook like a size like a size 4. The thread we’re going to be using is UTC 72 denier in cream and I’m going to start my thread right on the shank putting down a nice little base. Now I’m gonna grab my hook with my wire and for that I’m just going to be using some 50-pound Power Pro braid. Just want to make sure that that that braid is nice and flat right on top….