How to Tie Kurt’s Creek Minnow

Producer: tightlinevideo

In December of 2023, Colin McKeown of The New Fly Fisher invited me to shoot a show with him centered around steelhead on the Lake Erie tributaries. Our host and guide there, Kurt Bitokofer, owns several cottages in the area including this one in Conneaut, Ohio, where we stayed. Everything about the accommodations was first class and, upon arrival, we quickly made ourselves at home, including my son Drew who Colin had graciously invited to join us. Some of us really made ourselves right at home.

In terms of the fishing, everything came together. We had decent weather, good water conditions and relatively light crowds, plus the steelhead were staged up and ready to eat. Captain Kurt was able to get Drew into his very first steelhead which, as many of you know, is a pretty big deal.

Kurt’s daughter Morgan, who’s also a guide, put me on my largest fish of the trip, a beautiful-looking buck in pristine condition. For a newly minted guide, Morgan’s knowledge of the area and skills are nothing shy of extraordinary.

Although we were able to catch fish on egg patterns and nymphs, one of the most productive flies was one invented by Captain Kurt called “Kurt’s Creek Minnow”, and it produced for us both dead drifted below an indicator and swung. Here’s a little bit more about the fly and how to tie it.

Here we go. It starts off and we’ve been using a size 8 streamer hook, I guess they’re 3x long, and we’re using a 5/32” bead, it’s not a tungsten bead, it’s a brass bead, so not a whole ton of weight to it. Just going to get it firmly secured in the jaws of my tying vise.

The thread I’m using is called Fluoro Brite, it’s from Semperfli, it’s a really bright orange thread and super, super strong. This stuff is like rope, it is not a thin thread but there’s no reason to use thin thread on this. So I’m just going to get it started on the hook shank.

Ok, so what we’re going to do here is I’m going to take care of the underside of the fly first, and the easiest way to do that is just to take your hook and rotate it like that, like so, in your tying vise. No big deal.

And first material to get tied in is just a little bit of flash, just don’t want to overdo it with this stuff. We’re not trying to attract fish from a mile away or anything, there’s no reason to go heavy, heavy with this, so something about like that. You want this to extend a full hook shank back from the hook bend. I’m just going to snip it off there, give my bobbin a nice little counterclockwise spin which is going to help that tying thread jump kind of rearward, catch the material, then bind it down really, really well. These flies take a beating on the bottom, and so kind of important to get really tight wraps on there, make sure everything’s locked down.

Next material to get tied in is a little white marabou, again, this is a super, super, simple fly. You want to be sparse with this stuff, you don’t want a whole big ton of it on there. About the same length, not super critical, full hook in length, something like that, just going to get that bound down really well, sweep it back then trim the excess off nice and close. I’m not really worried about building up thread wraps or anything else, not critical on this one.

Then I just flip the fly back and we’ll finish the back of the fly. So, so many of these baitfish species here on the Erie tribs, well just about anywhere for that matter, are darker on the back, lighter on the bottom.  So we’ve been fishing this with a dark brown back, white bottom as well as an olive back.  Both look and work really, really well here. Just going to match those tips up with the tips of the white ones, get it anchored, trim the excess off, keep on taking wraps, just kind of cleaning the area up and at the same time building up a nice, little kind of hot spot thread collar behind that bead there.

How’re we looking on that other side there, good, got just a little bit of flash peeking through. Just need a finish – little back to front whip finish, seat that knot really really well, and put a little pressure on my tying thread, cut that off.

Super important here though is head cement, this is Sally Hansens Hard as Nails, and really, really saturate those thread wraps. If anything’s going to come apart bouncing along the bottom, even with a really good whip finish, it’s going to be those thread wraps so you want to seal them up real well.

And that’s it, that’s Kurt’s Creek Minnow, it has been working really, really well for us here with the steelhead on the Erie trips, great little fly.

All in all it was a fabulous trip, due in no small part to Kurt’s Creek Minnow. I can’t wait until the final program airs on The New Fly Fisher’s YouTube channel. I’m also looking forward to getting back out to the area and hosting my own trips there with Captain Kurt Charters.