Scuds are the Skittles of the Sea

High Calorie Snacks.

This Rainbow likes junk food.  

What do you do when you get out of the water and realize that you have literally thousands of scuds attached to your waders?

Skittle Scud

Curtis and I have a tradition of hitting my old stomping grounds at least once per year to check up on our friendly obese rainbow trout in a series of lakes.  The Utah DWR finally realized that they had the potential for making a great trophy fishery, changed some regulations, and VIOLA!! Big trout!  (Yeah.  I know... shocker.)  We have specifically hit it hard for the past two years and we have done pretty well throwing chironomids, leeches, callibaetis, etc, at them.  After a day last year, I looked down and realized that my waders were so covered in scuds that I could scoop them off by the handful.  Now, when a situation like this happens, my first instinct is to tie on something that looks exactly like the bugs that I find.  Last year I did this, and guess what... no dice.  The fish wouldn't even look at my offerings.  I imagine that if I lived in a world where skittles were everywhere floating in the air, I would just walk around with my mouth open and get enough skittles to make me nice and fat.  Yes, the green skittles are my favorite, but why would I move ten feet one way to eat a green skittle, when there are ten of them right in front of my fat, gluttonous face?  You get my point?  These rainbow trout had so much junk to eat that they didn't have to move very far to get a meal.  So how do we get these lazy porkers to eat something that is fake and not as delicious as Skittles?

Taste the Rainbow!

Two things.  First, locate the fish.  Because they will most likely be hunkered down in a spot and not really going out of their way to eat, it's critical to find what area of the lake they are in, and find out at what depth they are feeding.   Second, throw something that is somewhat similar - but different.  I knew there were thousands upon thousands of scuds and sow bugs in this lake, so I tied the scud pictured in the video below.  To make my scud stand out, I tied it a little bit darker and added two hot spots.  One on the back of the fly using Loon UV paint, and the other with dubbing right behind the bead.  Guess what...  It worked, and worked well.  I only wish that I had tied more than two of them for that trip.


Recipe:

Hook:  Allen N205BL or an Allen N204BL #10 BUY HERE
Thread: Montana Fly 3/0 Olive BUY HERE
Bead: 3.3 mm Tungsten BUY HERE
Over body: J:son Realskin - Green BUY HERE and Mirage Tinsel - opal BUY HERE
Ribbing: UTC Ultrawire - copper brown sm BUY HERE
Body: Arizona Synthetic Dubbing - bronze peacock BUY HERE
Hot spot: Sow Scud Dubbing - pink
Back hot spot: Loon UV fly paint - orange BUY HERE
Shell back: Loon UV fly finish - thin BUY HERE

~Cheech