tailor on fly

Hi micheal
What i use is a white polarfibre surfcandy. with plenty of flash in it. sometimes i put rattles in them, to attract them easier and tied on a 1/0 SL 12 S with no. 2 stick on eyes an epoxy head.Hope this helps you.
Good luck
steve

I have got them, down here in east gippsland on, deceivers and poppers( blue or red) using a 7/8 wt with slow sink tip.

hey there,
I was spotfishing small tailor with minnow type lures (manns stretch +5) the other day in my boat around logan river and i was wondering if you can catch them on fly. I think it'd be a pearler of a way to catch them. any advice on how/where to catch them and what flies to use? any help would be much appreciated.
good fishing to all ;D
michael
p.s I am using about a 7-8wt rod which i bought for rainbow trout in N.Z and i will be in a boat.
thanks

Tailor in SA are so rare I dont expect to catch one here in my home state, but I would like to fish for them one day. From what I have read on the subject thet share many similarities to the australian salmon, which I have caught on fly.

Most small to medium baitfish patterns should do the job, deceivers, surf candies, clousers etc.
One thing to think about is their razor sharp teeth. This means synthetic materials in your flies are generally the way to go if you dont want to tie a new fly one after every one or two fish. Natural fur and feather are nowhere near as tough. Think about materials such as superhair if you tie your own.

Hope this is of some use

Cheers

Adam

Hi Mmicfael I have caught a lot, anything thats mouving they bite on, I got them mainly on white deceivers, get ready to loose a lot of flies 7# is quite ok good fishing.
cheers vince.

We call them Blues over here but I believe they are the same critters. I have caught them up to 14 lb in the Northeast US and they are MEAN, they claim that they are one of the only fish that can see as good out of the water as in. I have found that they will eat almost any Fly however a green and white clouser moving as fast as you can with both hands most often wins!

rlbgfish173,

Your bluefish are pretty much the same except I believe they reach a bigger average size than our east coast tailor. The ones on our west coast grow pretty big - probably due to less fishing pressure.

Cheers

Adam

Dont do the Rex Hunt kiss and release on 'em :-X

Apprently the reason for them growing bigger in WA is that there are more nutrients in the water, meaning more plnkton, which apprently means more pilchards which make tailor grow bigger. That's what I heard anyway. Less fishing pressure might also be an answer but how many more people fish in the US?

They will eat anything - only once have a found them fussy but a quick and nasty trim job on the fly had them nailing the fly again. One piece of advise is use a tough fly. That is one tied with synthetics and preferably epoxy for surf candies. They destroy natual materials really quickly. Also, if you can get flies tied on long shanks that will keep you leader away from those teeth - no guarantee but it helps.

Once you find them, just throw you fly in front of them and I honestly don't think retrieve speed matters. I've even caught them while answering a mobile phone call with the fly dangling in the water. Wish we got them as big as the US blues. In Sydney 2lbs is a good fish! That sucks and most of view them as an annoyance because they're small and steal you flies!

thank you all for your help. weather depending I will try to head out on Saturday to try and find some chopping the surface. I will be sure to head out to Tackleworld and get a hold of some synthetic flies. As you said, I can't imagine the natural flies lasting as long. I'll try get a hold of some of the flies with epoxy resin. thanks again for your help and I look forward to giving it ago.
tight lines and burning thumbs
Michael Brewer

Very few, if any fishes, see as well out of water as in water. The reason is that the refactive index of air is 1 and water 1.6, which stuffs up your underwater vision, makes things bigger, and for fish makes things smaller. Also the fish does not have an occlusive eye, variable pupil, eyelids etc to regulate the light, so take a fish out of water, where the light is heavily attenuated into air where it isn't and it get a heavy does of light shock, like glare and it probably doesn't see much at all, except a big bright blur. You should cover the eyes when you take them out, if you want to release them.On the other hand tailor eat just about any fly, and have a nasty feeding habit of chopping their food into little cutlets from the tail up to the head.
Any fly should be tough, and I find that the best and most durable are wire flies made out of silver wire from the centre of electrical cables. They find it hard to destroy, and its cheap, flashy etc. Just the stuff for toothy critters. Max