Cat's Whisker

When it is stocking day and the water is full of curious, aggressive rainbow trout there are few flies that beat a Cat's Whisker. The loud colour combination, the pulsing marabou tail and the jigging bead-chain eyes are exactly what freshly stocked fish react to, and that makes it an obvious attractor in the box beside Blob.

Built to provoke

Cat's Whisker does not really imitate anything; it provokes. The strong signal colour shows at a distance, the marabou tail breathes and pulses at the slightest movement, and the bead-chain eyes give the fly a jigging, nodding action on the retrieve. For a freshly stocked rainbow trout, which has not yet learned what is food and what is not, that combination is hard to resist. That is why it shines brightest the first days after a stocking.

Colour choice

The classic is a white body with a yellow marabou tail, but wholly chartreuse (yellow-green) is at least as deadly. If you have a white-yellow and a chartreuse in the box you cover both coloured water and situations where you want maximum visibility. On clearer water and a little calmer fish a muted variant can work better, but the strength of Cat's Whisker is precisely the loud profile.

How you fish it

Cast out, let the fly sink to the right depth and pull in with twitches. The bead-chain eyes make it jig, dive down in the pauses and lift on the pull, and most takes come right in the pause when the fly sinks. Vary the retrieve pace: sometimes the fish wants fast, aggressive twitches, sometimes a slower, more searching pull. Count the sink time so you can put the fly at the same depth again when you have found the fish.

When you pick it

Bring Cat's Whisker out right after a stocking, in coloured water, or when the fish is active and hunting but will not take natural patterns. If it gives nothing you can switch to a calmer fly, but as a wake-up call it is hard to beat. More on the technique you find under streamer fishing and more attractors in flies for rainbow trout.