Schmidt's Rattlesnake

Ray Schmidt began guiding the Manistee below Hodenpyl Dam in 1985, chasing the big brown trout that live on that stretch's sculpins. He started from Ed Youngblood's Youngblood Special and kept making it bigger, up to a 10X-long hook. Big fish ate it, but many came unbuttoned during the fight.

Schmidt noticed the trout were grabbing the fly by the head and letting go once they tired. So he moved to a short hook up front and a stinger hook trailing behind, and tied a rabbit-strip muddler over it, with brass beads strung between the two hooks. The beads looked like a rattlesnake's tail, and the trailing hook bit him while he tied the first one, so the name stuck.

It became his best-known pattern. By 2011 his streamer box held both an articulated version and the darker original. Like most of his streamers it runs four inches or more, in dark sculpin colors for murky water, and is fished fast with twitches and strips.