A wish for a generic bait imitation was what made Kasper Mühlbach develop a fly, which he originally dubbed the Epoxy Triumph; A small epoxied baitfish imitation along the lines of the American tradition.
This fly was since modified a bit, and is now the Epoxy Miracle.
We don't often see traditional epoxy baitfish imitations used for Baltic sea trout. That can be a surprise since the fish are known to feed heavily on sand eels and other slender baitfish.
Most sea trout fishing is done with streamers or Woolly Bugger like shrimp imitations - or one of a selection of a whole spectrum of flies. We just see very few baitfish imitations in people's fly boxes.
The epoxy flies we see come out of the US are often fairly big, meant for stripers, bluefish, albacore and other large predators, which chase bait in the surf. Flies with lengths up to 5-10 inches are not rare, and that might be one reason why the style never caught on here.
We need flies a lot smaller. First of all a lot of our natural bait is only about 2-3 inches in length - even smaller - and secondly we fish light rods, not rarely down to 5 weights. This severely limits the size and weight of flies suitable for sea trout fishing.
But the wish for a bait imitation was still there and that is why Kasper developed a fly, which he originally dubbed the Epoxy Triumph; A small epoxied baitfish imitation along the lines of the American tradition.
This small and light generic sand eely imitation did well for him on one of our annual Bornholm trips. He had tied it up in different variations, and after a bit of adjustments and tunings it slowly developed into what we today refer to as the Epoxy Miracle.
It's not that miraculous, but an excellent fly with very good imitative capabilities and a low weight, which makes it easy to cast. The fly is amazingly mobile in the water in spite of its synthetic materials. These materials in particular makes it shed its water easily when hauled out of the water for a new cast, enabling us to easily control it on a light rod.
The fly comes in a number of variations, but three have become stable patterns: olive, dark and light grey. All three are very close to the sand eels that we see by the thousands here sometimes, but still general enough to pass for almost any small baitfish or fry.
The fly has proven its worth on may trips and has produced some nice fish. As a paradox it might be mentioned that small fish in particular seem to like it. This is not a joke or a lame excuse for us catching too many small fish, but actually small fish sometimes seem dumber than the large ones, and spin fisher will testify to that small sea trout often go wild on their rather large plugs. So if you run into a school of smallish fish and start hooking up regularly, leave the area and spare these toddlers the agony of having to bite over something close to their own size - with a hook in it!
See the tying steps below
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