Squid Plus Three

Squid Plus Four

Martin Joergensen

Within a few days during December 2014 and the start of January 2015, squid flies were suddenly on everybody's lips in the Danish sea trout anglers' community. People were catching sea trout with small, white, pink and gray squid in their stomachs all over the place, and suddenly everybody wanted to tie a squid fly.
Well, I'm not the one who lets such an entertaining craze slip between my fingers, and one of the Christmas and New Year fly tying sessions was centered around squid.

Now, squid isn't exactly news

around here, even though people acted like it was.
I have caught and kept one fish that had squid in its stomach in my life - and it had one squid and nothing else. That is many years ago, probably like twenty or so. My good friend Henning also immediately remembered a squid eating trout, which he caught a little less than a decade ago.
Squid have also been covered in the Danish sea trout fishing literature, and I have several Danish books on sea trout fishing, which mention squid. Both Michael Jensen's book "Quarry of the sea trout" (Havørredens byttedyr) from 1996 and Thomas Vinges "Sea Trout on the Coast" (Havørred på kysten) from 1999 mention squid in the Danish ocean in detail. Steen Ulnits' more recent Danish book, simply entitled "Sea trout" (Havørred), also mentions squid as a common food item for Danish trout. That was published in 2006.
So Danish squid are old news.
The new thing is that squid are being specifically imitated, which I haven't seen here in Denmark in the thirtysome years that I have been fly-fishing.

Squid catch

Mads Schmidt - Lars Jorck-Thomsen

In my eyes

people have been fishing squid imitations for quite a while. Look at the Pink Pig and its kin, and it's easy to see the similarity between the large very mobile fly and a small squid. The pig family flies do look more like squid than they do the shrimp, which they are tied to imitate. But that's a whole other story.

I set out tying a squid,

and as it is when I want to tie an imitation, I took a look at the natural. The squid in question is most likely Alloteuthis subulata, the European common squid sometimes also called Loligo subulata. These are small animals in the 10 centimeter or 4 inch range, but they can grow to twice that size. They are typically white, gray or tan with subtle gray, brown or pink markings. They have a long mantle, short arms and very large and pronounced eyes.
They swim in the open water, arms and eyes to the rear, pushed by the jet like propulsion they create by pumping water through the mantel. They are actually quite stiff to look at, undulating the fins or rims they have on the mantle and simply dragging the legs behind them, going in small jerks as they contract their body in pulses.
Their most pronounced feature is the very large eyes located on the rear third of the animal, and the color... or more like the lack of same. It's not the arms, even though you might think so.
We have several squid flies here on the Global FlyFisher already, not least thanks to Pete Gray.

Schmidt Squid and Squid Plus Three

Mads Schmidt - Martin Joergensen

Lots of squid patterns

popped up in the Danish forums, web pages and in Danish fly-fishing Facebook groups, and the squid fever was on. You see just a few on this page.
I decided to challenge myself a bit and make things easy for everybody, and try to keep my squid pattern in my Mundane style as an outset, meaning three materials plus hook and thread.
I dug into the stash and found several useful materials. Since I was going to tie a white fly, white it was. I found a white saddle, white ostrich herl, white dubbing and white fur - both a long haired angora rabbit and some Arctic fox. I decided to go for the white rabbit for the body and mantle and white ostrich herl for the legs. And then eyes of course. All the pictures I found showed very large, brightly white eyes with a black pupil. That I could do with my home made eyes, so they were produced in a suitable number.
I wound up doing it Mundane plus one, because the eyes had to be secured. By using LCR, I could also control the front shape of the mantle with a little resin.
For a hook, the original Mundane dogma prescribes a Kamasan B175 size 6, but for a fly this size that was a little too modest, so I strayed a bit there too, and used a long shank saltwater hook, the classic Mustad 34011 size 1. So it was Mundane plus two.
Lastly the black thread used in the Mundane project didn't suit the all white fly well, and I chose white in stead, and since I had now broken totally with the Mundane oath, the fly changed name from its working title Martin's Mundane Squid to the Squid Plus Three.

Beautiful squid imitation by Danish John Mortensen

John Mortensen

More squids

Kern Leo Lund - Lars Fabrin

Anatomy of a small squid

The squid are typically slender, elongated animals with ten short arms and a large body. Some squid have one pair of extra long arms that they trail behind them when swimming. They swim in smooth jerks, horizontally in quite straight lines with little limb movement, and are very different from the octopuses with their very undulating and organically moving arms. Squid are also pelagic - living in the free water masses - rather than benthic - bottom dwelling, like their eight-armed kindred.

Short arms, large eyes, large body

Paddy Ryan

Hook or tube

Martin Joergensen

Making eyes

Martin Joergensen

Tying instructions, tube fly

If you tie on a hook, you simply start at step 12 and tie on from there. Select a fairly long shanked hook.

Step 1: tube	Step 2: lining	Step 3: cut lining	Step 4: second collar
Step 5: needle	Step 6: needle through	Step 7: junction tube	Step 8: mount junction tube
Step 9: onto the tube	Step 10: mount needle	Step 11: tighten	Step 12: start thread
Step 13: ostrich herl	Step 14: cut herl	Step 15: line up tips	Step 16: grab herl
Step 17: broken	Step 18: line up herl	Step 19: tie on	Step 20: wind butts
Step 21: herl done	Step 22: white dubbing	Step 23: pluck dubbing	Step 24: dub tube
Step 25: cover tube	Step 26: eyes	Step 27: mount eyes	Step 28: LCR
Step 29: cure LCR	Step 30: fur	Step 31: trim	Step 32: position
Step 33: tie in	Step 34: trim butts	Step 35: cover and finish	Step 36: add LCR
Step 37: cure	Step 38: trim	Step 39: final trimming	Step 40: done

Martin Joergensen

Large but not huge

Martin Joergensen

You can of course

vary the fly by changing the colors. Keep them light - tan or gray will work, even light olive or pink. You can also just add a bit of color. Mix some pink or tan fur into the body dubbing and the mantle or use a marker to add a few colored specks to the mantle and arms. You can also use grizzly hackle for the arms and barred or speckled fur for the mantle.
Another variation is to tie in two of the arms long - as long as the rest of the animal. Many squid have these two extra long arms.

The Squid Plus Four

is another variation, tied on a tube. The thing is that a 10 centimeter fly requires quite a large hook, and by transferring the fly to a tube, you can reduce weight and use a much smaller hook, which can be desirable if you want to make a large fly that's still easy to cast.
Use a plastic tube for a light fly and a metal tube (like stainless steel) for a heavy one. The heavier and larger fly will require a sturdy rod to cast, but can also be fished trolling or on a sinking line
The thin metal tubes are available from Canadian Tube Flies.

Long body, short arms

Old print