Which Fly

[Fatherof4]

I have been working with a member here buying flies and got me to thinking.  Although I've been fly fishing for over 20 yrs, I got away from it for 17-18 yrs, and have fallen in love with it again in the last year or so.

I do a lot of speckled trout fishing in the FL Panhandle. Port St Joe area.  Water is super clear, and grass flats.  When I am fishing, mostly in 2-5 ft of water, I tend to gravitate to a clouser.  The reason, is to get the fly down in the water column some.  And, I have had some success.  I do have some flies of different shapes, that do not have any weight, therefore, are more or less on the surface when stripping them in.

Do most of you do this as well?  Mostly clousers?  I know I have quite a few flies for redfish, etc and they are different, but, rarely do we catch redfish.  Mostly trout, spanish, ladyfish, etc.

Just trying to pick your brains on your thought process and fly selection given the environment.

Thanks.

[whichwaysup]

Back in FL, I always used bendbacks clousers (hook point rides up) in a greenback pattern.  They never foul and are simple.  Bead chain eyes, white and green bucktail, tie up 10 in 10 min, and I often outfished my buddy using gulp.   Tried other patterns but never convinced they were more productive and they all fouled, which cost me more bites than my simple pattern did.

[SouthernWake]

A clouser is never the wrong choice. You could try a redfish crack style with sm lead eyes to get down a little deeper, it will also push more water.