If you were going to head onto the trout stream with one fly, what would it be? Most would choose something safe, like a hare’s ear, pheasant tail, scud. A woolly bugger would be a good bet. Dry fly snobs would likely pick an Adams. I got it in my head the other day that I wanted to catch a fish on a Mickey Finn. I think I actually first got it in my head that I wanted to tie a Mickey Finn, and I easily accomplished this.
You fly tying nerds take note that I used flat tinsel ribbed with oval tinsel for the body, instead of taking the easy route and using sparkle braid.
This was a favorite fly of mine when I was kid. Probably because even then I had all the material needed to tie one, and even with my limited tying abilities and crude equipment the fly was recognizable as a Mickey Finn when I was done. And I actually caught trout on them on occasion. Yellow and red seems to be a popular color combo, and anglers that spin fish for trout seem to favor the Panther Martin spinner with the yellow and red body [ I have recovered four of these from streamside branches this year alone]. There’s also the “Five-of-Diamonds” spoon, and many streamer and popper patterns use this color combo. I have a yellow and red Eagletail muskie lure hanging on the wall on which I once caught a memorable fish on Wabedo Lake
I always liked the name, but I never gave any thought to the origin of the name of this pattern until recently- never made the connection between this fly and the phrase “slipped a mickey”, referring to giving someone one a cocktail with ingredients meant to incapacitate whoever consumed it. Apparently at some point in time someone thought this pattern was quite deadly, and it was even known as “The Assassin” for a time. John Knight, the Solunar Tables guy, wrote an article of the effectiveness of this fly pattern in the ’30s, and it became a fly shop staple soon after.
This and many other “classic” streamers have fallen from popularity in recent years. Streamer fishing nowadays equates to something along the lines of “slinging triple articulated meat”. That’s cool, I like fishing for big trout too. But streamer fishing can be unbeatable for catching numbers of trout, especially if you use a moderately sized fly. For some reason, it pleases me that Umpqua still has the Mickey Finn in their catalog.
This book once belonged to my grandpa
At the same time, this pattern is featured on one of the color plates in Ray Bergman’s “Trout”. It is on Plate 16, titled “New Wet Flies”.
I still like tying and fishing with the old patterns, and when I pulled up to a new stream reputed to be full of brook trout I decided “why not” and tied the fresh yellow and red streamer on. It wasn’t long before before I was hooked up. Not a brookie, but a respectable brown trout had completely inhaled the thing. 
The next three were also browns, but then the brook trout took over. I’m not one that gets all misty eyed over our native brook trout, but this was a fun change of pace.
My Grandpa Phred, whom I often written about, often proclaimed how he preferred catching brook trout over browns. But we mostly fished the Kinni, where browns outnumber brookies by about 1000 to 1. We still caught brookies on occasion. “Why are there no big ones?” he would lament. I don’t think he realized, or at least accepted, that brook trout just don’t get that big. Especially when you keep every 9-incher you catch. In those days brook trout were “absent” from the Rush River. Until one day I caught one in between the bridges at Martell. It was about 8 inches long, I let it go. Once back at the car I reported to Phred that I had caught a brook trout. “The hell you did, there’s no brook trout in here!” “Well that’s what it was”. Not sure if he ever actually believed me. Brook trout are fairly common in the Rush now, as improved water quality has allowed them prosper. I once even caught a tiger trout in the Rush; this is pretty much the unicorn of the trout world, it is a hybrid between a male brook trout and a female brown trout. Phred caught one in the Kinni once, he cooked it for me for dinner.
Back to the action on this new stream. I don’t remember ever talking to anyone about this place, even though it isn’t all that far away. Considerable stream improvement has been done here, making this narrow stream very fishable. On the section I fished, maybe a mile of it, the stream is about 90% “live”–almost all of it was capable of holding fish, and almost all of it fishable.
I was working my way upstream, casting the Mickey straight up and stripping back faster than the current. In some spots this was tricky as the little creek moved along pretty good in places. At some point I decided to head back down to my starting point and explore downstream. Once I got to my starting point I tried casting downstream into the run. I hooked a good brown right away and realized how I had making this be harder than it had to be. All I needed to do was roll cast it down and across [not much to the “across” part, the stream was mostly about 10′ wide].
just lettin’ it hang down there…
Strip it, let it hang, work it with the rod tip. It didn’t matter, they loved it, and I was delighted when I realized I had lost track of how many I had caught. Many fish I caught while kneeling on the soft grass bank. On a couple I was actually sitting. The valley this creek flowed though is typical of the driftless area, steep hills running down to a narrow band of tillable land. There was a hint of green showing on the branch tips, but the fields were still drab. I caught a couple, and missed several others that grabbed the fly while I left it hanging in the current as I did a scenery check.
Fishing from the bank has an advantage I never realized before–when you’re standing in a stream, there is almost always noise from the water flowing around you. Not necessarily a lot , but it is always there. Fishing from the bank eliminates this ambient noise, and really lets you hear the birds, which are active everywhere now, but perhaps not as much as in this valley. The ever present blue jays and cardinals appeared to having their own version of the red vs. blue debate. Red winged blackbirds sang their song of spring, and many other unidentified songs mixed it up. I heard the bugling of cranes and the whistle of wood ducks. Gobbling turkeys, cackling pheasants, even a grouse was drumming. Where else can you find all of these birds in one place?
I was getting pretty hungry and stopped to check the time. I remember thinking that if it was after 12, I would head back to the truck. It was 2:10. Time flies and all of that. I still had the Mickey Finn tied on, although it was looking a little ragged, the tinsel was coming unraveled after too many encounters with little pointy teeth. I know I would have caught even more fish had I scaled down the size of the fly, as I missed many, many hits. And I suspect I would have caught some bigger fish had I gone with a bigger, heavier fly. I’ve got no complaints, Mickey Finn served me well. Got back to the truck and decided to drive up the county road to scope out some other parking areas. I left my waders on in case I saw something good. Found a couple more access points, but the cold pieces of greasy pizza leftover from the night before that I was cramming down my face were tasting mighty good. That was enough trout for one day.
This is the “after” picture, Mickey is looking pretty ratty now