Calamari

Squid are an important bait for saltwater anglers pretty much everywhere, but I always think squid imitations seem to be a bit of a novelty or 2nd tier option for a lot of fly anglers outside the US eastern seaboard. I kind of get it;  they're not as necessarily as ubiquitous as baitfish and a lot of larger squid flies look quite involved and time consuming ties-  whether they actually are or not. I'm guilty of it too, tokyo bay is full of squid and the yellowtail, mahi, tuna and bass all eat them but I rarely fish squid imitations. I used to and caught plenty of fish on them, especially mahi.  Perhaps over the pandemic my fishing routines changed a bit and I wasn't presented with the opportunity as much, but I'm not sure the move away didn't start to happen before that. Partly I think it's because I'm not fully happy with a lot of the larger squid flies I see and the ones I've worked on for myself haven't quite made me happy either.  It's not that they don't work though. It's that they tend to look squiddy to us, which is often a bit of a charicature of what squid acutally look like and how they behave. They almost all have huge flared "tentacles" that open and pulse  on the retrieve which isn't how squid get about or flee from a predator. i.e. jetting away with the tentacles folded together after spraying ink and turning white/translucent. Maybe it doesn't matter, especially if the fish are eating the flies, but something about it bothers me. A deceiver or bucktail deceiver with the eyes at the back will do as good a job as most larger squid patterns and I'm inclined to move towards this level of simplicity as it allows you to easily adjust to a specific purpose when you tie them.  less hair plus weight and flash for deep  dredging on underwater humps for yellowtail or with foam or more hair from the base of the bucktail to keep the fly up near the surface when fishing over shallow rips.

 

Smaller patterns it's less of an issue and to be honest I think you'd be hard pressed to do better than a Popovics' squid candy or an albie whore with the eyes stuck to the hook bend. Both of these are fairly imitative and make a good match for bait with mantles up to about 5cm. Carrying a few of each also allows you to cover  different situations  as they swim differently with the hard, smooth resin body of the candy giving a more darty action on the retrieve compared to the slower hangy motion you can get from the albiewhore.  It's a real shame that the squid foils were discontinued as they made for a really nice, quick candy pattern but maybe that's an indication of how underused this type of fly is. Luckily for me I've about 30 packets left for my own use. I should probably scan them so I can make more when I run out too. I'll be putting a few squid patterns in my box over the holidays and making a point of fishing them next year.  After all squid are delicious and fish eat them.