by Steven Johnson
“Crawfish?” I called out, seeing that Mark Wiese already had a trout on his line.
Wiese, an avid trout fisherman from Georgia, answered only with a grin, which said, “Do you really have to ask?”
If Wiese is knee deep in a trout stream, chances are extremely good that he has a Rebel Deep Teeny Wee Crawfish tied to the end of his line, and he virtually always begins a day with one. In his eyes, a Deep Teeny Wee is without rival for fishing the clear rocky streams that drain the Southern Appalachian Mountains in North Georgia and the Carolinas.
For extra shallow stream sections or waters where the Deep Teeny Wee wants to hang in the rocks, Wiese will switch to a Teeny Wee-Crawfish, which has the same body but doesn’t dig quite as deep. Occasionally, when trout aren’t taking a craw the way they should, he’ll tie on an Excalibur Ghost Minnow.
Wiese likes a Deep Teeny Wee because it works well under all kinds of conditions. It can be cranked in slack water but will run true in very swift water. In addition he has found that it produces well in streams of all sizes and that he can catch rainbow, brook and brown trout on the same bait.
For fishing plunge pools, eddy pockets and runs where the current is only of moderate swiftness, Wiese typically quarters casts upstream or casts cross current and cranks the little plug back swiftly and steadily. If there’s an eddy along the bank, many strikes will come as soon as Wiese begins turning the reel handle. Trout also often hit when the Crawfish wobbles past submerged boulders or as it kicks gravel or shoals along the bottom.
In swift water, Wiese typically takes a different tact. He cast straight across the stream or slightly downstream, lifts his rod and holds his line tight. The Deep Teeny Wee wobbles like mad as it swings downstream and out into the current. Once the bait is mostly downstream, Wiese begins reeling it back slowly. Many trout hit as soon as be begins reeling.
Wiese fishes the gamut of Rebel Crawfish colors on occasion. However, his favorite colors are stream crawfish, moss crawfish and ditch. All have an orange belly, which he has found the trout to favor. If the water is extra high or somewhat stained, he will switch to fire tiger or chartreuse/green back.
Wiese fishes Rebel Deep Teeny Wee Crawfish on 3- or 4-pound-test Silver Thread Trout Line. The streams he most often fishes are generally quite clear, so the low-visibility green and small diameter are both important to him. He uses a 4-foot Shakespeare ultralight rod and micro spinning reel.
Because Wiese fishes quite a few special-regulations trout streams, where only single-hook artificial lures are permitted, he typically removes the treble hooks that come on a Deep Teeny Wee and puts a No. 4 single hook on the back split ring.