Fly fishers have long known that the “Incredible Silver Minnow” is a favorite food among important species.

They wax on about the way its appearance would coax even the smartest salmon out of hiding, and they call it things like a “deadly” lure.

Here is a recipe, apparently from 1965:

Incredible Silver Minnow

Hook: No. 6, 2XL

Tail: A small bunch of gray stripped mallard herl or grizzly hackle.

Body: Wound tightly with lead wire. The wire body is covered and tapered with silk floss of any color. This is covered completely by a double overlay of embossed flat silver tinsel.

Throat: A small bunch of long crimson rooster hackle, the longest ones extending to the point of the hook.

Wing: A very small bunch of white bucktail, over which a very small bunch of blue (dyed) impala hair. Over this is a gray mallard flank feather tied on flat on top of the hair so it surrounds all of the hair. The elements of the wing extand half again as long as the hook.

Head: Built up to minnow-shape with 00 nylon thread, painted silver. Small painted black eyes, with yellow dot in center.

One might think that this would have generated a great deal of concern over the fate of the real Silver Minnow in the past 30 years. Alas, the opposite has happened and minnow populations have been decimated by development and water use. Today the minnow lives in just 5% of its former habitat on the Rio Grande, for example, and conservationists have been trying to reintroduce the Silvery Minnow. Only a few days ago a half million were released. Best of luck to these little ones.

Photo by Aimee Michelle Roberson