"A few years ago while talking to a few of my fellow striper guides I was awakened to the importance of lateral lines on bait fish. I had already put lateral lines on my bait fish patterns but never thought of them as an important part of my flies… it was more an attractive element. Furthermore, I never even called them lateral lines – I would call them cheeks or gills. After talking with my peers – who had already figured out that lateral lines were a very definitive component of most bait fish – I started looking at a lot of the bait that I was imitating with my flies. What I found was most of the bait that I was representing had what I call hard or dark lateral lines – and even the ones that don’t had a flash or sheen that divided the fish or color pallet of the fish. When I started adding hard black or purple UV’ish flash to my flies I found it made a HUGE difference in how the flies fished – Especially in clear water and high sun conditions. From that came the Hardline Baitfish in two colors. One the standard Oliver with a hard black lateral line and the Chad (Shad) color with a more purple sheen."
