The realization on the Mini Fish Whacker came about for two reasons. One is people who fished the regular Fish Whacker were asking for a smaller version mostly to be able to fish on lighter fly rods as well as a need to have a smaller sized fly for when the water was super clear and to trigger strikes from a little less aggressive fish.

I had also noticed that when getting fish to chase the Fish Whacker there were times where they would turn away at the last second and I thought it was due to the larger size of the fly so I started tying it in the 2 to 2.5 length as opposed to the 3 to 4 length of the Fish Whacker and found that it did indeed elicit lots of strikes when I might otherwise not get a reaction.

I also fished the Mini Fish Whacker along with the Fish Whacker on a two Whacker rig and found there were times the Mini Fish Whacker would get taken first even though it was the top fly in the two fly rig.