I still use weighed flies but I have extended and changed a few things that I like to do.
- I am almost exclusively fishing stiff hackle bead or without
- I try with a wire weighted fly prior to going heavy
this thread applies to #2…click to see the full thread.
There is a concept when bucktailing. Choice of weight to put the offering in the strike zone but not dragging bottom. You want a fly that the water speed will provide loft but not ride too high. Stiff hackle can aid in this as the water is a vehicle to deliver your offering and keep the fly from finding bottom. The stiff hackle can act as a sail to lift the fly away from the bottom…even a bead. I now tie my beads with stiff hackle.
I use the end of my running line as an indicator. I dont drop shot. Those methods work…adding lead, but I feel even with a short drift in fast water a strategic placement of a fly can be more effective. Sometimes my total rig is as long as the rod sometimes a quarter longer. I like at least 4 feet of tippet and longer if it is a deep pool. I gauge my presentation depth by how much tippet is above water and the tippet entry angle. My running line is opaque white and I fish it year round. I do now occasionally fish LL but only when I want delicate presentation.
Fishing deeper than a foot I never see the fly but the angle of your tippet and running line aways give cues on takes. Fishing deep you will never feel subtle takes so you can pulse a fly occasionally and often there may be a fish at the end.The stiff hackle give a lot of feedback and anchors the fly in a way soft hackle does not. So tension never moves the fly far from its current location and can overcome some drag of the tippet. I can check on the progress of my fly without ever moving it from the strike zone. Awesome and deadly.
This may relate it is from one of my posts on my Surfcasting forum but it is everything I love about blind presenting to fish…replace the word bucktail with kebari.
I thought I would share this entry I made in a thread on SRB.
The context was bucktails but it really applies to all plugs. I employ this tactic intentionally quite a bit. All of us do it without thinking about it, but thought it is a really important component to our angling success. The dead stick and what that technique actually is.Originally Posted by toyota;n131821
I’ve always liked low and slow trying to let the current (if any) do all the work. Once you get the jist of of it unlocks a world of opportunity and fish at your feet (literally)I have been really meditating on this thread lately. It has me wanting to fish. As I exited my house this morning, I really had the urge to be standing on a rock somewhere casting bucktails. I even considered the rock wall in my backyard as a perch to cast bucktails into the woods. The thought cracked me up a little… how we are a strange bunch…perhaps I am the weirdest on in the pack…hahahhaha.
Regarding letting current do the work. Ever since I was a teenager there has been something that I really enjoyed about allowing current deliver my offering. I would cast garden worms without any weight into the currents of a brook and let the water deliver the weightless offering to trout holding on structure under banks or in the deepest of channels. Lies that would be impossible to present to by any other method. There is something about that blind presentation that I have found enjoyment in. You could say it is very zen. Using water as a tool, and as you put it, let it do the work for you. Sometimes the best presentation is when the water presents the offering as it is the most natural.
For a better visualization for those who have not tinkered with this type of presentation, the below may be an experience you have had or you could try sometime to better visualize the concepts.
My daughter and I were on a hike along a small river peppered with rocks and boulders. 1-3 foot deep with a moderate current. We decided to throw a couple branches and sticks into the river for entertainment and we would watch the sticks float down the current. No matter where the sticks landed, whether it be in still water or the main channel of the current. Each stick would eventually make its way down stream through the labyrinth-gauntlet of rocks. The attributes of the sticks were light enough for the current to take full control of. The path of each stick if plotted was not mechanical but organic and sinuous. Sometimes a stick would get caught in an eddy and spiral a couple time before being grabbed by the main current again. The sticks would do s curves around obstacles. Like, one would think for sure they would hang up at some point, but they would always surprisingly float down current and out of site. As if the stick had a mind or it had a captain guiding it.
There is something to presenting lures in this way. Sometimes when you do nothing the current does more for you. If you consider the above as a two dimensional view of current (because it illustrates surface current only) and and object of neutral buoyancy organically traveling through that current. We can agree it is a very sophisticate presentation. A presentation where the person did nothing but drop the object in current. When we fish it can be the same thing but consider the current in three dimensions.
When I fish bucktails or plugs I employ some lost and found in my retrieve. This allows for some of this organic delivery.