Well, I've been down this road on a little bet with some NC scoundrels
who waxed me good -- however, the fact that I was accompanied by one
of the said scoundrels might have influenced the results.

Largemouth feed on insects and often quite voraciously. We should
consider fishing for them as fly fishermen as well as ersatz gear
fishermen equipped with feathers. Leeches, dragonflies, damselflies,
and small streamers should all work fine. Standard bassbugs also work
but wind will defeat them unless . . . Standard streamers work just
fine (Deceivers or Clousers anyone?)

About gear, well, I'm shying away from single handed rods in almost
any situation where distance and wind is on the menu. I can cast
farther and with less effort using a two-hander. For largemouth, it's
often necessary to cast far over lillypads to get at the best lunkers.
I kept thinking while in NC, that if I had brought one of my two
handers with me, I could've sailed casts well into the salad, through
the wind, then used the long rod to keep the fly skipping across the
top of the pads and the fly line off of the salad. My Loop 8/9 tosses
a 35' Airflo 12 wt. shooting head over 100' on an overhead cast and it
can cast short as well. There isn't a bassbug in existence that it
can't cast. Nothing beats a two-hander for covering water.

On Monday, I'm going to hit the Grand for dropback steelies, resident
bows and browns, smallies, or whatever hits the fly, using my Loop
7/8. A few weeks back, I was whacking monster smallies using a big
Daiwa, while after steelhead. In all cases, I'm covering a lot of
water. There was damn near a gale blowing hen I was using the Daiwa
and I could still fish. Some of the smallies were taken in water that
was about 10' deep.

It's time to think a bit out of the box . . .

Peter