Leader-weight

I recently (two days back) hiked into a between
two lakes channel in northern Idaho, where spawning
lake trout can be found in the shallow, slowly flowing
end of the lake, near the outlet, and spawning
brown trout can be found in the actual outlet.

It's fun fishing because it's sight fishing: the water
is so cystal clear you see the fish AND your fly.

This is an amazingly useful combination.
Bobber fishing doesn't work because the bobbers
spook the fish. All they would eat was egg
flies: yarn, orange plastic or heavier glass beads.

They'd sniff nymphs and streamers, but they wouldn't
eat, and that goes for both lakers and browns.

The egg flies had to dead drift. They'd chase a swinging
egg, but they wouldn't take it.

You had to get the egg down. But if you put weight on the
leader it became very difficult to feel the strikes. You could
see a fish turn and flash near your egg, you'd see the orange
dot dissapear, but feel no strike, if you had tungsten bead on
the leader for weight. All the strike does is straighten out the line.
The bead will be sinking deeper than the egg (if it is on the leader)
so all the strike does is pull the bead upwards until hte line
is straight, and then you might feel the strike, but by then
they've spit the hook.

A heavy glass bead, fished without weight on the leader,
was the best solution. At least you could feel hte strikes right
away. But a heavy egg doesn't drift as well, so that
solution had its drawbacks too.

salmobytes wrote:
A heavy glass bead, fished without weight on the leader,
was the best solution. At least you could feel hte strikes right
away. But a heavy egg doesn't drift as well, so that
solution had its drawbacks too.

I forgot the wrap-up. I don't think we caught a single
fish by feeling the strike and setting the hook. In all
cases we got hookups when we saw a fish move
and reacted to that.

If the water had been off-color, we'd have been
skunked, even though we'd had dozens of strikes.

salmobytes wrote:
salmobytes wrote:
A heavy glass bead, fished without weight on the leader,
was the best solution. At least you could feel hte strikes right
away. But a heavy egg doesn't drift as well, so that
solution had its drawbacks too.

I forgot the wrap-up. I don't think we caught a single
fish by feeling the strike and setting the hook. In all
cases we got hookups when we saw a fish move
and reacted to that.

If the water had been off-color, we'd have been
skunked, even though we'd had dozens of strikes.

Another approach that sometimes works for me in such a situation is a
sink-tip (or full sinking) line in a camouflafge colour (no fluoroscent
orange here) and a relatively short leader. A standard egg fly (yarn,
Floam(r) or whatever) then floats along with a nice dead-drift.