tungsten, or, not

"mu" wrote

Until I moved to
California and fished Lake Crowley I had never met anyone bobber
fishing with midges in stillwater. The tungsten beads I have are not
round but faceted so they are easily distinguishable from other bead
head materials - at least on my flies.


Crowley is where I was introduced to the technique, too. I've seen it
used elsewhere since that time, it's fairly common on Hebgen. It's amazing
how much more effective it can be than "traditional" stillwater wooly-bugger
stripping, at times. Another less common lake technique is very fast
sinking lines and floating, foam, flies ... the Brits call them 'boobies'
.... it's another very effective approach and one fish don't see much,
usually a plus .. slowly slide the line along the bottom, thus swimming the
fly just off it on it's short leader

I saw some faceted beads but never considered the idea that they would be
easy to tell from others ... just that they might flash more vigorously as
each flat caught and reflected light. I'll get some, somes like a logical
solution to my probem.

Now, moving on. I assume you know the trick of attaching your forceps to
the fly and slowly lowering it to touch bottom to measure depth and help set
the bobbicator to keep the fly just off the bottom ( obviously you remove
the forceps after the measuring ;-)

One problem I've never solved is the difficulty landing fish if your fishing
depth is more than about 8 feet. The bobber jams onto the rod's tip and
keeps you from reeling in far enough to get to the fish easily with a net.
So I sometimes end up grapping the leader and praying for the last few feet
as I pull without the shock absorber of the rod ... the better the fish, the
more fervent the prayers ;-) This risks breaking off a good fish, that
may have been played a little too long since that tendency follows from not
being able to land him quickly, and I always hate that few seconds.
Have you come up with a better solution to this "can't reach him OR reel in
any farther" problem with long leader bobber fishing?

On Jan 26, 9:00*am, "Larry L" wrote:


One problem I've never solved is the difficulty landing fish if your fishing
depth is more than about 8 feet. * * The bobber jams onto the rod's tip and
keeps you from reeling in far enough to get to the fish easily with a net..

The use of forceps as depth gauge I learned from Tom Loe.

Regarding deep midging, first, I use the pop-top indicators which can
be removed without having to slide down to the end of the line.

http://sierrapac.com/terminal_tac.htm

It's a dicey proposition to remove the indicator from the leader while
you've got a good fish on but this indicator is about the easiest to
perform such an operation.

Second, when I know I will be midging I bring along a landing net with
a 6 ft long handle.

BTW, one more nice thing about the pop-top indicators is that when on
the stream and not nymphing I leave the little rubber sleeve at the
end of my fly line and then slide it down the leader when I need to
quickly switch to indicator nymphing w/o having to re-tie. There are
several indicator designs which permit this too but I like the pop-
top's ability to communicate a lot more information about what is
going on underwater (while stillwater midging and on rivers) as
opposed to yarn indicators which can be removed w/o retying (via half
hitch) or the slit foam indicators with the rubber insert which do not
provide a nice drift. The little stick also shows me if my midge
leader is really hanging straight down.

Mu

"mu" wrote

BTW, one more nice thing about the pop-top indicators is that when on
the stream and not nymphing I leave the little rubber sleeve at the
end of my fly line and then slide it down the leader when I need to
quickly switch to indicator nymphing w/o having to re-tie.




I've seen those indicators but never tried them ... the idea of sliding down
the rubber sleeve for a bit of bobbicating then sliding it back up to return
to 'real' fly fishing G appeals a lot, I'll give it a try


Larry L ( who points out to skeptics that fly fishing can be talked about on
ROFF, too ;-)