Unconventional Wet Fly Fishing

[Wise-Man]

Okay, here is a good one. Any ol' timers chime in. I'd love to learn how to do this.

I was reading about a technique that's arguably _not_ fly fishing that involves wet flys.

Basiscly you tie a wet fly dropper behind a spinner and fish down stream. I read about this in an old book published in the 50's.

As a person who is new to fly fishing but a long time fisherman I'm curious. How does this rig work? Would it work w/ a nymph dropper too? Has anyone fished this before?

I love fishing no matter the form and to tell the truth, I'm not above chucking hardware. Fly fishing is hard and sometimes you just want to catch fish!

 

[LouM]

I think what you are refering to was a set up on a piece of leader material about 9 or so inches long. The mono was the spinner shank and a fly was tied to the end with a loop at the top, picture a rooster tail or similar spinner only using the above materials . If I can recall correctly it was called a 7-11. It was at times was quite effective on stockies. Also used same set up only with a bare hook with a worm or grub on the end.

 

[Pete]

Just speculating ...

It sounds like the same principle as trolling a streamer (or other lure) behind a dodger or "cowbells" in large lakes.

The flash of the metal attracts attention by simulating a school of forage fish, and the fly gives them something that looks like food.

It probably lost popularity when spinning tackle became common, and required lures heavy enough to spincast, rather than light enough to flycast.

It might work with a nymph, but IMHO a wet or streamer would be more effective fished this way.

 

[Lochswa]

Very interesting..

My father has reminded me on several occasions like Pete mentioned, before spinning rods were popular they did infact used to use spinners/flies and bait off of a fly rod.

It definetly would be easier to use a streamer as a point fly then a spinner.Easier to cast and ur line wont twist up

 

[rford]

That technique is getting more popular in the salt water.

You tie on a SW fly as a trailer to the back of Bomber or similar SW lure.

ralph

 

[JeffK]

In the dark days before spinning tackle if you wanted to fish light you basically used fly tackle, even if you used bait (fly tackle great to dead drift worms or salmon eggs) or a host of fly rod lures. The only other option was to use bait casting equipment and only the very best of anglers could handle light lures with casting tackle (Charlie Fox messed around with light bait casting for Susquehanna smallies) Tons of fly rod lures were developed for trout - one of the local Warren Co favorites was a flyrod Flatfish in silver with black and red dots. Pencil poppers were used for trout like the old Quilby Minnow.

Spinners have always been hot for trout (they go back to the middle of the 19th century) and options were small Hildebrandt flicker spinners, clip on spinners ahead of a fly, flies tied on spinners (like Joes Flies), or spinner blades and a bead slipped on a hook shank before tying a fly (like the propeller bladed Pistol Pete popular out West).

Special techniques were used for spinners for smallies or trout with fly tackle. The two I like best were to stand at the head a pool and cast across. Then you mend the line to get it to the near shore. Then you let out a few feet of line and mend it to the far shore. You can keep repeating this until the whole pool is covered using only one cast and mending the line back and forth. Take special care to go over rocks, under trees, or hit any other special cover. The other cool trick is for getting a spinner to travel downstream along a cut bank. Cast upstream and across to the far bank a few feet ahead of the cut and throw a big upstream mend to get the spinner fly to sink. When the fly gets to the upstream start of the cut bank hopefully it is at the right depth and the mend has straightened out - the distance upstream and the upstream mend must get the spinner fly to the right depth. Then throw a huge downstream mend and the downstream loop of line will pull the spinner downstream along the undercut. The old fly rod lure guys (just like the old wet fly guys) had plenty of tricks up their sleeves that are now mostly forgotten.

 

[Wise-Man]

hey that sounds fun. So, basically, you're using the drag created from the down stream mend to pull that rig though the pool. The upsteam mend will pull the "fly" closer to you and away from the opposite bank. Is that right?

 

[JeffK]

The upstream mend is basically to get the fly down, but the downstream mend does pull the fly. Many of the old spinner fly techniques run counter to most techniques today since with spinners you want the drag to pull the spinner and keep it spinning, while these days it's mostly about getting a dead drift.

Whether the spinner head towards the bank isn't a matter of up or down, but a matter of side to side placement.