A few issues back, I wrote about crappie fishing using cane poles, bobbers, and minnows hooked at the base of their dorsal fins so they could swim horizontally in a natural way, last longer on the hook, and move the bobber around a bit. It was an enthralling, action-filled technique for an eager-to-learn young angler. My uncle Leon was adamant about hooking the minnow through the rear base of the dorsal fin so it maintained a horizontal profile, with better action in the water, as opposed to a lip hook. He also preached that the depth of the bait under the bobber and above lake bottom was all important, as was the length of the minnow. He was known to high-grade his minnows from the local bait shop tanks for size and vitality, often trading chickens, fresh hen eggs, and field corn for what he wanted.
Today, following the lead of conventional-gear anglers, fly fishers are learning to use a similar technique for bass and scaling down fly size on similar rigs to catch crappies, other panfish species, and trout. It’s called the float-n-fly technique — fishing Balance Minnow and Balance Leech flies under an indicator. Indicator fishing for stillwater trout using small chironomid imitations has been around for some time, so in a sense, fishing Balance Minnows and Balance Leeches under an indicator is a natural progression for fly fishers. Nevertheless, I find it amusing that when fly anglers adopt the fish-n-fly technique, they are using the same concepts that my uncle used with live bait.
Let’s look at crappie fishing. Uncle Leon understood that you need to fish what you’re offering to the fish at a constant depth and present it as if it were alive. He knew that crappies hold tight in vertically stacked schools at preferred depths that change with water temperature, time of day, the presence of bait, and sunlight or absence thereof. That’s still true if you’re not fishing bait. Anglers have been using crappie jigs on spinning rods since light-test nylon monofilament line and spinning reels and rods that would cast lightweight lures showed up after World War II. Success comes when the angler learns to control the sink rate and how to keep the fly or flies in the feeding zone during much of the retrieve, not diagonally rising into and out of that zone, often far too rapidly. The same is true for fly lines. You need to keep the fly in the right zone, even though retrieving it tends to pull the fly past it,
Somewhere years ago, an angler, probably one tired of dipping his hands in cold springtime water chasing a minnow in a bucket, tied a small jig on the end of his line and added one of those three-fora-buck red-and-white plastic spring-clip bobbers to position his lure at what he hoped was the right depth. It turned out that this was a very successful way of fishing for crappies, bass, and other species. The technique became quite sophisticated. At Line-Out in Clear Lake Oaks, the previous owner had a well-stocked store that catered to tournament bass anglers, but his wife was an avid crappie angler and insisted that he have an entire room filled with crappie gear, much of which consisted of jigs of different weights and color combinations, some using feathers and others wiggly rubber or silicone, along with many choices in bobber design, not to mention minnow buckets. Float-n-fly provides an opportunity for fly fishers to experiment with jigs and hooks that were designed for conventional-tackle anglers.
Regardless of the origins of the technique, when adapted to fly fishing, it works quite well and is lots of fun. With a friend, I fished Clear Lake with guide Ryan Williams to learn more about the fish-n-fly technique and its nuances. We used a 9-1/2-foot 4-weight rod, occasionally changing fly depth, working tight to cover. Ryan uses a simple leader — 6 feet total from the fly line, with 3 feet of 15-pound-test Maxima and 3 feet of 10-pound-test Maxima. We never had to change the two-inch-long Balance Fly. Though pond smelt have appeared in the mix there, as in other lakes, threadfin shad are the primary baitfish, and his flies are tied to mimic their hatchet-shaped profile. Ryan uses classic baitfish colors of a white belly, light or medium olive body, and a darker top. To maintain the jig hook’s inherent balance, dress it lightly. You may have to experiment to get the balance right.
Ryan prefers a 1/32-ounce jig head for his small “streamer” flies, but as conditions dictate, he may use lighter 1/16-ounce jig hooks to tie his patterns. He uses a three-quarter-inch Thingamabobber with a 3/32-inch-diameter parachute post cut in half and glued to the indicator so it stands vertical when the jig weight straightens the leader out. Other people have their own variations on this. An indicator modified in this way can signal subtle “uplift” bites, as well as when a fish takes and turns or dives. When an uplift bite occurs, the indicator loses tension and rotates slightly, but isn’t pulled under. Instead, the post goes horizontal. The rig casts very well on an aggressive weight-forward floating line if you open up your loop.
Tom Page, who owns Reel Anglers Fly Shop in Grass Valley, has taken the Balance Minnow to another level. An innovative and skilled fly tyer, he has been experimenting with larger-gap hooks more suited for bass angling, and has settled on patterns that use “standout” hooks designed for the conventional-tackle bass market. These hooks have an odd-looking mid-shank bend that produces a second hook eyelet in addition to the traditional eye at the front of the hook. Threading the line through the two eyes causes the hook to “stand out” horizontally from the angler’s line when drop-shotting. When used for flies, however, the body is tied primarily on that odd bend, and when weighted properly the minnow imitation presents itself horizontally. (As a result, the point of the hook angles upward at roughly 45 degrees.)
Tom ties his leader to the “top,” up-pointing eye. He balances the fly with lead wire wrapped around the hook shank, the mid-shank eye projection, and forward to the hook’s front eye. He glues on eyes as far forward as possible on top of a silvery fine braid or dubbing wrapped over the lead spirals. In contrast, I weight my Balance Flies with dumbbell eyes and get less bulk. When building the fly, he stacks materials to mimic the three-tone baitfish coloration of light, medium, and dark. Tom finishes the head with careful application and cure of a UV coating. His flies are in high demand. This fly doesn’t tie well off of a conventional fly recipe. It requires experimentation and creativity to get things tight, compact, and balanced in such a way as to ensure a horizontal profile.
A float-n-fly rig allows you to keep your fly tight on a rock face, ledge, brush pile, or under docks and under piers — all places that crappies frequent — with less chance of snagging and possibly losing your fly. The same goes for fishing sunken stump fields such as those found at Lake Almanor, when fishing for smallmouths. I found that the fish often hit just as the jig was slowing down in its drop and the post starting to rise slowly toward the vertical. Casts under elevated docks were tricky, because there were horizontal and vertical obstacles, but the bow-and-arrow cast did the trick. If a crappie didn’t take immediately, a slight pull of a few inches helped. Shade was a major factor. Crappies on open flats were hard, if not impossible, to take on a cloudless day with little chop.
On still waters, I fish with a partner from a boat with multiple rigged fly rods. If nothing seems to be happening, such as rising fish on Callibaetis or damselfly nymphs, bait boils, or an ant swarm, we each start with a different technique. Norm uses a two-fly float-n-fly rig from his bow seat, and I cast and retrieve using a clear intermediate sinking line and a two-fly leader from my swivel seat in the stern. Like tournament bass anglers, we are trying to discern the technique that will produce fish. On a number of occasions, we have fished similar leeches, his a Balance Leech under an indicator and mine a conventional leech pattern of a similar color. We have seen days when the cast-and-retrieve method takes fish when the fish-n-fly technique doesn’t and vice versa, but I’ve seen fish prefer the fly suspended horizontally so many times that I’m a believer. Is what makes the technique effective the horizontal fly, action parted by angler (a light chop helps), the vertical leader, or just the stillness of no retrieve?
When fishing for trout using this method, I want to be able to change depth quickly, and use a much lighter test leader to the fly than when fishing for crappies, bluegills, and bass. We look for weed beds and use flies tied on size 12 and size 14 hooks. If the weeds are green, we go with olive. At Lava Lake in Central Oregon we found that weed stems and branches in the fall are reddish brown, and so we went with a rust Jay Fair color. We find it produces in many places in the West. Believe it or not, white works in Frenchman Lake in the fall. I first thought a stomach sample was bleached in stomach acid, but research and phone calls suggested the lake indeed held white leeches.
Balance Leeches are considerably easier to tie than Tom Page’s standout-hook minnows. I find it best to set up for production tying when making Balance Leeches. You typically use unweighted jig hooks for these flies. For bass or larger panfish, I try to find hooks with a wider gap. To create a test fly, tie a pin flush to the hook’s shank to extend the shank forward past the hook’s eye (a dressmaker pin works fine). Next, add weight, such as a bead or wraps of lead, to the pin to get the shank to hang horizontally, as a real fish would. To determine of you got this right, slide a pin or needle into the hook’s eye and let the fly hang unsupported. If it’s horizontal, you’ve placed the weight correctly. If it doesn’t hang horizontally, adjust the extender or weight accordingly on another fly, test once more, and measure the pin length. Cut a stack of pins, tie your first production attempt in tightly, and secure it with head cement or superglue.
If you prepare a dozen hooks this way, you can quickly complete a dozen flies. Just be sure to repeat the look of the successful test fly, whether it was a slim or bulky fly that balanced. As my friend and fishing partner, the late Jim Cramer, emphasized in his book, Become a Thinking Fly Tyer, don’t wrap your dubbing overly tight, and consider picking out body fibers with a bodkin so your fly will mimic life as it moves through the water.
Editor’s note: “The Balance Leech,” by Denis Isbister, which ran in our March/ April 2015 issue, presents instructions for tying and .ftshing this style of stillwater fly pattern. Denis uses unweighted jig hooks that have a 90-degree bend to the eye.
The Float-n-fly technique is particularly well suited for lethargic winter fish. Fish metabolism drops considerably in cold water, and anglers don’t fish much in the coldest months, in part due to unpleasant conditions, but also because they don’t know that fish may be at reachable depths and are catchable, believing instead that they school up and go almost dormant at great depths until they go into prespawn mode. But fish do feed in winter. They just do so slowly and carefully. Fish will rise from deeper water to inspect something that might be food. I watch fish and have observed that they will not move toward a distant bait, but if it is brought to them in increments, they will take it if it is right in front of their nose — as close as several inches. Floatn-fly presents the angler’s fly in a fashion that allows a fish in a slowed-down physiological mode to take a fly without much expenditure of energy.
And winter bass aren’t always deep. At Oroville a 10-to-14-foot-deep float-nfly rig takes fish because they are at those depths, feeding on pond smelt. In the Yuba dredging ponds, I’ve seen bass barely moving in a foot of water over sand and gravel bottoms on a sunlit day that warms the shallow water. Bass are cruising and nosing around, rooting up sculpins that are sunbathing. Also, bass, particularly spotted bass, often will suspend under baitfish schools in the winter. At Lake Berryessa, they suspend under threadfin shad schools, and holdover trout feed on the shad, as well. Big bass come up for the trout, as they do at Bullards Bar Reservoir under younger, smaller kokanee salmon. World records have resulted from fishing these situations.
As with most techniques, refinement increases success. You are going to miss a percentage of takes unless you focus on variations in the way the indicator behaves. A take can produce just two barely discernible bounces of a quarter of an inch. Because you may need to throw a leader as long as 14, feet, a quality rod matched with a top-grade aggressive weight-forward line will make casting much easier. As with classic chironomid indicator fishing, longer casts away from the boat, float tube, pontoon boat, or pram will take more fish. Mend often to eliminate slack so that you can set the hook quickly. A slight wind at your back helps. If the slightest doubt exists, hit it! Float-n-f ly is a good way to fish steep banks and the West’s steep-sided reservoirs, though you may want to mix in short, slow, six-inch pulls on your indicator and change depths to zero in on the correct one. Don’t forget to fish over sunken islands and out over long, sloping points. Using the float-n-fly technique is also a great way to allow a handicapped angler a chance to fly fish. A Spey or switch rod can be used as a cane pole, albeit an expensive one. In clear-water lakes, you might want to lighten line test, use fluorocarbon, and lengthen the leader. Give float-n-fly a try. You will become more enthusiastic as your skills rise, and proficiency will open up new angling windows and chances at huge fish.
