Most people who have come to the sport of fly fishing have done so through the pursuit of trout. Even in California, where the fisheries are so diverse, most people learn fly-fishing tactics by learning trout tactics. Consequently, most anglers tend to resort to those tactics when they target new species of fish. Over the past several decades, fly fishing for largemouth bass has become increasingly popular, but fly-fishers’ angling tactics have tended to remain rooted in what they know best. I have always believed that any angler who is trying to catch largemouth bass on a fly rod should instead base their fishing on the existing knowledge of the conventional-tackle bass-angling world.
The standard chartreuse Woolly Bugger stripped on a floating line is not going to cut it if you want to catch largemouth bass consistently. I realized this when I went from catching huge numbers of largemouth bass on private bass ponds around my childhood home to launching my new bass boat on various public bass lakes and not touching a fish for weeks. To say it was humbling would be an understatement. Over the past two decades, I have continued to learn how to catch bass by employing the knowledge of conventional bass anglers, and one of the earliest lessons I learned guides me every day that I fish for bass. In still waters, fly fishers typically make a cast, then retrieve the fly, whether on the surface or at some depth beneath it. They basically fish in two dimensions —they present their flies horizontally, along a flat plane. But conventional-tackle bass anglers see bass in a three-dimensional space and realize that a presentation needs to take into account how the bass encounter its prey in that space. They realize that the typical horizontal presentation most fly fishers use when fishing still waters is only one tool that anglers must have in their tool box.
Largemouth bass are ambush predators. In most cases, they don’t search out or chase food very far or at all. Concealed in or very tight to structure, they lie in wait to attack their prey. Largemouth bass are like lions in the Serengeti — they can strike quickly, and they can be deadly, but most of the time, they are just relaxing. That’s because bass species in general are not built for long, sustained chases. Think about how bass fight: they do not run and jump like a salmonid. They bulldog, in violent, quick short bursts. Their muscles are built for short, quick attacks, not sustained, long pursuits. Biology has determined that they will not be chasing food very far.
This means that casting your fly out to structure and then retrieving it back puts your fly in the strike zone or area where the bass will grab it for only a brief moment. If you draw a three-dimensional three-foot box around a bass and assume that the bass will eat or grab only what is in that box, it’s clear that a fly cast straight out and retrieved moves through that box very quickly. If that box is four feet under the surface, and you make a few strips before your fly gets down to that depth, it will have buzzed right over the targeted bass. That is why fly anglers need to begin to think in terms of vertical presentations for largemouth bass.
A conventional-tackle bass angler once told me to think about a largemouth bass hanging on structure as a cat to which you throw a toy on a string. If you move the toy too quickly away from it, the cat will lazily watch it stripped away. If you throw the toy too far away from the cat, it won’t even look up. But if you put it just close enough either over its head or next to it and move it just slowly enough, the cat perks up and will follow the toy, eventually swatting at it for the kill.
Getting the Drop
For fly anglers, there are several reasons why this concept is tough to put into practice. Dropping a fly vertically along structure can be a challenge, because it requires us to maintain connection with the fly as it drops, and to drop a fly vertically, there has to be some slack in the line. Most conventional-tackle anglers fishing vertical presentations are fishing on tight lines nearly right over the bass. Watch a video on YouTube or a TV show of someone “pitching jigs” or “punching.” These anglers are almost tight-lining a jig along or into structure, allowing the heavy jig or weight to pick up any slack. “Crawling or bouncing” a jig is achieved the same way — a weight is used to walk a bait down a rock wall or bank, keeping a line tight to the weight and vertically presenting the bait down the wall.
With a fly, adjusting the weight of the fly, the type of line you are fishing, and how you approach a piece of water can help achieve this vertical presentation. First of all, look at the type of structure you are going to be fishing and ask how dense the structure is and how uniform the edge is. One handicap that fly anglers have is there is nothing in our arsenal that is as weedless as a weedless jig or rubber-worm jig rigged weedless, so our ability to fish into structure is limited. In comparison, conventional-tackle anglers can rig a rubber jig weedless with a completely concealed hook point and cast it into the densest of cover. So we have to pick and choose our cover and analyze it in a different manner. We cannot fish every piece of structure. We have to cover the highest-percentage areas that we can. I prefer to look first at the density of cover to find the best water for vertically presenting a fly. Consider a spectrum in which the densest structure is a rock wall and the sparsest is a loosely branched sunken tree or reed bed. How we fish each and how largemouths relate to each differs greatly.
For dense structure, we can assume that a fly fished vertically along the edges will be seen by any bass hanging on that structure — for example, a rock wall. Crawling flies down a rock wall for bass is a pretty common presentation for most fly anglers, but moving the fly down the length of the wall, say from the depth of a foot to 20 feet, keeping the fly off the rocks, yet right on the structure and in front of bass at any depth, can be a challenge. The first item of tackle that an angler will need for achieving a vertical presentation to fish holding on a rock wall is a lead-core or incredibly heavy line that will sink along the wall down to the deepest of depths. Part of assuring this will occur involves positioning your boat or floatation device a few feet out from the desired or maximum depth that you wish to fish. On a steeper bank, this will be closer to the shore.
The next key is a short, 3-to-4-foot leader and a fly that, although a “sinking fly,” will float off the rocks while sinking with the line. I prefer to achieve this by adding foam to a crawfish or jig-style fly. Bead-chain eyes or light lead eyes can be used to keep the head down and sinking, while the foam will allow the fly to stay right on the wall, but not get hung up in the rocks. The sinking line will sink on the rocks, allowing the angler to move the fly vertically down the wall and find at what depth the fish are holding. By adjusting the length of the leader, you can keep the fly close to or farther off the rocks. Sometimes bass will suspend a few feet off the rocks, looking for prey that use the rocks for cover.
Once the depth along the rock wall where the fish are holding has been determined, an angler can switch to a horizontal presentation by locating their boat or floating device above the depth at which the fish are holding and then pull flies horizontally at that depth along the rock wall. This will usually require a line and possible fly change to match the sink rate to the depth. A fly design containing foam so that it floats right off structure while sinking down to it will remain important. Less dense structure allows largemouths to hang at various depths and move horizontally in and out of the structure. This is where seeing a bass’s world in three dimensions becomes really critical. Weed beds are the most common example of this kind of structure. Fish can hang out on the edges or move into weeds as necessary, based on conditions. When fishing a large weed bed or edge, I always start farther off the weeds than I think I should. There are many effective ways to fish vertically along this kind of structure. They key is being patient and in touch visually and tactilely with your fly.
My go-to rig is an intermediate shooting head setup with a 5-to-8-foot tapered leader with about a foot of red Amnesia between the fly line and the leader as a visual key. I fish a jig-style fly that is tied to move even when only minimal force is applied to the fly. As it drops, it moves and entices bass. Think of conventional bass jigs — they are basically huge rubberleg skirts that pulse and move as they drop. I don’t want a fly that comes alive only when I strip it, because in a vertical presentation, I am not stripping the fly. I prefer flies with marabou, rabbit strips, rubber legs, flash, and anything else that pulses and moves as it drops through the water column.
This method can work along timber, brush piles, and even reed beds. The key to fishing this method successfully is dialing in the weight of the fly. Many times, anglers will switch flies, convinced the pattern isn’t working, when the reality is that the weight of the fly is not allowing either the pattern or the presentation to work. Knowing the depth of the water along your weed bed is key. The heavier the fly, the faster it sinks, and the more quickly your fly moves through the holding zone. When largemouth bass are deep along this kind of structure, a heavy fly is a necessity, but when the fish are shallower, to entice the bass you may need to really slow the fly down, almost letting it just hover as it drops down.
The presentation and actual fishing of this rig is pretty simple. Cast directly at the edge of structure you wish to fish. Measure the cast out, then shake a bit of slack out, or stack the leader at the edge, if possible. As the fly sinks, slowly come tight to it. This allows you to be in touch with the fly and feel the grab as the fly drops. Coming tight to the fly happens at a faster rate the faster that the fly sinks and at a slower rate the more slowly the fly sinks. The key is not bringing in the slack too quickly, pulling the fly away from the structure, and not so slowly that you miss the grab. I use the red amnesia as a visual guide and err on the side of too slow. If I see the Amnesia move in any way, I make a quick strip to see if anything is there. Many times, the grab on a vertical presentation is lightning quick as a bass sucks in the fly and spits it right back out, so some intuition is involved.
Getting Into It
Largemouth bass do not always allow us to fish just the edges of structure. Many times, during the mid to late summer months, we have to be able to fish into structure. This is truly a challenge for the fly angler, and it, too, requires a vertical presentation. Conventional-tackle bass anglers have perfected “punching,” in which they literally punch through dense cover to get to the bass. Fly anglers have to fish with a bit more finesse. I look for small openings or edges in weed mats or dense cover where I can present a fly horizontally or on a drop. While this requires some serious attention to detail and a bit of a learning, it can pay off.
These openings may be no bigger than a basketball hoop, but they provide a window for a fly angler to drop a fly vertically into the interior of a piece of structure. The rig I fish for this situation is a floating line and a leader that is 5 to 12 feet long, depending on how deep the water is or how far I want the fly to drop. On that leader, I slide a slip float or foam cylinder. It must be big enough to see easily and must float very well. This float creates a hinge point between your leader and the fly. I tend to err on the size of larger, rather than smaller, when picking a float. The fly I use is very similar to the fly I fish when fishing the edges of structure. It must move with minimal force applied to it and entice the fish as it drops and then is jigged back up. I usually fish a very heavy fly, many times tying my flies on conventional jig hooks to get down fast.
I cast the whole rig, and the float slides down right to the fly. Once the rig lands, the fly sinks, and the float floats. I tend to favor a faster-sinking fly because I am going to retrieve the fly vertically back up to the float. Once the float reaches the butt section or fly line, I began to jig the fly back up slowly, covering the vertical area along the edge of the opening in the weeds. The grab is usually subtle, but can be firm, and once the bass grabs, there is usually very little room to play the fish, so a stout rod and stiff tippet are mandatory.
There are a few variations on this rig that allow me to change the presentation. One I use on reservoirs that have larger openings in their weed beds, where suspending smaller nymphs or even baitfish and tadpole patterns can be deadly. In these situations, I fish a fixed-indicator rig, cast to the opening, and just let the fly hover over or along the weed edges in the opening. This is almost like a popper-dropper rig, but with a much longer “drop,” allowing for much more movement and drift of the fly through the opening. This technique can be deadly as well in weedy areas where certain parts of the weeds protrude through the water and other parts sit a few feet below.
While none of these methods provide the soul-jarring grab of stripping baitfish patterns or the visual heart attack of a top-water explosion on a frog pattern, they do catch fish. Anglers who spend enough time listening to conventional-tackle bass anglers will realize that what wins tournaments and catches fish consistently is having a variety of techniques at one’s disposal. Being able to present a fly vertically gives fly anglers one more tool in their toolbox.
