From some of my earlier postings, some of you know that I've been looking for a sub-surface fly as effective as a popper for delta bass. I was trying to refine a spin-off on a zonker pattern, something of a super flashtail zonker with lead eyes to produce a jigging action. While I had some success with the fly, they've never produced like I hoped.
Well Saturday I went fishing with my brother-in-law. He's basically a hunter that fly fishes when he's not hunting. He got tired of casting a popper ( he had an injured shoulder) and switched to a relatively small black and red woolly bugger, something normally used for trout. He started nailing fish, catching two, maybe even three to one compared to my popper. Because his fly was so small, he was even catching LMBs that were barely three inches long!
I went out today armed with some LMB size, 4 inch chartreuse woolly buggers and my poppers. Again, the woolly bugger produced at twice the rate of the popper and the fish were bigger! Now today the wind was howling and coming from farther north than usual. Decent popper water was hard to find so it wasn't really a fair comparison but worth thinking about.
I really enjoy popping for bass but think that the large woolly buggers have a place in the delta fly box. For one thing, it seems that you can extend the fishing day, since the fly seems to produce later into the morning and it's definitely easier to cast when the wind's blowing.
The fly should be tied with NO weight and fished on a #2 sink tip with a series of short jerky strips and some pauses thrown in. Fish the troughs between weeds and rip-wrap and alleys in the weeds. Just like a popper, pause before roll casting to start your next cast.
I also found that you can get hits by holding your rod tip high and skating the fly across or just under the surface like a spinner bait.
As far as weeds, the fly is tied on a thin wire hook with no weed guard and the hook seems to slice through most of the weeds encountered. If not, a quick jerk out of the water will usually clear it. Unfortunately, when thrown into the tules you'd better find clear water. You can pull through the elodea but not the reeds!
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