Serious Fun @ JFFC May 2018 | Page 59

With all the baitfish imitations or streamers, I like to make the cast and give the fly some time to sink (bass often hit the fly on the drop so keep in contact with your fly). The fly is then stripped back erratically (think wounded fish) with interspersed pauses of a couple of seconds given throughout the retrieve (see the video for a typical streamer retrieve we have found to be successful). If you find the fish are hitting but not connecting with the fly, slow down your retrieve slightly and allow longer pause times. A lot of the takes occur on the pause or the first strip after the pause. HERE is a example of retrieve.

If the fish are close to the surface (you can sometimes see them boiling or jumping at dragon flies) you can change to the floating line and skim the baitfish patterns (especially the mini crafty bunny minnow) just below the surface with a fast retrieve. It is super exciting to see a school of bass chase the fly down and they often cartwheel out of the water when hitting the fly. When fishing poppers you need to slow things down considerably. After the cast let the fly settle and then bring the fly back with a pop pause retrieve, the bass find this irresistible. If the fish are not responding to this you can speed up the retrieve or slow it down even further until you find what they are looking for.

Flies:

The flies that I fish 90% of the time are self-tied baitfish imitations. This is more because of the joy I get out of imitative tying than anything else, as the bass usually smash any fly presented close to the school. What I have found is that I very seldom fish heavily weighted flies and prefer unweighted or lightly weighted (small brass bead) flies with a neutral density that hang on the pause in the retrieve.

Make sure you have the following flies in your bass box:

Woolly buggers: #8/6 in black, olive and brown. Tie some that are heavily hackled for fishing in low light. If you like tying flies in 5 mins then crystal buggers are also a winner in these sizes and colours mentioned above.

Zonker minnows: #6 in light olive, dark olive and black. You can tie the standard version with a bead head and they work brilliantly. For my personal pleasure, I prefer adding stick on eyes with a UV resin head. All my baitfish patterns have a prominent eye as I believe this to be a key trigger to the bass.

Pappa Roach: Tied as the original by Herman Botes, this fly really works when the bass are not responding to the quick retrieve on baitfish patterns and has often produced bigger fish when the fishing was slow. This fly should be fished slower close to weed beds.

Poppers: Small poppers in bright yellow/chartreuse, olive and black are our go to poppers. But, generally any popper will work, including small deer hair poppers. Pack some bigger black poppers for low light fishing. I tie a small foam frog popper that has also proven to be a killer pattern if the bass are looking for a more subtle plop, instead of n loader popper.