Do any forum members spend time bucktailing your flies in PS? I'm interested in your experience and tips.
This morning we launched before low tide and headed north toward Lagoon Pt. Along the way I decided to tie on a fly Randy Diefert gave me at a recent club meeting. It's a big bucktail and it looks GOOD!
I had the basic bucktail strategy from a Mike Benbow presentation, but I had not tried it myself. I put the 8wt in the rod holder with the tip straight to the fly. Then I dropped my fly into the prop wash of my 10hp kicker and watched it gurgle, pop and waked. I worked the shoreline in and out like I was trolling a cut plug behind mooching sinker.
It was not long before I had a decent fish swing and miss. How cool. It happened one more time before I cut the engine to begin the cast/strip.
The visual hits are really cool and I'm definitely doing this again, especially as I move from location to location. Mike showed lots of awesome photos of fish taken off Vancouver B.C., often enticing fish out from the kelp beds. Kelp beds are not what they use to be inside Puget Sound, so... I trolled the shallows of eelgrass along the shoreline.
Imagine a 12 pound coho slamming the straight line fly!
As for the rest of the day...
Not many fish caught today where we were fishing. Plenty of boats full of gear fishermen targeting pinks/coho. My friend released a pounder coho and 2 greenling. I boated a solitary male Pink.
how much line did you have out when you got that strike? I heard of the technique before and I've also heard it can be very effective, but I never tried it. Always seemed to me like the disturbance from the boat would keep them from rising to a surface fly in the wake
The propwash is exactly what attracts them TO the boat. They look up and see a foaming, moving mass of bubbles on the surface. They think it is a school of baitfish being attacked and they come up to investigate. The fly is a straggler and BLAMMO! Game on. I use the exact same technique, albeit with even bigger flies, when I move from spot to spot chasing mahimahi and other gamefish in the tropics. It always makes me scratch my head when flyfishermen pull in their lines when they move from spot to spot looking for baitballs, birds and surface crashers. Just keep your line in the water and drag that fly. The surprise hits can rip your arms from their sockets.
Pat
I had the fly at the tail end of the prop wash. When we saw the bait balls today it made some sense. Micro bubbles in the bait looked a lot like the tail end of the prop wash. I don't know why it works, but I too hear it does!
I have done a fair amount in MA 10 (some in 8-2, and 9). Success has been a bit hit or miss as having actively feeding coho seems to be a big help. I often alternate using cut plugs and flies (either trolling or casting to fishy tide rips). While the bait is usually more productive the flies have their moments (even out fishing my friends with their bait at times). Three has been couple magically late August and Septembers where my flies have consistently out fished my partners' herring.
The hard part is getting over the mental hurdle of thinking about you are competing with all the fancy gear and bait the most the boats in the area are using. For the areas that I fish a couple things that I think help.
Often getting the fly a few feet below the surface can help (3 to 10 feet) i.e. sink tips.
My best luck has been with 3 to 4 inch unweighted streamers in chartreuse and white. I especially like spun deer hair heads which seems to give the trolled or retrieved fly some "wiggle".
Like flat water better than a chop and sun light seems better than low light/fog.
Have bait near the surface is a big help.
Tides do make a difference with the best tide varying from location to location (Lacking other information I start with fishing on either side of the low).
I don't experience that kind of success I have read about on the outer Straits and open ocean but do see multiple fish days reasonable frequently with the occasional exception days. The average size tends to smallish (3 to 8#s) though I have taken some larger fish (best middle teens).
BTW some years when there are good numbers of coho Jacks and a dry fall there can be some great "trout" fish in terminal areas. When things line up throwing 3 inch streamers can result in dozens of jacks as well as multiple adults on tide. Finding such fishing with a city scape background can be surprising but it can be good enough to drag me away from my rivers and beloved sea-runs for a change of pace.
As Curt indicated, I've found trolling flies for coho to be much more productive in the straits as opposed to the sound. Consequently I don't bucktail much in the sound. Last year was a bit of an exception for me, but even with the good numbers of coho we had last year in the sound, it still just ok compared to MA 4. Your fly looks a bit big to me, but otherwise very similar in color and materials to what I use, however I use tube flies. I also always run a flasher 10ft down and about 10ft off the back and run my fly about 2-3 feet off the prop wash. That seems to work best for me. Also, don't be afraid to change up speeds and focus on tide rips. Making big "S" patterns can help as coming out of a turn sometimes will trigger a strike as the fly accelerates. Good luck, it's a hoot when you can see a fish following in pursuit a waked fly.
I've had much better results getting a following fish to take strike a fly when I just leave it alone as opposed to stripping it when bucktailing (although I suppose an occasional strip may be an effective way to attract a fish up to the fly). Once I have a fish in pursuit, I leave the fly alone and "wait for the weight". The vast majority of the time that results in a hook-up for me. Occasionally you get a fish that just follows the fly and will not strike it. This seems to be more common when the sun is on the water. In those situations, stripping the fly rarely induces a strike for me - at least in the straits. Maybe fish in the sound are more responsive to this technique. I have noticed that when casting clousers, fish will often follow the fly all the way to the boat and then strike in the last few feet, so maybe I'm not retrieving a buckailed fly close enough to the boat.
Jesse and I did this at Neah bay a couple years ago when we found a bunch of coho rising and demolishing the bait balls. We just stripped out a bunch of line behind the boat and started popping the rod tip up and down until we saw fish boiling on the bucktail. Then we'd wait for them to turn and set the hook. It was an absolute BLAST and probably the most fun I've had fishing...ever. It was so much fun, we ditched the downriggers and just started looking for bait balls and then running over to them and throwing out the fly lines. We were actually more successful in less time doing this than waiting for fish to hit the downriggers. I wish I would have known about bucktailing sooner because I think it'd been the way we fished the whole time.
Funny, but it does make for easier fishing! It's been so friggin windy this year out there that my Dad could hardly stand in the boat let alone cast. I came home from my last trip with mysterious bumps and bruises all over. When it comes to fishing, there's nothing I like more than standing on the motor bracket on the back of the new boat and casting clousers to coho mulling about in calm waters, but of the 13 days this season in MA 4, I had exactly 2 days with those conditions.
Fishing meadow point in years past when seeing coho active on the surface I have fished spoons in the prop wash with alot of success. I tied up some flies like the one shown and have been waiting to try it. Good luck and please report any success
I have an 8' Livingston that I take out every now and then to row around a little. When I'm on my way out and in I'll throw my fly out the back about 10' into the small stream of bubbles created by my rowing. It is great to watch the surface action with an occasional hit and a lot of misses. Most are very small coho although I have caught some nice ones that way. It's all good...I love this time of year!
This sounds a LOT like how we fish for tuna in San Diego. You drag feathers just behind the prop wash. Usually around the 2nd wake or so.
I'll never forget the time my buddy and I were daydreaming watching the feathers bouncing around behind the boat - it can get a little boring... - when a marlin sticks his head up out of the water right between the feathers just to see what was going on. Remember, this was maybe 30' from the stern of the boat! He didn't take one but it sure was fun to see.
And looking for fishy spots and throwing flies (or iron in SD) is tons of fun. If you see bait balls, working birds, boiling fish, etc, you chase them down - run and gun. One of the most fun ways to fish in my opinion - when they're hot anyway.
Just a thought on patterns. People talking about the motion of the fly back and forth made me think of Roger's sequin tube fly. I know on the strip that thing does a lot of darting back and forth. Maybe an adaptation would work on a bucktail/streamer? Probably with a bigger sequin?
Sounds like an experiment worth making.
Just a thought on patterns. People talking about the motion of the fly back and forth made me think of Roger's sequin tube fly. I know on the strip that thing does a lot of darting back and forth. Maybe an adaptation would work on a bucktail/streamer? Probably with a bigger sequin?
Sounds like an experiment worth making.
The propwash is exactly what attracts them TO the boat. They look up and see a foaming, moving mass of bubbles on the surface. They think it is a school of baitfish being attacked and they come up to investigate.
Yeah, I remember the summer I spent as crew, commercial fishing out of Neah Bay back in the '60s.
We'd be far out on the "prairie" (the area southwest of Tatoosh) and my new-to-the-game skipper was told by the old-timers to always troll through the disturbed waters after a freighter passed through.
We usually found the hand-gurdies bouncing after doing that!
We'd be far out on the "prairie" (the area southwest of Tatoosh) and my new-to-the-game skipper was told by the old-timers to always troll through the disturbed waters after a freighter passed through.
We usually found the hand-gurdies bouncing after doing that!
I've had birds follow the flats boat around when we're running (usually at least 25mph) from spot to spot with no lines out. I used to think they were waiting for us to start fishing again and that they left when they saw us throwing flies and not bait. Since seeing them dive down into the wake to pick things up makes me now think they wait for us to start moving and then follow us looking for the boat to suck up and stun / kill a baitfish in the prop wake. When we stop moving we stop making a chum trail for them and they fly off..
Same thing probably happens to an even greater extent with a freighter leaving a bigger trail of easy prey sea life behind it..
running at trolling speed from spot to spot can be excruciatingly slow. i would rather run at 15-20 knots to the birds and/or tide rip in the distance than go 3-5 knots. the people who actually fly fish out at neah bay know that any wasted time equals less fish as good tide rips will eventually disappear as well as bait balls. quick, fast re-sets result in more fish on the line when fly fishing at neah bay and everywhere else i've cast flies for salmon... even kayaking.
That's a good tip. I'll keep that in mind when fishing is slow. I've heard radio reports of guys referring to the 'prairie' . Is that the basic area around blue dot or further west? Thanks
That's a good tip. I'll keep that in mind when fishing is slow. I've heard radio reports of guys referring to the 'prairie' . Is that the basic area around blue dot or further west? Thanks
Bucktailing, as I know it, uses a spinner blade on a clevis in front of the fly. Beads are used so that the end of the blade revolves through the eye on the fly. There's some 'hokus pokus' about the colours of the beads - from glow green, to red, to silver, but the blade is always supposed to travel through the centre of the eye.
In Tofino we trolled the fly about 15' to 20' back in the propwash on a short (3') leader off of an Airflo Depthfinder 300. Speed was adjusted to have the fly just in the surface to keep the blade wet and rotating.
Here's my attempt at a more weedless bucktail. A SS cotter pin is used for the shank and weight with lead wire strips lashed to the bottom of the shank only. The 60deg jig hook style shape to the cotter pin at the front should deflect weeds downwards. The stiff braided wire to the upright trailing hook should keep the only hook bend on the fly higher in the water and further away from that deflected weed. The bend in the shank with the bottom weighting should also make for more of a keel and keep the fly tracking straight with less spinning. Seemed to work well for me on a trial run but since there weren't any visible coho around I wasn't going to try it all day. Would love some feedback on performance from anyone else that ties some up.
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