Weight for subsurface flies

[Markbob 0]

The only trout trip that I have been on was guided and we used a tandem nymph rig with two pheasant tail nymphs (one natural, the other flash back) fished below some split shot and a strike indicator. I asked the guide (Corky for Duranglers) about the use of bead heads patterns and he said that he typically only uses them as a dropper on hopper/dropper rigs. He said that if he is fishing any other way, he uses non beadhead patterns and adds the weight with split shot so that he can control the amount of weight he adds for the given hole he is fishing.

I notice that a lot of people use bead head patterns for other things. Obviously what he was doing was not "wrong" because we caught a lot of fish but what are other people doing differently that I am not understanding? Are you tying BH patterns for the specific areas that you fish knowing the weight needed for your favorite holes during different flows and such?

 

I suspect that there is a good book about how do fish these different types of flies and such, can anyone recommend a good one?

[poksal 0]

The only trout trip that I have been on was guided and we used a tandem nymph rig with two pheasant tail nymphs (one natural, the other flash back) fished below some split shot and a strike indicator. I asked the guide (Corky for Duranglers) about the use of bead heads patterns and he said that he typically only uses them as a dropper on hopper/dropper rigs. He said that if he is fishing any other way, he uses non beadhead patterns and adds the weight with split shot so that he can control the amount of weight he adds for the given hole he is fishing.

I notice that a lot of people use bead head patterns for other things. Obviously what he was doing was not "wrong" because we caught a lot of fish but what are other people doing differently that I am not understanding? Are you tying BH patterns for the specific areas that you fish knowing the weight needed for your favorite holes during different flows and such?

 

I suspect that there is a good book about how do fish these different types of flies and such, can anyone recommend a good one?

 

Thanx for asking that question, I will be soaking up the answers, too.

[NJ All Day 0]

Nope, and if i need to get down i will use a spit shot. Because if you fish a certain river that could have a multiple of pools that are different depths. First you will have to use up tippet material to change the fly for a certain hole. And you would need to carry a variety of one fly in total different weight for just the one river. And if you fish multiple rivers you'll have crazy amounts of flies that you would be carrying. If you fish with split shots, you could just add split shot if the pool is deeper, or if it gets shallow again just take the split shot off.

[Jaydub 0]

Most of my nymphs are weighted the old-fashioned way, with lead wire. I haven't seen too many naturals with giant gold heads. But I do have bead-heads and unweighted nymphs in my box and use split shot as well at times. I don't tie for speciifc holes, but I will select fly combinations and weight based on the speed and depth of current. Sometimes you can't use shot. For example on flyfishing only waters in Oregon, you can't attach any weight to your line or leader. Any weight has to be part of the fly.

[atroutbum2 0]

any regular pattern can be made into a beadhead pattern by simply adding a bead to it. sometimes adding the bead is done to add some flash to the pattern that u dont get with the regular pattern, i think of it as " putting the cherry on top " of an already effective pattern

 

beads come in many sizes and colors, i personally tie mainly using gold beads, but thats my prefrence, silver and brass are also colors i like. if u want to make the beadhead really heavy, use a tungston bead or tuck a few lead wraps into the bead

 

i sometimes prefer to use beadheads simply because the splitshot keeps flying off the leader and its a pain to keep putting it back. ive seen heavily pressured fish shy away fron the fly because they see the splitshot on the line, but they gobble up a beadhead presented without splitshot on the line

 

but the bad thing about beadheads, and other weighted flys, is that they behaive diffrently in the water than an unweighted fly does. sometimes this diffrence makes the fish take one and not take the other

 

as with anything else, beadheads have their place in your flybox but they are not the cure for every fishing situation

[OutSide 0]

I'm just a beginner but I can say that there are similar reasons for different setups with spinning gear as well. Sometimes it is all about what you want the fly to look like to the fish. A bead head or heavily weighted fly is created for the sole purpose of sinking at a certain rate. Other times it is used to keep the fly down at a certain level in a given (estimated) current. For bass fishing and for many other species, the weight is applied forward (higher on the line) to give the lure or bait a different presentation. When bass fishing or coastal fishing, one doesn't always want the lure or bait on the bottom so the weight is moved according to the desired depth. I like to use bead heads when I want a fly to have a faster sink rate in faster currents. Like most people, I don't want my flies to reach the bottom but I want it to reach an acceptable level for feeding fish. Water temperature, clarity and current can all determine my desired results.

 

Sometimes I want the fly to sit in a certain position in the water no matter how long the fly is in the water. This is a good time to use split shot. Lets say I want my fly five or so inches from the bottom of a really slow moving river but I don't want the fly to sink to the bottom. I will place a properly weighted split shot eight or nine inches (give or take) above a non-weighted or light weighted wet fly. Now my fly is above the river or lake bottom and moving with the currents because the split shot is sitting on the bottom and not my fly. Of course this is in ideal situations. Unless the current is fairly fast the fly will eventually sink. This is the whole premiss behind the carolina rig. The fisherman doesn't want the worm on the bottom of the lake but suspended at about the same level throughout the retrieve.

 

What most people are saying is that you can take a subsurface wet fly and alter it's appearance according to the situation at hand. I say carry one bead head and one non-beadhead. The reasoning is fairly simple. You can get each fly to catch fish at any given point in the water but the both sink differently. I non-weighted with a split shot added to the line does not sink or suspend the same way a weighted one does and vise-versa. Sometimes it is better to have the fly sink on its own and sometimes its better for the fly to be carry down by the line. Situation will usually dictate which is best.

 

I think it is a matter of preference and available options. By cousin is a guide in Texas and he will say "its not what you have in the box that counts. Its how you use it" At the same rate, I believe that not all fishing is equal. This past saturday a guy out fished me because he was a lazy fly fisher. We both were using white woolies but he used a split shot maybe five inches above the his fly. I used both weighted and unweighted woolies. He caught double of what I did by simply tossing the line 10-15 feet and letting it sit. The split shot was keeping the line on the bottom of the river but his wooly was just sitting suspended off the bottom in the current. Nothing he did was pretty or artistic but if your life depended on what you caught - he won. Not really what most of us consider fly fishing but it caught plenty of fish.

[JSzymczyk 0]

There's no mystery and you're not doing anything wrong. Way back in the dark ages, there was a time when we had never heard of bead head flies. We used split shot, honest to God split SHOT, as in shot of the same sizes found in shotgun shells with a cut halfway through the diameter, to get our flies where we wanted them. I still have boxes of Dinsmore's #6, #4, and #2 split shot which I use. Then someone remembered that fish are actually FISH <)>>>< with the a brain the size of a rice grain and they usually respond well to a bit of flash or glitter, and someone started putting shiny beads on flies and the idea took off. Beadheads are a combination of attraction, weight, and looks. I use both beadhead flies and non-beadhead flies of the same patterns.