Fly Fishing With A Spinner Reel

[DrNed]

I've been taught in the finer art of fly fishing and done it a few times, but let's be honest I'm not very good. To make my fishing experience more productive this time I'm thinking of using a fly with a bobber and a spinning reel. I feel this will allow me to be more precise in my casts as well as get me away from the shore line. I'm sure others have done this. What were your results? What tips would you give a non fisherman who wants to catch a few fish for eating?

 

[Nick]

Get the clear bubbles and fill them up about half way with water. You can do some good fly fishing with that setup. My favorite is to put a renegade on about 4-5 feet back and fish it wet. Slowly dragging it through the water. Works like a charm. You can fish dry flies that way too, but the splash from the bobber kind of messes up the presentation so you usually have to wait a while for things to calm down again. That gets kind of boring.

 

[DrNed]

Get the clear bubbles and fill them up about half way with water. You can do some good fly fishing with that setup. My favorite is to put a renegade on about 4-5 feet back and fish it wet. Slowly dragging it through the water. Works like a charm. You can fish dry flies that way too, but the splash from the bobber kind of messes up the presentation so you usually have to wait a while for things to calm down again. That gets kind of boring.

SWEEEEET! Thanks.

Also, have you used Royal Wolf? That's what I used a couple of years ago with moderate success. I'll get some Renegade too.

 

[Nick]

Yes, the Royal Wolf is another favorite, but is best fished dry so I wouldn't usually use it with a bubble.

 

[b.stark]

The "bubble" bobbers are the way to go for fishing flies with conventional gear. Used to do it a lot, but then I picked up a real fairy wand and haven't used the fly and bubble rig for a very long time. A big advantage of the fly and bubble rig is you can put your fly on the other side of the lake with no backcasting room, and still be able to go for deep running spoons and spinners. It is good to put quite a bit of leader between the bubble and the fly, 4-5 feet was about right in my experience also. Works better in stillwater than in streams in my experience.

 

[Wyatt Carson]

I've fished both wet and dry flies with a short ultra light rod, spinning reel and bubble over the years and have had very good luck. I like the clear bubbles too where you can pass the line through, sometimes with some water in them, sometimes dry. Sometimes if the fish are active and I can see them out there the fly does not have any time at all to sit and fish are caught very quickly to grill over the fire. If they don't hit right off then reel very, very, very slowly.

I'm trying to remember my top five but it seems they were in no particular order;

Caddis
Ant
Royal coachman
wolly bugger
muddler minnow

mosquitoes worked well too

sometimes they hit just about anything and sometimes they seem very picky...

take a couple of small Rebel crayfish and grasshoppers too, not flies but plastic lures...Blue Fox Minnow spins in rainbow and brown patterns work real well for me too as do Panther Martin spinners. Those few lures and flies will cover most situations and will catch fish when folks with worms and power bait are getting nary a bite...

 

[Jackalope]

You have gotten some amazing suggestions. If you want there is nothing wrong with putting your spinning reel on your fly rod. Then you only have to take one rod if you want to fly fish also. Just switch out your reel for what type of fishing you want to do. The other nice thing is if you see fish in Lilly pads or log jams the extra length of youre fly rod will help by just dropping the fly on top of them. I've done this a lot , and it works great.

I'm a jig fisherman mostly I personally think a marabou jig is the best thing to use in the Uintas. That's just my opinion though. I grew up with the bubble, and fly method my dad still uses is exclusively. To me the best fly is a Renegade or Double Renegade.

I've been poring, and tying my own marabou jigs for a couple years now, and have great success with a couple of my patterns.

 

[Nick]

I'm a jig fisherman mostly I personally think a marabou jig is the best thing to use in the Uintas.

I started using these back in 2011 and also had great success with them. If I recall, I think brown/black patterns were the best and I want to say 1/8 oz but my memory is a little fuzzy on that. What do you use @Jackalope?

 

[Jackalope]

I started using these back in 2011 and also had great success with them. If I recall, I think brown/black patterns were the best and I want to say 1/8 oz but my memory is a little fuzzy on that. What do you use @Jackalope?

I like to use 1/16oz jigs they don't cast as far as a 1/8 oz , but drop much slower, and that's when the fish will most likely strike it. I do however carry some 1/8 oz jigs just to get a little farther out in the lake if I need to. Like You said brown/black work very well. I have my best luck with a ginger jig I tie.

 

[uintahiker]

Fly & bubble works great. I usually cast out and reel in slowly. Sometimes I put 2 flies on, and have caught 2 fish at the same time on multiple occasions.

Some flies I like are Griffiths Gnats, Renegades, ants, and stimulators.

 

[DrNed]

Awesome info everyone! Much thanks!

I am really looking forward to fishing now and
hopefully get my kids interested again. We took
some fly fishing lessons and the complexity of it
was just too much for them. It became too much
about casting properly, controling the line correctly,
watching the fly, etc, etc and not abut having fun.
This info, I believe, will make it a lot simpler -
allowing us to just have fun with it.

 

[DrNed]

One more thing . . . what pound line do you use?

 

[uintahiker]

One more thing . . . what pound line do you use?

4-6lb monofilament, a little more if it's braid. It comes down to diameter and stiffness. Lower diameter is better. I typically thread the clear bubble onto my line small side first, then tie on a swivel, then another 3-4 feet of line and then the fly.

 

[Wyatt Carson]

One more thing . . . what pound line do you use?

It depends on your rod and reel to some extent and what kind of water you are fishing. With Ultralight spin fishing and my equipment I never went over 4 lb test and even when ocean fishing for Spanish Mackerel with a popping rod, 8 lb test was my limit and that felt strong even with those things skipping over the water and jumping on their runs.

 

[DrNed]

My favorite is to put a renegade on about 4-5 feet back and fish it wet. Slowly dragging it through the water. Works like a charm.

Bumping.

So when I did this originally this is the set up I had:

Pole ---------- Bobber ----------- Fly

As I reread your post today it sounds like what you actually meant was:

Pole ---------- Fly ---------- Bobber

Which was the correct interpretation?

Thanks

 

[Wanderlust073]

It's pole -> bubble -> fly.

 

[Nick]

It's pole -> bubble -> fly.

This. Also important to distinguish a bubble vs. a bobber. You're probably using the right thing, but to me a bobber is one of those things that just floats. A bubble takes on as much water as you want it to.