Shooting Line Helps Prospect For Bluegills

Even back in lsaak Walton's day fly fishers tried to stay back from their quarry and used small diameters for the end of their lines. They called it "fishing fine and far-off".

Reaching out was easy then. All the anglers needed was muscle. Using wooden rods eighteen or more feet in length, and woven horsehair lines at least half again as long, it couldn't have been too difficult to place a fly forty feet or so away.

Lines at that time were thick enough through most of their length to provide heft for throwing, but tapered to a point where the fly was tied on. Early day anglers believed the chances of having good fish take their fly were much better if they used lines tapered to a single hair or at the most two. This was the "fine" part.

Fishing fine and far off is still important, but things are different today. For the most part, fly rods are less than half as long. Fly lines are 90 or 110 feet long but are carried on a reel. To extend line, it is stripped off and cast, usually by throwing it backward first and then forward.

To a fly rodder wading in waist deep water or fishing from a canoe, forty feet is still far-off if line is extended by false-casting. There just isn't time for long back casts to straighten out before dropping to the water. Hitting the water behind will kill a forward cast just as striking a tree or the ground will.

Exhibition casters standing on a dock or platform can handle way more than a hundred feet of line in the air, but they have room for their back casts to fall without touching down. Also, I've seen them go through contortions that would rival a baseball pitcher's windup. Neither are compatible with casting from a canoe or while wading.

Luckily, there is another way to "fish far-off. It eliminates false-casting and is easy to do. It is called "shooting line" and simply involves releasing previously stripped off line (held in loops in the line-hand) through the guides on the forward cast. ith proper equipment and practice, you can retrieve as much line as you wish and shoot it out again with one single cast.

Actually the only reason for making the line go "whoosh-whoosh" through the air, as you see many casters do, is to dry the fly. Doing it for any other reason wastes time and energy. No fish has ever taken a fly while it was going back and forth overhead, and more and more anglers are realizing this.

Unfortunately, few rod makers have. Line manufacturers have made enormous strides in the last twenty years towards making lines that shoot better. They now are made with tapers and finishes that greatly facilitate casting. Every manufacturer offers weight forward lines designed especially for shooting.

Most of these have a 30 foot belly of the specified weight tapered to a size designed to make the leader almost a continuation of the line. Back of the belly it tapers quickly to a lighter, smaller diameter that slips easily through the guides.

The main source of line friction (and resistance to shooting) are guides spaced too far apart and stripping guides that are too small. Since fly casters are throwing line and not lure weight, any line sagging between guides has an extremely adverse effect on the ease with which the line slides through them.

Because line that has been stored on a reel tends to retain its coils for some time after being stripped off, too-small stripping (or bottom) guides also slow the line's passing through.

Rod manufacturers could do much to take advantage of the progress in fly line design by merely adding more and larger snake guides and increasing stripping guide size. many of them now are using ceramic guides which according to their advertising copy, reduce friction. They still leave them too far apart so, as far as I can see, all they do is add weight and cost.

I guess nobody is going to drag fly rod manufacturers into the twentieth century until they are good and ready.

I have personally built hundreds of fly rods, and can state positively that nothing makes a rod shoot line like plenty of snake guides and a large enough stripping guide. Probably this is why my wife and I are kept busy filling rod orders.

One time last summer I happened to mention to Richard "Pete" Peterson that I was partial to using a fly rod and had a lot of respect for bluegills when taken on a fly. Pete, who formerly lived in South Dakota and is an experienced stream fly fisher, seemed a little incredulous. "You mean sunfish"? he said.

From the ensuing conversation I began to believe that his bluegill experience had been with the naive juveniles that hang around docks and boats. The upshot was that I promised to introduce him and his fly rod to some adult ones at the earliest opportunity.

The chance came a few days ago. My wife and I were spending a few days at our cabin near Fifield where Pete and his family now live. Two weeks of rain had the rivers and creeks brim-full, so a little lake fishing seemed like a good idea to both Pete and I.

Planet Lake, a 40 acre body of water just east of Fifield has long been one of my favorites. It is a soft water lake virtually free of vegetation, but with a margin that must be close to ninety percent bog. Over the years this has encroached on the lake until most of the shoreline extends out over deep water.

It provides the cover and food that weedy bays do elsewhere. However, the fish that live here, unlike those in shallow bays have deep, open water to run and fight in. The result is some of the scrappiest bluegills anywhere and something about the lake's ecology gives them coloration that is absolutely startling.

Ralph Erickson and his wife operate a small boat livery on the lake, and this evening Pete and I put our canoe in at their dock. We pushed out a little way and proceeded to follow the shoreline, prospecting for bluegills. I learned long ago that adult bluegills don't stay close to boats or fishers and the clearer the water, the more true this is. Because of this we started out trying to stay 40 or 50 feet away from shore.

Pete is a proficient fly caster and, standing upright, can lay out a lot of line. Sitting low in the canoe, however, was something else. Used, as he was, to stream fishing in relatively open country, shooting instead of false-casting to extend line was new to him.

When he tried to reach out for distance his line would hit the water behind us and of course spoil the forward cast. Moving closer allowed him to place his flies close in, but put everything except little fish down.

Gradually, he began to shoot line instead of false casting. Before the evening was over he was able to reach out fifty feet with only a short back cast, and we could stay far enough from shore to take respectable bluegills.

This particular evening they were much more interested in floating lures than sunken. The only wet fly they showed any desire for at all was a gray rabbit-fur scud imitation. We did manage to take a few fish with these.

We had the best luck with a little clipped deer hair bug. A size 12 yellow popper produced lots of hits but not many takes. The hair bug took fish consistently all evening.

Any of the three had to be cast tight up against the shore and brought out slowly with start and stop retrieves to do any good. Most of the hits were when the fly was stopped.

To my way of thinking, a canoe and fly rod make an unbeatable combination for this kind of fishing. The former enables you to move easily and quietly on the water, and the latter will deliver lures that don't make fish-alarming splashes.

Small diameter tippets are also a necessity. Anything that makes a lure move rigidly so it appears to be fastened to something will put down fish. We both started the evening by tying on new 4X tippets. Like the anglers of Walton's time, we "fished fine and far-off".