Fly Fishing

jeremy · Location: Portland, Maine

hey whippa...i was checking out your site and i think you should add a category in the forum for "set-ups" - i know you covered the 3 basic approaches on the web pages...however...i was recently at jason's house and was reading a steelhead magazine from out west. seems as though there are all sort of ways to refine a typical chuck and duck or ticking the bottom approach.

one set up that caught my eye was attaching a slinky between the leader and the tippet...vertically and not as dangling entity. also what are your thoughts on the slinkies? even if i am fishing an indicator...i am thinking of making up a bunch of various sized slinkies from one piece of shot all the way up to 6 or more pieces of shot...this year i am going to be working on catching more fish and getting hung up much less....i had some great progress last year... i fished an indicator most of the season in the tailouts and softer water. i found that i was getting just as many hook ups and sometimes more but without the typical snags associated with ticking the bottom with pencil lead or something of the sort. i like very little weight and sometimes no weight at all....an indicator and a glo bug....tough to beat so far for me...it has been the most productive.

anyway...then joey tells me something about beeds and another type of setup...seems that guys on the west coast have all sorts of methods and on the great lakes i seem to see only the typical setups. so...i know that setups and rigging is key to catching steelies...but i also know that my one tried and true method is just one method...would like to see a topic on your forums where you would expand upon the various setups and the options for expanding or simplifying each...and/or tweaking the setup to adjust for different conditions. thanx.

jeremy · Location: Portland, Maine

ps....hey kodiakcommando....what are the different types of tactics you use or know of people using in alaska???

ChrisR · Location: Southeast Massachusetts

I didn't even know waterwhippa had a site. What's the link?

jeremy · Location: Portland, Maine

salmonriverspecialists.com - see the front page of this site for details. it's a new site that he just released...you'll like it.

ChrisR · Location: Southeast Massachusetts

I really need to get that cup of coffee. How did I miss that? Thanks Jeremy.

KodiakCommando · Location: Kodiak, Alaska

You mentioned that you heard of people using a bead technique and i don't know if it is similar to what i do. Any way Alaska steelhead and especially rainbow trout are very smart and are fished heavily with egg patterns such as glo bugs so people use beads to represent the eggs. Most of these beads are much more realistic than glo bugs and some people paint them like me so they look like a freshly fertilized egg. You fish these beads by pegging them with a toothpick 2 inches above a bare glo bug hook. This helps reduce gut hooking to near impossible and the fish hold on longer since there is no hook to feel. In fact the rainbows are smart enough that you have to also have the right size, 10mm for spawning kings, 8 for silvers and big reds, and 6 for pinks and reds. This is a killer technique for steelhead and i usually add some splitshot and use a strike indicator. Below is a pic of a painted bead.