Yesterday I went fishing at a shallow oxbow lake and had an absolute blast from catching all the fish. I caught the expected crappies and bluegills but many times a perch ended up on the end of my line. Now this lake is pretty shallow with about 12 ft the maximum dept so a fly line could catch these perch no matter how shallow or deep they are. But seeing how readily they were taking a fly got me to thinking, a sometimes dangerous procedure.
This fall I visited a lake where the perch bite was deep. Really deep. About 21 ft. deep over what I believe was some rubble on the bottom. These fish were being caught verticle jigging small tube jigs and pilki's tippet with a maggot. I started wondering how a fly fisher could get down to these fish. I though type IV sinking line on a 7 wt. rod with a long 10-15 ft leader made of fireline and small clouser minnow with large dumbell eyes might get me down there. I'd probably have to make very long casts and hope the fish took the fly with gusto instead of a tenative peck. Or I could just verticle jig the rig. If I got impatient waiting for the fly to get to the bottom i could rig my 10 wt with type 8 sinking fly line and get down there in a hurry to catch the little buggers
Sereliouly folks, has anybody else tried to catch small fish weighing less than a pound that far down?