Which fish better…weighted or unweighted Waterboatman?
I like mine to be unweighted. If I want to add a little weight, I add a swivel between the leader and tippet. When trout are on to waterboatmen, the fishing can be awesome especially casting to rises.
Regards Mike
Thx, Mike, when or why do you decide to add weight?
Unweighted=when the trout are clearly rising to them.
weighted=when I have tried my staple flies and they aren’t producing.
I usually start unweighted, especially if I am fishing along the shoreline or if there are visible rises. If that doesn’t work I will try the weight. If that still doesn’t work, I say the heck with it and toss out a black leech.
Regards Mike
ask the fish??? 
I know , Norm, but I’ve got some unweighted tied up and was hoping that would do 
So there aren’t more of you out there with an opinion :shock:
No! There aren"t :?
ducksterman,
I’ll take a shot at it!! Why in the WORLD would you want to weigh a Water Boatman?? Please don’t put any Lead on that WB HOOK!!!
Thanks,
Doug
I have seen them hit the water and then pop back up, so the moral of this story is carry both and look at what the naturals are doing and go from there, the fish won’t laugh at you if you start with one or the other.
But I WILL!!!
Doug
OK , they fished very well…but another reason I asked was…Skip Morris has what I think is his new Water boatman pattern and he uses a black metal bead…I know tie them both ways …but he may have a good reason???
I have used WaterBm patterns effectively only once. However success came because I used an unweighted fly and a sink tip line. WaterBm gather air in their hairy legs to allow them to breath and then dive down to feed on vegetation - or when egg laying dive down to lay eggs (they kind of look like caddis at this time). The sink tip line caused the fly to submerge on the cast and then arc back to the surface (like and emerger) on the retrieve. This mimicked the movement of the real insect and I think the action was as important as the pattern. Perhaps some light weight on the fly to help it get down, but not so much weight that it is a ‘dead’ weight.
I don’t weight mine, but I do add a little bit of weight up on the leader when I feel the need to or use an intermediate line. Boatman are often neutrally buoyant if you ever watch them in a tank. So it’s a matter of just making the fly behave in the same manner. If I see fish coming up to the surface for them. I fish them like an emerger. If you use something that helps them float to the surface in the tying process (hint) then you can pull them down under water then let them float back up. Like one might do with a “Usual”.
I just thought of a good idea for fishing water boatman patterns…
Put Frogs Fanny on the boatman pattern so that when it’s under water it will have a air bubble surrounding it…Might work better on finicky fish than a regular boatman…May look totally unnatural on a boatman pattern…I don’t know.
Chris ,
You may be interested in this…
Doug you spend so much time finding (Smilies) that you may never get on the water to laugh or be laughed at.
Water boatman carry an air bubble with them which underwater will shine like a beacon. Even a black bead refelects light.
WB swim up to surface to the air and also dive down to the bottom. In springtime, they will swim up to the surface and hop over to the new shallow ponds dotting the spring landscape. Come fall this migration is reversed and they head back to to the deeper ponds to over winter.
My 2 cents worth of advice? Carry both, fish unweighted in the spring and beaded in the fall!
Guy
PS…And it that don’t work, put a leech on and catch fish!!!
Thanks for the link ducksterman. Very effective nymph indeed. Reminded me that I need to tie some up.