When you are fishing stillwater for trout and using midges…
Do you always anchor?
When you do anchor do you double anchor?
How do you decide at what depth to fish?
Ducksterman,
Here is some Midge info;http://www.uky.edu/~agrdanny/flyfish/faq/faq-9.htm
I never fished Midges in stillwater, but I don’t see why you would have to anchor, if there is little or no wind.
Doug
When midges/chironomids hatch they move vertically in the water column at a very slow pace. Drifting around in a float tube or boat tends to drag the little buggers through the water, so conventional wisdom says “anchor”. I usually find that a single anchor in most situations works fine.
I normally use a two fly rig and set the bottom fly about 6 inches off the bottom, or just above the weed bed, and the second fly about 9 inches above the first one.
So, “how do you know where 6 inches off the bottom is”, you ask? I use this handy/dandy depth finder.
[COLOR=black]The parts consist of an alligator clip (local electronic parts store), a piece of mono, a small, sliding sinker, and two split shot.
[/COLOR]
To get the depth, attach to bottom fly and lower it into the water. When it hits bottom, lift it about 6 inches, and attach your indicator. Retrieve depth finder and remove. As long as you stay anchored in the same spot you won’t have to recalibrate your depth. If you move, check depth again, and readjust.
I’ve been fishing stillwater more and more the last few years and the one aspect of that I can’t seem to get a handle on is chironomid fishing.
Dan mentioned that he fishes 6" or so from the bottom. What’s your line/leader/indicator setup look like. I can’t imagine working a fly line with more than 10-15’ of leader, but if that’s what it takes… Is that what it takes?
Any info from experienced midge fisherman would be appriciated. Seems like a good way to fish, but I can’t get my mind wrapped around the setup.
I normally don’t fish chironomids deeper than 10 to 12 feet due partly to the problem of landing a fish when you’ve got a 9 foot rod with an indicator attached above 12 feet of leader/tippet. Unless you have a long handled net, it’s tough to get the beasty in the tube.
My typical setup for chironomids is as follows: Ten feet of 2 or 3X fluoro off a floating line. I don’t use tapered leaders as I want the rig to sink quickly and to hang straight.
I will then add 18 inches of 3 or 4X using a double surgeons knot and leaving an 8 inch tag end of the 2/3X. The rig looks like this:
I’ll tie the top fly off the tag, and the bottom fly about 12 inches below the top fly.
If the water is smooth I will do a slow 3 to 4 inch strip every 2 to 3 min., if it’s a little choppy I’ll just let the water action move the flies.
Using this setup in late April and early May I caught more than 60 Lahotan Cutthroats on Pyramid Lake ranging from 15 to 31 inches and up to 10.5 lbs.
I am usually fishing from a float tube with no anchor. If it gets real windy it’s a problem but most of the time works fine. Most of the time I use a very slooow retrieve or just let it sit and give a slight twitch once in awhile.
I find the depth similarly to Grizz. Only I just clip my hemostats to the bottom fly for my “sounder”.
I have seen reference to some quick release type indicators that allow you to fish a very long leader with an indicator and still land fish. I haven’t found these locally however.
Ducksterman,
While Chronnie fishing isn’t my first choice, sometimes it is the only game on the lake if you want to catch a fish.
I bring two anchors with me and if I have to set anchor then I usually use both. I do that so my pontoon boat or my WaterMaster raft won’t pivot around the anchor as the winds gently blow and swirl around. I set one anchor of the right side, behind me and play out most of the line (I have 30 feet on each anchor). Then I drop my second anchor off my left side, behind me and play out a little line as I bring in some line from the other anchor. When I am about in the middle then I tie off the lines. Unless you catch an absolute hog of a fish you will be able to keep the fish to the front of the boat and away from the anchor lines.
Have fun fishing.
Larry 
—sagefisher—
I double anchor my boat or single anchor the pontoon. There is always wind. Always! I use a SA floating line with a sink tip . The tip is 10feet long I use the depth sounder or a plumb bob to find the depth. Depending on the depth I add enough mono to reach about 16 inches off the bottom. Casts need only be long enough to get the line out about 30 or 40 feet from the boat. I count down 15 seconds which is enough for my 10 feet of line to sink, then I just twitch the line every so often 0r a slow hand twist retrieve for 5 twists then a 5 second pause then repeat till the line is near the boat. Re-cast and start over. I use weighted flies for this. I tie the fly on with a perfection loop Which I think makes a better movement for the fly.
Sometimes I just lower the line down without casting and do a dead slow retreive . Hits happen when the fly nears the boat.
When using my toon I avoid using my flippers while anchored, I believe it scares the fish. I have even double anchored my toon to avoid using the flippers.
PS I bought the adjustable force fins and just hate them. I sold them cheap to a buddy. He loves them. Go figure.
Aha, so there’s another method I’d considered, but couldn’t figure out the specifics.
Sink tip + leader would get me down deeper, but I wouldn’t know where – or if – to put an indicator. Any tips?
This is great info. Thanks folks.
BTW, what’s there to hate about adjustable Force Fins? I’m in the “love’em” category. (When I got to the lake the other day, found out I’d forgotten my boots. Just snugged up the FFs and into the lake I went in my stocking foot waders.)
midge or “buzzer” fishing over this side of the water is usually done from a drifting boat on large still waters. the method involves casting in front of the drift and retreiving at the same speed or very sightly faster than the boat is drifting, this way you still have a slow retreive and also cover more water and so more fish. if it is a bit too fast a drift I usually deploy a drogue (parachute) over the rear of the boat to slow things down a bit. Hope this helps
Hey Ducksterman, the guys who realy know about Buzzer fishing are the poms and they almost always drift and cast ahead of the drift. Retrieve at a fast enougth pace to just keep in contact with your flies, and dont forget to hold them on the dangle when they are close to you for as long as you can, you will hook at least a third of your fish on the dangle!
All the best.
Mike.
Was fishing a local pond yesterday and the fishing was goofy good. There was too fast and too slow on the retrieve…
I also believe strongly that most bites are never noticed and a heavy fly is important to maintain feel. I use a quick descent dubbed caddis sort of nymph with a tiny PT nymph. Had 4 doubles yesterday and too many fish to count/remember.
A lot of stocked chinook salmon up to close to a foot. They bite best in the cooler temps and will shut off about the time the rainbows get hungry.
art
I midge fish most of the year. I use a strike indicator that slips down leader when a fish is on. The peg has a hole through the center of it and the leader slips through it and the corky slips on the line also so the peg will stick out of the top. a small loop is put in the line and inserted between the corky and outside of the peg to hold the indicator in place. The tension of the fish or strike will pull the loop out and the strike indicator will slip down the leader keeping it out of the guides. This makes landing fish much easier even with 20ft. long leaders.
Flydesk.com has the indicators I am talking about. Do not use the ones with a split down the indicator or the leader will just fall out and you will lose the indicator.
As far as anchors, use two in my opinion when in a boat. A little more time setting up is worth not having the frustration of botched presentation. A foot off the bottom is my standard with the bottom fly being one of at least three flies.
Thanks for the replies, everyone…I learned some things.
In regard to the indicators loufly mentioned…they do solve the long leader reeling in problem…Fly Goddess steered me onto those…
jayatwork, though I haven’t used my own yet I made a couple up out of foam [punched foam out of flip flops and a center tube out of Q-tip shaft…as used for tube flies]…they are cheap enough at Fly Desk …but that 6$ postage:p
Anyway back to the…“.How do you decide at what depth to fish?”
I’m interested in how you decide where to fish when the temperatures are good at pretty much any where in the water column…how do you decide at what level the fish are feeding…with out spending a lot of time experimenting??? Sounds like some of you pretty much fish just off the bottom .
Most midge fishing is done on the bottom. Well, I can’t say most, but a very large portion of it is. Experience says to start on the bottom and work your way up. As far as temperature, if the hatch is going on, the whole water column will be fish able. A good technique for midge fishing is the fast sink line technique. The line is cast out and let to sink until straight down below the angler just about the standard foot off the bottom. The faster the sink the shorter the wait. The fly is then sloooowly,( I mean slowly) retrieved up through the water column. Tedious, but very effective because during a midge hatch, like I said before, the fish will feed at many depths. It is experimenting, but just fishing this way will bring you many fish without changing the depth, lines, leaders, and even flies because the wrong pattern is always blamed for a fishless day when other factors should be, like depth and temperature.
What I usually do in my pontoon:
NO wind – never happens here.
Low winds – slowly kick the pontoon or tube to maintain position.
Moderate winds – one nice 15# prickly anchor on the trolley.
Higher winds – add second anchor, 8lb mushroom.
Really high winds – find local bar and grill. Order fish.
I almost always use clear lake line, intermediate type 1 (cortland clear camo).
I start with no countdown…retrieve immediately. Then let it sink more and more each time before doing the slow retrieve, until I find the fish depth.
Without an anchor, chironomid fishing is really tough if there is any wind at all. The slow retrieve is key. If the angle of emergance is steep…it’s not uncommon to hook the fish right under the boat, if you let the fly sink all the way.
DANBOB
These will let you fish looong leaders, and will allow you to reel all the way in.
http://www.flydesk.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=TF&Product_Code=45025