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Fishing: How To Fish: Advanced: Fly Fishing
Staying in the Strike Zone
Any novice fisherman knows that the first obstacle in fishing is simply finding the fish. Experienced anglers know only too well, however, that once you spot your quarry, the hard part has only just begun. They know that whether you’re sight fishing in shallow water, casting in the suds along a beach or fishing the depths from a boat, real success will depend almost entirely on your ability to find the zone in which the fish will strike your fly. Experimenting with different flies or retrieves will do you no good if you aren’t presenting them in that zone. Being in or out of that zone can be the difference between not catching any fish or really hammering them. The following are some effective tactics to use so your fly stays in the “strike zone.”
First … Find the Strike Zone
When sight fishing in skinny water for species such as bones, reds, snook, tarpon or even stripers, the strike zone will usually depend almost entirely upon water visibility and the fish’s ability to see, or hear, the fly. In clear water, the strike zone may be several feet extending from the sides and to the front of the fish. In turbid water, the strike zone may be reduced to less than 1 foot, or even mere inches. To complicate matters even more, most of the time these prized shallow-water species are almost always on the move searching for prey. In other situations, a bonefish or redfish may be tilted down rooting around on the bottom and will not see your fly unless you plop it down right on its head. Accurate casting becomes a must in these situations.
Most of the time when fishing in open water for species such as striped bass or bluefish, they are hidden from view and feeding below the surface. A depth finder often will be your best tool to quickly determine the depth and extent of the fish in the area. The depth of the fish will dictate the most appropriate weight of line to use — a floating line for surface-feeding fish, an intermediate for just below the surface or any of a variety of weighted lines to reach the desired depth down to 20 feet or more. If you don’t have a depth finder, you’ll have to resort to experimentation by casting a weighted line with a known sink rate (i.e., 450-grains that sinks approximately 8 inches per second) and counting down and retrieving at different depths until you get a strike. If you have a fishing buddy or two on board, you can use different weighted lines and retrieve at different depths to see which works best. Once you get a strike you’ll know the approximate depth and can then change lines as needed to get quickly back down to the strike zone.
As an example, Rick Bender and I were fishing the upper Chesapeake in the spring. Stripers were showing up on the depth finder from 10 to 20 feet down with the highest concentration being between 18 and 20 feet deep. I was using a 550-grain weighted line and was hooking up every now and then. Bender, on the other hand, was better prepared with his 850-grain shooting-head system and was hooking up with much greater consistency. He was not only able to get his fly down to the primary strike zone quicker, but his fly stayed in that deeper zone longer. The result: Bender caught more and bigger fish, including a nice 20-pounder.
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