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fishing a fly on a spinning rod or with a float?

i am new to fly fishing. lovin it. last weekend i was talking to a guy at a campground by a river and dam and he said he caught some fish on 'attractors' with his spinning rod and float. How does that work exactly. what are attractors and how do you use them with floats? wont the float spook the fish?

Public Comments

1. actually the floaters look like bugs to fish.
2. You can fish flies with a spinning outfit, but it's not the preferred method if you ask me, and, as luck would have it, you are asking me. The way you fish flies with a fly fishing outfit is that you cast your nearly weightless fly with the weight of your fly line and the elastic action of the rod. It's a great system that has evolved over many centuries. With a spinning outfit, you don't have a weighted line, so the weight has to be at the end of the line, where the fly is. Obviously, if you're using a dry fly, you don't want something that will sink the fly, so you use a bobber for the weight. You cast the bobber and the fly goes along for the ride. Yes, the bobber can spook fish -- at least much more than a fly landing by itself. The bobber can also swamp the fly and cause drag on your fly. The fact that you CAN use a fly on a spinning outfit is proof of how versatile that gear is, but it's still non-optimal -- basically a workaround. An attractor is just a fly that is not designed to look like a particular creature. They're usually tied with some dramatic shape or color to "attract" the eye of a feeding fish. Humpys, Wullfs, Wooly Buggers, and Stimulators are attractors. So, the guy you were talking to was probably using a big fat attractor because it maintained buoyancy even after the splashdown of the bobber and it imitated nothing more specific than "a bug." Incidentally, the other broad category of fly is "imitator" which is meant to accurately imitate a certain insect or other forage.
3. use one of the clear plastic floats that you add water to for weight. put it about 3 feet above the fly. you should use only about 4lb line. keep it light. cast it out and retrieve slowly keeping the fly either on or just under the surface. just about any sort of fly should work. patterns to imitate ants, bees or other small insects that may have landed in the water will work. some with a bit of "flash" or bright color may be more effective at times.