It is common to fish for large rainbows using a dry line with a wet fly in the Kamloops Region of British Columbia, Canada, like it is in many areas. Chironomids on the hang, damsel nymphs along the weeds or gomphus in the marl are perfect examples.
However, a technique that is rarely used but can be extremely productive is fishing floating fly patterns with a wet or sinking line. This odd combination has worked for years by crafty fishermen and fly-tyers when fishing a waterboatman imitation. Jack Shaw, author of "Flyfishing the Trout Lakes" touches on this strategy of fishing waterboatman patterns.
The theory behind this technique makes a lot of sense with the migration of a few feed sources where waterboatman, backswimmers and snails come to mind. The advantage is that you can mimic the course of the feed going from top to bottom, along the bottom and back up to the surface and expect a 'strike' at any point of the retrieve.
Rainbows in this region quite often go off the obvious feed and occasionally turn to snails as a primary feeding target. Snails are an available food source all season but seem to be preferred by the fish in the early spring and late fall when most other feed activity has diminished.
Personally, I have never seen an actual snail imitation nor knew how I would fish one until I talked with long-time fishing personality and author, Mo Bradley (book - From Ice Off to Ice On). He has nurtured and studied the life cycles of most local freshwater insects in an aquarium at his home for years and described to me the habits of our local freshwater snails. Apparently they generate their own gases to carry them to the surface when they need an oxygen supplement, remain buoyant until they are satisfied and release the gas with control to return to the bottom.
Mo suggested that I look at a pattern that originated in the UK, the Booby Fly, and fish it with a sinking line. It is basically a popper fly that creates a unique action of wanting to go back to the surface while it's being pulled to the bottom. In order to achieve the desired action he also suggested that a maximum 7 foot leader be used.
Not ever seeing a booby fly before, I decided to tie my own version of a snail imitation based on the information that Mo gave me. It ended up looking like a chironomid with... well... boobies. For the boobies, I cut a slice out of a "dink float", a type of foam float used on the rivers, cut it into 1/4" slices, cut the slices in half and tied it to the forward end of the hook crossways so it looked like a "T". I first used a gray foam and dark body on the fly with a brass bead head. Ugly enough to look like a snail imitation. I also tied a similar pattern that looked like a small maribou leech and added boobies to that.
My first day out with the fly was unproductive. I went to Pass Lake for the lunkers and as usual, I was stymied. The fly wasn't quite working the way I wanted. I believe that the metal beadhead more than neutralized the buoyancy of the boobies and the fly didn't "bob" between pulls on the line the way that I expected. There was a highlight in the day. As I fished the shallows I was able to watch large rainbow trout follow the fly with curiosity. They didn't take it but at least I knew that I had captured their attention.
After being skunked with my first booby fly pattern, I modified the fly using a glass beadhead instead of a metal one and added a mixture of white boobies as well as the gray. I felt armed and dangerous and was anxious to give it another try. This time I headed to Morgan Lake, near Savona. This time we were rewarded.
On my 2nd cast I nailed a lovely 20" beauty with the dark booby. Then another and another. I tinkered with the way I was presenting the fly and found most of my success was when I was able to let the fast sinking line find it's way to the bottom (12'-15') while the booby remained at or near the surface. Then I retrieved using various methods (slow and short pulls, slow long pulls, quick short pulls and so on) and found that the fish were most likely to hit the fly as it approached the bottom during the descent or as the fly ascended near the end of the retrieve pattern. In any case the fish were very aggressive in their take.
I'll let it be known that I shared my flies with a buddy and he had little success to start. I watched him fish the pattern for awhile and was able to determine that he wasn't allowing the fly line to sink to the bottom first. This is key to the performance of the fly. Once he mastered that technique his success increased substantially.
We managed to fish the booby pattern until November 20 when it just got too cool. Winter was biting in the wind and it snowed 3 days later. My best day was a 7 fish, 30 lb total weight afternoon during 2 hours of fishing. I even got fish on the troll as I kept my line in the water while I rowed to a different location on the lake.
We are naming the fly "the Kamloops Booby". In terms of success (and I have only fished this pattern about 5 times), I have found that the combination of a white head and dark boobies or dark head and white boobies had the best success. I had a little better success with the chironimid body compared with the micro-leech body. Our fishing with the fly was limited to the month of November so we look forward to a new season and developing a log for it's applications throughout a whole season. You can be sure that both Morgan Lake and Pass Lake will be on the list.
Learn more about the booby fly tying ideas and an illustration on how to tie it.
Tight lines - Go barbless - Practice Catch and Release.
Scandalli Accordion
