I've been fishing the eelgrass in San Diego bay for spotties lately. My question(s) is is any one using dropper flies for spotties, and if so which setup, and which flies? I talked to a guy at a local flyshop who suggested it, and was wondering if anyone out there has had any success with it.
Thanks,
Marc
mcarndt@hotmail.com

Hi Marc,
Seems to me that presenting a dropper rig in "grass beds" would result in frequent snags? When I use a two-fly rig it's typically in "debris-free & snag-free" environs. Just my opinion. Let us know how you do buddy.
Cheers, Ken

Ken,
Thanks. All I was looking for was an opinion, and to find out if anyone else had tried it. I don't snag too much in the eel grass w/ smallish fly hooks, but I can't imagine another hook below (or behind) my clouser would make things easier. Given the spotties' love of crustacean treats, it makes some sense, but may not be practical. I'm still figuring all this out and appreciate any opinions offered.
Thanks again,
Marc

Marc,

I've been fishing for spotted sand bass for 27 years now, with 22 of them almost exclusively with a fly rod, and with the last ten of them as a "full time" licensed guide running fly fishing excursions on spotted sand bass fisheries. I've fished for spotties from Point Fermin to Guererro Negro, B.C., Mexico, too. And while my experiences along this line are fairly extensive, they aren't all-inclusive.

That said, I like to think that I've learned a few things about fishing for spotted sand bass in all of the years that I've done it. One of these things is that spotted sand bass rely very heavily on the current to deliver their dinner to them. As a whole, spotted sand bass don't spend a lot of time or energy chasing down baitfish. They're the lazy pigs at the piscene feeding trough. Because tide-induced current flow is so important to them as a food conveyor, they typically prefer to orient to hard structures in areas where the potential for high current flow is the greatest--i.e. places where the current from a wide channel is forced to flow through a narrow one. They also tend to do most of their biting during the middle 50% of a tide.

If you divide the tide into quarters, it takes the first quarter for the current to get moving at 70% of it's potential maximum. By the time you're half way through the tide, the current will be 100% of it's potential maximum. Once you've fished your way through the third quater of the tide, the current will have dropped down to 70% again, and it only goes downhill from there, usually taking the bite along with it.

The point is that you don't have an endless amount of time in a day to catch these things if you're serious about maximum fish contact. What you've got is a 3 to 3.5 hour window of opportunity, and if you are going to maximize that opportunity, your fly needs to be in the water where the fish live and not in the air where they don't.

I have an acquaintence who fishes Newport Bay on a fairly regular basis. He's one of these guys who changes his flies frequently and fishes a dropper rig regularly. He considers a 6-fish day to be a good one; a 12-fish day is an exceptional one to him. Based on what his expectations are, I guess he figures he can afford to screw around with his flies in the air where the fish don't live, rather than keeping one proven pattern in the water where the fish do live. I'm not trying to brag or boast, but if I'm fishing Glorietta Bay or around the Coronado Bridge or any other spot I know to be a good one, I expect to catch at least 6 spotted sand bass in the first 30 minutes of actual fishing time and at least 3 dozen on an average day. That's 12 fish per hour, or a fish landed every 5 minutes, and doing that within the time constraint of the middle 50% of a tide doesn't leave a lot of time left for screwing around with complicated rigs or clearing the eelgrass off a fly -or flies, if you insist on droppers.

You accurately noted that spotties go nuts over crustaceans. They prefer to eat sand crabs, burrowing shrimps, and so forth over baitfish. A baitfish is a meal that a spottie has to work for, and they aren't really into that. So why not just feed them something they like the first time and ditch the Clouser and other big, scary, fast-moving baitfish imitations that they really aren't interested in on a regular basis?

Spotted sand bass do need eelgrass, and they need plenty of it. However, they use it primarily as spawining habitat. Although you'll always find a few spotties cruising the grass for a meal -usually on the edge of the bed rather than the middle of it and often smaller fish that are feeding on jacksmelt eggs- most of them would rather hang out in the shadow of a hard structure in a high-current area that rises out of a sand bottom. Bridge pilings are obvious places, as are dock pilings near the entrance to a narrow docking channel from a wider one. Channel marker buoys are also good, as spotties will relate to the concrete bocks or old iron engine blocks used to anchor them.

Prior to the spawn and immediately after it, the spotted sand bass that are typically fairly solitary most of the year get together in large spawning aggregations in deep channels adjacent to eelgrass beds. These aggregations can contain anywhere from 100 to 1,000 spotties or more, too. When they spawn -typically on the eve of a full moon- they'll move into the grass to do their thing. When they're in the grass, they'll tend to do things they don't normally do the rest of the year- things like chasing live bait or smacking a 2/0 Clouser hard enough to make you think that your rod is getting pulled out of your hands. Think of it like this: If you were spawning, and I threw a big Clouser past your nose, you'd be pretty pissed off, too, wouldn't you?

This is why my dropper-rig acquaintence fishes eelgrass so much: Back in his bait fishing days, he found that about the only place he caught spotted sand bass on bait was in eelgrass and his most productive time of the year was and is usually late July or early August, which is usally when the spotties in Newport Bay spawn, which is why they're in the grass in big numbers, and why they don't mind running down a live anchovie or a big Clouser.

The rest of the time -most of the time, in fact- spotted sand bass are looking for a meal that appears small, slender, non-threating, and easy to kill. I catch most of my spotted sand bass on a marinized no-hackle Woolly Bugger variant with Clouser-style eyes that I call a Newport Special. These are tied on fine-wire hooks from size 10 to size 6, and the biggest ones I fish are about 2.25 inches OAL. Not real big, right? So how do I get the fish to see them?

I do that with color. In the shallow marine environment where spotted sand bass live, the two most visible colors to them are white and chartreuse. White is a good, visible color under almost any water condition you can think of, but it doesn't contrast well with a sand bottom. Chartreuse does. The color gets their attention because it's one they can see from the greatest depth and distance. The small, slender profile, and the fact that I fish these flies in the same direction that the current flows and at roughly the same speed, and that they are light enough to hop off the bottom a bit while maintaing light, intermittent contact inks the deal. When Newport Specials won't get you bit, Bonefish Biters will, with their "crabbier" profile.

It might seem that by fishing two flies, you'll double your pleasure and double your fun, but if you're talking about doing that when pursing spotties in eelgrass, I think you'll eventually find that all you're doing is doubling your frustration. Hey, I have enough problems just keeping one Newport Special from snagging on the grass and I certainly don't need an extra hook point out there to make a tough situation worse. Even when they're in the grass, the spotted sand bass can be very light takers, and it's challenging enough to try to tell the difference between my fly bouncing of the sand, lightly ticking along the edge of a clam bed, ticking througth the grass, and a take that is usually more slurpy-sucky than wham-bam, without having another fly out there trying to snag itself. As you know, spotties are a hot fish for their size and generally don't quit until you kill them or release them. I don't need an extra leader for the fish to get wrapped up in, nor do I need a bare hook point out there to snag the same grass that I'm trying to fight my fish through. Also, I have enough of a job just dealin' with these guys one at a time on a 6 -weight and a 5X to 3X leader, so I can only imagine what a double hook up might feel like.

You were looking for an opinion and now you've got another one. Ditch the baitfish imitations and feed these guys what they really want to begin with. Focus on fishing where the fish are (it ain't always eelgrass), fishing when they're in the mood to eat (middle 50% of an incoming spring tide), and feeding them something visible (chartreuse) that's non-treatening (small and slender) and easy to kill ( moving in the same direction and at roughly the same speed as the current), and fish effciently (don't waste time rigging, changing flies, or otherwise screwing around with your fly out of the water -one snag really is one too many when you think in terms of landing a fish every 5 minutes), and you'll do well.

But if you're like my dropper-rig-fishing acquaintence who constantly seeks to re-invent the wheel rather than simply admit that the damn thing rolls like it's supposed to, then you'll probably ignore all of this, anyhow...

The question you need to ask isn't "what fly will get me bit"? The question you should be asking is "why does a fish take my fly"? In other words, you need to know what makes the fish that you seek to catch tick -where they live and when, what they feed on and how they prey upon it, what depth range they prefer, what water temperature range they like, how much dissolved O2 they need to be happy, and so forth. Knowledge is power....it prevents you from trying to feed the fish that you want to catch something that they really don't normally want to eat, and it prevents you from fishing where the fish aren't, and generally keeps you from making your angling life more complicated than it needs to be.

-JP

Hey, when the fly shop guy who suggested a dropper rig did the suggesting, did he also suggest fly patterns to try? Did he ask you why you're fishing the grass, or offer insight as to how spotteds use grass beds and when they use them? Did he offer you any insight as to what spotted sand bass spend most of their time feeding on? (baitfish are way, way down the list -below sand crabs, shrimps, clams and clam siphons, marine worms, small mollosks, copepods and such-like) Did he say what you'd expect to gain by doing the dropper thing? Did he talk about deep water color shift, or what light spectrum a spotted sand bass's eyes are "tuned" to see best in? Did he talk about what depth range and water temperature they like best? When you have the answers to questions like that, you can come up with your own effective fishing strategy and understand not only that it works, but why it works, which is more important, because it gives you a repeatable result.

_________________
"I fish, therefore I am."

Wow, so, ixnay on the opperdray. Thanks, JP, for the insights, I'm going to have to print that for my binder. Just an inquiry, I don't know that this guy knew that I was after spotties specifically or not - I'm really not specifically after spotties, but that's all I seem to catch. But I do love to catch them. My situation is that I occasionally rent a skiff at Glorietta, but for the most part I'm shore bound. I either throw from a bank or wade a bayside beach, and eelgrass is the natural target in my situation. Structure isn't always within reach from those spots. I have often wondered how the clousers got to be the go-to fly given the dietary preference otherwise. Do you have a link where I can get a look at the flies you suggested? Thanks again for your reply, maybe you ought to email it to your pal too. I really appreciate your time.
Marc

Marc,

When I'm fishing from a boat, I normally use a 6 -weight with a lot of power in the butt (first-generation Echo 690-4X's, in my case). The rod gives me enough oomph to cast a 300 grain head (Rio DeepSea) yet is forgiving enough in the forward part of the blank to protect the 5X to 3X flourocarbon that I use for leaders. The flies that I fish are small, non-threatening, and appear easy to kill. But they don't work well at all if the leader is too stiff to allow them to respond naturally to subsurface current. That's why I fish the light leaders. I use fluoro becuase it doesn't stretch much, and that helps me "feel" what the fly is doing. The feel issue is also why I use a stiff, "tropical core" line. Yeah, it's a major PITA from a casting standpoint in our mild climate because of the coil memory, but the stiff core transmits more feel to my fingers, allowing me to feel takes that I'd miss with a limper core line.

Things change when I'm fishing from the beach. I still use the same rod, but I fish with a WF-7F line and a long leader -up to twenty feet. That leader is a level length of 4 to 6 lb Stren Magnathin spin-fishing mono. The flies I use are still the same, but instead of using the 5/32 size eyes, I go up in size to 7/32 so that the fly gets down faster.

This floating line / long leader method is not my own thinking... I got it from an article that I read by Rich Jacobsen of Sierra Pacific Fishing Adventures.

With this method, you aren't dragging a sinking line over the backs of fish. By playing with the leader length relative to the depth of the water where you are fishing, you can tune the degree of "hop" that you get from your flies on the retrieve. The longer the leader, the less hop you get, and the shorter it is, the more you get, but the leader has to be long enough to let the fly get down to the bottom. It'll hop, because the line is pulling it from above, rather than horizontally as it does with a fast-sinking integrated head. BTW, halibut go nuts over food items that hop up off the bottom a bit...

So far, it's all positives. I'll grant that some of them are small, and might not matter that much. There is one that does, though, and it's the main reason, in my view, why the floating line and long leader method is the best thing going for shorebound anglers fishing places like Alamitos Bay or Mission Bay or Glorietta.

When you cast a floating line and your line lands on the water, it has a little waviness to it from coil memory. When you pull on your line to retrieve, that waviness goes away. Pause, and it returns. Now imagine that you've made a cast, given your line a few tugs in retrieving your fly, and you've paused the retrieve. If you see that waviness disappear, and you aren't pulling on the line, something else is pulling on it, and that something else is a fish. Set the hook! You don't actually feel the takes, most of the time with this method. You see them...

How many times have you heard or read that you can't get bit when fly fishing in the salt if you don't move your fly? Well, that little bit of conventional wisdom might be accepted by the masses, but it ain't wise. It ain't even true, as you'll discover if you fish this long leader and floating line method. You'll get a lot of takes when your fly is just sitting there. I get most of mine during the pause. The differnece is that now, with the floating line and long leader, you'll know when you're getting bit during a pause in the retrieve because you can see it in the line and react to it.

"But isn't a 20 foot leader with a weighted fly on the end a major PITA to cast"? you ask. Well, uh, yeah, it is. But it's not impossible if you practice getting the timing down, and once you do, your catch rate will go up so much that you'll be amazed beyond measure.

-JP

_________________
"I fish, therefore I am."

Thanks again JP, the first time I tried for spotties on the fly was with my 5 wt w/ floating line. It makes sense in a shallow flat. I was trying to throw heavy clousers though, and that set up was a little whippy for that. But the fight was great. I've got a floating line for my saltwater rod coming soon. As soon as it's spooled up, I'm going to put this to practice. Maybe I'll pick up the occasional flattie now, I know they're around my current spot. Hey, I really appreciate your time, thanks for the info,it's really pointed me in a direction I think will be more productive.
Marc