If I’ve screwed up in bonefishing, and I have… plenty… I probably have done the most damage with my stripping. I can get a little too in my head, over thinking the problem and coming up with some modified strip that just scares the hell out of the fish and leaves that fantastic V of a bonefish that has just had enough of your $h*t.
Glad to see a story from Deneki about stripping.
photo credit - Andrew Bennett
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Tags: Andros South, Bahamas, bonefishing, Deneki, fly fishing, Stripping
yep, screw this one up all the time…
Anxiety stripping, the curse from not getting enough fishing time. Your brain is on fire with the thought that you only have a few days to fish and you have to make the most of your opportunities. Also known as the Yankee Choke
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Hey Bjorn,
The most important thing I’ve learned about stripping flies on the flats is to keep your rod-tip “in” the water. Let’s say you’ve just made a great cast at a big fish; you give the fly plenty of time to settle on the bottom; then begin stripping in the usual foot long “strip-pause-strip” sequence…all the while your rod tip is about a foot or more above the surface of the water.
In our “minds-eye”, we visualize our fly doing the two-step…jumping off the bottom then diving into the silt. Nothing could be further from the truth!. With your rod-tip raised above the surface of the water, that first strip does nothing to your line (and consiquenty fly) other than to glide it an inch or two. You see!, that first strip only takes the slack/belly out of your flyline. As soon as your first strip ends, the weight of your flyline between your rod-tip and the water causes the line to droop to a point of rest again without any action or purposefull direction by you. Strip after strip in this manner results in the fly being in almost constant motion and certainly not reaching bottom between strips. It’s a complicated concept to swallow and one I certainly wished I could describe better. Bottom line!…stripping with your rod-tip in the water results in your fly doing exactly what your stripping hand is doing. The slack-catch-up-slack scenario can’t happen. An added bonus is that wind can’t bother your stripping presentation either!.
Regard bud,
Henry
More of a mindset than a technique, my El Pescador guide Gilberto Acosta once told me, “Glenn, BE the shrimp”, this after a I proceeded to literally outrace a bone trying to eat my fly. My problem is that I was used to BEING the sardine here in SoCal!
The rod tip out of the water thing always puzzles me. How can you have a good connection to the fly with a big loose bit of line there at your rod tip? Get that tip down! I like mine just in the water.