There is a question out there in the fishing world, is spinning gear more effective than a fly rod or is it the other way around. Well, the honest answer to that question is it depends. It depends on a multitude of factors from the type of water being fished, depth the fish are at, water clarity, what are the fish feeding on, what type of fish are you after and the list goes on. But in my opinion as to which method is more effective is it depends on a day to day basis. Conditions and fish mood are always changing. I grew up lure fishing, and about 16 years ago I picked up fly fishing. And while I almost exclusively fly fish now, I do pick up the spinning rod every now and then
Something I have often been asked is, "isn't it easier and more effective to fish nymphs on a spinning rod under a float vs a fly rod and indicator set up"? So having thought about this a lot and coming up with ideas in my head I finally decided to test it out and see for myself. My wife and I both fly fish and for this little experiment I had her spin fishing with me to get another point of view as well. We went to a river I had not fished in years, and I really did no research prior to going about what patterns are effective on this particular river. I just took the whole fly box and we went through them.
First and foremost, does it work? Well as you can see from the picture above it does work. That fish was one of three rainbow trout we caught in about four hours of fishing along with a small bull trout. We were bouncing through various fly patterns though and had we went with prior knowledge of the hot patterns I think we could have caught more. But even though this method worked, it wasn't without its pitfalls and head aches.
Our setup was fairly simple. We used 8ft ultra light trout rods with 8lb braided line. A fixed float, the kind you use for steelhead fishing only down sized a bit. The float was attached to our braided main line. At the end of the braid was a barrel swivel (a barrel swivel prevents you from losing your float should you hang up). Under the barrel swivel we had 3ft of fluorocarbon leader (6-8 lb). On the business end of our leader we experimented with single and double fly set ups as well as a small split shot about 8 inches above the fly on a single fly rig and the top fly on a double.
The first and really main issue was split shot placement. I tie my flies with tungsten bead heads, but to still get the flies down in a timely manner we used a split shot weight, similar to a fly fishing nymph rig. (It should be noted that the split shot also served to ensure our float rode upright). We started with the weight being placed directly under the barrel swivel. This kept our float upright, but depending on the depth we were fishing it didn't get our flies down quick enough and it tangled a great deal when casting! We finally found that placing the weight 6-8 inches above the fly worked better on all aspects of the rig including the tangling when casting. But it didn't eliminate it. We still got tangled about every fifth cast it seemed like.
A pro to this set up was, if I wasn't tangling up I felt I could make more casts, more drifts and cover more water than with a fly rod and nymph rig. But again there are factors to this as well. A great fly caster could have covered almost as much water. However, he wouldn't have been able to fish the far side of the run or river like I could with the spinning rod.
The second issue we encountered was the double fly set up. I tied them on the leader the same way I would when fly fishing. With two flies we seemed to get tangled up more casting than with just one. Where as fly fishing, this doesn't happen too often unless its a horrible cast. So the one fly set up was definitely the way to go and led to more time fishing.
The third and last issue we found, was even though we were using ultra light floats made for small jigs in the 1/64 oz range, I still felt that we were missing bites. I think when fishing a fly rod with an indicator, you detect the more subtle bites and I don't think we were getting that with our float set up. Not every bite will sink the hole float or indicator. I also felt I had to mend my line more with the braid and spinning rod then I do with fly line.
So the conclusion to the experiment. Does it work? Absolutely! If you don't know how to fly fish but wanted to fish with nymphs this set up would be just what you want. However you will get tangled when casting. You can't whip it out there like if you were casting a spinner. You have to kind of lob it to keep the rig from tangling. Honestly this became a head ache after a while. So for me, it wasn't more effective than nymphing with a fly rod. If I had to fish this way in the future I would probably use tiny marabou jigs instead of flies. I think this would lead to less tangles and a more enjoyable experience.
I hope this helps you guys out, or maybe even shorten the learning curve if you want to try it yourself. It did work, and even though it was a pain tangling up, it was still fishing and we were still catching fish which is always great! Tight lines!
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