Float-N-Fly

[sticksteer]

I've read some about this technique but never tried it, what is the best time of year to use it? What is the deepest water to use it in? What is the best way to rig it ?

[deathb4disco]

Float 'n' Anything (bait, jig, fly, soft plastic) works year round, but the method is generally associated with colder water. It works in all depths. I use a fixed waggler float most of the time. In really deep water, I'd rig it slip style. I like a very light jig (nothing bigger than 1/32 oz) with a couple of split shot above the jig.

It's very popular with smallmouth fisherman. You could also do a search over at www.riversmallies.com and www.bronzeback.com -- lots of F 'n' F fans at both sites.

Google should produce lots of info as well.

[hairjig]

I use this technique a lot for fishing down to 10-12 feet. I like to use slip floats, although I will sometimes use a fixed float. I really like that the slip float allows you to give some vertical movement with very little lateral movement. I fish mainly hair jigs and sometimes marabou. I also prefer 1/32 and smaller, sometimes much smaller, but lately I have been fishing a lot of 1/16 hair jigs with this technique and doing pretty well.

[grits and gravy]

I have been using a variation of this to catch a lot of crappie lately. I use a cigar shape foam float that I peg to the line with the plastic stopper that is in the float. Except I turn the stopper around so that the fat end is in the float and the skinny end is sticking out the top of the float. I then crimp on a tiny splitshot, about 1/100th, and position the float so that the stopper will click against the spiltshot. I then us a 1/16 jig and cast over the top of sunken brush. When I retreive the rig I gently twitch it back about 4 or 5 twitches and then let is sit for about 5 seconds. The clicking noise will help attract the crappie and the slow moving jig will get them to bite. This has really been doing well for me. Some times the fish dont seem to like the sound so I then just remove the split shot and just work it back to the boat the same way.