Going Weedless

I’m pro weed guards. Or, if you like, I’m a weed-guardist rather than a weed-guardaphobic.

In many situations you need to get your fly right into the cover where many fish live, especially on that critical first cast. With most species there’s rarely the luxury of making a sighter cast. If the fly lands close, but not close enough, the element of surprise is lost — it’s nothing but a warning cast.

All sorts of structure warrants weed guards, from bankside bushes, flooded grass, weed beds and dense lily pads through to mangrove roots, fallen trees — and these can consist of fine twigs through to big old logs — to coral and rubble substrates and rock bars covered in oysters. All of these will catch a fly unprotected by a guard, unless it’s built in some way that avoids hang-ups. The reality is that most of the time, if we don’t get our fly into that structure, or onto the bottom, there’s a good chance we won’t get our fish.

I also like to be able to sink a fly out of sight into cover. Fish retreat into cover at different times of the day and for different reasons. Sometimes, after the first fish in a snag has been caught the others will retreat deeper, so you need to sink your fly deeper. In a good snag, or in amongst mangroves, and even in what looks like clear water, there can be an unseen entangling mass of twigs and branches just waiting for a hook point.

If we cast an unprotected fly into cover and it gets fouled up, we have several options. We can jiggle it until it comes off, or sometimes roll-cast it off backwards, or pull hard and hope it breaks free before the hook straightens or the leader breaks. Or we can go in there and get it, which means that snag is finished and it’s time to go somewhere else.

Even something as simple as picking up a strand of grass or weed on a hook renders that cast useless. Breaking off means re-rigging, and straightening the hook means changing flies or risking a broken hook. All of these problems can be avoided by fly design and construction.

ADEQUATE PROTECTION

If we throw a well-protected fly into cover we’re at least going to generate a lot more bites, because we can feel comfortable about throwing right into the best part of the cover, or letting that fly sink well into it. We might miss some fish because of the weed guards, but we’re going to get a hell of a lot more strikes, which will convert into more fish and we’ll spend more time fishing and less re-rigging.

There are two broad methods for protecting flies from hanging up in structure, or picking up weed. The first is fly design. There are flies that are designed to ride hook-point up, and others tied so that the hook point is covered by the materials they’re made from, so protection is part of the fly.

Then there are flies that have an added protection that is not part of the fly per se, but external. These are what we generally call weed guards.

The most basic weedless protection I can come up with is a well-hackled fly. I learned long ago that a well-hackled Woolly Worm, where the hackle extends beyond the gape, sits very easily on submerged vegetation. This stiff hackle is effectively a weed guard. Small Woolly Worms are deadly flies in early spring in Tasmania because they can be sunk onto the vegetation of flooded lake and river margins and be left to sit there and not get hung up, or pick up bits of grass. I use them similarly for carp in the shallow water of flooded lake margins. A Stimulator or an Elk Hair Caddis, with their slightly longer stiff hackle, are great flies for small overgrown streams because that stiff hackle extending beyond the hook point goes a long way toward preventing hang-ups.

BENDBACKS

An effective fly design for avoiding weeds and snagging is one that rides hook-point up. The bendback style of fly is one variation. This involves altering the balance of a standard hook by putting a bend in the shank just behind the eye. It’s effective for softer-mouthed fish, but the problem is that it alters the angle of pull when you set the hook. An ideal hook shape has the point of the hook pointing directly at the eye of the hook (or at the very least parallel to the shaft and eye), so when you pull to set the hook the force is direct to the point. Bendbacks alter this because the hook point is aligned away from the eye of the hook, and it’s more likely the point will skid across hard mouths.

Building weed-proof flies in the bendback style without losing that eye-to-point alignment can be done. You can bend hooks that already have a well-turned-in point, such as a Gamakatsu SL12, or by utilising worm hooks used by soft-plastics anglers. You can also use 60-degree jig hooks, and standard J hooks designed and weighted to ride hook-point up (Clousers, crabs, and Crazy Charlie-style flies). These hooks also give you a little more shaft to bind materials onto, and have become increasingly popular in micro sizes for nymphs.

Florida guiding maestro Steve Huff loves to chase snook in the Everglades on his days off. He showed me a very neat fly he uses that slides in and around the mangroves and vegetation where the snook live. Steve doesn’t like weed guards and says his fly is mostly snag-proof and definitely not fish-proof. He uses deer hair heads on worm hooks (that ride hook point up) and leaves this stiff hair longer, sweeping back over the hook point.

John Haenke has had a lot of success on a variety of species with a fly that doesn’t look like much, but that he can comfortably put into cover where the fish are. Fly appearance aside, this is often sufficient to get a bite. He uses silicone on the head materials to essentially bury the hook, but when a fish grabs it the silicone is soft enough to collapse and expose the point. It’s not a new technique. I have some early wool and silicone head flies from Shaun Ash that use this method, and I suspect it came originally from the fertile mind of Bob Popovics (see page 68).

Rob Meade’s Gutless Flies (FL#63), including his Gutless Mudeye, his Shufflers, and his deeply inventive crab flies are brilliant monuments to the creativity of exceptional fly-tiers when confronted by a problem. These flies clearly demonstrate that you can tie a fly in such a way that the materials themselves become the weed guard.

I’ve been experimenting with larger barramundi tube-flies, utilising worm hooks. This allows me to use the hook’s great qualities without having to tie materials onto the limited space they offer. These flies are very weed-free and the potential for this style of fly is exciting.

LOOPS & SPRAGS

The next stage of creating snag-proof or weedless flies, and the designs we mostly associate with ‘weed-guards’, involves the addition of various types of less subtle protection for less subtle snags and weeds. These are in the form of loops and sprags, or legs.

Dismissed by some as ‘fish guards’, the reality is that without them we simply can’t fish most cover properly. You might be accurate enough to land the fly in exactly the right spot every time, but there is usually so much unseen underwater cover that you can’t afford to let the fly sink. Or there might be all sorts of hook-catching bits between the right spot and you, making even a simple pick-up impossible.

The single sprag of stiff monofilament used on flies cast to bonefish, permit and other bottom feeders is the first of the basic protectors that are essential for sinking flies to the bottom among coral, rubble and weeds. These are kept short to avoid affecting the balance of the fly.

The double loop of monofilament has been around for a long time and is the favourite of many who cast flies into dense weed-beds and lily pads. It has US bass fishing origins. In this style, it’s the first thing tied into the fly at the back of the hook bend, and then the last thing that’s tied in as it sweeps right around the point and finishes at the head. It’s probably the most widely known type of weed guard.

Double loops are effective, but I find unless they’re really well built and the bindings come well down around the bend of the hook, and are coated in lots of tying cement, they become too easily moved aside. Once damaged they are not repairable, though still usable in less snaggy situations. The standard material for these weed guards for many years was 30 lb Mason Hard, but today stiffer fluorocarbons are superior.

Hard or foam-bodied popping head flies are fairly easily retro-fitted with snag guards. Depending on the material the heads are made from, you can drill, poke or burn a couple of holes and then Super Glue sprags, or a loop of monofilament, into them.

Weed guards tied or fitted to the front of a fly are just as effective as the more complete wrap-around guards. They’re also more easily tied in, are replaceable, and can be fitted to shop-bought flies that don’t have a weed guard.

The single sprag of monofilament is for those with a low trust in weed guards, who are nervous about them and think they’re going to cost them fish. They’re the Claytons of the weed guard world, the weed guard you have when you don’t want a weed guard.

The loop of mono is very popular but I don’t like it in situations where that loop can catch on something such as twiggy snags. These are tied into the fly.

The double sprag of mono is also popular. It’s often tied in as a loop and can be cut into two sprags if the snags are too ‘catchy’. These are also tied into the fly.

My favourite weed guard incorporates two legs of plastic-coated wire. This is held in place with UV cement so it’s replaceable and can be retro-fitted to many flies. I’m amazed at how much punishment this style of weed guard can take. When fishing snags and weed beds for all manner of fish, I always include a tube of UV cement and a spool of 40 lb black or clear plastic-coated wire as an essential part of my kit. When first using this system, I encountered a tree in Central Queensland that had no leaves but was a mass of 2-inch thorns. I threw countless casts into the ‘toothpick tree’ with flies protected by these flexible wire guards, and they didn’t hang up once.

Single strand wire in my view is too severe. Once bent or damaged it’s finished. It’s replaceable but needs to be tied in.

Throughout all these variations, I consider weedless designs and weed guards to be an essential part of so much of our fishing. I can’t imagine how difficult and frustrating it would be without them. Even if they cost me a few fish, I know that the other side of the ledger — the fish they’ve allowed me to catch from almost unfishable water — is still well into the black.

Thanks to Brett Clarke, Chris Beech and Rob Meade for their contributions.