Soft Hackle Presentation

[flyrodman]

Alright, I am having problems with fishing soft hackles. I read through the previous thread and "swinging" was mentioned. Is there a certain technique to swinging soft hackles besides casting and letting you line drift downstream? The reason I am asking this is because I have spent a couple of hours on the trout streams fishing soft hackles and have nothing to show for it. Not a single fish. Pretty frustrating stuff.

[Brian K. Shaffer]

It depends on the body of water you are fishing. Taneycomo is very productive with soft hackle fishing because the trout are likely to chase the fly thinking it is a side swimming scud or a midge in the film trying to escape or a midge above the film trying to dry its wings so it can fly away. Better put - it just looks like food to them and it is escaping - so they tend to chase it down and swipe at it, sometimes once twice or three times before they commit to it fully and hook themselves.

Also, the swing technique is best when thrown at a 45 degree angle / using quartering casts downstream.

Here is a good sparsely tied SH and a tying tutorial :

http://dharmaofthedrift.blogspot.com/2009/11/fly-tying-tutorial-partridge-olive-soft.html

Truthfully I tie my feather in different, but you can decide how you like to do it and improve upon it.

best part is - you can almost just sparsely dub on a creamy gray mixture and brush it out and fish it like a soft hackle and forget the hackle altogether ....

[DaddyO]

What length and size leader/tippet do you guys use when fishing soft hackles and/or crackle backs?

[Brian K. Shaffer]

It depends... soft hackles of the small size I use 6x standard mono... Cracklebacks the same.. depending on size. If its a huge crackleback.. I use huge tippet.. sometimes as heavy as 2x (like for the big ugly)

I do not use fluorocarbon as I do not like the way it kinks / shows and holds issues.

[Greasy B]

Don't give up flyrodman. Soft hackles are easily my number two producer, only slightly behind beadhead buggers. Goodness a person could write a book about the countless presentations. (Selvester Nemes). When tieing or buying Brian's example above is the perfect form of a soft hackle, less is best.

[XP 590]

Agree with above, stick with it. Soft hackles have always produced for me, and the feeling when the fish tugs on that tight line is addictive. I learned about them from a guide on Taney about 8 yrs ago and they are one of my go to flys when all else fails. There is almost no wrong way to fish them, but swinging on a tight line seems the most common. For me, the speed of the stream makes the biggest difference in how I work it. If the stream is pretty fast, I'll throw a few upstream mends to allow the fly to sink a little. Sometimes it's better just skimmed right below the surface, I just try a bunch of different things. One thing I was taught is to keep my rod tip up a little, and follow the line downstream. When the fly gets straight downstream, resist the urge to immediately re cast, one writer even suggested counting to 15 because you often will get good strikes as the fly flails around in the current. Another thing is to keep a little "shock loop" of fly line in your fingers because the hits can be pretty hard in moving current. Hope your luck changes.

[jdmidwest]

Soft hackles can be fished dead drift or with some kind of swimming motion.

You can let them drift with the current to resemble a drowned neutral or sinking bug, depending on how it is weighted and the current.

Or you can strip, lift, or drag it across a current.

[Ham]

I usually struggle with them, but I have had a couple of stellar days using soft hackles that make me keep trying. All the bites I get that I don't hook up , do frustrate me though.

[laker67]

A soft hackle should be thought of as an attractor fly, if it is not attracting, try a different retrieve. You can skip it, strip it, snip it, or dead drift with a swing. You can also skip it, strip it, or snip it against the current on an upstream retrieve. If that don't work, check to make sure that trout exist in the water you are fishing.

[Brian K. Shaffer]

I always feel like the hook itself is preventing me from the actual hookup - the connection to fly and trout.

Many times I have been fishing faster water and had many short strikes.. thinking I was doing something wrong with these soft hackles....actually... I was doing everything right - just using the wrong hook for the bite.