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At the 1999 world fly fishing championships held at Jindabyne in 1999 fishing buzzers was the buzz (excuse the pun) and as soon as I got home I tied some up according to the patterns I had seen. I fished those flies many times , without conviction or confidence, and with the inevitable poor results. Those little buzzer flies were quickly delegated only a tight corner of my fly box. At the 2004 Fly Fish Australia National Fly Fishing championships based at Eucumbene buzzers were the go again and I set out to better understand the concept determined this time to add this obviously successful technique to my fishing tools for future outings. What I hadn't understood until the 2004 event was that these flies work best when fished to imitate the natural. I thought I had imitated the naturals as best I could with the retrieves I had tested, but when I finally came to grips with fishing buzzers, I realized I had failed miserably.

Static fishing with long leaders over drowned vegetation when midge are around

I have since addressed that issue and have also found that fishing static or very slowly also works very well, not only for buzzers, but also for the nymphal or pupa stage of the life cycle of other insects that spend part of their life cycle in the water including:

1. Mayfly
2. Caddis
3. Damsel
4. Flies that represent other small insects that spend part of their life cycle in the water including: carixia, spiders and scud.

In warmer months, including Spring and Autumn, particularly when water levels have risen and drowned new ground, you will often find fish holding in areas that contain detritus matter and feeding on drowned terrestrials and the nymphs and pupa of the insects that spend part of their life cycle in the water.

This static to relatively slow fishing technique works very well at those times.

Mostly these food sources are fairly static but for the insects that spend part of their life cycle in the water when they get to that stage in their life cycle when it is time to emerge they embark on that perilously vulnerable journey to the surface of the water to emerge. They all make that journey differently but generally they are pretty poor swimmers so to facilitate their rise to the surface they generate minuscule amounts of gas which floats them toward the surface. As they rise the gas expands and at several points in their ascent it detaches from the creature and the midge or pupa to slowly starts to sink again.  As they sink they generate more gas and generally they don't  sink as far as they have risen with the last bubble and the process repeats several times until they actually reach the surface of the water. It doesn't sound like a very efficient system but you have to remembers that the timing of such emergence is generally done on mass allowing for enough of them to avoid predators and for the genus to survive.

The technique is best fished from a boat but of course can be fish from the bank, and in both case you need to shorten or lengthen your leader depending on water depths and of course the level fish are feeding at.

The retrieve

There are five stages to the true static retrieve: presentation, drop, lift/s, hang and dibble.

1. The presentation cast is very important for this type of fishing as a lot of fish are taken as the flies are presented. It's worth sacrificing a little distance to achieve clean casts that fully extends the leader and putting you in immediate contact with your flies.
2. As nymphs do drop and rise as part of the emerging process keep in touch with your team of flies as they slowly drop through the water column by continuing to retrieving fly line at the same speed as the drift of the boat.
3. Once your team of flies have sunk to the required depth it's time to commence the emerging process and repeatedly lift and drop the flies at increasingly shallower depths until you basically run out of water. I like lifting strokes that retrieve between half and one meter of line followed by drops that allow the team of flies to drop something like half the distance they just rose. On really calm days you can get quite a few of these lifting strokes into each cast.
4. Once you run out of water don't pick the team up and recast as you may miss fish that have followed your fly or flies toward the surface. Following the final or the last few lifts allow the flies to hang vertically in the water. As I am hanging flies I like to give my rod tip a little wiggle so as to impart a little nervous action in to flies. That is often enough to induce a strike.
5. The final step in each cast should be to dibble the flies. After the final hang of the flies slowly lift the bob fly (top dropper fly) to the surface and again whist wiggling the rod tip drag the top fly back toward the recasting position making a wake on the surface of the water. Watch your flies carefully as they are pulled toward the surface and be prepared to halt the dibble if a fish is still hanging below a fly. This is the last chance for fish to take one of your flies and often they seem to know this and respond appropriately. Fish focused on flies will often take a fly right at the boat oblivious of the presence of the boat or you. Complete the dibble by lifting the flies out of the water with your back cast and commence your next presentation.

Takes can be violent or subtle and can occur from the time the fly hits the water, right through the drop, the lift/s, any time during the hang on the lift or even as you dibble the flies across the surface to recast.

The alternative to a true static retrieve which because the retrieve is at the same speed that the boat is drifting basically fishes the same column of water for the full retrieve is to speed the retrieve op to faster than the drift of the boat so that more water is covered.

It pays to work through the various speed of retrieve options until you get an idea of what is working at the time.

Fly Line

My preferred set up for static and slow retrieve fishing is my normal floating fly line or a sink tip fly line and I have found both of those line options to be much more effective than fishing with a true sink lines.

Fishing with either a floating line or a sink tip has proven as the flies are rising and falling just as the natural would rather than swimming along almost horizontally as you retrieve a sinking line back to the boat or bank.

If your using a sink tip my preference is a fly line with the sink tip manufactured in rather than a poly leader because the addition of a poly leader to a fly line interferes with the dynamics of the fly line and casting may be inhibited. That's not a problem with normal length leaders but often the leaders for static fishing can be quite long and anything that inhibits you normal cast may lead to either shorten your cast or introduce tangles that you would not normally get both of which reduce the time your flies are in the water.

The faster the drift of the boat the harder it will be to get your team of flies down to the desired depth and that is when you may need to resort to fishing an intermediate, type III or type V density compensated fly line. The down side of course is of course that because the drift is faster the number of lifts you can make in each cast obviously reduces ... sometimes one carefully regulated lift and/or drop will be enough.

Leader set up

I like to attach a 2cm long Maxima Ultragreen monofilament loop to the end of each of my fly lines. I like that loop connected to the fly line to be about 2/3 the thickness of the tip of the fly line which works out at about 12.5kg for 6 weight lines and 10kg for 4 weight lines.

The butt section of my leader is made up of two two 60cm lengths of monofilament line. Th first is connected to the loop on the fly line with a locked blood knot and is slightly heavier than the second 60cm length of butt section. For my six weight rods I use 15lb then 10lb Maxima Ultragreen for theas butt sections. I use this butt section set up for two reasons. First because the heavier line makes a better connection to the small loop at the end of my fly line than thin tippet material and secondly because the slightly heavier butt section definitely helps turn over your team of flies. To that butt section I tie two arm spans (2 x 5 and a half feet in my case) of tippet material. I use a surgeons knot when joining sections of butt section and butt section to tippet together. Tie the surgeons knot carefully and even if it’s between two tippet materials of different thickness or between mono and fluorocarbon it wont fail. The droppers are about 20cm long and the fist dropper is about 50cm below where the butt and the tippet join and the middle dropper is in the middle between the top dropper and the point. The distance between your flies is very important and on balance I would say that 105 meters is about optimum. Any closer and the close flies may spook fish but the wider the gap the harder to cast the team of flies becomes and the more difficult it becomes to get the point fly close enough to the boat to net a fish. I suggest you experiment and come up with a compromise that suites your casting ability and style and of course the weather conditions. As a general rule however I suggest that if you have to drop down to your flies being closer than say 1 meter in dirty water or 1.2 meters in clearer water then you would be better dropping down to a two fly rig with a wider gap between your two flies. Anyway with this type of leader set up you can pull your point fly hard against the rod tip and swap lines via the loop to “locked loop” connection which at that stage will be half way down the rod. I am a strong advocate of using a lefty’s loop knot I connect dry flies to my tippet because that knot allows the fly to swing or swim freely and because it’s dam strong when tied carefully. I often pre-tie a couple of teams of flies and just wrap them around a piece of 20mm thick closed cell foam so that I can change a full team of flies over pretty quickly.

My basic loch style leader leader set up for a 6 weight outfit is set out below:

1. Fly line with 20 cm monofiliment loop on end.
2. First butt section of 60 cm of 0.37 mm Maxima Ultra Green or fluorocarbon. This is connected to the fly line loop with either an open loop or an open loop closed with a locked blood knot.
3. Second butt section of 60 cm of 0.30 mm Maxima Ultra Green or fluorocarbon connected to the first butt section with a surgeons knot.
4. 3.5 meters of tippet connected to the end of the second butt section with a surgeons knot. The first dropper is 50 cm down the tippet.
5. The middle dropper is 1.5 meters further down the tippet.
6. Droppers are 20 cm long.

Vary your leader set up to suit:

1. How you net fish. (i have a small loop to “open loop” (knotted for competitions) set up which will go through the top runner cleanly in either direction and allow me to lift fish well into reach of my net.)
2. How you change fly lines (my leader set up allows me to change lines quickly).
3. How you changing leaders (my “open loop” [or knotted open loop connection for competitions] to loop set-up allows me to change leaders quickly).
4. How you keep in contact with flies.
5. Your casting style.

The flies

I generally opt for a point fly with a little weight when fishing static or slowly twitching or retrieving wets to anchor my team of flies and to ensure that my leader is relatively straight and I am therefor in touch with all three flies. Good choices are bead head nymphs, epoxy or weighted chironomid patterns and even small woolly buggers with a small amount of lead weight hidden in the dressing. The amount of weight you need is very much a function of wind and consequently the speed of your drift, where the fish are holding and of course the depth you want to fish at.

My favourite anchor flies are: bead head nymphs, weighted jelly worm, epoxy midge, BH bibio, BH spiders, mini olive woolly bugger, mini shrek and mini magoo

If you know what the fish are feeding on its always worth matching the hatch but if your unsure of what there eating its worth trying a bit of a mixture. Some middle and top dropper fly suggestions are set out below:

1. Chironomid (aka midge and buzzers): alpine buzzer, chironomid and black buzzer
2. Mayfly:fuzzy nymph, cruncher and montana nymph
3. Caddis: stick caddis, stick fly, fetal caddis grub, caddis grub
4. Damsel: Chatto's damsel, bag fly,
5. Flies that represent other small insects that spend part of their life cycle in the water including: carixia, spiders and scud.

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