Fish with blob flies for stocked trout

Irish international Peter Driver explains how to effectively fish blob flies for stocked rainbow and brown trout

 Issue 19 (Nov-Dec 2017)     Peter Driver     Off the Scale magazine

Blobs are one of those things in fly fishing that really divides opinion; some love them and use them frequently, some hate them and refuse to use them at all! However, there can be no doubting their effectiveness, especially on stocked trout fisheries and, where allowed, they can catch you an awful lot of fish. There are a number of ways to fish blobs but here I detail fishing them ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’.

  • You can suspend blobs at a chosen depth using either an indicator /bung or, if fishery rules don’t allow these, a bung fly. Bung flies are simple patterns tied with buoyant, visible materials and dubbing that will hold up one or more blob (or other) flies. The application of some Watershed to your bung fly will make it float endlessly.
  • A common problem with using various types of indicators or bungs is that the trout will often try and take them! Using a dedicated bung fly instead means you can hook these fish!
  • ‘Bunging’ as it is called, allows you to fish blobs (or other flies) static if the fish aren’t in the mood for chasing your flies, or to slowly retrieve your fly back towards you, making it very versatile. As with any method, fishing “top-down” like this is all about finding that correct depth, though…
  • Blobs can also be tied with some foam incorporated making them ‘floating-arsed blobs’ or FABs. This allows you to fish them near the surface or even better fish them from the bottom, up.
  • Fishing ‘bottom-up’ requires only a very short leader on the end of a Di3-7 sinking line. The FAB naturally rises in the water to the length of the leader (usually start at 2ft) on a slack line but will dive back down to the lakebed when you retrieve it.
  • Fishing blobs ‘bottom-up’ also makes them very visible and attractive to passing trout. Usually they are best fished as slow as possible but sometimes a short, sharp figure-of-eight retrieve can score well. This makes the FAB almost hop along the bottom.

blob flies