...was nymph and indicator fishing with a bright green/red corky in a lake yesterday and actually had a fish rise to my corky! Sheesh--some fish'll eat anything!

Last winter steelie fishing my buddy and I had half a dozen hits between us on our floats--we usually used dink floats in the smaller size, but he had one hit a huge white and red weighted styro float, too. A couple of the hits we were sure were dollies, and one my buddy swore was a sucker. A sucker? Hitting a surface (misre)presentation?

Sometimes I wonder if I'm tying my surface muddlers for summer runs too small...has anyone else had this happen? Should I try tying a hook into a dink float and swinging it over summer runs?

Another day lake fishing I noticed a fish sipping powerbait off the surface (it was one of those kind of lakes) and rigged up a larger hook with a big gob of powerbait and tossed it out there and wouldn't you know it? I caught a fish with a powerbait dry fly!

I was once fishing a small river that had just come back into shape from a large flood.
I came to a drift that had a large root wad washed into it. Knowing it was probably snaggy I put on a white styro float to keep out of the snags. My first pass a late summer run came up from under the root ball and swiped at the float, completely ignoring my eggs. Second pass, same thing! Third time, the fish grabbed the float and tried eating the the thing on it's return to the comfort of root ball. I must of looked stupid trying to set the hook on a fish with nothing but styrofaom in it's mouth! As God as my witness, being nobody else was around, this really happend. I guess late summer fish act like dumb hatchery trout.

I've seen it happen on a number of occasion, especially to floats that are orange on the bottom. Time and again fish would rise and hit the float.

Yes its time to stop tying those carefully constructed orange Bombers and glue a chunk of fl. orange foam to a hook. Have seen summer fish rise to some large corkies an unfortunate angler dropped in the river, but that was 15 or more years ago, and have not seen anything like it since. But glueing the foam to the hook thing, hmmm, maybe not such a bad idea!

I usually use clear bobbers, so I see that happen alot. I have seen silvers in a slow water frenzy strike the bobber repeatedly. I think they smell the bait and it gets them excited, I don't know what they think the bobber is. I also have gotten alot of blasts from smallmouth while fishing for squawfish on the columbia.

I use clear floats in the summer and tie a piece of pink or red yarn above it for a strike indicator at times. I ve had a few summerruns totally engolf my float, I think they were after the yarn because it dosen happen without the yarn.

This winter I had a steelie hit at my dink float a couple times while in some frog water. I was using a glow bug under a float so I pulled my float all the way down to my glow bug and casted back out. Believe it or not the fish hit my float agian and I landed a 5 pund wild buck.

:p Howdy,
I havent been float fishing for that long, maybe five years or so. But me and my friends have had several experiences with salmon and steelhead rising to the float (bobber) with repeated enthusiasm. In order to catch these fish, we will set the jig/bait 2 inch under the float. My friend Bryan has tied of series of deerhair flies replicating the several types of floats we use. However, we still haven't had the opportunity to use these flies on a willing fish. And thats all I have to say about that.