I fished for 90 minutes today at a very popular late fall spot. Lots of bass around — the spin guys were cleaning up — but I wasn’t getting my fly where it needed to be, which was down deep. Dagnabbit, I left my bag of 3/0 shot in the car. Two sections of T-11 (totaling 10 feet) and a leader shortened to 3 feet solved the problem, along with some upstream casts and active mending. When my fly was ticking bottom, the bottom often fought back. All shorts, but some of them put up a good fight in the current. Wow, the wind! Gusts over 20mph made me glad I was casting with/across it. The dredging is still going on, but any commotion caused by tugs and barges didn’t seem to bother the fish. A glorious day to wet a line and catch a few stripers (and a bonus shad).
No photos, because you all know what a schoolie looks like. You’ll have to settle for a blast from the past on a warm summer night a few years ago…
currentseams.com 
Nice Steve! I was out a couple weeks ago when the wind was blowing 25-30…gusts 40. I had a short window to fish so I opted for the spinning rod in the wind. I used a couple flies as teasers though. One was a short-tailed version of a Seaducer, made with all grizzly hackle. The other was a version of the “Greaseliner-ish” fly you’ve shown on here. I make the tail (feelers…think “shrimp”) a little longer than yours, and throw in a few strands of a clear flash material. I used some golden pheasant tippets for eyes. I got the feeling that the fish would eat anything I threw that day…small lures and fly teasers were getting me multiple double-headers.
It’s all good, Frank. 🙂
What flies were working for you with the “deep dropping” 😃and short leader method?
-Frank
When you’re dealing with aggressive school bass, fly selection is often a non-factor. Anything in the 3-4″ range in the strike zone is going to draw attention. So I usually use patterns like Ray’s Fly, my Soft-hackled Flatwing, etc. Color is usually irrelevant.
Thanx! Yeah, I was thinking the same thing about fly selection. Good confidence fishing for my fly tying skills!
Thought that was you. Next time I will introduce myself I was the cigar smoker to your left who was also having trouble getting his flies down to the bottom. But a glorious late fall outing none the less.
After you left, I fished that rip/hole you were in and picked up a bunch. Not my favorite kind of fishing, but it was fun to play tug of war and you are right — we won the weather lottery.