Suspending flies are great end-of-summer and early fall patterns in the surf, inlets, back bays, and rivers for striped bass and weakfish. Scaled down in size, they’re also a winner with largemouth bass and pickerel, crappies, and perch. They catch well all year, but as September and October signal the start of the fall season, some of the best fly-fishing opportunities will depend on slow-sinking fly patterns. With split personalties, they can’t make up their mind what to do—they don’t float or sink quickly; instead, they suspend in place at whatever depth the fly line takes them.
Some of the best season-ending action will occur ninja-style and on the prowl at night and early morning. The striped bass fishing friends I learned from in Rhode Island, Long Island, and New Jersey—guys who really knew their stuff—all fished at night. Although not a fly fisher, the late Russ Wilson always said, “Nighttime is the right time.” Well, tide and moon phases are important too, but his advice for the night shift was good as gold.
Unlike weighted patterns, like a Jiggy with a nose-cone weight or a Clouser with dumbbell eyes, a suspending fly is light in physical weight so it sinks slowly. In a strong current, it won’t sink at all, suspending like a weightless, water-borne astronaut defying gravity. Its light weight also makes it easy to cast so it lands on the water like a feather. Most coastal rivers and bays become whisper-quiet during late summer and early fall evenings, so a big, noisy fly will spook fish like a bomb going off. When bass lie in quiet places like the shadows of marina docks or bridge lights, along a stretch of bulkhead or boulder-strewn shore, or at the pungent edge of a spartina marsh, they will scoot away like a nervous cat when a heavy fly plunks down too close to them. By contrast, a soft-landing, suspending fly piques their curiosity; often they turn, eyeball the fly and then attack.
Besides a slow sink rate, a good suspending fly does not have a pronounced nose-diving action so it offers a unique imitation of a natural baitfish. The best suspending fly choices can be retrieved at a lazy pace, giving the fish plenty of time to decide whether to eat. Many of the best suspending patterns rely on the in-water action of their natural bucktail fibers, feather hackles, peacock herl, and marabou. A long, slow strip followed by a pause is a good basic retrieve because it lets the fibers light up, pulsate, and move in the water current; although a retrieve cadence that relies on short twitches and pauses can also be a winning strategy. Sometimes, a mix of both rhythms is the way to go. Strikes will vary from a gentle tap to a hammerlike smash that stops the fly dead in its tracks.
A dependable suspending fly relies on the fly line to achieve and maintain the optimum retrieve depth. A floating line obviously keeps the fly high and near the surface. An intermediate fly line will sink ever so slowly, positioning the fly just below the surface if there’s a strong current or a bit deeper in quiet water to about five feet or so, depending upon how long you wait before beginning the retrieve. In fresh water, an intermediate can sink quite a way down. about 2 to 4 feet. if you wait about 10 seconds or so before stripping. A full-sink or a sink-tip integrated Type 3 or Type 6 line gets down much deeper to suspend along channel edges, deep holes, and drop-offs at bar edges along the surf.
A favorite bridge I like to fish through early fall reliably has schoolie striped bass in a 17-foot-deep hole equidistant between the arched span of the bridge abutments. A 6-weight fly line and a 15-second countdown takes the fly down about 8 feet and holds it at that depth. A couple of retrieves work well in this situation: a straight retrieve with pauses or a feedback retrieve that works the fly ahead several feet and then slips the line so it free-drifts back into the current before stripping again. I also work the rod tip, angling left or right to cover a wider retrieve path. These methods work best in a boat or kayak anchored uptide of the bridge.
Hook size and weight have some influence on a fly’s suspending talents. A stout heavy-wire hook will take a fly down much faster than a thin-wire hook. A good example is the Owner Aki. Its standard 5170 version sinks quickly and has a heavy-duty shank ideal for big bass, blues, school tuna, and albies. Its little brother, the Aki Light 4170, has a lighter wire shank, making it a good choice for almost any suspending pattern.
Good choices for suspending flies include Don Avondolio’s Enticer, Ray Bondorew’s Ray’s Fly, Jack Gartside’s Gurgler tied in reverse with the popper lips facing aft, and Gartide’s Beastmaster General. Other options include Bendback patterns, Lou Tabory’s Snake Flies, and shrimp patterns. Any of Ken Abrames’ patterns with a palmered hackle collar, like the Eel Punt, Katydid, Rusty River Rider, and RLS Snapper are New England favorites and work anywhere. A popper with the head tied in reverse like the FlyMan Slider or with a shortened head (like a Bob’s Banger with a half-inch-long head or a shortened Blados Crease Fly) can also be fished just under the surface. There’s no shortage of possibilities and many can be found in Angelo Peluso’s Saltwater Flies of the Northeast, plus Google and YouTube for online information. Fly shops like River Bay Outfitters and The Saltwater Edge can provide hands-on tying tips for salt-minded freshwater versions of suspending flies.
Early Suspending Flies
Looking back in time, the Tom Loving Bass Fly from the 1920s was an early pattern with a slow sink rate. It enjoyed great favor long before the term “suspending” was even in vogue. With a red palmered head and white bucktail for the tail, its roots go back to the 1890s. The Bass Fly name probably referred to largemouth bass, not striped bass, but it likely caught both in the brackish waters of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries.
Homer Rhode moved from Pennsylvania to south Florida in the 1920s and became enamored with the Everglades and the Keys, so it’s plausible to believe that he knew of Loving’s fly. Rhode created palmered hackle-body streamers in the 1930s, a time when he sold snook to support himself through the Great Depression. His flies had to be effective, or he went without a paycheck. He created two versions: one with bucktail for the tail; the other with splayed saddles. Both were tied in all-white, grizzly, yellow, or combinations of all three colors. For tarpon, he favored red for the palmered bodies, which became the prototype quintessential tarpon fly tied by Stu Apte and many others at the Miami Beach Rod and Reel Club. With bucktail for the tail, it was named the Homer Rhode Bucktail, and the feather version was called the Homer Rhode Streamer. Both flies suspended nicely in shallow water and caught fish down south and in New England.
By the late 1960s, Chico Fernandez tweaked the fly and called it the Sea-Ducer, which he marketed through his company, SeaFlies. Fly-fishing writers can’t seem to agree on the spelling, so it’s also known as the Seducer and Seaducer. What made Chico’s fly better? For one, he was careful to lash the tail saddles at the very top and rear-most bend of the hook to avoid fouling during the cast. Second, he increased the body fullness by extending the palmer wraps from near the hook bend all the way to the hook eye. These small improvements significantly enhanced the fly’s action, pushed more water, pulsated more at rest in between strips, and suspended nicely in shallow water.
Fast forward to the late 1970s, when Bob Popovics created one of the best suspending flies of all time, the Semper Fleye. It’s a simple pattern, but to this day he still considers it one of his best. “It’s a confidence builder,” Bob says, “because it works just about anywhere—surf or backwater, even in fresh water. Heck, I used it up in Saskatchewan, Canada, for northern pike, big ones, and they just ate it up.”
When Bob created the pattern, there weren’t many saltwater flies to choose from. The Brooks Blonde was popular, the Lefty’s Deceiver was just becoming well known, and in Barnegat Bay, the Tarpon Tamer, a divided-wing southern fly, was popular with its frog-like action. Bob thought the action of divided-wing flies could be improved. “My goal was to create a fly with attraction and action to fool striped bass, and I really didn’t like tying divided-wing flies because it was kind of hard to get the feathers to line up left and right,” he said.
He came up with a much better idea and described it this way. “After lashing a bucktail underlay in place, I added thin-profile tail saddles one at a time clockwise around the hook shank. The bucktail base helped keep the feathers spread for maximum action and provided extra fullness to the tail that a feather-only tail lacks. It allows the natural taper of the tail feathers to breathe with an amazing action.”
Previously, palmered collars of other flies were tied 90 degrees to the hook shank, but Bob wanted more bulk for the head to create as much attraction and action as possible. He palmered the webby portion of the feathers to build up the collar and used a few thread wraps to help lay them back and then added another few wraps of hackle. The result was a bulkier head that had more resistance and pushed a lot of water, creating a slip-stream effect for the tail feathers. It was a dramatic improvement over traditional palmer wraps. To create a very bulky head, he prefers the webby part of the hackle and also varies the bulk and shape of the collar by using one feather at a time or multiple feathers. However, keep in mind that with more hackle in the collar, the fly will suspend less and sink more.
The Semper Fleye hovers rather than sinks, and I used it a lot on the Manasquan River to fish cuts in shallow sand bars and mussel beds. An intermediate was my go-to line to get the pattern down a few inches in quiet water. In heavy current or along the edge of a deep drop-off, I used a 3- or 6-weight sink-tip line. It just depended on how deep I needed to fish or how much current speed had to be overcome. Even in shallow water, currents can rip through cuts and around bridge abutments. The suspending Semper Fleye fished on a sink line with a short leader was able to overcome the lifting power of a fast current and get the fly well down.
Suspending patterns and techniques that present flies at constant depth are very effective this time of the year. They catch fish like crazy, in both fresh and salt, and they’re simple, quick, and easy to tie. Invest an hour after dinner and you’ll have a dozen or so ready for your next on-the-water session. Catch ‘em up!
