So, out of those who use a fly rod for bass, which lines do you prefer and what situation(s) do you prefer them in, being deliberately vague, I am in the market for a new line or two and am curious what you guys are using, when a given line is preferred, that sort of thing.

I haven't fished for bass with a fly rod for many years.  In my younger days, I did lots of it.  I fished mostly with popping bugs.  Bumble bee poppers where my favorite. The bugs I used where about the diameter of a large ball point pen.  I used an 8 1/2' rod with "C" level line.  Distance was not that important in bass fishing.  Neither was a light presentation.  Bass didn't seem to care if my cast wasn't textbook perfect.  Fly rod bass fishing is great fun. You need clear water for the best fishing.  It's a terrific way to fish small residential lakes and canals.  The biggest bass I ever caught with a fly rod was nine pounds.  I once caught a 17 pound tarpon fishing for bass with a fly rod in a Miami drainage ditch.  Have fun!

I dont do it much anymore, but when I did I used SA MPX or titan

1 hour ago, Captain Phil said:

I haven't fished for bass with a fly rod for many years.  In my younger days, I did lots of it.  I fished mostly with popping bugs.  Bumble bee poppers where my favorite. The bugs I used where about the diameter of a large ball point pen.  I used an 8 1/2' rod with "C" level line.  Distance was not that important in bass fishing.  Neither was a light presentation.  Bass didn't seem to care if my cast wasn't textbook perfect.  Fly rod bass fishing is great fun. You need clear water for the best fishing.  It's a terrific way to fish small residential lakes and canals.  The biggest bass I ever caught with a fly rod was nine pounds.  I once caught a 17 pound tarpon fishing for bass with a fly rod in a Miami drainage ditch.  Have fun!

As near as I can tell, options are effectively limited to topwater poppers/deer hair/sneaky Pete style bugs, or streamers of one sort or another...I know there are technically craw/shrimp style flies but I don't think that is an arena a fly rod really shines in, I currently am running a 9' 8wt Orvis Clearwater combo, have seriously considered picking up a St. Croix Mojo Bass 8wt in the 7'11" length to make accurate casting tight to cover a bit easier, I also think that in most cases, a bit of a splash on a cast is only going to help you unless you drop it right on the fishes nose, then you might spook him, of course he may get mad and try to rip the rod out of your hands too.

What weight rod are you using?  If you're 7wt and higher, pretty much any old weight forward line is going to work.  If you're like me and don't want to buy another rod specifically for bass, I would recommend the OPST Commando head system.  I can throw big, articulated meat streamers and giant poppers on my 5wt with that setup.  I use the Smooth line with a 5' floating tip and a straight 20# Maxima leader.  Works like a charm.

 

However, when fishing fast water features in a river for smallmouth, I like to Euronymph them with a super small hair jig.  I use Cortland competition fly line and a leader made up of straight 2x Rio two toned sighter material to a 3x Rio Flouroflex leader, length depending on the depth of water.  My preferred hair jig is a 1/50th oz PJ Finesse Marabou jig in black, white, tan or chartreuse.  You will pick up panfish with lure because it's a tiny hook, but it's also one of the nastiest hooks I've ever seen.  Do not stick yourself with that thing.  The barb is serious business.  It's a little weird getting used to doing a strip set while Euronymphing.  I do not use a tippet ring for this though, because if a knot is going to fail, it always seems like it's gonna be at that tippet ring.  I use blood knots for everything because they're easy to tie and super, super strong.  If you wanna get away with a single reel, you can buy or make a "Eurocheater", which is what I normally do.  You just take 10-20 ft of competition fly line with your leader attached and loop it to the line on your reel.

 

Lemme know if you have questions.  I've tried just about every line there is out there, so I can probably give you some pro's and con's on whatever you're using.

9 minutes ago, Sphynx said:

As near as I can tell, options are effectively limited to topwater poppers/deer hair/sneaky Pete style bugs, or streamers of one sort or another...I know there are technically craw/shrimp style flies but I don't think that is an arena a fly rod really shines in, I currently am running a 9' 8wt Orvis Clearwater combo, have seriously considered picking up a St. Croix Mojo Bass 8wt in the 7'11" length to make accurate casting tight to cover a bit easier, I also think that in most cases, a bit of a splash on a cast is only going to help you unless you drop it right on the fishes nose, then you might spook him, of course he may get mad and try to rip the rod out of your hands too.

Check out this video starting at 11:00 for a really obscure craw method for the fly rod.  Not what I do, but your post made me think of it:

 

 

5 hours ago, Talio said:

What weight rod are you using?  If you're 7wt and higher, pretty much any old weight forward line is going to work.  If you're like me and don't want to buy another rod specifically for bass, I would recommend the OPST Commando head system.  I can throw big, articulated meat streamers and giant poppers on my 5wt with that setup.  I use the Smooth line with a 5' floating tip and a straight 20# Maxima leader.  Works like a charm.

 

However, when fishing fast water features in a river for smallmouth, I like to Euronymph them with a super small hair jig.  I use Cortland competition fly line and a leader made up of straight 2x Rio two toned sighter material to a 3x Rio Flouroflex leader, length depending on the depth of water.  My preferred hair jig is a 1/50th oz PJ Finesse Marabou jig in black, white, tan or chartreuse.  You will pick up panfish with lure because it's a tiny hook, but it's also one of the nastiest hooks I've ever seen.  Do not stick yourself with that thing.  The barb is serious business.  It's a little weird getting used to doing a strip set while Euronymphing.  I do not use a tippet ring for this though, because if a knot is going to fail, it always seems like it's gonna be at that tippet ring.  I use blood knots for everything because they're easy to tie and super, super strong.  If you wanna get away with a single reel, you can buy or make a "Eurocheater", which is what I normally do.  You just take 10-20 ft of competition fly line with your leader attached and loop it to the line on your reel.

 

Lemme know if you have questions.  I've tried just about every line there is out there, so I can probably give you some pro's and con's on whatever you're using.

Check out this video starting at 11:00 for a really obscure craw method for the fly rod.  Not what I do, but your post made me think of it:

 

 

I'm currently using one of two rods, a 5wt or an 8wt, space on an 18 wheeler is limited so I have to TRY to limit just how much crap I bring along, both rods are Orvis Clearwater series, with Clearwater reels, I wouldn't call these rods the cats meow necessarily, but they sure feel a lot nicer than nearly anything else I have put my hands on in this price point, and it has a vastly better warranty than the ones I thought felt a bit better, on the 5wt I am running Scientific Anglers Mastery MPX WF5F, I have the included Clearwater WF8F on the 8wt. I have precisely 0 experience with anything other than floating line, which does just fine for streamers in the typical trout stream setting, but I find it makes fishing streamers or bottom presentations a headache at best and a lot of non PG words at worst when fishing anything deeper than maybe 3 or 4 feet in depth, which means eventually I will need a sinking line of some sort or other, the more similar the casting characteristics between the two lines the better as I see things, this of course does not mean sacrificing a lines primary function for the convenience of not having to alter my casting more than the minimum though.

 

I also own a Cabela's Prestige outfit in a 5 weight using the included line which is better than I had any reason to expect, and a 5wt Reddington Vice using another Cabelas line, which I enjoy immensely but leave at the folks so I don't have to shuttle a bunch of crap when I am off the road just to go fishing. As far as bass specifically I eventually want rods and lines designated for them,a rod that is a jack of all trades is truly a master of none, but it doesn't have to happen all in a night, the journey after all is at least half of the fun

Yeah, it doesn't take much depth to cancel out the floating line.  Only way to beat that is to weight down your streamer with a ton of lead.  That's why I like the OPST Commando Head on my 5wt.  It's a shooting head, which if you don't know, is basically just a short section of fly line that's super heavy.  Normally, at the end that's running to your reel, you just loop on straight mono running line.  That way when that heavy piece of line overloads your rod, it casts like a cannon because the line it's pulling behind it essentially has no weight at all.  Then to the business end you have a system of sink tips with different rates of sink, plus they now make a floating tip.  What's great about this kind of system is that the section of really heavy line that is your shooting head allows you to throw much more wind resistant streamers and poppers than a normal fly line would let you get away with.  I've yet to find a streamer I can't throw on a 5wt with that system.  Otherwise, you're gonna be looking at throwing mostly panfish sized poppers and 3-4" streamers max for that rod.

 

Your 8wt should throw whatever.  Most 8wt's now are made specifically to chuck giant flies at different species of bass.  That's a solid rod for what you're trying to do.  The problem your gonna have, if you're looking to fish deep water, is that most fly line only sinks so much.  Even if you go full sink line, most options are gonna fall 6 or 7 IPS (inch per second, they measure it that way, but it's usually not accurate because of drag or water resistance from the fly) and even if you are able to find some heavier stuff, the faster it sinks, the worse it casts in most cases.

 

Cabela's makes nice stuff.  I am truly sadden they stopped making their in house brand of fluoro lines.  That was the best fishing line I ever used.  They have a bass bug fly line that's pretty good.  It's got a really aggressive forward taper to be able to punch out more wind resistant flies.  I used that line almost exclusively until I bought the Command head system last year.  For myself, I'm not usually looking for a deep presentation from a fly.  Even if deep water, I'm going to throw a popper or strip a streamer really fast right under the surface of the water to get a reaction strike.  If you want to get deep, it's just so much easier on conventional gear.

 

I think it pays, literally, to consider why you're going for bass on the fly rod.  I do it mostly because I'm addicted to casting them.  Casting a fly rod is one of those rare things in my life where I was a complete natural.  I just picked the thing up and started doing crazy casts right away.  I was teaching classes on fly fishing the next year and was guiding a rich couple in my area the next. So it's just in my blood for whatever reason.  I also, just so happen to really hate treble hooks.  They're barbaric, stick to everything (mostly me) and they STILL don't hold fish better than a single hook.  So if I want to fish a popper, I prefer fly gear because I can get away with one stout hook with a top water presentation.  Also, bass eat dragon and damsel flies like crazy.  It's little talked about in tournament fishing, but some of my biggest top water catches have been on blue or red poppers depending on what color dragon flies I'm seeing fly around. 

 

The reason I'm bringing this up is because all this crap is expensive.  You can chase the dragon and end up with 10 different rods just like you can on conventional gear, only it's gonna cost you way more to get the same kind of quality and the presentation will still be a bit of a compromise.  I know for me, I tried it for years building these ridiculous metal monstrosity flies trying desperately to get a decent bottom presentation.  I dunno what the exact moment was, but I remember one day getting back to the truck and just saying...I'm buying a baitcaster and a dozen jigs.  I was trying to make square pegs fit in round holes.  If you're trying to get to the middle and lower level of water column, you're better off with conventional gear.  You just are.  Nothing is gonna substitute a half ounce of lead on the end of thin fishing line in terms of depth.

 

And we haven't talked snags yet.  One of my hardest, most brutal catches was when I dropped a popper into a hole in some super thick hydrilla mats and a massive 3.5lber smashed it.  I swear it took me a half hour to get him out of there and by the time I did, I had stretched my fly line so bad it had to be replaced.  Imagine just setting the rod down, and pulling the line hand over hand like you're raising a sail or something.  It was a mess.  Fly rods just don't do the junk well.

 

So I guess my point is, you're gonna make compromises in bass fishing with a fly rod.  They work awesome on trout streams because you can throw little tiny hooks in shallow water that trout like.  But even with that, most of us are euronymphing at this point which is basically turning a fly rod into a bait caster that can throw micro-jigs.  Most of traditional fly fishing these days is based in aesthetics.  It's just a visually satisfying thing to catch a trout on a dry fly in a stream.  Bass on poppers is basically the same thing.  Hopefully that wasn't too much pointless pontification and gave you a few things to think about.

 

PS edit: forgot one thing.  Learn to tie your own flies.  You don't need expensive stuff.  I invested maybe a 100 bucks when I started.  Most streamers you buy aren't weighed heavily enough to get a really deep presentation.  The rare instance I do want to put a fly deep, I use big, heavy saltwater hooks that sink like a stone and use the biggest dumbbell eyes I can find to tie Clousers.  They cast like crap, but with Belgian/lob cast, they work fine.  Plus you can pitch on a fly rod with heavy flies easily.  You could throw this and some poppers on your 8wt with regular old 8wt weight forward floating fly line.  I don't think there's a huge difference between the weight forward fly lines out there beyond how the head is built.  Some folks like a ton of weight up front, which is what most bass bug line is like, but I personally like double taper whenever I can get away with it.  I like to keep all of my fly line off the water whenever I can, so double taper kills some of the sag you get that pulls the fly out of the strike zone you want to be in.

I'm using mostly an 8wt Sage Method (very fast) for most of my bass fishing.  With that setup I have two reels - 1 loaded with 9wt Rio InTouch Outbound Short (works well for large flies) and a second reel with Rio Intermediate sinking line 3ips for mid column fishing.  I loaded my 8wt Sage a line up (9wt) to help soften it up.  This was based on Rio's and Sage's recommendation which seems to work nicely.  Moving big flies requires a nice sharp cast and either a single or double haul to keep the line speed up.

 

I also use a 10wt rod for bigger flies or really windy days and a 7wt for smaller flies and smallies.

 

Look for lines that have heavier heads to move the bigger flies.

I have a vice and tie many of my own trout bugs, never got too much into streamers, but I don't think it'd be hard to figure out a few simple patterns, most of my "streamer" fishing for trout has been restricted either to Woolly Buggers or Clouser Minnows, both of which catch bass too, I know this because many's the time I hooked a nice trout only to discover his mouth was shaped wrong and he was green or bronze. The snags are the reason I generally don't like to use craw patterns and bottom presentations with a fly rod, it isn't as simple as a conventional set up where you just pop a leader at the knot and go on with your day, I do enjoy it a lot for the visual appeal, it's a very methodical and regimented way of fishing, either that appeals to you or it doesn't. I also however am attracted to flies for bass due to space considerations, in order to be prepared for an average day on a body of water with conventional gear, I have to pack along a spinning rod, and a baitcasting setup, an entire backpack full of crap, covering everything from bottom bouncing, mid water column moving/search style baits, topwaters, on and on and on...it's great fun, but it takes up a crapload of space. Fly gear is much more space efficient, 3 boxes of flies, popper/topwaters, a streamer box, and if you want a bottom/craw box, one rod, a reel, couple extra spools with different kinds of line on them, a vest, and I'm cooking with grease. All of this takes up much less space on the truck and that means more than you could imagine to me. Casting a fly rod is ridiculously easy, in fact the number one thing I see people pooching with a fly rod is adding too many steps to the cast, they want to move things that don't need to move and generally overcomplicate a very straightforward process. They are always putting the cart before the horse as it were, and lots of people who have been at it even for some time often prefer to use a specialized cast to prove to some imaginary audience that they are a virtuoso caster when a basic cast, or even a roll cast would have done just as good or better, I don't understand why they do this, maybe they have some kind of unresolved psychological thing that mom or dad didn't pin enough of the grades they got to the fridge or something, who knows, but I do know I detest fishing with those sorts of people, they are the sort who lead you after gear you have no use for to talk about with your pinky out raised while sipping some fancy tea at your rod club, no thanks,