Originally Posted by BobP

I'd probably start off on a DI3 line with a team of predominantly dark or black patterns and use the countdown method, varying my retreive until......

I have found that a FTA retreive is quite deadly, and the time to expect a take is after a 10 second pause followed by a steady 2 foot draw on the line. Very often answered by a hefty thump at the other end.

Originally Posted by BobP

Buzzers and nymphs generally don't zip through the water at high speed. If the boat is drifting on the drogue pace your retrieve so that you are fishing very slightly faster than the boat is moving. You just need to keep the line straight enough to be in contact.

Fishing damsels & other thingies off the bank I rely on a version of the FTA retrieve. FTA means Fool Them About or some other four letter word associated with fornication. Basically I bung it out there, allow it to sink for as long as I need, then two swift two foot pulls to straighten everything out and this also gets any fish who happens to be in the area interested. I then follow up with a mixture of fast and slow figure eights, dead stops for about ten seconds, then a long slow draw which is often answered by a savage pull from the other end. If not we go through some more fig eights and a few short pulls until the cast is fished out. Just chucking it out and dragging it back the same way every time is boring and not that productive.

Someone once said, "It's not how you chuck it out there that matters, it's how you pull it back again" and that is a very true statement.

Originally Posted by roll cast

Bill here you go