Bobby's Question:

I am going to try fly fishing for sand bass. What outfit would you recommend and what type of flies?

Bobby

Mark's Answer:

Bobby,

Sand bass are one of the still-undiscovered joys to catch on a fly rod. They don't get very large but put up one heckuva fight when hooked. In Cedar Creek Lake, a reservoir I grew up fishing on about an hour from my hometown of Dallas, Texas, the sandies form up in schools — and are easy to spot by the agitated shad on top of the water as the sandies chase them.

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Since sand bass don't often grow bigger than a couple of pounds, you can do just fine with a three- or four-weight outfit. When they are schooling, you can get by with a floating line, but a sink-tip line would be more efficient.

The best idea is to buy a reel with cassettes so you can have one line with a sinktip and the other a full sinking line (so you can get down deep when they aren't feeding on top).

The type of flies varies from fishery to fishery. Sandies are known to hit just about anything when they are in a feeding frenzy. I've caught them on a bare hook when I was growing up — indiscriminate are they not. Clouser minnows, rainbow trout streamers, woolly buggers, shad patterns — just about any baitfish pattern will work