Salt Soul, Fresh Flats: Saltwater Tactics for Freshwater Fly Fishing

Imagine you’re standing on the sunbaked casting deck of a shallow-water skiff in the late morning of an already hot and sunny day. The boat slips stealthily through crystal clear water over a shallow, sandy bottom as a breeze dances across the open landscape. Through polarized lenses, your eyes scan left then right in search of a target. There’s nothing like flats fishing.

“There’s one,” you mutter as a dark silhouette meanders into view on the edge of sight at the 3 o’clock position. Without hesitation you make two false casts and shoot your fly line out in front of the target to intercept its path, drag the fly back toward the fish, and let it drop to the bottom. Instantly the fish turns to face and approach the potential prey item as it enters its field of awareness. Your guide, perched atop an elevated poling platform at the rear of the boat, issues instructions in a low and confident voice as he has thousands of times. “Tick, tick, tick,” he says, indicating abrupt, two-inch strips on the line to crawl the fly along the bottom.

The fish accelerates towards the fly with increasing interest. “Keep it moving,” the guide says as the fish puts its face less than 6 inches behind the fly. “Tick, tick, ti–” the fly disappears as the fish surges forward. “Set!” yells the guide as you strip set and lift the rod tip skyward. The line pulls tight, the 8-weight bends, and you feel the hook bury itself in 6 pounds of headshaking fury. Fish on! 

It’s a style of fishing that is most often associated with shallow saltwater flats for bonefish, tarpon, and permit, but that’s not always the case. In fact, the sequence described above played out in the heart of the Great Lakes, and the fish was a freshwater drum. Indeed, many of the tactics used in the salt can be applied in a wide range of freshwater environments where anglers can stalk and hunt individual fish in shallow or clear water. 

Drawing Parallels Between Salt and Fresh

“You can duplicate just about any saltwater experience in freshwater environments,” says Jerry Darkes, one of the foremost figures in Great Lakes fly fishing and author of Favorite Flies for the Upper Midwest and Essential Flies for the Great Lakes Region. Darkes’ extensive experience in both fresh and saltwater gives him a unique perspective on the similarities between the methods used in the Great Lakes and those employed in the salt. Throughout his fly-fishing career, Darkes has led trips to a variety of locations in the Bahamas, Belize, Cuba, and Mexico.

“In both settings you have the ability to stalk and target shallow-water game species with flies, and many of the tactical considerations are the same,” he says. “Anglers in both situations are essentially playing the same game,” he continues, alluding to skills like presenting with stealth, setting the boat up at optimal casting angles, minimizing false casts, adjusting to wind conditions, accurately casting 40 to 60 feet, and manipulating flies based on the fish’s body language.

It's very similar from an equipment standpoint as well, with 7- and 8-weight rods, weight-forward floating lines, long leaders–often with fluorocarbon tippet added–and weighted flies being the norm. Darkes also notes that freshwater anglers, just like in the salt, can often encounter blitzes with fish busting bait on the surface–exciting and action-packed scenes with aggressive takes. 

There are more freshwater opportunities to test these skills than most people think, but the bulk of them remain relatively unknown and under-explored. In recent years, Darkes has taken a special interest in unlocking their secrets–often borrowing or expanding upon typical saltwater techniques to consistently put freshwater species in the net. Much of his work in this area was documented and outlined in his 2013 book, Fly Fishing the Inland Oceans. This work provides Great Lakes anglers with unprecedented information about effectively covering such large bodies of freshwater with flies, opening up vast expanses of fishable water that have been historically overlooked by fly anglers.

The Flats of Lake St. Clair

Lake St. Clair is one of many freshwater venues that sets up perfectly for saltwater-style fly fishing. Often referred to as the “Sixth Great Lake,” St. Clair is a 26-mile long, 24-mile-wide body of water that connects Lakes Huron and Lake Erie and sits on the border of Michigan and Ontario. The St. Clair River that feeds the lake is one of the largest freshwater estuaries on earth. It’s a unique fishery with an average depth of only 10 feet and around 25,000 acres of even shallower areas, forming a maze of cattails and phragmites that provide sight-fishing opportunities on crystal-clear flats that are teeming with life.

Dave Hurley has become one of the area’s most experienced and respected fly-fishing guides, combining an extensive West Coast angling background with an intimate knowledge of St. Clair’s shallow-water residents. He owns and operates Skinny Water Guide Service out of Pleasant Ridge, Michigan, running trips on St. Clair, Lake Huron, and Lake Erie. Over the years he’s developed highly refined programs for freshwater drum, bowfin, carp, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, northern pike, catfish, and muskie, providing his anglers with epic and unique Great Lakes sight-fishing experiences. 

Hurley deploys his programs, the majority of which are almost exclusively sight-fishing based, from a technical skiff outfitted with an elevated casting deck and poling platform. From his perch he poles through the nooks and crannies of St. Clair in almost complete silence as he scans the shallows for feeding fish. He carries a range of patterns, but his Flats Jordan has emerged as a do-it-all fly that catches just about all of the available species. He’s found that the fish respond to it in many colors, but he prefers black or bright tones like chartreuse to aid the angler in tracking it below the surface. Once a target is identified, he instructs the angler regarding casting approach and retrieve cadence, depending on the species. 

Saltwater Tactics for Freshwater Drum

Freshwater drum can be difficult to catch in shallow water. They are highly aware of their surroundings, often spooking when approached by anglers and fleeing if a fly plops into the water too loudly. This behavior holds true on the flats as well as in small-to-medium-sized rivers where they can often be found mixed in with grazing carp in areas of slack water, where anglers can pursue them on foot. To combat this, Hurley coaches his anglers to cast well beyond the target and drag the fly back into position before allowing it to silently sink on a slack line within about three feet of the fish. This “drag-and-drop" technique can be used for a variety of freshwater and saltwater species when stealthy presentations are required. 

Sealing the deal and convincing drum to eat can also be a challenge, as they tend to prefer a very specific type of retrieve. They respond well, according to Hurley, to “constant positive feedback: “With short, sharp strips of bottom-oriented flies.” Once the fly enters the drum’s field, anglers are encouraged to scuttle it inch by inch along the bottom to generate interest. “It’s important,” says Hurley, “to keep the fly moving, but not remove it from the zone.” The “ticks” or micro strips accomplish this, with short pauses added if the fish seems to lose track of the fly. Darkes compares freshwater drum to permit.

“Permit and freshwater drum are typically the most challenging fish to catch on a fly in their respective environments,” he says. “They both often respond best to specialized retrieves,” he notes, “although the two retrieves themselves are entirely different.”

According to Darkes, permit generally react positively to crab imitations dropped out ahead of the cruising fish and retrieved with long, slow strips and a quick recovery in between to simulate a crab moving continuously through the water.

Saltwater Tactics for Smallmouth Bass

Smallmouth bass continue to draw massive interest in the warmwater fly-fishing space for their abundance and ferocity. Like freshwater drum, they can be sight fished in a variety of locations that have shallow or clear water. They are one of Lake St. Clair’s most coveted game species, and a staple in Hurley’s flats program. In stark contrast to drum, smallmouth are much less picky when it comes to presentation, seizing the opportunity to crush flies presented in myriad ways as long at the angler can put it in the zone.

Hurley’s anglers most often catch cruising or suspended smallmouth bass by casting the fly a few feet in front of the fish and simply letting the fly sink. The eager bass routinely eat it on the drop. If not immediately eaten, a series of fast strips and pauses often seal the deal on the opportunistic smallmouth. “Bonefish and smallmouth are similar,” Darkes says, “because they are both generally less selective regarding flies and cadences of retrieve, and both species are a little easier to catch in their respective environments.” He’s seen bonefish come up high in the water column to eat flies on the drop–very similar to what Hurley sees in smallmouth bass on the freshwater flats. In both cases, the angler must quickly deliver flies at a distance to cruising fish before they flee–another common thread connecting fresh and saltwater fishing. The ability to shoot line with minimal false casts decreases the chance of “line flash” alerting the fish to the angler’s presence. It also gets the fly into position quicker, capitalizing on the often very short window before the fish moves out of range or spooks. 

Saltwater Tactics for Carp

Carp, like freshwater drum, are “trash fish” that have graduated from obscurity and joined the mainstream. These days they enjoy nearly unanimous acceptance by anglers as worthy fly-rod targets for their intelligence, size, and their propensity to inhale an assortment of flies. Also lovingly compared to bonefish, these “golden bones” offer exciting sight-casting opportunities in shallow waters across the world. Common carp, specifically, are gaining admirers among warmwater fly anglers who have adopted some very saltwater-esque techniques to catch them. Carp are also a mainstay for Hurley who is able to pole his skiff shockingly close to this big and famously wary game species. Like smallmouth, common carp aren’t usually all that picky about specific fly patterns, as long as the angler can remain undetected long enough to properly present them. Hurley notes that feeding carp will often cruise right over and eat a stationary fly that has dropped into their view, doing most of the work for the angler. The magic is in the approach, though, and these beasts are much tougher to fool on foot. Wade anglers have a considerably more difficult time getting within range before carp flee. Long, accurate casts must deliver the fly well beyond the fish before it can be stealthily dragged back into place. Understanding which fish to cast to is also an important consideration when targeting carp and drum, as cruising fish will rarely cooperate. Instead, it's important to find actively feeding fish–betrayed by clouds of silt and tails that often flirt with the water’s surface.

More Tools for Fly Fishing the Great Lakes

Sight fishing requires many of the same skills and techniques regardless of the species and location. The ability to stalk, cast with accuracy, and elicit a feeding response by animating a fly in accordance with a fish’s body language are the common threads that weave fresh and saltwater sight fishing together. It’s an exciting and challenging way to fish in any setting, creating exciting sequences that form unforgettable moments for anglers no matter what species slides into the net.

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More information about Jerry Darkes, his guided trips, and his published work can be found at jerrydarkes.com. To learn more about Dave Hurley and his freshwater flats program, check out skinnywatersafari.com. 

Matt Redmond is a guide, writer, and fly tier from Cleveland, Ohio. He owns and operates Northeast Ohio Angling LLC and has over a decade of experience fishing throughout the Great Lakes and their connecting waters for a variety of warm- and coldwater species.