On September 1st, I was in the boat rigging up with my boat partner John Gummer from New Zealand, unknowingly sitting in individual 2nd place going into the final session of the 2016 Commonwealth Fly Fishing Championships. As I strung up my Di7 sweep with the team of flies my teammates had done very well with on Lac Barriere, I giggled to myself as John was threading his guides with a floating line. Knowing that the fish were down between 13ft-18ft based off of my teams previous success on this lake, my game plan was a 31 count, yes… 31 not 30. Once hitting that countdown, crawling back a coral booby followed by a leech and a damsel. Right off the jump I was getting short strikes. Typically after fish have been pounded for 3 or 4 sessions they won’t take a fly with as much confidence as they would in the 1st or 2nd. Quickly adjusting by shortening the tails on my lures, I got on the board about 15 minutes in. Settling in after getting a confidence fish under my belt, I’m startled when John rocks the boat as he sends a bass master classic hook set into a 14” trout. As he lays into a fish I start to pay a little closer attention to his set up, he’s fishing the bung. Suspended from an ear plug like fly were two small nymphs at approximately 8ft and 12ft. While here I am at the other end of the spectrum pulling flies on a Di7 sweep. He stuck with the bung for 3hrs and I stuck to my set up right until the horn as well. I finished with 7 fish and John edged me out, winning the session with 8. Second place in that session was enough to help my team win the team gold by the largest gap in Commonwealth history and secure the Individual Gold medal to put the cherry on top.

Team Canada White (Left to Right): Ivo Balinov, Colin Huff, Donald Thom, John Beaven, Keefer Pitfield, Todd Oishi, David Forgeron, Ian Troup, Jeremiah Hamilton

The bung is a technique which was developed in the UK for fishing flies static while having pure indication of when a fish is biting. It has been around for many years but was seemingly neglected in Canada as it can be an extremely boring way to fish if you aren’t at the correct depth or the fish prefer a moving fly. I was first introduced to it by Robbie Bell when he won a session on Lake Mills at the Canadian Nationals at Kenauk back in 09’.

People always ask me why I fish competitively, and its reasons like this. There’s never an end to what you can learn as there’s constantly new materials, new flies, new techniques and constant innovation. This session stuck with me throughout the long Canadian winter. Daydreaming about the bung and slapping myself; partly to stop thinking about it but also because I had never taken the time to practice this technique on our local waters. Part of the reason I never changed to the bung in that final session was because I lacked the confidence in the technique.

One hot mid-July day I finished work, grabbed my gear and stuffed a few coronas into the loaded down Coleman and made the quick drive over to Uncle Donald Thom’s, just across the river. We probably put some diesel fuel in the tractor, fed the raccoons and spent 30 minutes trying to get Buster (one of his English setters) into the house. From there we were off to one of the local lakes for an evening fish. Finally breaking the mould of our constant success pulling lures I forced myself to tie up some bung flies the night before, which were two 4mm cylinders of foam tied off the top of a size 10 500BL. I wasn’t sure what nymphs to tie up so I just grabbed my two nymph boxes out of my chest pack and threw them into my lake bag.

Donald Thom roping in another “silver beauty” using the bung.

I tied my first dropper only 4 inches off the end of my line to where on a short dropper I tied my tuning fork like bung. Off of that, I suspended two squirmy wormies at 12ft and 16ft. At first it was like nothing I’ve casted before. The least aerodynamic fly in existence trailed by two weighted squirmies. Casting this out only 35-40ft to begin I sat and hopelessly gazed at this large yellow and pink foam contraption which spun as my worms reached their targeted depths. The doubtfulness combined with instant boredom spiked a serious thirst, so I reached into the cooler and grabbed a couple ice bathed coronas for Donald and myself. Cracking one and then the next, I began slicing up some lime wedges when Donald calmly says; “Hey Colin, where’s your bung?!”. Dropping what I was doing, with the knife and lime hitting the bottom of the boat, I grabbed my rod and lifted it as high and as hard as I could. My line went tight and Donald and I looked at each other like a couple deer in the headlights with their mouths wide open. Quickly changing from shock to laughter, we giggled like a couple school girls. What have we been missing out on we say to ourselves. Getting the fish into the net and quickly catching several more, Donald changed his set up to match mine but put his flies at different depths to see if we could lock down at what depth the fish were suspended at. If we weren’t casting or sipping on a frosty corona while the flies sank, one of us was playing a fish. With our minds spinning into orbit on how productive this technique was in a month where the fishing is often very difficult, we left the lake with smiles ear to ear. We spent the rest of the summer modifying the bung to be easier to land fish and easier to change depths without having to re-rig every time. We would tie droppers every 2ft-4ft on a 20ft leader in case we wanted to make a quick depth change. This distance could vary depending on the clarity of water or if you have pinpointed the concentration of fish, you might make this distance closer.

Here’s a look at the setup before moving the bung dropper down the leader so that the fly line does not sink.

Here’s where we hit a speedbump, having the bung right off the tip of your line with a worm often suspended at the maximum competition allowed leader length of 20ft. This was an Olympic event to land fish because you couldn’t strip the bung fly through the guides to gain some length so even standing up with your rod raised as high as possible, the fish was always just out of reach. So, we’d either have to net one another’s fish or if you were quick and lucky, you could stand on the seat of the boat and get the fish close enough to the surface and hope he stayed there just long enough for you to jump down, grab the net and scoop him up. So, we began brainstorming ideas to make it so we didn’t have to keep doing this, because in a competition this is isn’t feasible. So, we thought maybe we’ll have to get into rod building and build a bung rod which has guides wide enough for a large foam fly to slide in and out with ease. Or tying the fly on super light tippet with a weak knot so that whenever it hits that first guide, it will just snap off. But this required to much time retying knots every time you landed a fish. We probably hummed and hawed about it for a week until one day driving up to the lake it hit me. If we made the dropper of the bung 5-6ft long it will give us just enough length for it to slide through the guide to a point where we can net the fish. It was the most bizarre rig to cast but it worked exactly like it should have. The only thing which I wasn’t a huge fan of was that it had to drag your floating line down however many feet you made the dropper. This was an easy adjustment, instead of tying the dropper close to the fly line, I just made the distance to that first dropper the same length as the knot to the bung fly so that it would only submerge the fluorocarbon and not the fly line.

No shortage of good times with Paul and Thomas Markhauser in the boat.

This technique quickly turned into a go-to for the summer of 2017, out fishing any other technique by a country mile. Not only was it extremely productive but it was a technique which I could use for guiding or bringing several people in the boat. The visual aspect made it easier to make fun of your friends whenever they weren’t paying attention to their fly. “Hey Paul, what happened to your bung?”. It’s a great technique for beginners and novice anglers because the playing field is leveled and the one with patience and a perfectly timed, strong hook set could be the top rod.

As the leaves changed colours and the bung continued to disappear from the surface, we neared Eastern Canada’s top lake competition of the year which is the Mark Anderson Championships held at Kenauk Nature in Montebello, QC. Going up two days early with my partner Ian Troup in late October, I was so excited to see if the bung would work well on these lakes that I have been fishing since I was 7 years old. It didn’t take long to confirm that the answer to that was a strong yes. Catching fish every cast, we finally snipped the hook off our squirmies so we didn’t mouth sore every fish before game day. Even with a hookless fly, fish were so committed to the worm bite that we netted one that just wouldn’t let go of it. We were feeling so confident and excited going into the first session with a technique that no one would likely be able to match, at least on the first day….

My first session was on Sugarbush lake and Ian started off on Green lake. I got in the boat with my boat partner Francois Dallaire who definitely looked at me like “what the hell is this guy up to now”. He set up with a Di3 and a standard go to team of Kenauk lures. The horn blew and I made my first cast with one worm sitting at 8ft and another right around 13ft. Well it wasn’t long before the bung disappeared and I laid into my first rainbow trout of the session, 2 minutes in. The key for me was to set up a slightly different drift every time and cover as much water as possible, knowing that my flies were in the perfect zone. Finishing with 27 fish, John Beaven was second with 19 who we also let in on the technique before the comp. Winning my first session by a healthy margin I was excited to hear how Ian made out. Coming off the lake with not the enthused look I expected, he proceeded to tell me that he was fishing with straightened hooks for an hour and a half. He could have run up some serious numbers if he had checked on that earlier. Ivo won that session with 11 which was not the numbers I had predicted from that lake. During the hour and half break between sessions, it was clear that the cat was out of the bag and it was a frenzy amongst most teams as they foraged through their fly boxes in search of worms and something that would float high enough to support them.

The second session, there were certainly a few more bobber like flies then the first. Instantly getting into them, I proceeded to pull 26 fish out of Green Lake fishing the exact same way as I fished on Sugarbush. Same depths, just covering water and capitalizing on each hook set. Come the 3rd session, ABSOLUTE BUNG FEST. Floating lines, pink dirt snakes and bung flies all around. I had serious mixed feelings about it. It was a mix between “Holy shit, look what I’ve done!” and “Holy shit, what have I done?”. Either way, it was amazing to watch how quickly competitive anglers can adapt and make all necessary adjustments to match what is working best and even modify it in ways to be even more productive. It was very clear that the combination of the squirmy under the bung was the top technique, and here to stay.

Since then, the bung has probably been the most used technique in all local lake events including the squirmy wormy being the top fly underneath it. Now we have reached a crossroad where we have to ask ourselves, are we fly fishing or are we bobber fishing. This technique has brought the local loch style game to a stand still in terms of furthering our knowledge and advancing our skillset. The bung is essentially just a competition legal spin on what guys like Brian Chan and Phil Rowley have been doing for years… for a clear reason, its deadly. Being able to locate the mass of fish and suspend an irresistible fly in the desired water column, it just makes sense. When you begin thinking about sinking lines and the amount of time your flies stay in “the zone”, its significantly diminished due to retrieval rates and requirement of constant casting. With the bung, your flies spend more time in the zone for the exact opposite reasons, no retrieve and hardly any casting depending on the drift.

As I get back from the 2018 Commonwealth Championships in Northen Ireland where our team placed 2nd (more to come on that). I begin to look forward to the 4th edition of the Mark Anderson Competition and on Monday, September 17, 2018 this is the email I receive.

“The use of flies incorporating soft silicone material (e.g. squirmies) will NOT be allowed; This is motivated by the experience of the Czech Republic and Spain which have banned such flies completely from their competitions. Fish easily chew off and swallow the material, which is again the principle of no-harm that is followed in competitive fly-fishing;”

Similar to some of my past relationships, it was fun while it lasted but didn’t last long. Personally, I am on side with this decision to ban the squirmy for several reasons. Due to its effectiveness suspended below a bung, the majority of all anglers in local competitions would continue to stare at foam cylinders for 3 hour sessions. What’s wrong with that? Instead of continuing to learn, innovate and help make ourselves better anglers, we might as well pick up a 2-4 of Bud light and troll around the lake. Not to mention that the material used could be harmful to the fish if swallowed. In my experience, I’ve never had fish chew off the end of my worm, but could see how it may be possible. If you were to take a 4 inch piece of silicone worm material, you’d likely be able to stretch it to a meter long and still not have it break. Where I see the biggest threat to the fish is similar to the reasons fisheries have banned the boobie, they try and swallow it. If you don’t offer this technique your full attention, the life-like material of the squirmy will quickly get inhaled by the fish. I think this is the correct move for our local comps in Eastern Canada, we’ll see if Fly Fishing Canada adopts this regulation all together. This also gives me the opportunity to keep searching for the next best thing and continue to put arrows in the quiver. Because at the end of the day, competitive fly fishing is more then catching fish and collecting medals but a way to fast track the learning curve and always stay on the brink of innovation.

Squirmy Wormy - Case Closed