Fishing style bouncing flies off water surface

[sashkello]

Hi all!

Once upon a time when I was a preschooler I went to a small village for a few weeks in the middle of summer with my friend. There his uncle brought us to a small creek to fish. The fishing set up was as follows. There were two rods, with their lines connected together, and a long thin dropper leader attached to the middle of it. At the end was a small hook on which we put flies and grasshoppers we caught around in the grass. People holding rods were placed on the two sides of the creek, moving the dropper to the middle, so that the bait was hanging about 20cm above the water. Then we did a kind of little up and down movement of the rod (on either end) and the fly would gently touch the water making bouncing motion like midges often do. I assume wave circles created by the fly attracted the fish and we really barely had any time to reel it out to the middle before something would take it within just 2-3 bounces. 

I was wondering if this (or some similar 1-rod technique) is practiced here in Australia at all? Does it have a name? I have this what-if feeling that if I just put a fly on the end of a light leader and try bouncing it along the banks of some lake trout would take it in seconds. But I don't know whether this is a good idea at all or if it only worked there and then

Cheers!

Edited August 28 by sashkello

[XD351]

Can’t say I’ve ever heard of it !

[thatdan1000]

It's not a specified practice but when we put in a rogue cast that goes over a branch while bass/jack fishing we call it "tea bagging" as you dunk the lure in the water to try and get a bite before you flick it off the branch

[Ryder]

I think it’s called “Dapping”

https://www.openseason.ie/collections/dapping-for-trout#:~:text=Dapping is a fly-fishing,the surface of the water.

 

Edited August 28 by Ryder
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[Little_Flatty]

Yes they covered Dapping in the Scotland episode of 'A River Somewhere'. Don't think they caught anything though!

So if we call fishing with poppers 'topwater', what do they call these methods then? 'Overwater'? 🤣

There's every chance the technique could work in Australia on the right species.

[sashkello]

Thanks, guys, "dapping" is the word then! Looks like there are special ultra-long rods for it, although seems they aren't available immediately at Australian stores. Probably a bit too much hassle to be worth it, but it's something I wanted to try myself since childhood, so maybe one day I will...

[Peter K]

No reason you can find yourself an ultra light fish rod...really long bamboo stick. I've used a bamboo branch for ages as a blackish rod. Simple, super effective, why pay the price why make it hard, go back to the old ancient methods that have always and will always work.

[sashkello]

16 hours ago, Peter KH said:

No reason you can find yourself an ultra light fish rod...really long bamboo stick. I've used a bamboo branch for ages as a blackish rod. Simple, super effective, why pay the price why make it hard, go back to the old ancient methods that have always and will always work.

That's usually what I do, and probably will, but I don't want to admit it here if it fails and look stupid, only if it works, you see, so shhhh.