A several more thoughts:

Get a spool of 4 or 6 pound clear mono. Tippet gets awfully expensive if you are using it in 10 to 20' pieces. Then attach 2 feet of tippet to the level mono leader. This will give me up to 20' of depth to fish my chiros at.

I use these little floats that come with a small peg in them, they sell for like 3/1.25 at Outdoor Emporium and the like. Use the smallest one you can, the fill won't feel it as well, and will hang on longer.

The time to fish away from the bottom is if a hatch is coming off of midges. Typically there will be swirling at the top, but you won't get any takes on drys. I will switch to a chiro, 3-5 feet down, and have constant action.

My #1 chiro is the Snowcone in red or black. It sinks to depth well, and is easy to tie. Just keep them skinny and small. Size 12-16. Snowcone has a white bead for the head, a floss body and some fine copper wire wound up it.