Question: How much weight do you use to get a jig down 3-5' in a medium flow (3 mph) river? It seems that if I use dink floats -- even skinny ones or cut down ones -- if I want to sink the float to the paint I'll be using more weight than is needed to do the job. If I go with a lighter balsa (Thill) float, I'll sink the float entirely if I use more than a couple of #3's on the leader. How important is it to have a jig that's hanging directly below the float? If I'm underweighted and the jig is leading the float downstream, can't I run an extra 1-2' of line below the float to compensate or will there be too much slack in the system to detect light bites?

With those heavily weighted dinks I'm finding it harder to hook up with all that weight down below, and even harder to keep 'em pinned -- there's a lot of weight to fling around when the fish do head shakes. I'm learning to set the hooks extra hard w/ a thumb clamp on the spool but I'm still losing too many.

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PS While Hawk's in the Great Lakes doing X-Files experiments on the steelies' genes, I'm in Singapore causing the locals some consternation when they see me show up at the swamp with a 10 1/2 float rod, dink floats and jigs. I explain that I'm actually steelhead fishing -- that always helps.