Bill, the barbells are pretty much what make the Clouser a Clouser. If you
want to forego the barbells but still get it down in the water column, I would
suggest tying Deceiver's in the same Clouser color patterns you have
confidence in and instead of throwing a floating or intermediate sink, throwing
a full sink line. I do that with my 10 wt, throwing a shooting head sinking
line and run a simple 3'-5' leader of 20-30 lb fluorocarbon and the fly gets
down in the water column just fine, although it does not rest right on the bottom
like a Clouser does. For that reason, I find the Clouser seems to work best for
the stripes, but the sinking line works better for me on the albies.