** Video Appears Below. **
My friend once described a truly slidable dry dropper system as the Holy Grail of fly fishing. For sure, the ability to slide the dry fly to adjust for depth opens up all the possibilities of a dry dropper system. But it has to slide quickly. It has to be easy. And the slidable system cannot take away the finesse of the dry fly.
My solution is in this video. It allows me to slide the dry fly whenever I like, but the dry won’t slide when a fish eats it.
I published an article to Troutbitten about this in 2017. I’ve been using this system for fifteen years. This is the best way to rig a slidable dry dropper.
Here’s the article . . .
READ: Troutbitten | A Slidable Dry Dropper System
And here’s the video . . .
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Fish hard, friends.
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Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com
Thanks for the video accompaniment to the article. I live this system and it’s one of my favorite ways to fish.
Merry Christmas, Dom
Nice
Hey Dom,
Merry Christmas to you and the rest of the TB gang!
One issue that occasionally happens to me with this system is the loop on the perfection loop breaks off. Have you experienced this? What might I be doing wrong?
And when I say the loop I don’t mean the knot of the perfection loop but where the loop is contacting the main line is where the break occurs so all Im left with after the break is the entire rig as you laid out but the dropper is just gone.
I’m using 6lb invizx for both the dropper and the main line.
Hi there. No, really haven’t had that happen for me. But if you’re perfection loop is breaking like that, then there’s simply too much friction. Try sliding it by holding it right at the knot and then moving. Otherwise, try the Uni Knot method. Cheers.
Great way of tying an adjustable dry dropper! Will definitely be trying it this year. Two questions I have is do you typically use nylon? And do you find the system floats well with smaller dries with that Dacron uni knot when it gets wet? Thx
Hi Tim.
No, I would rather use fluoro for the Slidable part, because it’s more abrasion resistant.
Yes, the dry fly floats just fine with the Dacron there. Remember, it’s quite small. And if you think it’ll sink, put a bit of floatant on it. (But it doesn’t sink anyway.)
Cheers.
Dom
When I was younger and rock climbing we used a prusic knot for a quick ascent. This knot could be pushed up or down the main rope by hand but if you pulled on the loop itself it would lock down on the main line. Have you tried keeping the perfection loop just slightly larger and passing your tag end of the dropper through the perfection loop twice? I love this idea but live almost 5 hours from my nearest trout stream.
Here is an example of the prusic passed twice around the main line, or maybe the 3x tippet on a mono rig.
https://www.animatedknots.com/prusik-knot
Great video! Can’t wait to try this. My question is about integrating this into a Harvey leader setup, which is what I typically use with my dries and dry-dropper rigs. On your typical Harvey small stream leader, the 3x portion is only 6”, followed by 12” 4x and then maybe 24” of terminal tippet (5x or 6x). Would you just make the 3x portion longer for the adjustable dry fly and leave out the 4x and terminal tippet sections, instead making that the terminal tippet to the dropper? How do you adjust your small stream Harvey leader formula to account for this system?