** NOTE ** Find the Companion YouTube Video Below

A dry fly below the sighter in a tight line, Mono Rig system, with a reasonable nymph tied in below — that’s my favorite way to fish with a fly rod. I like the dry on a four-inch tag and a dry fly pattern that offers an accurate enough match for a prevalent insect — a reasonable dry.

I most often choose a Troutbitten Standard Mono Rig, because it has a twenty pound butt section that’s powerful enough to cast and push the dry fly to the target.

I prefer to be tight to the dry all the way through the drift, but I’ll lay the rig down at distance, especially if it’s windy. This leader choice also allows me to mend if necessary, very much like a fly line.

I attach the dry fly from a tag on my tippet section, and I watch the “Y” in the leader, but I do it for different reasons than what most anglers seem to talk about. I care about suspension and control. Is my rod tip in charge, or is the dry fly in charge of the drift? That’s the key to this tactic. 

Let’s look at all of this in greater detail: leaders, flies, weights and presentation options.

But first, let’s step back seven years . . .

Resources

In September of 2019 I published an article series that covered the three styles of dry dropper. When I covered this style of tight line dry dropper, the feedback I received was pretty confused, because at that time, fishing dry dropper on a Mono Rig was not common.

READ: Troutbitten | Three Styles of Dry Dropper: #3 – Tight Line Dry Dropper

Three years later, Austin Dando and I covered the same topic, Three Styles of Dry Dropper, in a five part Skills Series for the Troutbitten Podcast, and once again, tight line dry dropper made an appearance. The tactic still hadn’t caught on, and the main confusion I saw was how people wanted to lay line on the water instead of using the tight line advantage.

PODCAST: Troutbitten | Dry Dropper Skills Series – Tight Line Dry Dropper 

Since then, there’s been more info passed around about dry dropper styles on a Mono Rig. The two most recent that I’ve seen are Eric Stauffer on his channel Brook to River Fly Fishing and a video from Joe Clark for Fulling Mill. I liked that Joe shouted out Loren Williams, because that’s where I learned of the tactic as well. (That was at least eighteen years ago.) I’ve also seen Josh Miller and Devin Olsen speak or write about this style and pass on some great ideas.

But with all these other sources I’ve found, their approach comes from a competition mindset. That makes perfect sense if you’re in the comp scene, but I have no use for competition rules or limitations. So if you aren’t in that world either, it pays to look broadly at the technique and consider everything that’s possible.

What’s In a Name?

I encourage you to revisit the Troutbitten article and podcast that covers this topic. Also, there are multiple Troutbitten videos in the Fish and Film series, where you can see these tactics in action. 

But first . . . what are we calling it?

Tight line dry dropper. That has my vote, because it’s utilitarian. It describes the rig by way of its parts.

— We’re fishing a tight line rig (which does not mean we’re always purely tight to a fly, but that we CAN have that tight line advantage at any point).

— We have a dry fly.

— And we have a dropper, or a nymph. 

There you go. Tight line dry dropper. We could also call it Mono Rig dry dropper, but that sounds a little clumsy.

This is not Euro dry dropper. I’m firmly against the term euro rig as a general name for a long leader system.There’s nothing European about a long length of monofilament, and when you start to assign regionality to any tactic, people become argumentative about who came up with what first. There’s not much of a legitimate claim-to-fame to be found anyway, and really . . . nobody cares. We just want to fish hard and learn new things.

Leader Choice

I’ll fish tight line dry dropper with any Mono Rig: Standard, Thin or Micro-Thin. But I prefer the Standard for a few distinct advantages. 

Most of the recent content that demonstrates these styles lists a micro leader as part of the tactic. But I strongly disagree. Any Mono Rig is a fine choice. 

A micro leader has the advantage of less sag at longer distances. The reality is it’s about five more feet before the mass of even the thinnest leader pulls on the dry. Given our short range of a true tight line advantage for any leader, another five feet can be significant. If that five feet matters to you, maybe choose micro.

However, the micro leader’s biggest disadvantage is always its lack of power. The leader has no mass to push like a fly line, so with lighter weights you’re relegated to water load casts and limited angles. 

Even more consequential, a micro leader cannot push the tippet into a cast after the fly lands, so things like a power curve or even a medium tuck cast are not options. A micro leader almost forces you to be in touch upon landing the flies. And I don’t like that limitation. 

A standard leader allows me to land the nymph, then land the dry fly in the same lane, even across from my position, by using a power curve in the cast. 

A standard leader also allows me to choose how much slack I want between my nymph and the dry upon landing. Often, I give nymphs just a bit of grace to sink for a half second before truly coming tight to the dry. These are both wonderful options to have in a tight line dry dropper system, but good casting must always be there.

Cast every leader with full turnover. The nymph enters first, then the dry fly and the leader should stay up . . . usually.

Here’s the video, and the article continues below  . . .

(Please choose 4K or 2K for best resolution.)

The Tight Line Advantage

Line on the water is what sinks a dry fly, just as much as the weight underneath. So the truest drifts come from being just barely tight to the dry fly. 

Tight line dry dropper is best at distances where the leader can be held off the water, all the way up to the dry fly without that leader influencing the dry. If you are within two to two-and-a-half times the length of rod (about 20-25 feet away), most any Mono Rig build works for this.

READ: Troutbitten | The Tight Line Advantage Across Fishing Styles

Dry Flies and Nymphs

You don’t need special flies for this. Klinkhammers, standard Parachutes, CDC and Elk, and an fX-Caddis are my favorite choices.

All of these flies stand a good chance of fooling trout, and they’re selected from the same set of dry flies that I use to trick the toughest fish, season after season.

Many of the dry flies recommended for this style of dry dropper come from the comp scene. For sure, they are great for suspending flies, but they might not fool as many fish as the flies I listed above. Competition rules do not permit the use of indicators of any type, so creative comp anglers are constantly inventing ways to skirt the rules, and in many cases the flies you see recommended for tight line dry dropper are built for buoyancy over realism, where the dry fly might get a hit or two, but it’s mostly there to suspend the nymph

I’d rather choose a dry fly that I expect the trout will eat, and if I want more suspension I don’t use a sacrificial dry fly, I simply choose a small yarn indy.

For the nymphs, I need enough weight to help overcome the air resistance of the dry in the air, but it can’t be so heavy that it sinks the dry fly on the surface. If you choose the patterns I listed above for dry flies, that range of weight can get a little narrow.

Many anglers also choose foam patterns which inherently have some weight to them. That weight can help overcome air resistance as well.

Choose what works, and think of the dry and nymph as a working pair. This isn’t about tying on a big foam hopper to suspend whatever nymph you want to throw underneath. Instead, a little more nuance in decision making opens up better fishing.

READ: Troutbitten | Series | What You’re Missing By Following FIPS Competition Rules

Weight

While I prefer bead headed nymphs, I also employ split shot or even drop shot in a dry dropper setup. It’s just weight, and split shot with unweighted flies drifts differently. And I also use two nymphs under a dry on a regular basis.

READ: Troutbitten | Fishing Report – Brush Piles and Droppers

Rigging

From one-to-three feet beyond the sighter, I create a four-inch tag for the dry fly. Below that I have enough tippet to allow the nymph to reach the zone I wish to fish. That could be just a foot past the dry or up to about four feet, in my waters.

I never use tight line dry dropper as a bottom bouncing approach. Instead, I’m asking the trout to come up through the column a bit, so I’m often running about two feet of tippet beyond the dry. There are times, however, where I’ll run a little deeper or heavier and aim for the nymph to glide through the strike zone. (Lower for longer is one of my guiding principles for nymphing.)

Presentations

In Joe Clark’s recent video for Fulling Mill, he did a nice job walking through three ways to use this rig: lay line on the water, be tight to the dry, or pick the dry up and be tight to the nymph. 

I do just two of these, but I’ll add another.

I rarely pick up the dry and tight line the nymph. I’ve tried it enough to know that even the smallest breeze creates way more line sag than any Mono Rig butt section ever does, and it puts me out of contact too much. I might do this for a cast or two, but I’d rather just clip off the dry and get a better drift.

I do lay line on the water a fair amount. Remember, though, the nymph enters first, then the dry, then the leader can lay down on my terms. And when I lay down the line, it’s much more often in soft water than in fast. Another guiding principle is to use the tight line advantage whenever possible, and that means the line is off the water. 

For me, tight line dry dropper is most effective when I’m tight to the dry, with my line off the water. 

And the magic to this whole thing might very well be in exactly how we can do that. 

That brings me to . . .

Slipping Contact at the Y

I’ve heard Josh, Joe, Eric and others use the term “fishing the Y,” and I like the visual. For years, I said the dry fly mounted on a tag this way created a V, but more accurately it’s a Y shape. So I’d like to take that term and expand on it. 

It’s all about suspension. Is the rod tip suspending the nymph or are we letting the dry fly do the work? That’s the choice. And it’s a choice that can be made throughout the drift.

I wrote about this in the 2019 article, and Austin and I deconstructed this concept in the 2022 Skills Series Podcast. The very reason the dry fly is mounted on a tag is so we can transfer contact and control of the nymph from our rod tip to the dry fly.

My cast finishes, and I’m tight to the dry fly, but just barely. I like to let the dry fly do the suspension work and carry the load. It does the job of dictating the path of the nymph. But then, throughout the drift, I might lift my rod a few inches to gain contact with the nymph, essentially bypassing the dry fly and getting tight to the nymph. Importantly, the dry fly does not need to leave the water when I do this, and that’s why the tag attachment is so important.

I often see it recommended to paint the Y with wax, to color it bright orange so you can see the Y. I never do this because it’s just not necessary. When I lift too much, my dry fly leaves the water. That’s fine for a moment, and now I’ve found the Y, even if I can’t see it.

Next,  I can dip the rod a few inches and allow the Y to actually go under the water. That’s when the dry fly truly gains the payload and is in charge of suspension. This is my most common setup, because I like the dry fly doing the suspension work.

I also don’t want anything bright orange around the dry fly to possibly spook a trout away from eating it.

Which contact point has control, is the dry fly suspending the weight or is my rod tip in charge? That’s the most important question. Moving between those two ways within one drift is a great way to learn what I call slipping contact, and that can be done even without a dry fly. 

Check out all the other Troutbitten resources on this subject linked above.

And remember, there’s a lot more to every method and tactic out there when you really break things down and analyze what’s happening on the water. 

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