Set on anything. This often repeated mantra of nymphing anglers comes with more caveats, confusions and troubles than can be counted. But it’s a great strategy that hooks trout too. The longer I fish, the more I learn from others. And lately, my friend, Smith, has me...
If you have it, accuracy might be something that you take for granted. Oh, I’ll just punch the fly under those tree limbs and land the fly with an upstream curve to compensate for the swift current rolling sideways off the mossy rock. If that’s easy for you, then...
It’s a word thrown around in fly fishing circles a lot — turnover. But the concept is commonly misunderstood. No matter what type of fly we’re casting, and no matter the type of leader, we need our rig to turn over. It’s the best way to accurately place the fly in the...
Always, the river gives us something to fight against. Muddy water, strong winds or high sun — there are endless elements to overcome. Low water, hot weather or cold conditions — they all change the game with unique obstacles. Rarely are conditions perfect. And if...
Regardless of the leader choice, angle of delivery, or distance in the cast, every tight liner must choose whether to lead, track or guide the flies downstream. So the question here is how do you fish these rigs, not how they are put together.
Good tracking is about letting the flies be more affected by the current than our tippet. Instead of bossing the flies around and leading them downstream, we simply track their progress in the water.
Tracking is the counterpoint to leading. Instead of controlling the speed and position of the nymphs through the drift, we let the flies find their own way . . .
One of the joys of fly fishing is problem solving. There are so many tools available, with seemingly infinite tactics to discover, it seems like any difficult situation on the water can be solved. Perhaps it can. For those anglers who search for answers in tough moments, the prospect of solving a puzzle builds lasting hope into every cast. And after seasons on the water, the game becomes not how many trout we can catch, but how many ways those trout can be caught. Then, when presented with conditions that chase fair-weather fishers off the water, we rise to the moment with a tested solution, perfectly adapted and suited for the variables at hand.
There is not one way. There are a hundred ways. And the best anglers are prepared with all of them.
One of them is the slidable foam pinch on indy . . .
Leading does not mean we are dragging the flies downstream. In fact, no matter what method we choose (leading, tracking or guiding), our job is to simply recover the slack that is given to us. We tuck the flies upstream and the river sends them back. It may seem like there is just one way to recover that slack. But there are at least two distinct methods — leading and tracking.
Let’s talk more about leading . . .
Eventually, after decades of drifting things for trout, I discovered other ways of fishing dead drifts.
And now, I try to be out of contact as much as in contact. I ride the line between leading the flies and tracking them — choosing sometimes one and sometimes the other. And I’ve come to think of that mix of both styles as guiding the flies.
Think about these concepts the next time you are on the water with a pair of nymphs in hand. What is your standard approach? What are the strengths of leading the flies? What are the deficiencies? When does tracking the flies stand out as the best tactic? And when does it fail?
. . . But Smith had also drawn out of me one thing that I’d never fully put into words before explaining it to him. Namely, that contact is felt as much as it’s seen. While tight line nymphing, I’d told Smith, an advanced angler can feel contact with the nymph on the rod tip. Essentially, you could very well fish with your eyes closed. And because Smith was skeptical, I’d suggested some after-dark tight line nymphing as a way to prove to my friend that he could feel that contact just as well as anyone . . .
Smith was still puzzled, and I suspected I was about to join him. He held up his rod, with the long Mono Rig leader, two nymphs and a sighter, and pointed to it. “But if strike detection is mostly visual, what part of this is feel?” Smith had asked a question that I’d never fully considered. Then I answered. “At the rod tip you can feel when you’re in contact with the flies . . .”