** This is Part Two of a short Troutbitten series about contact, feel and sight while tight line nymphing. This all reads a lot better if you first visit Part One (Strike Detection is Visual). Also be sure to find Part Three (Contact Can Be Felt at the Rod Tip) ** --...
** This is Part One of a short Troutbitten series about contact, feel and sight while tight line nymphing. Be sure to find Part Two (How Much of this is Feel?) and Part Three (Contact Can Be Felt at the Rod Tip) ** Smith arose from his halfway crouch and took a step...
The biggest misconception in nymphing is that our flies should bump along the bottom. Get it down where the trout are, they say. Bounce the nymph along the riverbed, because that’s the only way to catch trout. We’re told to feel the nymph tick, tick, tick across the...
Good fishing happens by doing a bunch of the small things right. And improvement happens when you do more things right than you did last time. Our favorite wild trout teach us good fishing habits because they’re discriminating. They are rarely fooled by inferior...
The best nymphing leaders incorporate a key principle — limit the diameters of leader material under the surface. But sometimes, two is better than one.
Here’s how and why it’s done . . .
A simple piece of colored monofilament might be the most important element in a tight line nymphing rig. The sighter, placed just above the tippet section of the leader, shows us everything about the drift. When fished well, a Mono Rig or a euro nymphing setup provides the angler with amazing control over the course of the flies. So it’s important to use it to our advantage.
Reading the sighter is an unending education. Like so many interesting pursuits in life, tight lining is something you can refine to no end.
Everything we read from the sighter follows from first gaining contact. Learning to make that contact happen, and learning to see whether we are in touch with the flies, is the primary skill. Everything else follows from there.
In a future article, I’ll break down all the elements of reading a sighter, but for now, let’s focus on just one important aspect — keeping the sighter stable . . .
You might be a poor judge of ten feet. In fact, on the river, you probably are. Anglers are notorious for overestimating the lengths of things, right? Your buddy tells you about the big trout he caught, up around the bend. “It was probably twenty inches,” he says. But he didn’t measure it. So you nod and smile skeptically. Tell that same friend you’ll meet him three hundred yards upstream for lunch, and you could be walking around hungry at noon, until you finally find him a half mile upstream. Again, we’re bad at evaluating distance out there.
With that in mind, consider this . . .
My first experience with modern sighter material was an opaque line from a Czech company. I paid more in shipping than I paid for the line, and I waited a couple weeks, wondering if the package would ever arrive.
It did. And I immediately noticed how different it was. The material was extremely limp when compared to the same diameter of the Gold Stren and Amnesia that I favored. And at the tying desk, where I’d opened the package and inspected the line, I loved how visible the new bi-color was — it was opaque, not translucent. So I was eager to fish with the new line, assuming it would become my new favorite sighter material.
It didn’t. Instead, just a few casts in, I realized what I’d given up by using the new material — turnover.
For better or worse, modern sighter material is all quite similar in design to that first line I bought from the Czechs. It’s opaque (great). And it’s limp (great only sometimes.) . . .
How do you know when to set the hook? Should you set on any twitch, pause or hesitation of the line and sighter? Yeah, sometimes. If the trout eats the nymph fast and hard, those twitches and pauses are unmistakable. Aggressive takes are obvious, but most eats on a nymph are subtle. And the angler has a choice: set on anything, or make guesses about every twitch, pause and hesitation. It’s a rough life. But there’s a third option too . . .
The check set is a very short and powerful hook set that moves the nymph just a few inches. Drift, drift, bump, check set. Nope, not a trout. Then let the nymph fall back into the drift and watch for the next take.
That sounds much easier than it really is. And in fact, the check set simply does not work under some conditions. But in the right situation, it’s a deadly tactic. Let’s get to that . . .
If you could plunge your head underwater and see what the trout sees, you’d have a much better idea of how to drift your flies. I once bought a wet suit and snorkel, with full intentions of doing just that. The experience was a bust, and my wife has some favorite anecdotes she likes to tell about that short period of our life.
Some of the things that trout eat can only dead drift, while others have little outboard motors for propulsion. Most trout foods have at least some wiggle to them, but which things can actually move across current seams at will? Baitfish can, of course. So when we’re representing minnows, sculpins, small trout or crayfish with our streamers, crossing seams might be a good idea. Likewise, stoneflies have a lot more swimming power than most caddis and mayflies, but their ability to cross current seams is nothing compared to baitfish. All of this is something to think about . . .