What is conventional about this 20" wild PA rainbow? Not a thing. I didn't catch him on a nymph! Read the water folks. The creek was full of chubs, and something was chasing them, and causing them to jump out of the water. I used two streamers, the larger streamer was tied onto a smaller streamer so to mimic what was likely happening in the water that day.
Pennsylvania Brown taken on a Dry Dropper. He took the parachute adams, not the nymph!
The first word in the T&S motto is study. The latter portion of our motto suggests that there is another intention behind the simple act of catching fish, which more often than not isn’t so simple—but that’s a good thing. I’d like to think that all fly-fishers approach the art of angling with a quiet and studious mind, but that does not always seem to be the case. Hell, all of us fall victim to the ‘I-just-want-to-catch-fish’ attitude now and then. Fly-fishing is complex, but it’s still at a fundamental level just fishing, and something just a little bit more. The complexity of it all comes from our techniques. Some beginners are drawn to fly-angling do to what seems to be an elaborate and complicated casting style. In my opinion, casting is incidental to the real complexity of reading the water, presenting the fly and the meditation that ensues as a function of the inevitable water flogging that we all do.
Bug mimicry is a lot of what catching a trout is all about. The irony of modern day bug mimicry is that the sport has convinced itself that there is only one way to catch trout on the fly—with a nymph. Fly-fishing in some parts of the country and on some rivers in particular, is thought of by many a narrow mined angler as strictly an exercise in fishing nymphs. Don’t get me wrong; I stand on the right side of the rhetorical retort when the question put to the dry purest is: ‘do you want to catch fish or cast’. What the nympher has forgotten is technique variation. The die-hard nymph fisher has basically forgotten how to fly fish. If what you ultimately want to do is catch trout, then you as a modern angler should remember history. Nymphing is new. Nymphing is highly effective. Nymphing is not the only trick in the book.
When the old timers went fishing and there weren’t any bugs hatching or trout rising, they’d strip a streamer or swing a wet fly. Fishing a wet fly on the surface or just under the surface was and is in my estimation a form of prospecting. The truth is that insect life in the water column is dynamic, and the morphology of the bugs as they rise to the surface is changing (larva, pupa, emerger, adult fly). My point here is, that you should use variety when you are fishing. If you started the day nymphing, and you then see rises in the film—switch techniques. Try using emergers with a greased leader. Try swinging soft hackles. And what about a dry dropper?
A point of amazement for me is the idea that some believe you should not cast a dry fly if fish aren’t rising. But in my experience getting them to take a dry is based on how much insect variety there is on a river at a given time of year, or conversely how limited the food supply is. I’ve had it both ways. At 9000 ft in Yosemite the biomass is limited, and as a result you have little fish that are very aggressive on any dry fly you throw them. In dynamic Pennsylvania creeks I’ve had brown trout come from across the river to leap onto my parachute adams. I’ve proved to myself that trout don’t have to be rising in order to be willing to take a dry—a point that leads me back to the dry-dropper and it’s utility as the ultimate prospecting rig. It works really well it seems, but like everything in fly fishing there are caveats and the major one for this rig is how seemingly river specific it is. I still haven’t figured out why the dry-dropper works on some rivers and not others. The only thing I do know is that prospecting with the dry-dropper is truly the manifestation of salmonid serendipity. One theory I have for the variable enigmatic effectiveness of the dry-dropper is that on my home tail water the trout are strictly keyed into the abundant midge population, making other patterns obsolete.
I think these days its hard to listen to anyone’s conventional wisdom on what works on a river, mainly because much like a tail water trout obsessed with midges, modern fly fishers are too keyed into nymphs to think outside the box. I’ve had the pleasure to fish the East Carson River a couple of times last year. When I first looked at the river, it seemed like there could not be any trout feeding. Modern conventional wisdom told me in the case of a dead river, the fish are deep eating nymphs, but it was summer, and all the reports were screaming about hoppers and stone flies. I decided to leave the strike indicator in my vest. Without one single solitary rise I tied on a dry-dropper (#16 yellow crystal stimulator, with a #20 bead head micro may fly), and sure enough, I caught fish all day long on both patterns.
It is important to study, and thus to approach fishing creatively. Lets face it; if a fly fisher didn’t want to study the art, then he or she would simply revert to worms. So I challenge you fellow brothers and sisters of the angle to consider subsurface nymph fishing as one tool of many, and that when you decide to fish nymphs exclusively, you are not only as narrow minded as the dry fly purist you are as boring as a bait fishermen.
Bug mimicry is a lot of what catching a trout is all about. The irony of modern day bug mimicry is that the sport has convinced itself that there is only one way to catch trout on the fly—with a nymph. Fly-fishing in some parts of the country and on some rivers in particular, is thought of by many a narrow mined angler as strictly an exercise in fishing nymphs. Don’t get me wrong; I stand on the right side of the rhetorical retort when the question put to the dry purest is: ‘do you want to catch fish or cast’. What the nympher has forgotten is technique variation. The die-hard nymph fisher has basically forgotten how to fly fish. If what you ultimately want to do is catch trout, then you as a modern angler should remember history. Nymphing is new. Nymphing is highly effective. Nymphing is not the only trick in the book.
When the old timers went fishing and there weren’t any bugs hatching or trout rising, they’d strip a streamer or swing a wet fly. Fishing a wet fly on the surface or just under the surface was and is in my estimation a form of prospecting. The truth is that insect life in the water column is dynamic, and the morphology of the bugs as they rise to the surface is changing (larva, pupa, emerger, adult fly). My point here is, that you should use variety when you are fishing. If you started the day nymphing, and you then see rises in the film—switch techniques. Try using emergers with a greased leader. Try swinging soft hackles. And what about a dry dropper?
A point of amazement for me is the idea that some believe you should not cast a dry fly if fish aren’t rising. But in my experience getting them to take a dry is based on how much insect variety there is on a river at a given time of year, or conversely how limited the food supply is. I’ve had it both ways. At 9000 ft in Yosemite the biomass is limited, and as a result you have little fish that are very aggressive on any dry fly you throw them. In dynamic Pennsylvania creeks I’ve had brown trout come from across the river to leap onto my parachute adams. I’ve proved to myself that trout don’t have to be rising in order to be willing to take a dry—a point that leads me back to the dry-dropper and it’s utility as the ultimate prospecting rig. It works really well it seems, but like everything in fly fishing there are caveats and the major one for this rig is how seemingly river specific it is. I still haven’t figured out why the dry-dropper works on some rivers and not others. The only thing I do know is that prospecting with the dry-dropper is truly the manifestation of salmonid serendipity. One theory I have for the variable enigmatic effectiveness of the dry-dropper is that on my home tail water the trout are strictly keyed into the abundant midge population, making other patterns obsolete.
I think these days its hard to listen to anyone’s conventional wisdom on what works on a river, mainly because much like a tail water trout obsessed with midges, modern fly fishers are too keyed into nymphs to think outside the box. I’ve had the pleasure to fish the East Carson River a couple of times last year. When I first looked at the river, it seemed like there could not be any trout feeding. Modern conventional wisdom told me in the case of a dead river, the fish are deep eating nymphs, but it was summer, and all the reports were screaming about hoppers and stone flies. I decided to leave the strike indicator in my vest. Without one single solitary rise I tied on a dry-dropper (#16 yellow crystal stimulator, with a #20 bead head micro may fly), and sure enough, I caught fish all day long on both patterns.
It is important to study, and thus to approach fishing creatively. Lets face it; if a fly fisher didn’t want to study the art, then he or she would simply revert to worms. So I challenge you fellow brothers and sisters of the angle to consider subsurface nymph fishing as one tool of many, and that when you decide to fish nymphs exclusively, you are not only as narrow minded as the dry fly purist you are as boring as a bait fishermen.
East Carson stocked bow. He took the bead head micro may fly.
-- Posted by David
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