This is a short technique corner – but I’m putting it up here so some folks over at the OFF have a better description of how it’s done, with a visual aid for rigging. One fellow in particular mentioned that he’s done well fishing dries, but would like to try nymphing the deeper water on some of the small streams he’s fished, but hasn’t been successful and isn’t sure if he’s doing it right. So for those of us who learn better with something to visually reference, here goes.
Indicator nymphing is probably THE most successful (numbers wise, anyway) way to catch trout, or just about any other fish that swims in moving water. It also draws a LOT of debate in some circles – or at least some disdain. “Bobber fishing” or “bait fishing” are some of the jabs the purists like to throw around.
They aren’t far off the mark though – indicator nymphing really IS bobber fishing, just with a fly, not a hunk of bait or a jig (though you can drift a fly tied on a micro jig head under an indicator and slay the fish). First off – you need an indicator. There’s a huge variety of indicator types out there – yarn indicators, foam indicators, corkies, small balsa floats… so pick an indicator you like. Personally I like a pegged corkie, or a Thingamabobber (which is a high tech balloon with a molded in ring to attach your leader too). I’ve tried others, and found these the best for me. They don’t hinder casting, because even the smallest versions of these work well with weighted nymphs, or a BB shot and a nymph. Of course, if you’re chucking larger, or heavier flies, or multi fly rigs, you’ll want to scale up the size of your indicator. Even still, the largest corkies cast way better than any yarn indicator I’ve tried. Corkies are cheap – about twelve cents a piece on the high side, five cents if you get a good deal on them. Toss a few round tooth picks and some corkies (pick your color) in a small plastic bag, or in one compartment of a fly box and you’re set.
Now, depending on water depth and current speed, and the type of flies you’ll fish, you may or may not need split shot. I typically stick with BB size shot – but sometimes you need to use smaller shot (typically about $5-7 for a container of them) in light current but deep water (or you could just go with a heavy fly and skip the shot). In deep, fast water, you might need to upsize the shot size to keep your flies down.
Multiple smaller shot spaced out on the leader will cast better, but fewer, larger shot will stay down better and sink quicker. Either way, if you’re fishing at the right level, you’ll be snagging bottom and loosing flies occasionally. If you don’t feel the weight ticking along the bottom – you’re not fishing deep enough. There is a way to mitigate fly loss – that’s by crimping your shot a bit loosely onto a long tag end left when attaching your tippet – so that if the shot snags up, they will pull free from the leader tag and pop the flies free. That rigging method does not cast very well though – an in-line weight will be easier to cast, and tangle much less often.
Of course to fish, you need flies. Bead head nymphs and lead wire wrapped nymphs will get down quickly – but sometimes you don’t want the fly to be weighted – an unweighted or even a buoyant fly, 4-12 inches up from the split shot, will give a more natural presentation as the fly will bob and weave through the current, just like a real nymph or worm.
Notice the similarity between an indicator nymph rig (top) and a bobber & jig rig fished on a spin rod (bottom)?
Usually when I fish, I fish a multiple fly rig – at least two flies – sometimes three (which is all Oregon allows) – this doubles your chances of getting a hook up, and lets you try different patterns to see which one the fish really want.
I used to tie my flies in line by tying the dropper fly to the bend of the point fly, but this year I’ve changed things up and found it’s easier to cast if I tie the dropper fly to the hook eye of the point fly, like the picture below.
When fishing the rig – keep as much of the fly line off the water as possible – a long rod helps with this, but a long rod is relative to the size of the water you’re fishing. On most waters, a 9+ foot rod is good, but on small streams, an 8-8’6″ rod will work fine, and on a small brook, a 7′ rod might be “long”.
Keep the rig floating naturally, without drag – think of your indicator as a dry fly – and try to present it with a drag free drift. If the indicator is consistently moving slower than the current, adjust the depth, and maybe adjust the number or size of the split shot, since that’s a sign that you’re hanging and dragging bottom more than just ticking the bottom. If the indicator moves faster than the current, you’ve probably got a belly of line pulling the whole rig down stream, and you need to work on line control. Keep the running line off the water, and throw an upstream mend in the line that has to be on the water – and keep mending to keep that drift drag free.
Aside from that – just keep watching the indicator. Any twitch, especially a sideways or upstream twitch – is a signal of a bite. Sometimes the fish will yank the indicator under water just like a fish pulling a bobber under water. Set the hook! You’ll get the hang of it. Just keep it up, and you’ll catch fish, and possibly bigger ones than you’ll get on dry flies.
Remember to slow your casting stroke down, and open your casting loop up with this rig – or you risk breaking your rod (Tim Rajeff has clocked casting strokes, and determined that an average fisherman’s casting stroke has the fly moving at about 120mph. At 120mph a split shot or bead head fly hitting your rod tip is as close to a guarantee of a broken rod as you can get. And you don’t want to wang yourself with a fast moving split shot either – it HURTS.
Focus on fishing water closer to you than you might with dry flies, make a few drifts, step up or downstream (which ever way you’re working the river) and make a few more passes. Wade closer to the fish’s lie instead of trying to fish 70 feet way. One more thing to keep in mind – thinner diameter lines will help your flies get down quicker and drift more naturally than using thicker leaders – and with indi nymphing, you really don’t even need a fancy knotless tapered leader. A three-section leader with a heavy butt, medium mid section, and a fine tippet will work just fine. The level line sections will also help keep a corkie or other pegged indicator from sliding on the line, as they can do with tapered lines.
Experiment until you find what works.
I’ve been a busy beaver in my spare time of late – earlier this week I picked up some new tying materials, more flosses, mostly, along with more hooks. A new dubbing loop tool, and those – coupled with some new tying techniques gleaned from John Shewey’s Steelhead Flies, I’ve been tying up a storm.
One of the new techniques I’ve been working on – is twisting wire and floss, or wire and dubbing, or wire and yarn into some neat, tight body “ropes”. The technique is pretty simple – tie your fine wire (gold or silver), along with a couple strands of floss (or yarn, or your pre twisted dubbing loop) and capture the tag ends in a good set of hackle pliers, keeping the wire and floss tight. Now grab the bottom of your pliers with your dubbing loop tool (shepard’s hook type) and spin them together until they form a tight round rope. Now wrap that to form the body of the fly. If you use more than one color of body material, you get a candy-cane effect in the body. I tied up a bunch of soft hackle wets (size 12’s) with some of these bodies. Can’t wait to get them wet.
I also tied up handful of steelhead flies (size 2’s) – some normal floss bodies, and some of the twisted-rope type bodies. Tied up a prototype shrimp while I was at it.
Now I’m almost jonesing to hit up the river and swing for some steel – the only draw back is that I sold my heavy rod a while back and haven’t replaced it yet. I need to get a new 7 weight, soon.
Tied up a bunch more #12 dry flies for the next panfish outing. Simple brightly colored floss bodied hair wings.
They’ll do double duty for pocket water dry fly fishing too.
This week’s Blogger Spotlight features Cameron over at The Fiberglass Manifesto.
Cameron is a fiberglass crank in the finest order – as devoted to the tubular glass rod blank as even the most ardent split cane rod aficionados. Cameron features articles and sneak peaks at great glass rods old and new – along with glass rod makers. It’s not JUST glass rods over at TFM – Cameron also has some great gear reviews on reels, lines, and other equipment, stories about fishing from his kayak, and fishing with his kids. Cameron is a busy guy – but he still manages to update TFM at least a couple times a day it seems – and his site is a great gateway to the wonderful world of fiberglass fishing rods. There’s also the occasional contest over there. Who doesn’t like occasional free swag?
Being a bit of a glass geek myself, I can’t pimp out TFM enough, and I wish I had some of the cool rods in my rack that grace the electronic pages over there. If anyone of you wonderful readers out there hits the Power Ball or Mega Millions or something – feel free to drop a nice 3 weight Kabuto in my lap 😉 I dig the lemon drop colored blank, and the burl bamboo grips.
Glass is not dead!
I’ve been reading. A LOT. Have to kill the down time at work, so I’ve taken stacks of my old fishing magazines and books – and I’ve been reading, and thinking about fishing, possibly enough that some stuffy old farts with fancy sheepskins on their wall would say I’m obsessed. Whatever – river water courses through my veins and my soul, and fish of all kinds swim through my mind.
So I’ve been thinking long and hard about a myriad of fishing topics – thinking about down sizing my gear fishing collection (but not eliminating it) and shifting more toward the fly rod for almost all species. I’ve also been thinking about those hypothetical questions we always see in magazine articles – you know, those “favorite flies” or “if you only had one fly” nonsense. Well, it’s not really nonsense, I guess, if it’s been on the forefront of my mind for a while.
So I came to the conclusion that there are three flies that, if I HAD to stick with just THOSE flies, for all my fishing, forever, I would have supreme confidence in. #1 on the list is the venerable Woolly Bugger – that fly, given varied sizes and colors, will catch anything that swims, in any water, anywhere in the world, with an unholy regularity. A guy could spend his entire life fishing just the Woolly Bugger, if all he cared about when fishing was catching fish. You seriously wouldn’t need any other flies to catch fish. But then, fly fishing isn’t a purely numbers game, at least for me – or most fishers I know who fish the long rod.
Selecting a fly that we think is going to give us that edge, or a fly that matches a hatch, or just by god one we tied that ISN’T a woolly bugger, is a big part of the fun of fly fishing. And then of course there’s the fun in fly casting – but that’d getting off topic and I don’t want to do that right now.
So the Woolly Bugger is #1 – #2 by a close margin would be the simple soft hackled wet fly. Like the WB – a soft hackled wet fly need only change size and body color and it will catch just about any fish with gills. There’s something almost magical about the pulsating fibers of the hackle, and the simple bodies you usually find on them – that drive fish wild. You can fish the soft hackle as a nymph, an emerger, a typical wet fly (drowned adult or emerger) or even dress them with some floatant and fish them as a dry fly cripple. You can ‘match the hatch’ simply by picking the right size fly, in a color close to the that of the hatching naturals. Or you can get crazy and fish an outlandish, brightly colored pattern and still lay the wood to the fish. In fact, I think the soft hackled wet fly is THE most versatile fly ever created. And think – the first fly ever fished was probably a soft hackled wet fly, tied on a bone hook and fished on a horse hair (or similar) line in a method similar to Tenkara. The soft hackled wet fly has a LOT of staying power in history, and I don’t see them fading from fly fishing consciousness in my life time.
The soft hackle wet, like the woolly bugger, has a very special place in my heart, and my fly collection – so much so I’ve devoted an entire fly box to them, along with space in my main fly box…
If someone stole all my fly boxes but my soft hackles, I could still go fishing and get fish, if there are fish in the river. My favorite soft hackles are tied in sizes 10 and 12, there’s rarely a GOOD reason to go much smaller, but I do tie them down to about size 18 – but it’s the size 12’s that get the most use.
Dub the body, tie a floss body, or make a mylar or wire body – these will catch fish.
The last fly I’d pick is my generic spent-wing standard dry fly – again, just pick a size and color and BAM, hatch matched. Use your scissors to trim the hackles to make them sit lower in the water, trim the wing on one side to make it into a cripple, sweep the wings back to imitate a caddis or stone fly. These flies simply work when the fish are looking up for their meal.
A guy could do just fine for himself if he went afield with a single box filled with the generic dry flies, the soft hackled wets, and a few buggers – and fished them on something like a medium actioned 6 weight rod about 8-9 feet long. might not be perfect for all situations, but it’d get the job done for most.
Floggin' Water 