** UPDATE ** After publishing this article, I've settled on as my current replacement recommendation for Red Amnesia. I still prefer Amnesia (and I have more than a dozen spools), but the Neon Fire...
Articles With the Tag . . . Sighter
The Pulley Retrieve (with VIDEO)
** NOTE ** A video for the Pulley Retrieve appears below. Recover more line, and recover it smoother. Why not, right? Sounds good. Last week my friend, Mark, stood calf-deep and fifteen feet off the bank, at the back end of the tailout. Early winter flows were running...
The Backing Barrel Might Be The Best Sighter Ever
** Note ** This article is a full re-write of a previous article titled, The Backing Barrel. Now, many years later, new ideas and new materials deserve a fresh look. -- -- -- -- -- -- A simple piece of Dacron, tied in a barrel, is a visible and sensitive addition to...
VIDEO | Streamers on the Mono Rig: Episode 2 — Casting
Fishing streamers on the Mono Rig offers anglers ultimate control over the direction and action of their flies -- all the way through the drift. And while small streamers may need nothing more than a nymphing-style cast, mid-sized and full-sized streamers require a...
Tight Line Nymphing — Contact Can Be Felt at the Rod Tip
. . . 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 . . .
Tight Line Nymphing — How Much of this is Feel?
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 . . .”
Tight Line Nymphing — Strike Detection is Visual
Smith set up over my right shoulder and watched for a while, quietly examining my backhand drifts and spitting sunflower seed shells on the water. I landed two trout and missed another . . .
“Did you feel those strikes, or did you set the hook because the sighter twitched?” Smith asked . . .
“They rarely hit hard enough to feel it,” I told him. “And if you’re waiting for some some kind of tug or tap, you’re missing a lot of strikes.”
The Sweet Ride
There’s a sweet spot to every drift. For each swing of a wet fly, strip of a streamer or drift of a dry, there’s a range — a distance — where the fly looks its best. This is the moment where the fur and feathers tied to a hook are most convincing or most natural. It’s when the fly is really fishing and not just dragging through the water. Good anglers recognize this sweet spot of the drift. They maximize its length. They position themselves in the river to control it with their rod tip or with slack line. And they set it all up to happen over the best trout in the river . . .
We’re looking for the best part of what happens after a cast. We’re searching for the sweet ride. And we’re trying to make it last as long as possible . . .
Tight Line Nymphing: Drift with a Stable Sighter
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 . . .
Is a soft sighter best? Not always
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.) . . .