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 believing that maybe — just maybe — it’s possible to tell the difference between a tap and a take.

Nymphing is an art of the unseen. When the nymph disappears below the surface, the guesswork starts. And I believe that most anglers who dislike nymphing are turned off for just that reason — they are blind and in the dark about where the nymph is, about what it’s doing down there and where it’s traveling next.

Tight line tactics solve many of these problems, and that’s why so many anglers fall in love with euro nymphing and Mono Rig tactics. The sighter is the key, because a simple piece of colored monofilament takes away much of the guesswork. It gets us halfway toward the goal of knowing where our nymph is and where it’s going next.

I love riding the strike zone instead of bumping the bottom. And when I set my target zone as the cushion of water above the riverbed — that lower part of the water column that’s going slower than the rest — I really do set on almost anything. And I no longer need to guess. Any unusual pause, tick or wiggle is probably a fish. Set the hook.

But using the riverbed as a reference is the more common way to know about the unseen nymph below. Get the fly down. Tick the riverbed. Touch and lift. This time-honored strategy is used across fishing styles for just about every species I’ve ever cast to. Find the bottom, and find fish. Better yet, find the bottom and know where the fly is.

READ: Troutbitten | When Drifting Low Isn’t Low Enough

Another good Sunday morning with Joey. He might make it all the way through the winter this year.

What’s the problem with that?

Well, beyond the obvious issues with snagging and hanging up often enough to cause frustration, using the riverbed as a reference — actually touching the fly or split shot — forces us to guess about every tick and each tap. Is it a trout taking the fly or the weight touching the bottom?

For years, I’ve said that you can’t tell the difference — that there’s no reliable way to determine a fish-eat vs contact with the bottom. Trout rarely chase or aggressively eat a nymph. Most often, they simply intercept the fly’s progress. And the result above the water looks and feels a hell of a lot like the fly touching a rock down below.You just can’t tell the difference. So . . . set on anything, right?

But we don’t. None of us do. Instead, we learn to set on anything unexpected. After tens of thousands of drifts, and seasons spent peering into the river below, we learn how fifty centigrams tied to 4X and sent into a three-foot bucket flowing at walking speed should operate down there. Yes, there are a lot of variables. And that’s why “set on anything” is the elementary approach. We learn it first. Don’t guess. Not yet. Not until you’ve learned and developed a set of expectations. Then take those expectations into a juicy current seam and drift it a few times. Those expectations combine with knowledge about the seam at hand and blossom into real knowledge about what lies beneath, until we become masters of nymphing by refining the drift. (Okay, not really.)

Joey

The Tap and the Take?

I fished with my friend, Smith, a few weeks ago. And I saw him pick apart seams all morning long. The trout were sluggish, so we both moved from a tracking approach to a more deliberate leading style. We added weight for more control, and we moved our target zone further down.

“Let’s touch the bottom,” Smith suggested. “We’ll slow the drift a bit, the tag fly above will bounce, and we’ll know more certainly where the flies are.”

So, no more guessing — except for the strike detection, because we would now have to decide on each bump. Is that a rock or a trout? Make the instant decision. Set the hook or do not.

Smith’s sense for this was remarkably keen. He glided and ticked. He bumped and touched the riverbed — not too much, but just enough to control the flies and know their placement precisely. He was good at it. While many anglers allow the fly to touch too often, snagging the bottom on too many drifts, Smith kept the flies moving along, hitting a rock every couple of feet, or a few times on each drift. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

Later, we set things even lower with a drop shot rig and a lead ball of 1/32 oz. Now the bottom contact was even more frequent, with a tap-tap-tap-a-tap feel, all the way through.

And within each style, Smith had the sense for what was a trout and what was not. When I asked him, he called it the tap and the take.

“Feel or visual,” I asked.

“Both,” he replied. “The taps of the rocks are almost the same as a trout eating the fly, but there’s something softer about the way the nymph stops on a trout.”

I was skeptical.

“Softer?” I questioned.

“Yeah,” he said. “It’s subtle, but there’s a difference.”

This is another advantage of a pure tight line approach. Without an indicator between the angler and the fly, a true sense for the flies can be developed. But Smith was taking it further than I’d seen. And I furrowed my brow with doubt.

“The tap and the take,” Smith repeated. “The taps on rocks are harder — more firm, or like a quick, dense tick. But when a trout eats the lower fly, it simply stops the fly’s progress. So it feels like a pause more than a tap.”

“Hmmm.” I was intrigued. “What if they eat the upper fly?” I asked. (Smith was rigged with a small nymph on a tag about eighteen inches up from the point fly.)

“Good question,” Smith nodded, as he tucked the next cast upstream with a perfectly compact forearm stroke. He finished out the drift with no words..

“Well?” I prodded.

“If they eat the upper fly, the take is more deliberate. It’s unmistakably a trout, and they almost set the hook themselves. Because, what’s their next motion after they eat that fly, Dom?” Smith asked.

“They turn back down to settle into the strike zone . . .” I said.

“Yeah. So those hits on the tag are ones we don’t have to guess about.”

“. . . Usually . . .” I interjected.

“Of course,” Smith chuckled.

After a few more casts to finish out the upper corner of a bank pocket, Smith reeled up and waded to the inside bank with me. We always skipped the long pool above when the nymph game was on. So we found the narrow path through the floodplain and hiked among the fragrant ferns.

“The tap and the take, huh?” I nodded. “I like that.”

“Yup,” Smith said assuredly. “Think about it.”

In Practice

I’ve done just that for the last few weeks. I’ve thought more about determining the difference between a rock and a trout. On most trips, I’ve chosen to lead rather than track with my nymph rigs. And I take my target lower too, below the strike zone and down to the riverbed, to use it as a reference. Tick, tick, pause, drift, pause, tick. And sure, I’m guessing for the takes. But I’m starting to see what Smith meant. And the more I focus, the better my guesses are.

One more point to mention. These kinds of things are highly conditional. A certain amount of weight is needed to feel much of anything on the rocks. And it takes a suitable fly or split shot approach to truly ride the bottom. The right rod and leader help too. And if the rocks in the rivers you fish are covered in moss or algae, the feel for the whole thing is deadened. That said, I do find that most trout waters are a great place for bottom bumping and feeling the trout eats..

The tap and the take. It’s a fun and rewarding way to spend a morning.

Fish hard, friends.

** Donate ** If you enjoy this article, please consider a donation. Your support is what keeps this Troutbitten project funded. Scroll below to find the Donate Button. And thank you.

** Subscribe to Troutbitten and follow along. (It’s  free.) ** 

Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com