**NOTE** This is Part Three in a Troutbitten Short Series about weights and measures. You can find the full series at the link below. READ: Troutbitten | Category | Know Your Weights and Measures Beginning anglers probably don’t give much thought to the overall...
**NOTE** This is Part Two in a Troutbitten Short Series about weights and measures. You can find the full series at the link below. READ: Troutbitten | Category | Know Your Weights and Measures I performed a single haul on the back cast, and the fly rod flexed a bit...
**NOTE** This is Part One in a Troutbitten Short Series about weights and measures. You can find the full series at the link below. READ: Troutbitten | Category | Know Your Weights and Measures Fishermen are bad with numbers. We’re notorious for embellishing the size...
The contact we have on a tight line rig allows for choice. How do you want to present the fly? How deep? What speed and what seam? Call it euro nymphing or a contact rig. Fish a Mono Rig or shorter leader with [eafl id="254620" name="Cortland Competition Mono Core Fly...
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.”
I’m not suggesting that 6X and lighter tippets are always a crutch. But they certainly can be. Extra-thin tippets are an easy way to solve a tough problem — getting a good dead drift. But sometimes, choosing a harder path makes all the difference — because you might learn more.
. . . How and why in the article . . .
For better casting, for more options after the power stroke, for more available adjustments regarding where the line will end up, shoot most or all of the necessary line on the backcast. And if you’re really good, do it with no extra false casting . . .
Here’s how and why . . .
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 . . .
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 rocks, and then set the hook when a trout eats. With apologies to all who have uttered these sentiments and given them useless ink, that is pure bullshit.
Here’s how and why to avoid the bottom, fish more effectively and catch more trout with a top down approach . . .
. . . Think of it like this: Tight line anglers should stick the landing at the end of the cast. Only the line that must enter the water should go under, while everything else remains above the surface and in the air. The leader should be tight, from the water’s surface to the rod tip, in a leading angle almost immediately. Stick the landing! Learn what angle the sighter eventually takes through the drift, and that’s the angle you should start with . . .