Nymphing For Rainbows

[duckydoty]

You got it right, Rick. And thank you for the kind words, it means a lot considering the source. I do have to say that I have had a great bunch of teachers though.

Fishing rain or shine tomorrow. Will be implementing said tactics if anyone wants to hook up and do some fishing look me up. White Jeep Commander and will have a blue-gray NY Yankees hat and an orange gear pack on my back. Or message me for my cell number.

Where you fishing?

[Trout Commander]

ahaha d'oh! Thought I had it in there. Starting at Taney. Some guy was talking about a place to chase whites and maybe even spoonbill up the James so I might mosey over that way if I get a wild hair .

[duckydoty]

ahaha d'oh! Thought I had it in there. Starting at Taney. Some guy was talking about a place to chase whites and maybe even spoonbill up the James so I might mosey over that way if I get a wild hair .

As the addict (me) tapps the inside of his arm....I might be needing a fix...Might see you over there.

[Trout Commander]

As the addict (me) tapps the inside of his arm....I might be needing a fix...Might see you over there.

I can definitely relate to that. After my big plans of a full weekend on the NFOW fell through two weekends in a row I am jonesing for a fix in a bad way! ...The tug is the drug!

If you see me say hey.

[Al Agnew]

My default nymph rig is pretty common...somewhere around a 7.5 ft. leader, depending upon water clarity, it will be anything from 1X to 3X. Go down one size (up one number) for tippet--if you're using a 3x leader, use 4x tippet. Tie on a length of tippet about 18 inches. Pick your top fly, which will either be bigger or a more contrasting color, and tie it on using a palomar knot about 6 inches down from the knot attaching tippet to leader, leaving the long tag end of the tippet that you'll have with a palomar knot. Tie on a smaller and/or more drab colored nymph on the end of that tag end. Put however much split shot you need for the type of current you're fishing just above the knot where tippet and leader connect. Use a small Thingamabobber for an indicator. Put it about 18 inches farther up the line from the split shot and knot than the length of the DEEPEST part of the run you're fishing.

When you are fishing a run that drops sharply out of a riffle, try to make your cast up into the shallow part of the riffle so that the indicator is downstream of the flies as it starts to drift, and mend immediately so that your line will not give the indicator any unnatural drift. That way, even if you've got 4 feet between indicator and your weight and the spot where the fly is at that point is only 18 inches deep, you'll still detect the strike immediately, because your indicator is keeping a tight line from it to your flies. Use enough weight to keep the weight on the bottom and actually ticking the bottom. That way, there's a balance between the indicator pulling your flies downstream and the weight slowing their drift a bit. If you think about aquatic insects, they are just as often drifting or even swimming from one rock to the next as they are free-drifting above the bottom. That's what I want to imitate with my set-up. It's probably not considered classic fly fishing; in fact, my buddies and I call it "dredging". But it works, and it allows you to effectively fish a drift of varying depths and keep your fly on the bottom the whole time. Oh...most of my casts start out from 20 to 45 degrees upstream, and don't end until the flies have swung downstream. Take in some line as the flies drift to about even with your position, mend there if necessary and let back out some line as the flies drift downstream of you, so you end up with about the same amount of line out at the end of the drift as you started out with at the start.

Edited to add...this rig doesn't work well in small streams like BSC, or in very slow runs. In those situations I'll use a dry fly and dropper nymph rig instead.