Nymphing

[ness]

I got it Wayne

So, where does one find a teeny brown around here?

[Wayne SW/MO]

At one time there were some in the Niangua. I don't know about the lower Illinois.

[Nick Williams]

Haha I would have believed you ness, I had thought it was a brown when I brought it to hand, but I am not always right!

Ok so how do I know, using an indicator or not, whether to make my mends upstream or down stream?

I didn't notice a lot of times that my mends were dragging the indicator along, though I didn't see it when I was fishing indicator(less). I know that doesn't mean it wasn't doing it.

At a couple spots the run I was fishing was short enough I could just high stick it somewhat so I could keep my fly line off the water.

I didn't even think about sharpening my hooks. I've never done that, how does one go about it? I actually was checking my knots at one point and realized I didn't even have a barb or anything, it had broken off at the bend!

I was fishing on the Lower Illinois by Gore, OK; it's the closest fishery for trout. Apparently they've started stocking browns, it was a nice surprise. I heard that all the stock for Oklahoma comes from MO. While I see that as implausible, do you guys know anything about that?

[Wayne SW/MO]

Nick, when nymph fishing you can't rely on every cast be a successful drift without adjustment. Mend and fish what you can, then mend again. How much drift you get from each cast will vary according to the flow. Your goal should be to get as much length as you can in the drift free of drag from the line and leader. That's why I shy away from indicators, fly line and leaders cause drag enough buy them selves. I think the best advice concerning indicators is to start without them, the if it appears you can get a better drift with one you can always add something.

I suspect they get their trout from the Neosho national hatchery. the water below Tenkiller would eligible because it should be a warm water fishery, but the dam has changed it and the trout are mitigation for that.

I use to be a good friend of the son of the people who owned the first farm on the west side of the river below the dam. I haven't been there in 40 years, but at that time there were a string of cabins on the first private land, and then their farm ran from there and my neighbor owned one of the cabins. I hunted duck and deer and occasionally fished it for several years. Early on they didn't put many fish in the river and the fishing was mediocre.

[Justin Spencer]

I absolutely love this post. I'm still trying to learn this technique. I think Nick is from Oklahoma and it's a trip to get around here, but would anyone of the more experienced nymph anglers on this board be willing to maybe mentor and set up a sort of nymph teaching day down at Taneycomo? Maybe devote a few hours to impart your ancient wisdom onto us poor nubes?

I'd love to host a get together down here this fall if anyone is interested. I'm no professional, but I'm sure if we get a few to come down somebody might know what they were doing, and I'm sure everybody (including me) could learn a little. October is a great time to be down here, virtually no one on the river, hopefully it will have rained by then and usually the fish bite pretty good. If anyone is interested or has some dates they would suggest let me know. I won't really have time to work on it until after Labor Day, but if anyone else wants to be in charge we can do it. Camping can be paid in beer, cabins will still cost money.

[ness]

Take a look at this video from angler extraordinaire Norm Crisp:

[Gavin]

Tim the Enchanter in your avatar...Like the new look Ness.

[dgames]

Nick,

I fish the Lower Illinois pretty regularly and would recommend using an indicator of some kind. So much of the fishing holding water on the LI is really slow water which would make high sticking pretty difficult I would think. In addition, the low visibility of the water make sight fishing impractical, at least for me it would.

I have success using a stimulator dry fly as my indicator with 7x fluoro tied to the bend of the stimulator hook and a bead head fly as my dropper. I find that I use a shorter dropper than you would normally think you need. With a layer of moss on the bottom of so much of the stream, you really can't drag the bottom there. I usually try to keep my fly drifting 6 or 8 inches above the bottom. If there is significant surface feeding on midges, I will shorten my dropper even more and use a midge maybe a foot to 15" below the surface. I have actually done really well fishing this short dropper rig in the big deep hole downstream at watts. It amazes me that even though the water is 6 or 7 ft deep, I am catching fish just below the surface.

As far as mending and drift, I really just concentrate on keeping my dry fly drift drag free and that keeps the dropper drift drag free as well. I visualize how a small leaf would drift on the surface, unattached to anything, and try to make the dry do the same thing. To do this, you just have to make sure you never have tension in the last few feet of the leader. My general method is to cast quartering upstream. I pull in slack as the fly is drifting back towards me and also reach towards the fly to keep as much line as possible off the water. Just as the fly is drifiting about even with me, I will make a mend to where I flick my fly line and the butt of the leader upstream of the fly. As it drifts downstream, I then make little flicks to feed slack back out to the fly to allow it to drift downstream of me without tension. It is helpful to get put a sizable piece of slack around the tip of your fly line with your first mend and this will allow you to make subsequent mends without disturbing the fly.

Try to avoid as much as possible what I call a J curve, where your line points downstream and makes a 'J', curving back upstream to the fly. If you have this, you almost certainly have drag and it is time to pick up for the next cast. The trickiest part of this is the mend to throw your line upstream of the fly as it is going past you. It is critical that your fly line is floating really well in order to make this mend with minimal disturbance to the fly. I apply dry fly floatant to the last few feet of my fly line as well as the butt of my leader to make this mend as easy as possible. If the line starts sinking through the day, apply more floatant.

Finally, when you are getting a good drag free drift, develop a mind set where you expect a strike. WIth the stimulator as the indicator, it will simply disappear. Anticipate this and then calmly lift up to set the hook. If you aren't expecting the strike, there always seems to be a moment of hesitation to register that, hey I just had a strike, and that hesitation can be enough to miss the hookset.

Anyway, good luck. If you are interested, I would be open to meet down at the LI some time to help.

[ness]

Tim the Enchanter in your avatar...Like the new look Ness.

Why, thank you sir.

[Nick Williams]

Nick,

I fish the Lower Illinois pretty regularly and would recommend using an indicator of some kind. So much of the fishing holding water on the LI is really slow water which would make high sticking pretty difficult I would think. In addition, the low visibility of the water make sight fishing impractical, at least for me it would.

I have success using a stimulator dry fly as my indicator with 7x fluoro tied to the bend of the stimulator hook and a bead head fly as my dropper. I find that I use a shorter dropper than you would normally think you need. With a layer of moss on the bottom of so much of the stream, you really can't drag the bottom there. I usually try to keep my fly drifting 6 or 8 inches above the bottom. If there is significant surface feeding on midges, I will shorten my dropper even more and use a midge maybe a foot to 15" below the surface. I have actually done really well fishing this short dropper rig in the big deep hole downstream at watts. It amazes me that even though the water is 6 or 7 ft deep, I am catching fish just below the surface.

As far as mending and drift, I really just concentrate on keeping my dry fly drift drag free and that keeps the dropper drift drag free as well. I visualize how a small leaf would drift on the surface, unattached to anything, and try to make the dry do the same thing. To do this, you just have to make sure you never have tension in the last few feet of the leader. My general method is to cast quartering upstream. I pull in slack as the fly is drifting back towards me and also reach towards the fly to keep as much line as possible off the water. Just as the fly is drifiting about even with me, I will make a mend to where I flick my fly line and the butt of the leader upstream of the fly. As it drifts downstream, I then make little flicks to feed slack back out to the fly to allow it to drift downstream of me without tension. It is helpful to get put a sizable piece of slack around the tip of your fly line with your first mend and this will allow you to make subsequent mends without disturbing the fly.

Try to avoid as much as possible what I call a J curve, where your line points downstream and makes a 'J', curving back upstream to the fly. If you have this, you almost certainly have drag and it is time to pick up for the next cast. The trickiest part of this is the mend to throw your line upstream of the fly as it is going past you. It is critical that your fly line is floating really well in order to make this mend with minimal disturbance to the fly. I apply dry fly floatant to the last few feet of my fly line as well as the butt of my leader to make this mend as easy as possible. If the line starts sinking through the day, apply more floatant.

Finally, when you are getting a good drag free drift, develop a mind set where you expect a strike. WIth the stimulator as the indicator, it will simply disappear. Anticipate this and then calmly lift up to set the hook. If you aren't expecting the strike, there always seems to be a moment of hesitation to register that, hey I just had a strike, and that hesitation can be enough to miss the hookset.

Anyway, good luck. If you are interested, I would be open to meet down at the LI some time to help.

Yeah, most of the river is really wide and slow. The parts that I tried high sticking were at a few small riffles just south of watts.

I've never thought about it as a leaf before though. That's kind of smart since there always seems to be something flowing down the river that I can compare my indicator too.

So do you use the stimulator, and any fly you use, as an indicator just because you don't want to have an indicator? Or is it another reason?

Meeting down there sometime would be cool, though i don't know for sure when I'll have another open Saturday that I can get away.