Dead Drifting

My favorite is dry fly fishing, but not necessarily dead drift. If there is a hatch of mayflies (which is rare in the Ozarks), I've found it important to match the hatch. It's classic. It's what I read about with all the poetic prose when I was getting started decades ago. It is where, as it says in A River Runs Through it," "...there is no distinction between religion and fly fishing."

When I get a chance to fish a good mayfly hatch, I'll employ a quartering upstream dead drift and mend line to get a longer drift. But often during these situations, I'll cast to a particular fish rising regularly. I try time the cast to coincide with a particular trout's rising rhythm, and deliver the cast two or three feet above him. Once the fly floats past his rising position, I pick up and prepare for another cast. That way, you only need a few feet of dead drift; mending usually isn't necessary. I think it is better, when trout are rising steadily, to pick a particular trout, not just broadcast to them all.

By the way, I've found wild trout in remote areas much easier to fool during a hatch than our heavily hammered Ozark trout. If you can approach them without them seeing you, and make a cast that doesn't spook them, you can catch them, even if your fly doesn't match the hatch. In the Ozarks, on the other hand, I've seen trout that wouldn't fall for any fake with a hook.

I was fishing the Meramec just below the springs during a decent hatch of #16 Cahill-type flies. I had the prefect match and got four strikes on four casts, but didn't hook one of them. Inspected my fly and found that I had ticked a rock on the backcast and broke the hook at the bend. Tied another of the exact pattern on and couldn't get another take. Super-selective fish that have been caught and released many times, I think, learn to reject anything with a hook. No much you can do about that.

In the Qzarks, however, caddis dominate, and I fish them across or quartering downstream with a skitter-pause presentation. In this situation, I tend to cover the likely holding water, instead of casting to particular fish. This is also my favorite (maybe more so), because of the way they rise. They are aggressive, showy and splashy and sometimes come all the way out of the water to pounce on the fly from above. Even though the presentation is classically unorthodox, you're actually matching the hatch, because caddis are quite active when they try to leave the surface.

Personally I like to dead drift large nymphs subsurface. I think I get the urge to do this from all the years of small mouth and goggleye fishing. I just enjoy the idea of a monstrous fish lingering in the deep like the kracken waiting for some unsuspecting victim to cruise by. I do so enjoy not knowing until it surfaces the first time. Granted its not as adrenaline pumping as dry fly fishing but it's got its own allure just the same.

Indicator fishing with midges.