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 First published April 19th 2004 - More than 5 years ago
More about: Nymphing Nymphs Fish Better Going deep Ways to get a fly to fish deep in the waterWhen you fish a nymph it is a good idea to go deep - really deep. A good rule is that if you do not loose a fly to the bottom from time to time, you are not deep enough. Here are a few reasons why that is important and a bunch of hints on how to get down there.
When warm weather hits the fishing water - either during a normal fishing day or in the warmest part of the season - the trout seem to stop feeding and disappear. Of course it is not so. The fish just find their way down into the cooler waters of the stream and following the diminished surface activity just start feeding on stuff that is in the water rather than on the water.
Cold weather
No matter what, most fish stay close to the bottom and - according to my knowledge - most fish even feed primarily on subsurface food items such as nymphs and emergers as well as scuds and other aquatic animals. Sure dry fly fishing is fun, and sure it is exciting to watch a fish rise to you fly. But watching your fly pass over seemingly empty water time after time with no strikes is not my idea of a good time. When that happens, I switch to a nymph. And preferably a heavy one.
Drifting downstream
Insects living in water spend a much larger amount of their life in the water - preferably on the bottom - than on the surface. Most flies that hatch, actually sit on the water for literally seconds after having spent at least a year in the water - mostly on the bottom, but sometimes also in the water column. Other life forms spend all their life down deep. Nymphs and other insects are torn loose from plants and gravel either by accident or purpose, and drift downstream in a more or less controlled manner. Most of them will sink or seek towards the bottom to find safety. Our nymphs should also be drifting downstream in a free floating manner, maybe seeking towards the bottom, maybe just tumbling and maybe sometimes rising towards the surface mimicking the beginning of an emerge and a hatch.
The abyss
The different ways have different final results, which we can quickly describe as:
Weight!
Think of a fly like the Dog Nobbler, the odd British stillwater pattern that can bring up fish from the bottom of almost any trout lake. Not to mention the good old Woolly Bugger… Think of the Czech nymphs that we started seeing some 15-20 years ago. These extremely dense, very heavy and very simple nymphs that showed many anglers a whole new world: fishing very deep within a short distance. Think of recent flies such as the Copper John. Small, intricate, complex pattern with epoxy and copper wire. What is the common trait of all these successful flies? Weight! Simple as that. All their other qualities not forgotten, they are plain heavy.
Ways with weight
I will later add an article with a few patterns, which in a simple manner illustrates some of these different ways of adding weight.
Most patterns can have weight added - even dries! Hans Weilenmann's CDC&Elk tied as a gold head emerger is an example. The bead transforms the dry fly into a nymph, that can be fished with a lifting motion to impersonate an emerging insect. Many other patterns can easily be converted with beads or cones. Bas Verschoor's Cone Head Series illustrate this perfectly. If you do not want the fly to look different, a few wraps of heavy thread under the body can do the trick. No matter which method you choose, make sure that the weight is firmly secured to the hook. The heavy addition is bound to try to work itself loose in the cast, and will easily ruin an otherwise nice looking fly if it starts scooting up and down the hook shank.
Varnish or super glue is the easiest way to make weight stick. But in the case of beads and cones, it might be advisable to add a layer of thread under the weight in order to make it fit snugly. Most beads and cones have a large bore, which facilitates their passing over the barb and around the hook bend. Once in place behind the eye of the hook, they will typically wiggle quite a bit. Move the bead back on the hook shank and add a few layers of a thick tying thread just where the bead will sit. Varnish or glue and press the bead onto this seat. Now it cannot wiggle and will not come loose without severe violence. Lead and other heavy wire should also be secured by wrapping tightly criss-cross over it and varnishing or gluing before the rest of the fly is tied. It is advisable to prepare a bunch of weighted hooks before commencing the tying of the actual flies. The glue or varnish will be dry, and you can avoid material sticking to the soft surface.
Fishing the weighted fly The fairly light and stiff modern rods used for trout fishing are not built to cast these heavy flies, and care must be taken not to overload them. They probably won't break, but their performance will be poor and casting will be tiring.
Do not try to push speed and distance when casting a heavy fly on a light rod, but deliver the fly with a lingering stroke and an open arc in order not to drive the rod too far. Keep false casting and double hauling to a minimum, and remember that you are fishing deep, so you can often go closer to your target. Unless the water is gin clear, the fish will not see you - and even in clear water, fish dwelling in shallow have a very small field of view.
Fellow angler Claus Bech Petersen picked up another method in New Zealand, where the Kiwis demonstrated a somewhat more extreme version of this cast referred to as the Tongariro haul, where heavy nymphs are pulled out of the water a fair bit downstream, using the friction of the line in the current to load the rod, which then catapults the nymph upstream for a new drift.
The rig from hell As efficient as it might be in the water, it is a menace to keep under control when in the air. It has a tendency to got its own ways: large and light components in one direction, heavy ones in the other - preferably turning around themselves and tangling up miserably.
As above the solution is to be calm. Large open loops, slow, short casts and keeping the rig as much on and under the water as possible is a very good solution to all potential problems. And it keeps the flies where the fish are: in the water.
When fishing in running water the mend is a really good method to get a fly to drift freely. Mending the line is simply moving the belly of the line upstream, thus preventing the current from dragging it downstream faster than the tip and the fly. A line belly moving downstream will pull the tip and leader, making the fly move in a different direction of faster downstream than the surrounding water. In dry fly fishing this is known as drag. Drag can also take place when fishing a nymph, except that there are no stripes in the surface to reveal it. But the fish will notice, and avoid eating stuff that moves unnaturally. Mending upstream can resolve this.
Simply lift the line off the water, leaving the fly where it is, and move your rod tip upstream as soon as you see the belly of the line "overtaking" the tip. The mend can be repeated several times during a drift, dramatically prolonging the effcient fishing time for the fly.
Down-and-across
Split shot Split shot are easy to work with and can be added and removed from the line with some care and a set of pliers without leaving marks. But if you regularly need to add and remove weight - or just want to avoid using tools for the job - you might consider sink putty. This is a soft, sticky, heavy substance that you fold around the leader and press to attach. It is not quite as heavy as the metal split shot, but easier to work with and a good alternative if your split shots are lead. The distance from the fly to the split shot or putty depends on the depth, weight of the added mass and the way you want to fish. Up to 50 centimetres or about 1½ foot will usually do fine. Less is no problem. As an alternative to the passive split shot, I warmly recommend using a heavy fly in stead of pure weight. This has some advantages: first of all no lead and secondly the "split shot" fishes! There is no rule saying that the weight must be in the terminal end of the rig. It might as well be the top fly that is the heaviest of a team. In a similar way you can use a large dry fly as a strike indicator if you want to increase chances of hookup here. Steve Schweitzer's brilliant indicator might be very visible, but is does not catch fish - which reminds me that I actually saw a desciption of a brightly colored strike indicator tied on a hook in an British magazine recently. A line that sinks Another way of getting your fly to fish deeper is using a line that sinks. This is endorsed by many fishers who think that the fly should be unweighted and able to move freely, while the line should be the medium of moving the fly to its location - either in a cast or after, when the fly has hit the water. The line can be an all sinking line or just a sink tip as well as it can vary in density and thus have different sinking rates. An intermediate line will bring your fly under the surface and slowly towards the bottom while a line with a fast sinkning tip can have almost the same effect as shot on the leader. Some specially designed nymphing lines have sinking tips and/or brightly colored bands on the floating part to aide visibility and strike detection.
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Submitted June 29th 2007
In New Zealand coarse anglers have shown a new way of getting the fly down to often phenominal depths and at great range by using long rods, up to 18 ft., (minimum 13 ft) mono lines, a tradiditional stick float with drifts of 30 plus meters drag free. Long rods make drifting a nymph between heavy weed beds far easier too with the better control that they offer on rivers that trditional fly fishers have given up on. Shot the float so just enough tip shows to see at distance with all the shot round the float bottom and fish a heavy weighted nymph up to 3 meters below. This technique works just as well on shallower water too; just set the depth by moving the float up or down to the required depth.
Search articles on "Long trotting" to get mor info'.