The Ancient Art of the Wet Fly

[KevinC]

Damn, that's an unuathorised biography! Who's the author? Kevin, I may have some work for you, if you ever return from leave!!!

Nothing makes me happier than a man who wants to get divorced... its almost as good as a man who needs to be liquidated...

[Chris Shelton]

Chris

K@kpraat koning? I thought I read somewhere that's been reserved for steelheads by EBF?

In the interest of improving my pearls of wisdom hit rate, and for this reason alone, I will reserve comment Neil

[dlampert]

Darryl

Nice post! May I change tack slightly and discuss nymph fishing for a moment. Fishing with you I've noticed that you primarily use the NZ rig beneath an indicator. I use that techniques mostly as well. I have fished with a very good fisherman in Nottingham Road who fished a single nymph like a wet fly and was very effective at catching fish in this manner. He would cast out and "retrieve" the nymph - in the same manner as the stillwater guys fish a damsel. Very effective for him as I said. I asked him why he did not use the downstream drift method and his response was that he'd found the retrieval technique to be more effective. I've used both techniques and have caught fish on both methods. The single nymph without indicator does have the advantage of being easier to cast accurately though.

Your thoughts?

Hi Neil,

I am no expert on nymphing but have been lucky enough to learn a bit from people like Fred and Tom. I will fish either one or two or even three nymphs depending on the depth and speed of the water and what I am trying to achieve. I will often fish a heavily weighted nymph (dropper) to get my point fly (usually unweighted or lightly weighted) down into the correct zone where the fish are feeding. This allows your point fly to move freely and act more naturally as any weight that you add to a fly will impede it's "natural" movement. You will still catch fish on your heavily weighted dropper and one of the advantages of fishing multiple flies is you have more chances of catching fish

As far as NZ rigging goes, I tend to use it because it's easier to tie and easier to cast. Having a rotating dropper is supposed to be more effective - czech nymphing etc but unless you are czech nymphing I find that I tend to get more tangles if casting with rotating droppers.

When it comes to retrieving or inducing a take with a nymph, I will usually try and fish a couple of drifts drag free first, to see if I get a response. If this doesn't work then I will try and induce the take. This is a technique that I learnt from Tom and it will often get you a fish if a drag free drift is not working. As for fishing drag free without an indicator, I am not confident in my abilities to detect the take without an indicator. Having seen how many takes I miss with an indicator when in the presence of someone like Fred, I would hate to think how many I would miss when fishing without one. Fishing without an indicator whilst retrieving the fly is a different story and I will sometime remove my indicator if I feel I am not getting deep enough or if I am fishing them on the swing.

In Rhodes/Barkly I tend more towards fishing a single heavily weighted nymph under an indicator but then the water is not as clear as ours and the fish are more eager to eat a larger nymph. In Rhodes you also have to contend with sunken logs, willow trees etc on some of the beats which makes fishing a single nymph easier then a team.

I am sure others will have different ideas but this works for me.

Regards,
Darryl

[Dyno]

I like your thoughts Darrel, I am now fishing a #16 hunch back ZAK under a #14 Stimulator, between 3 and 5 feet, depending on water depth and weight of the ZAK. I have tried it on my last 4 or 5 trips, for trout and found that it works a charm, I even got a 16" fish out a very unlikely hole, in fact it was no deeper than my gravel guards.

I don’t want to point at the strike indicator as a problem, but we tend to use bright, unnatural colors and I speculate that this is a small issue. But I cant say I enjoy the NZ rig in the NEC, but it does have its purposes, on some of the bigger waters.

I have been Liaison (sp) lifting allot on the Vaal lately and it is paying pretty well, but they always take the emerger as it comes off the bottom.

[KevinE]

In Rhodes/Barkly I tend more towards fishing a single heavily weighted nymph under an indicator but then the water is not as clear as ours and the fish are more eager to eat a larger nymph. In Rhodes you also have to contend with sunken logs, willow trees etc on some of the beats which makes fishing a single nymph easier then a team.

If I could I would generally prefer to fish with only one nymph (a small one) but in the waters that I fish I really need to get that little nymph down quickly so hence have to mostly resort to NZ style rigging. It is the small nymph #14 to #16 that gets most of the takes but it would get very few takes if not fished as part of this rig because it would be swimmimg too high.

For a double rig I usually fish a tungsten bead #12 hare & copper or halfback nymph with a #14 to #16 pheasant tail variant or caddis below. But you do get tired of throwing these rigs all day - the evening rise can never come soon enough. But enough of my hardships, I suspect I won't get much sympathy.

[Dyno]

But enough of my hardships, I suspect I won't get much sympathy.

Yip, none from me. I don't believe in Girly things like thant.

I have gone away from tungsten, and prefer to add split shot, so my flys all weigh similar weights, and therefor I can control the sink rate bettter.