French Nymphing ~ Improved system!

[Gerrit Viljoen]

I've started with French Nymphing this year thanks to Korrie who raised the topic and found it to be another effective way to target fish apart from Vaal Nymphing ala yarn and Czech Nymphing ala barred fly line.

Now, the two methods I knew off before improving the system was 1. A coiled mono sighter / indicator / communicator and 2. A braided connector.The technique involves adding a section of either coiled mono or a braid connector between your leader and tippet section. You would then fish 2 or 3 flies and let them drift down the current and bites would then be detected via the sighter.

The correct way to fish these flies is to use flies light enough to have them actually drift down with the current and not too heavy for them to just sink and lie at the bottom.The improvement of the system (to me) came almost instantly because of two reasons;

1. You could not move this sighter up or down. You had your leader tied or looped at the one end (top) of the sighter and your tippet with flies at the bottom end of the sighter.

2. The Vaal is not a level playing field so to speak. One moment you have shallow water and the next deep, fast water then slow and so on.

In order to be in touch with the flies all the time and importantly being in control of things, I had to make leader changes often. I had to add sections of leader or take away or fished as is knowing that at times the setup was not 100% correct. Reason being the sighter was either to close to the entry point of the water / flies or too far. This really annoyed me cause changing so often takes time and when the fishing is on you don't wanna stall the action.

Improvement

I was looking for a solution to have the same visual benefits as a connecter BUT also, a way to be able to slide the sighter up and down to compensate for depth and current speed.I found it in a 14 cm yellow 8wt floating line.

What you do is cut 7 x 2cm “sleeves of fly line” or longer / shorter if you wish and thread your leader butt through the sleeves one by one. A bit difficult doing the 14 cm all at once. Loop to loop the butt of the leader to the loop you have at the end of the fly line.

You now have the luxury to slide the sleeves aka sighter up or down and be connected anywhere you fish. It doesn't move whatsoever but the trick is to use line thick or thin enough to fit into the 7 x 2cm sleeves of fly line. I've found a 12lb Maxima butt section works great using a 8wt floating line. Experiment if you're not sure.

So, no more leader changes and same visual effect as before. You can then use a marker to create a barring effect thus creating contrast for better visibility. You can even choose not to slide the sleeves together leaving a 1mm gap between the 7 x 2cm sleeves of fly line as shown below.

Go try it!

See pic below to get the idea,work in progress for it's upcoming dunk.

Attachment 7758

[Korrie]

Very innovative.
As you mentioned, work in progress.
I am sure that over time, you will perfect the system.

Would love to hear, how it performed.

[Korrie]

Gerrit
I was sitting here thinking about your statement.
having to change constantly for the depth.
One way to get by, when your strike indicator is at a fixed depth, is to let the leader angle in the water column.
The deeper the water, the more vertical, the shallower water, more at an angle.
Takes a bit of time, to learn the presentation/casting and the speed to let the surface water take the indicator, so that you are always in touch.

When we do eventually get together, will show you some secret tricks.

But glad to see that you are playing around with more ideas and tricks.

[Gerrit Viljoen]

Note folks this is a very very slow form of Nymphing cause at the bottom of the river bed you have a much slower current speed compared to higher up and at certain places you actually have negative hydrolics i.e the flow is then actually upstream and not down.

[JAG]

Hi Gerrit

Very interesting. But personally I do not like any thing that floats on my leader; it prevents the leader to sink properly.

What I do to nymph at different depths is to add more then one indicators on my leader. One for deep water nymphing and one for shallow water.

[Gerrit Viljoen]

The leader in this set up is not suppose to sink.Maybe a little in much faster and deeper water but generally not.

You have a 10ft leader which ends in a perfection loop.(Your sighter moves up and down this line)To this you add another 4.5ft of tippet.In this 4.5ft section of tippet you have 2 dropper systems (1.5ft each) and a final piece of 1.5ft to complete the 4.5ft and to which you attach your point fly.

(14.5ft in total)

I hope the above made sense.

[Niel Malan]

french nymphing? Last night a virus, several, attacked my pc and alsao started downloading porno to my desktop. When i saw this french nymph thing I thought it was more porno downloaded by the virus! Eish

[GrootWillie]

Last night a virus, several, attacked my pc and alsao started downloading porno to my desktop.

Ja Niel...Nice try..I've also tried to sell that one to my fiance before!

[E.T.]

I've started with French Nymphing this year thanks to Korrie who raised the topic and found it to be another effective way to target fish apart from Vaal Nymphing ala yarn and Czech Nymphing ala barred fly line.

Now, the two methods I knew off before improving the system was 1. A coiled mono sighter / indicator / communicator and 2. A braided connector.The technique involves adding a section of either coiled mono or a braid connector between your leader and tippet section. You would then fish 2 or 3 flies and let them drift down the current and bites would then be detected via the sighter.

The correct way to fish these flies is to use flies light enough to have them actually drift down with the current and not too heavy for them to just sink and lie at the bottom.The improvement of the system (to me) came almost instantly because of two reasons;

1. You could not move this sighter up or down. You had your leader tied or looped at the one end (top) of the sighter and your tippet with flies at the bottom end of the sighter.

2. The Vaal is not a level playing field so to speak. One moment you have shallow water and the next deep, fast water then slow and so on.

In order to be in touch with the flies all the time and importantly being in control of things, I had to make leader changes often. I had to add sections of leader or take away or fished as is knowing that at times the setup was not 100% correct. Reason being the sighter was either to close to the entry point of the water / flies or too far. This really annoyed me cause changing so often takes time and when the fishing is on you don't wanna stall the action.

Improvement

I was looking for a solution to have the same visual benefits as a connecter BUT also, a way to be able to slide the sighter up and down to compensate for depth and current speed.I found it in a 14 cm yellow 8wt floating line.

What you do is cut 7 x 2cm “sleeves of fly line” or longer / shorter if you wish and thread your leader butt through the sleeves one by one. A bit difficult doing the 14 cm all at once. Loop to loop the butt of the leader to the loop you have at the end of the fly line.

You now have the luxury to slide the sleeves aka sighter up or down and be connected anywhere you fish. It doesn't move whatsoever but the trick is to use line thick or thin enough to fit into the 7 x 2cm sleeves of fly line. I've found a 12lb Maxima butt section works great using a 8wt floating line. Experiment if you're not sure.

So, no more leader changes and same visual effect as before. You can then use a marker to create a barring effect thus creating contrast for better visibility. You can even choose not to slide the sleeves together leaving a 1mm gap between the 7 x 2cm sleeves of fly line as shown below.

Go try it!

See pic below to get the idea,work in progress for it's upcoming dunk.

Attachment 7758

Gert wouldn't this work if you added small luminous orange plastic beads in between the sections of fly line?
Or even dabs of tinted orange epoxy?
I look forward to your response.

[Gerrit Viljoen]

Koos this was just something I tried.... if I can remember I ended up fishing a leader which I built using double x yellow mono and orange UV fly paint.