The Great Dry fly/nymph debate

I had intended on writing an article on our fishing trip to WV, but Rusty did such a good job, I thought I’d leave it at that.  Be sure to check out our photos from the trip in the gallery HERE We had a great time down there and I’m sure we’ll be back in the future.  This article is somewhat tied into our trip but has more to do with something that’s been nagging me for a while now.  It’s the great debate on Dry Fly fishing vs. Nymphing.

I listen to some popular fly fishing podcasts on my long commute to and from work everyday and in the last 2 episodes, the issue of dry fly fishing vs. nymphing has come up.  It seems like those who subscribe to one school of thought or the other always have something negative or condescending to say about the other.  In the latest podcast I heard, a comment was made about a stream that they were fishing where they could see larger fish holding on the bottom of a deep pool.  They were fishing dries and said that those larger fish would probably not come up from the depths to take a dry, and the thought of fishing a nymph came up.  Then, one of the hosts said, “yeah, you could fish a nymph down there and probably pick up one of the larger fish, but you’d feel dirty about it afterwords.”.

Now, I’m not a purist, and maybe if I were, I’d side with the host on that comment, but to me, that’s a ridiculous comment.  I don’t know about some of these dry fly fishing purists, but when I go fishing, I go for basically 2 reasons.  Reason one is to get away and spend time outdoors, and reason two (and most important) is TO CATCH FISH.  Why on earth, if you were going out with the intent of catching fish would you say: “I’m not going to try to catch those larger fish with a nymph because nymphing isn’t as pure as dry fly fishing.”?

On Rusty and I’s recent trip, we ended up fishing a wild stream deep in the backcountry, and due to the conditions, I spent 90% of my time fishing dry flies.  Not because I’m a purist, or because I prefer fishing dries, but because given the conditions, that was (in my opinion), the way to go.  I enjoy catching fish on dries from time to time, and I consider myself an excellent caster.  I love sidearm casting in tight conditions and flipping dries back under brush and overgrown stream banks.  Am I going to talk down on nymphing because I like fishing dries occasionally?  NO!  Most of the time I fish nymphs because I’ve learned in my 15 or so years of fly fishing that the bigger fish, and more fish, feed on the bottom.

I’ve watched guys fishing dries in the past during the day while no flies are coming off the water, or very few are coming off and they aren’t catching anything.  Meanwhile, Rusty and I will be dredging with nymphs and picking up fish left and right.  Are we “bad” fly fishermen for fishing nymphs when there’s no hatch?  NO!  We are in fact “matching the hatch”, or more accurately, “matching the lack of hatch” because that’s what the FISH want!

I’m not saying that nymphing is “better” than fishing dries, and I don’t think anyone who goes fly fishing to catch fish would say either way that one is “better” than the other.  The other thing I commonly hear is “nymphing is easier than dry fly fishing”.  Now, I’m really confused at this one.  First of all, when you’re fishing dries, there is typically NO mistaking a take from a fish.  You’d have to be a really poor fishermen to miss a take on a dry.  Nymphing on the other hand is always resulting in mistaken takes and snags, cases where the hydraulics cause slack between your indicator and your flies and times when you’re fishing over no fish.  Nymphing requires much more of an understanding of where fish hold deeper in the water, and a greater knowledge of what insect life is most prevalent than when dry fly fishing.

I really can’t understand how someone could say that nymphing is easier than dry fly fishing, but that’s not my point.  My point is, who cares?  The point is to go out, have a good time and catch fish.  By that logic, really, anything goes.  I personally don’t have any gripe with people using spinners(hardware), live bait and powerbait for that matter.  It’s not my cup of tea, but I can’t fault people for trying to catch fish by logical (except powerbait ?) means.

Here’s a good thing to think about.  One of the most intriguing waters I’ve fished is the North Branch of the Potomac in MD/WV.  This river is awesome, huge, fast moving and contains a fair number of trout.  The problem is, though, that it has very poor insect life.  This river is no secret, and is known for producing the state record fish.  So how did the fish get so big without insect life?  The simple answer: Baitfish.  So, given that piece of knowledge, here is a simple question: If you want to catch big fish on a river like the North Branch, what should you fish?: (A) Nymphs (B) Streamers (C) Dry Flies.   If you answered (B), you’d be right on, and I hope it doesn’t take a genius to realize that.  Now, by the purists way of thinking, you’d fish dries.  Why in the hell would you fish dries for giant trout that spend 99% of their time on the BOTTOM of a river with pools as deep as 20 feet, on a stream that has VERY little insect life, and virtually NO hatches?

I apologize for the harsh post, and such a bunch of rambling, but this whole dry vs. nymph thing has been WAY too common for my ears lately.  Just had to get this off my chest and point out the North Branch example as an extreme to illustrate the bullheadedness of some people’s thinking on dries vs. nymphs.

West Virginia’s Back Country: Simply Amazing

     Now that I have calmed down a little from the fly fishing trip this weekend, I can share some of it with you.  My good friend Phil and I decided to try out some West Virginia streams.   Since we have never been there  fly fishing and only heard other peoples stories, we had to give it a go.  The easy access areas were very much your typical stocked trout waters that can fish very well, but with miles and miles of wild trout water in the area had us ready to explore. 

     Let me first say that if your gonna explore wild trout waters in the mountain, be ready to put on some miles.  Even though you have to work hard for these fish, it is well worth the work.  The absolute beauty of these fish are indescribable.  The main stream that we fished had both 100% wild brooks and rainbows.  The colors of a wild brook is amazing, but these rainbows were the prettiest I”d ever seen. 

     So Phil and I started our Saturday with a strong cup of coffee and a stern breakfast.  We needed to have a good reserve of energy because the walking was gonna be killer.  The first pool that we actually got our lines wet in was incredible.  It had two main currents, one from the head of the pool and one from a small spring feeding the edge.  The depth of this pool was about 8 feet deep and full of trout.  You may think that’s crazy deep for a mountain stream, and it is very uncharacteristic, but this was an amazing place.  This first pool rewarded us both with a few trout to get the day started off positive.  In most wild trout streams the fish are very spooky and even though several more fish made this pool a home, they shut down after a little disturbance.

     We made our way farther upstream to find nothing but great pockets, pools, and riffles with cooperative trout.  We took turns fishing and had a blast doing so.  Phil was fishing a gray caddis dry while I was fishing a tan caddis emerger.  Several times through the day we caught fish in the same pools on both the dry and the emerger.  These fish were really smart and to catch them effectively, you had to be stealthy and present a well placed fly.  The neat thing about wild fish is that if you can be undetected, you can bring trout to the net all day.  Wild trout aren’t to picky,  if you’re careful, if not it’s gonna be a long day. 

     Well, now we had made it about 300 yards upstream with a dozen under our belts, and it just kept getting better.  Have you ever had one of those dreams that when you wake up your upset?  Well this was one of those dreams that progressively got better.  We found ourselves catching 2 to 3 brook trout at every pool.  The farther we got upstream the nicer the fish got and the first wild rainbow was captured by Phil and it was amazing.  These rainbows were in such good shape with superior strength for their size.  The average size fish was probably 8 inches with a few smaller and a few larger. 

     Now we are a mile from the truck and we have been fishing for hours, but it was so rewarding to catch these little guys.  We knew about some impressive waterfalls upstream, but we fished to slow and never made it that far, next time.  The day was starting to come to a close with the satisfaction level super high, when Phil hooks into three more rainbows in one riffle.  The  rainbows must have liked the dries, because my emerger didn’t get any.  Not that I’m complaining about catching all brookies, but it would’ve been nice to land a bow.  At days end Phil landed five bows and a bunch of brooks.  I landed a bunch of brooks and had a great time doing it. 

     This was one of the best times I ever spent on the water.  I have been to Montana, Wisconsin, and several other places that have trophy trout, but this day of hiking and catching truly wild trout surpassed them all.  The number of trout that Phil and I caught this day probably got close to 80 or so, but who’s counting.  If you want to find beautiful seclusion and catch a mess of wild trout in the process, give West Virginia’s Back country a try, I know I’ll go back.

     And as for now and always “Tight Lines”

     Rusty

Great fly fishing ebooks!

I have a long commute everyday and usually fill the time with podcasts and books.  There’s somewhat of a lack of good digital fly fishing books out there and I was looking for something to fill my commute time and came across a great package of ebooks.  You get 7 books which are all really good for the cost.  The author was selling them individually, but decided to sell it as a package.  It makes for good reading to fill the time.  You definitely get some good tips.  It’s a good value as far as I’m concerned at $27.95 for all 7 books.  You could print them out if you wanted to also.  Here’s the site: Powerful fly fishing tactics

LOGS

     Well let me get started by saying that this is gonna be a little different type of article.  It’s actually been a long time since I have put an article on the site, sorry for that.  This past year has been a particularly busy year with work and home life, but hope to have a good showing this year.

     So, many of you probably seen the title logs and didn’t think about fly fishing, unless you are a hard core nymph fisherman.  I have two things to say about logs in our trout streams, one is that they are good cover for our trout, the other is the trout that gets large enough to be classified as a log.  I know that this may be a funny name for a large trout, but is it really?  I suppose you can continue to call them Lunkers if you want, because that’s not a silly name for a trout at all! 

     Basically this is a little refresher telling you that early spring is a great time to catch some big fish, or Logs.  My favorite way to get on some big fish in the early spring is with a streamer.  Now most of you will say “Who doesn’t know that?”  But the fact of the matter is that if you can pinpoint what depth of water the big boys are hanging in, then you have a great chance of catching several trophy fish a day, instead of that lone Log you may hook into.  The size of the streamer doesn’t have to be a huge attractor, but a larger size is always good for larger trout, especially browns. 

     Their are so many different techniques to fishing streamers.  A good technique that everyone has tried is the downstream swing, that produces some nice fish in the spring, or anytime of the year.  Next time you find yourself at a nice pool, run, or riffle, give a straight, cross current, strip back retrieve a try.  Now I’m not saying that this is gonna put you on multiple fish, but I am saying that once you detect the depth the Logs are feeding in, this technique is easy to repeat over and over. 

     Landing a large fish in the spring can be interesting since the water is usually up and we all know how those big trout will use current to their advantage.  If you are caught in a situation that your Log you just hooked is running downstream, run with him, unless you don’t want to see the fish or fly again.  Large fish are also very smart, they didn’t get that big by being stupid.  Always take precautions when landing and releasing your Logs, because even though they are big they still are a fragile part of the underwater life that others can enjoy someday.  Not doing anything tomorrow?  Go Logging and hold on, it’s gonna be fun!!!

     And as for now and always “Tight lines”

     Rusty

Rain swollen streams with unusual deadly results

     Well as I got off work this morning I couldn’t help but think about fly fishing.  The streams have been pounded by rain for the last several weeks and this week was no exception.  I arrived to the stream about 8:00 am to find that I had it to myself, no big surprise since the color of the stream resembled most mud puddles, but I thought I’d give it a shot. 

     I studied the water a little bit and realized that if I drifted nymphs or streamer low and slow, I thought I could pick up some fish.  Even though the skies opened up as soon as I got set to go, the morning proved to be a success. 

     I started with a fly that I thought would be a visual advantage for the trout to seen in the stained, or should I say muddy water, a wine colored San Juan Worm in a size 14.  After I fished for approximately 30 minutes I realized that this could be tougher then I first expected, but I pushed on and was rewarded with a nice brown that made an aggressive strike.  I no sooner released that fish and was quickly rewarded with the fish of the day, a nice 16 inch acrobatic bow.  Fishing the same run where the previous 2 fish came from, I kept dredging and a really nice fish hammered the San Juan Worm.  This fish was never seen but I had plenty of time to feel the weight of the fish and it was definitely a nice one that I would’ve loved to get my hands on.

     Now that I broke off I thought I’d try something else, so I tied on a size 14 olive soft hackle.  I fished pretty hard with the soft hackle and managed a few more nice trout.  That’s 2 different patterns that have produced on this raining day.  Being completely honest I can say I didn’t expect much to happen in the catching department with the conditions the way they were, but as long as the fish were active I wasn’t leaving. 

     Well the rain continued to fall, now at a pretty steady pace, and the trout kept feeding.  I thought that since I caught fish on 2 patterns, I’d try a third, so I tied on a size 16 caddis larva, green in color, to see what would happen.  After fishing the previous flies slow I really knew I’d have to slow it down with the caddis larva because of the small size and the discolored water.  I fished this low and slow and believe it or not, caught more fish with the caddis then I did with the others.  It just amazed me at how good a trouts eyes are to be able to pick up a size 16 fly in the muddy current, decide if it’s food, and strike.  I picked up several more trout with the caddis larva before deciding to fish a streamer.  Now I really don’t like fishing streamers and only go to them as a last resort, but today was such a good day I thought it was worth a try. 

     I fished the streamer for no more then 5 cast before the first of many browns became a victim of my olive Matuka streamer.  The more I fished the streamer the more I started to like fishing it, probably because I was catching fish.  Now this is the 4th fly that I have had luck with this morning, and I always try to tell people that the fly isn’t the most important thing and that proved right today. 

     I only fished about 100 yards of stream today because of the muddy conditions I had to fish slow and present the fly to the fish in a way that appealed to them.  Lets rewind here and remember I caught about a dozen fish, lost about 8 others and did so with 4 different flies.  If you ask me that proves my theory of Presentation is #1, and is something that I will always believe.  Next time your really itching to go fly fishing but the water conditions just aren’t right, fish low and slow and I promise you’ll catch fish that you thought couldn’t see your fly.  Also, the fly your fishing doesn’t have to be big, but it can help when the water clarity is a factor.  The size 16 caddis larva I was fishing found several trouts mouths, so just believe in the trouts seeing ability and fish your fly the way the fish want to see it.

     And as for now and always “tight lines”

     Rusty