Willi wrote in message ...



I disagree with this. Biological drift occurs to some degree throughout
most days and gives the trout who are "holed up" during non feeding
periods the opportunity to eat with little effort. Research has shown
that early mornings are the time of the most biological drift, but it
does occur throughout the day. That's the strength of dead drift
nymphing with weight etc.

IMO, the strength of drifting a nymph along the bottom is that it will
generally interest at least some of the fish that are in a nonfeeding
mode. It will also take fish that are actively feeding. All the other
techniques that I'm aware of primarily rely on taking only actively
feeding fish.


Biological drift is a dawn & dusk phenomenon with some occurrance
during the day, on that we're agreed, however, I'm linking this info
with a point I made earlier. I find that nymphing is most appropriate
to defined slots, seams, and trenches that are deeper than the
surrounding water and clearly defined. While you can nymph anywhere
in a river, watch most nymph anglers and they head straight for these
types of features. If I approach this sort of feature, I usually bust
out the nymphs too.

The nympher relies on practically hitting the fish on the nose with
the nymph --works great if the current and bottom structure cause the
fish to line up and hold in a relatively confined and clearly defined
area. If you have to get a fly to the fish in these features then
nymphing with weight provides your best shot. However, fish are not
confined to just these areas and to search broad riffles, big flats,
and other such undefined river features with a nymph can be a very
unproductive approach. Fish working the flats tend to cruise, fish
working riffles move rapidly to feed -- both can be covered more
easily by the swung fly than the dead drifted nymph.

If we confine our fishing to the typical deep slots, then I agree with
you that the nymph is best, but move beyond these areas and other
methods will prevail. I'm particualrly interested in riffle dwelling
caddis with broad (time-wise) emergence patterns. These caddis tend
to emerge in the afternoon, for example, but almost throughout the
entire day, there is some sort of activity with them. A moving
emerger or egg-layer, presented even when no activity of this sort is
present, will still attract attention as the trout will not likely
have had an opportunity to "forget" this insect behaviour since it is
a daily occurance over most of the season. IOW they're constantly
primed to react to caddis emergence/egg-laying, especially for
Hydropsyche, Ceratopsyche, and Cheumatopsyche in my waters.


Actively feeding trout are much more fun to target, IMO, and I try and
seek them out. However, for most of the year in most waters, these
feeding periods are very limited both in occurrence and duration.

I'd be prepared to suggest that their are actively feeding fish
somewhere in a river at almost any time. Obviously weather patterns
and other issues can turn them off, but under normal conditions,
there's always some actively feeding somewhere. I find that the
riffle dwellers tend to be active as these fish are in their feeding
lies, as opposed to the trench dwellers who are sitting in their
resting lies.



I think it's definitely more fun and is more effective during the right
time and in the right place. I also think that anglers are missing out
by not learning these different techniques. I'm not trying to convince
you to chuck and duck, I don't find it particularly fun, but I'm also
convinced that day in and day out throughout the season across the
Country, nymphs dead drifted along the bottom are going to catch far
more trout than any other technique.


Well Willi, there's only one way we're gonna settle this . . .