Nymphing - indicator-to-nymph MAX distance

"Dave LaCourse" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 31 May 2005 19:59:32 -0500, "Wolfgang"
wrote:

If there's four feet
of leader between the indicator and the fly and the fly is ahead of the
indicator, your indicator can move up to nearly eight feet.....at the same
speed as the bubbles around it.....before the numph moves at all.

Like I said, I don't nymph down stream.

O.k.......but you DID ask who does.

Some do.

Yeah, I believe Jim Leisenring did.

More power to them,

Well, he's kind of dead now.

but I don't.

O.k.

Wolfgang
who notes in passing that being invisible ain't what it used to was.

This has been one of the best, most informative discussions I have ever
seen here. Thanks so much for all your postings. I will ponder, try
out, and come back when I have more questions.

Many thanks, Tim

Actually, Dave (or anyone), I do have a couple more question:

Do you worry that too much weight can somehow mess with the drift of
your nymph?

OK, obviously there's some amount of weight that is too much. But I'm
just wondering if I should always try to err on the side of extra
weight. As it is, I can't think of a time that I"ve ever put on more
than two 4's, or maybe one BB - and perhaps that's my problem. And
yes, I'm sure in general I don't do enough to tick bottom. But does
the upside of being down deep always trump the downside of possibly
having too much weight? (Sorry - that sentence came out as is, and
it's just too bad to change it.)

If it makes a difference - most of the situations when I'm
under-confident in my nymphing occur when I'm casting a ways, say about
20'. If I'm high-sticking, then I'm generally pretty confident. (And
part of what started all of this is that I noticed that I have a
markedly better success rate nymphing when I'm close enough and the
water is clear enough that I can actually see the take subsurface - a
much much higher success ratio - made me think I was doing something
wrong in other situations, just looking at my indicator.)

wrote:
If you're fishing deep with lots of distance between the bobber and the
fly, watch the submerged curves in your leader instead of your fish
pimp when you can and you'll notice more takes.

When the drift is too far away to see the leader underwater, overpower
the mend a little and pull the whole outfit a little tighter underwater
and that'll also help with detection. I think it's worth the temporary
interruption in the drift to get a little straighter leader underwater.

Let your downstream drifts straigthen completely before you strip your
line in or pick it up to cast. Sometimes you've got a fish hooked and
don't know it and of course sometimes they like it swinging and/or
rising at the end of the drift.

bruce h

You're the best dead-drift nympher I've ever seen, with the possible
exception of Willi. 90% of what I've learned about that technique has
come from watching you two. Now I've reached the point where, once in a
blue moon, I can kick your ass on the San Juan, if they're taking
chamois worms. :-)

What attracts me to dead-drift nymphing isn't catching lots of fish,
although that's a nice bonus. The payoff is reading the water, deciding
where the fish are, and setting up the drift. The mending is critical.
It sets everything up for the dead drift. Put it right on their ****ing
noses.

I'm going to sneak in a TR under false pretenses:

The day before yesterday I took my fishing cat to a local lake. I know I
can always catch nice rainbows in this lake by stripping woolly buggers,
if I'm patient enough, but that's boring fishing. So I went in the
evening, expecting rises. The rises were few, so I fished the damn
woolly bugger and caught a couple. But then the surface action heated
up, so I swapped my floating line for the sink tip and tied on a
medium-sized parachute Adams.

The frustrating thing about floating in a lake with a fly rod is that
the rises seem always out of reach, and so it went, for over an hour.
Finally, there was a rise within casting distance, and miraculously I
put the fly right smack on the the rise form, with delicacy. At that
very moment, a Sandhill Crane came flying into the lakeside marsh on a
landing pattern. I couldn't take my eyes off that magnificent bird, not
20 yards away, even though I'd just made the best cast of the evening.
The bird was gliding in slow, slow motion, almost still-framed with its
size, searching for just the right spot to land. I heard the fish take,
struck and hooked and landed it, a 14" holdover rainbow. It was very
satisfying for such a modest fish, Thanks to the crane.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.

"rw" wrote

I'm going to sneak in a TR under false pretenses:

The day before yesterday I took my fishing cat to a local lake. I know I
can always catch nice rainbows in this lake by stripping woolly buggers,
if I'm patient enough, but that's boring fishing. So I went in the
evening, expecting rises.

(snip)

maudlin.

just kidding, of course. very nice imagery.

wayno

Thanks for the great compliment RW. I'll remember that next time I'm
watching you catch a zillion fish.

Excellent story, too.

bh

I thought the elitist principle of "upstream only" applies to dries
only, and that it's still acceptable for a snob to fish nymphs
downstream (G).

Seriously, though, you *never* fish nymphs downstream, even a little?
That's the first time I've ever heard that one. It takes a lot of
discipline to get that fly out of the water before it crosses that
line...

There are an amazing variety of techniques around and I know that yours
works for you so I'm not knocking it. I just can't resist being a
smart ass. ; -)

bh

On 6/2/05 12:46 PM, in article
,
" wrote:

I just can't resist being a
smart ass. ; -)


The ROFF motto, ladies and gents!

Bill

On Thu, 1 Jun 2005 wrote:

Do you worry that too much weight can somehow mess with the drift of
your nymph?

I use an interative approach where I lengthen the leader a little bit, add
a little more weight, and repeat the process until I start ticking bottom
or snagging the occasional bit of vegetation.

the upside of being down deep always trump the downside of possibly
having too much weight?

Catching fish has a huge upside in the level of enjoyment and development
of confidence to the point where eventually you can fine tune your
technique and back of on the amount of weight.

Mu

"Mu Young Lee" wrote in message
cc.itd.umich.edu...
On Thu, 1 Jun 2005 wrote:

Do you worry that too much weight can somehow mess with the drift of
your nymph?

I use an interative approach where I lengthen the leader a little bit, add
a little more weight, and repeat the process until I start ticking bottom
or snagging the occasional bit of vegetation.

the upside of being down deep always trump the downside of possibly
having too much weight?

Catching fish has a huge upside in the level of enjoyment and development
of confidence to the point where eventually you can fine tune your
technique and back of on the amount of weight.

Mu

ya know, i just can't resist the opportunity to soapbox on some of this
"nymphing technique" as it relates to fishing with a fly rod.

at some point (and for me, it's after one lead ball), this leaves the
world of "fysshing with a flye", or whatever, and enters the world of "catch
the *******s anyway you can".

if one wants, or needs, to start adding chunks of lead to a line, very
early on a lightweight spinning rod becomes, quite obviously, a much more
efficient tool; and more stylish, to boot.

yfitons
wayno