The Denny Rickards emerger discussion

"Larry L" wrote

On still waters, sinking your fly with the
line is the most effective approach most of the time ( maybe a little
weight in the fly, but damn little just to break the surface, and 90+% of
the time I use unweighted flies and sinking lines of various sink rates )



Oh, yeah ... an exception, to prove the rule

many times ... THE way to hook stillwater trout is "on the drop" ... i.e. as
the fly sinks ... this requires lots of concentration to spot the change in
sink rate that signals a take.

If you find a place where you can clearly watch callibaetis nymphs
'hatching' you will see that they often swim up to near the surface, then
slowly sink back down towards the bottom, often repeating this several times
before finally hitting the film and 'emerging' Damsels also do a 'wiggle
like hell, then rest and slowly sink' approach to protruding objects to find
a place to crawl out ... that sink can be a key to catching on hard fished
stillwaters.

Although this 'sinking' is slow, it does somewhat refute the stated idea
about sinking " It's not a natural movement of any fly!" During the early
part of a callibaetis hatch a lightly weighted fly tossed out on a floating
line, allowed to sink and then stripped back to near the surface .. now
repeat ... will often attract more hits on the sink than the rise ...ah,
IME. IMO, this is probably due in part to fish in lakes learning to
mistrust certain types of motion, the types most anglers impart on a
'stripped' fly.