Caddis searching pattern - from failure to success

Peter Charles wrote:
Willi wrote in message ...

Although, IMO, dead drifting nymphs is THE most effective technique day
in and day out, it's not a very fun way of fishing. Swinging wets and
some of the other nymphing techniques are much more fun. However, they
are not as consistently effective and it's hard, at least for me, to
determine when they are going to be effective.

Willi



As a general commentary . . .

As a follow-on to my last post -- I think that emerger fishing offers
the maximum advantage to anglers, not nymph fishing. The bulk of the
instar larval and pupal stages of burrowing/crawling mayfly and
cased/net building caddis are mostly unavailable to trout, living as
they do in the interstitial zones of gravel, pebble, and cobble or
burrowed into the silt. Before they're ready to emerge, they're only
available when dislodged or during biological drift. Grubbing trout
can get at some but we can't imitate that approach. Better nymph
opportunities lie with the free swimming larval forms that the nymph
fisher can easily imitate and use to enjoy success, but they only
represent a fraction of the total nymph population. However, it's
during emergence, when even pupae tucked under rocks must expose
themselves to predation, that our best shot exists.


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.



The nymphing trout basically sits in its feeding lie picking off
drifting larvae, rarely straying very far. But the trout feeding on
emergers is far more bold, roaming about, and more likely to be
actively feeding, as opposed to the static trout that is
opportunistically feeding. These two conditions, exposed larvae/pupae
and actively feeding fish provide us with our best chance, however as
Mu points out, this is also the toughest form of fishing to get right.
I'm sure many successful nymph fishers unwittingly blunder into
emerger success by drifting their nymphs along with the emerging
mayfly larvae.

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.


These two points together, with the tendency of caddis to emerge over
prelonged periods during the day and the season, are the reasons why
I'm try to pay a lot more attention to these emergence opportunities.
My recent Whitemans experience can't be taken too far but it is
encouraging that presenting a fly that is both visually and
behaviourally correct can get much better results than the "chuck 'n'
chance it" of blind nymphing.


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.

Willi