everyone seems to have questions about rigging nymphs with indicators and dry droppers but
people seldom ask about where and how to fish them these aspects are equally as important so let me
share some tips with you honestly the best place to fish nymphs with indicators is in water with a
broken moderately fast current like i have here in front of me you also want to look for places with
a uniform rather than swirly current for a number of reasons first it's hard to follow an indicator
and get a good drift in swirly current and second although trout may hide under swirly currents
from predators when they feed they like to be in a more uniform current because it's easier
to hold their position and capture their prey it's always a good idea to start first in faster water
especially because fish here have to grab quicker and they're easier to catch and strikes are more
apparent when a trout grabs a nymph and fast water here's what happens during a nymph drift
regardless of whether you're using an indicator or a dry dropper you make a cast and the nymphs begin
to sink as the nibs and indicator drift downstream the hips get deeper and finally hang directly
below the indicator if all goes according to plan this is the place you're most likely to get
a strike although trout can eat the nib anytime during the drift and sometimes they take a nymph
as soon as it hits the water sometimes the surface current moves much faster than the current below
or if the indicator lands in a different current lane than the flies the indicator will pull them
off to the side either of these introduce drag and pull the nymphs so they move counter to natural
stuff drifting in the current and they don't look realistic to the fish there are two ways to fix
this issue one is to make sure you cast your line flies and your indicator in the same current lane
another is to add more weight to your leader so that the weight
helps to counteract the pull of the indicator okay i wanted to fish straight upstream in this pool
but i see some water under that tree that looks a little bit better and i don't want a weight
it's too deep to weight over there so what i'm gonna do is instead of mending because i don't
particularly care for mending unless unless all else fails so what i'm going to try to do
is reach my rod tip out over there as if i were standing in that current lane so that without
mending i can still get a pretty good pretty good drift so i'll show you how to do it here
by watching your indicator carefully you can often tell if your flies down below are dragging or not
an indicator that seems to ride in a perky manner on the surface at the same speed as the current
or even slower is what you want so just to make this clear there's a difference between
a dragging indicator and a lagging indicator okay a dragging indicator is when the indicator slides
across currents when when the line tightens and you pull it back toward you and it goes across
the currents a lagging indicator is one that's in the same current as the flies but it's just
going a little bit slower than the surface current because the water down below is always slower than
the water on top so to get that indicator to try to match the fly speed you want it to be going
a little bit slower than the top current this is not to say you can't fish indicators across stream
or even downstream you'll get a shorter drift but by making a reach cast or a slack line cast
mending and maybe feeding some line into the drift you'll be able to fish nymphs in any directions if
conditions won't allow you to fish upstream like when you have slow current on the opposite side
of the river in this case casting upstream gives you almost immediate drag so you're better off
moving up and casting downstream to the fish from an upstream direction this is probably a good
time to visit my friend and casting guru pete kutzer for some tricks on casting with
indicator and dry dropper rigs hi i'm pete kutzer with the orvis fly fishing schools
today i want to talk about a very fun and effective way to catch a lot of fish
and that's using two flies when you use two flies there's a couple different scenarios that you can
use those two flies in one really common way is with a large dry fly and then nymph below it
sometimes called a dry dropper sometimes you can fish with two streamers you may even fish with two
nymphs underneath a strike indicator and that can be a very deadly technique in a lot of situations
but when we have two flies what we want to do is open up our loop and so there's a couple things
that we have to do in our cast to help open up that loop when we're casting we're always
told and you probably heard me say it before or heard somebody else say before we want to
travel in a straight path and that straight path is kind of like this rod right here you see it's
a nice straight line that straight path we want to travel in that straight path on our back cast
to that stop and then we again we want to travel in that straight path forward into our stop
if we take that straight path and just bend it a little bit that's going to help opening up
that loop or open up that loop giving you a little bit of a wider loop preventing those multiple fly
breaks from hooking each other so when we cast i like to imagine stopping at my eye level you know
somewhere around eye level right here and that allows that loop to jump out with a nice crisp
stop getting out to that fish well that tight loop can be a little dangerous so rather than
stopping here at eye level what i'm going to do is just stop a little bit lower just a little bit
that little bit of a lower stop opens up that loop gets those flies to turn over safely without
hooking each other and laying on the water gets you into a good fishing position another great
technique when you're fishing with a dry fly and a dropper or if you're fishing with two nymphs is a
cast called a tuck cast with the tuck cast i'm going to stop that rod and make a quick little
lift with my rod tip just a little bounce if you will that quick bounce forces that nymph over
the top a little bit more aggressively getting it to land first sinking a lot quicker this is
going to get you into the strike zone a little bit faster catching more fish make the cast
quick lift nymph lands first now we're in that strike zone we're making that good cast
stopping that rod tip a little bit lower is going to help opening that loop up preventing those
tangles these are great techniques when you're fishing with a dry dropper setup two streamers
or a two nymph rig with a strike indicator and some split shot that's a lot of stuff
it's easy to get tangled with that give these casts a try and i'm sure you'll catch more fish
this video is brought to you by fish usa america's fly shop
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