fly fishing was some kind of indicator is just slightly more sophisticated than bobber fishing
but your indicator much more than being just a signal of a strike is a drift indicator it tells
you in what current lane your fly is drifting and by carefully observing your indicator it
gives you a hint on whether your fly is drifting naturally with the current when i first learned
to fish nymphs we didn't have sophisticated indicators and we used a direct upstream or
almost direct upstream approach and watched our floating line this is a nice clean way of fishing
and i still use it at times today especially in clear water when i can see trout in the current
but most people agree that the use of a separate indicator on the leader is an easier and more
effective way to do it most of the insects and crustaceans trout eat are weak swimmers
and they don't swim against the current or swim across current lanes they drift with the current
at the same speed as bubbles and debris and it's a trout's job to sort out the food from the junk
and it's our job to make sure our nymphs drift in the same way because although
it's difficult for us to perceive a nymph that is not drifting naturally from our perspective
trout do this all day long all their lives and the slightest hint of suspicious activity
alerts them that what is drifting by is not food getting the right depth is also important
most times trout stay close to the bottom of a river where the current is slower and it's
easier for them to hold their position they may ignore something drifting more than a few feet
above them during aquatic insect hatches though when there are insects throughout the water column
trout may range from their spot on the bottom to grab something in mid water but when they're
not actively feeding you'll do your best shoving your flies in their face there are
all kinds of different indicators that you can buy in a tackle shop and they all have their purposes
different ones for different water types i carry a ton of them first and foremost is
the extremely popular and infamous thingamabobber and it's soft plastic filled with air so it floats
really really well and to attach this you merely fold your leader over slide it through the hole
bring the loop around the other side of the indicator pull it through and it's snug and
as long as your leader is fairly thick it won't slide up and down the leader and it's very easy
to loosen that up and then move it any place in your leader similar to the thingamabobber
is one called an airlock and it's a little bit harder plastic still filled with air
but this one you just twist off the top and there's a little rubber grommet inside there
you put your leader through a slot and then you screw down on there again it
floats all day long really easy to move on the leader and doesn't put a kink in your leader
then there are also hard bodied types that are solid either cork or foam or plastic here's one
that has a little tab in it and again you fold your leader over
you pass it through there and you peg it in place so it doesn't slide on your leader now these work
great and they're easy to move around but these two things tend to catch on your leader and and
get tangled so not my favorite but they are easy to use and they do float all day long
here's one that's very similar to the thingamabobber except this one
is solid cork so again it floats all day long bounces along on the current really nicely and
like the thingamabobber you double over your leader butt you pass it through the ground the
hole there you pull it around the other side and you snug it tight another one called a twist on
this is made these are small they're made out of some sort of some sort of high floating plastic
hard plastic maybe styrofoam or something like that and you just put the leader inside there
and you twist it around there's a rubber band and then that holds the leader in place
then there's a type i don't really like very much they're really easy to use they're made
out of foam and they have sticky stuff on the back and you pull them off and you fold this
over your leader and then it holds it in place now some people like them because they're very
sensitive they're very light and very sensitive but you can't move them on your leader and you
find them all over the riverbank because they come off and they never disintegrate so i don't
particularly care for this kind of indicator and then there's yarn indicators one of my favorites
the nice thing about yarn indicator is you make them yourself so you can make a yarn
indicator as small or as large as you want another advantage is it's biodegradable it's sheep's wool
so that if you lose this on the stream no big deal it's biodegradable just like any animal fur
is so this comes in a kit and it comes with a little tool that has you you cut a piece of tubing
and you slide it on there you loop your leader through the tube you slip the tube over the leader
loop and then you just hold that loop open and you take as much or as little yarn as you want you
put it inside the loop you snug it down and you've got a nice little wool indicator any size you want
so for slow water like this flatter water i really like a yarn indicator if i'm going to use an
indicator at all the yarn is much easier to cast it's less air resistant it lands a lot
lighter on the water and also yarn indicators are so much more sensitive than the hard plastic ones
sometimes it's slow water it's difficult to detect a strike but that yarn will really really bounce
and wiggle when you have a strike sometimes you have to do something because your yarn indicator
may start to float low and you can't see it so a couple things you can do one is you can make a
couple of quick false casts just like you would a dry fly to dry it off and that should help but if
it still continues to sink and you can't see it it's easy enough to just bring the indicator in
take the same dry fly powder that you would use for a dry fly the desiccant powder the white
powder dip it in there grind it around a little bit make sure it's thoroughly
thoroughly dried and now that indicator will float high for another hour or two
told you the yarn indicator works in flat water that fish i had thrown i had actually
thrown a hard plastic indicator over into that area earlier and and made numerous drifts and
never caught a fish but that yarn indicator was just sensitive enough that i was able to see the
strike it was a very subtle strike and the yarn helped me out there buddy took a hendrickson nymph
pretty wild fish
barbless hook comes out quickly
a great do-it-yourself indicator was developed by colorado guide pat dorsey you take a small
rubber band used for orthodontist braces and you wrap a loop part of your leader around it five
times you then slip a section of polypropylene macrame yarn that you fuzzed up with a comb
into the loop pull the band up to snug the yarn trim the ends if desired and you're set to go
you can make your own indicators of any size and color that you want
okay