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 nips and indicator drift downstream
the nips 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 any time
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 is 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 gonna 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 slackline 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
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