nymphing?
- This topic has 24 replies, 11 voices, and was last updated Jan 8, 2009 at 8:08 pm by
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George, no offense but I’m confused about the point of this post? In the fly tying section you wrote that you have been using a Renzetti vise for over two years and recommended it as a great product. I assume you would have tied some nymphs by now. Please clarify.
Neal
These are great questions! I’m sure this will lead to a great discussion with many opinions and hopefully someone can post some good “general” articles on the topic. Most people fish nymphs with a floating line and a mono leader with the nymph on the end of the leader. It gets pretty complicated with all the different types of nymph fishing and the rig setups. Here is were it gets complicated – it is not uncommon to fish nymphs with sinking lines on lakes because you need to get to the deeper water. Also, I sometimes use small size 14 wooly buggers (a streamer) as nymphs, hahaha.
traditional wet flies would be tied with absorbant | sinking material.
you would not want to use oily pelts from muskrats or beavers
weight may or may not be added to the fly to help it sink -depending where in the water column you want the fly to be worked- substrate bottom, suspended above bottom, in mid water, sub surface, or surface filmnymphs could represent insects swimming to the surface to live a terrestrial life, insects that have lost holding of substrate, things that have been knocked loose by somone up stream, another fish digging in the gravel, or a stream bank being eroded.
if a lot of foot morsels are coming down stream, a fish meerly needs to open its mouth and they will be fed. if you think about how many bugs could be in 1 sq inch of water and how many square inches a fish can move through mouth into gut/gills you get to picture that these morsels make up a mighty large percentage of the trout’s diet (think cold water where the fish metabolism is slowed down)
other times the fish will actively pursue the food item
submerged aquatic food items are like an iceberg. we only see a small portion of what is going on in the air, there is a whole lot more going on below and that is what nymphing is aiming to replicate
there are a myriad of items from crustaceans, round worms, insects, fish, leeches, mollusks, drowned mammals, that make up the submerged diet.
dave whitlock’s book is great: http://www.amazon.com/Whitlocks-Guide-Aquatic-Trout-Second/dp/1599210665/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1231190755&sr=8-1
check out the ‘underwater world of trout’ dvd and
this website i have linked on mine: http://www.bgsd.k12.wa.us/hml/jr_cam/macros/amc/index.html#odonata
i’m used to saying all of this as usual rather than writing so hope you can make sense of it all.
edit: tackle
shorter leaders have less drag in the water/are less manipulated by the current and thus will allow your fly to have a more realistic look in the water for a longer period
some prefer flourocarbon leaders as light does not reflect off the line, some prefer to paint their split shot to make them resemble the stream geology, some prefer to rub their nymphs on the rocks and logs so they take on the smell of the water and don’t smell like sun screen or all other things in the food thread
a longer rod will take more line off the water surface which enables the line to be less manipulated by the current. think of a triangle with water is one side, your rod is the other, and line is the 3rd, the hypotnuse. if make your arm/rod longer, you shorten the hypotnuse.
George,
There are a couple of really excellent books on nymphing techniques and strategies that I would recommend.
George, you’ve gotten some great responses. I might add that historically in fly-fishing literature, a “nymph” was technically the last instar stage of a mayfly when it fully developed its wingpads just prior to emergence. For that reason, early American nymph fishing techniques were identical to wet fly methods of producing a natural drift and swing at the end–what many now days describe as fishing soft hackles or emergers.
If you are interested in this aspect of nymphing, I would point you to Bergman’s Trout–still the classic. Read his early chapters on Wet Fly Fishing and Nymph Fishing. I would urge you to become familiar with these methods before coming to rely on a strike indicator which is the ruin of many an angler :-). I still use them, but I can easily slip back into a non-strike indicator mood and much prefer it for my own enjoyment.
as the term instar has been brought up, here is a webpage with a graph indicating the instar stage in the life cycle of a mayfly.
http://www.thefeedinglane.com/insects.html
Thank you all, I have ordered most of the books you mention and although I am still somewhat confused I hope it will become clear soon.
If you dont want to use an indicator you can simply watch the point where your fly line joins your leader. If the line slows, stops, or just looks funny, set!!!! I much prefer this to fishing indicators, nothing against them. I tried them my first year fly fishing it just didnt fit me very well. Good luck. 🙂
Here is what I meant by a triangle:
X = line
Y = water
Z = rodY and Z are the same in both images
Z in the top image is at a greater angle to the water which lengthens the distance between Y and Z
Z in the bottom image is at a lesser angle to the water which shortens the distance between Y and Z
More line on the water = more line manipulated by the water
Less line on the water = less line manipulated by the waterI see what looks like an African tree in your avatar – are you over there?
Well spotted Zach, definitely an Acacia of some sort, might just be an Acacia Tortilis, my favorites…
This thread is getting seriously interesting… I can’t say I have much to add, I fish nymphs when they aren’t taking the dry, emergers when they boil and terrestrials when the wind blows…
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