Weight Management
No I am not talking about the millions of diet plans to keep your body weight down. I am talking about your nymph fishing rig. My friend Bob usually out fishes me 2 to 1 nymph fishing. Despite using the same flies and properly dead drifting the right holding water, Bob catches more fish. The reason is, he is always adjusting his split shots (adding or subtracting) and float to the water condition he is fishing. He is getting his flies on the bottom where the fish are at, especially in the spring. Although there are many ways to achieve this including high sticking, European style nymphing etc. these methods are all design to get the flies to the bottom where the fish are at. Most fly fishermen utilize some sort of float, split shot and a two flies system. We set our float about two arm’s length, tie on a tippet about a foot above the first nymph, add a split shot above the tippet knot and then add a smaller nymph a foot to eighteen inches to the point or first fly. Fishing this set up with the proper drifts will catch fish and you will be happy, although if you want to catch more fish you want to fish like Bob. He walks around the stream with a split shots sometimes in his mouth (non toxin type I think) and constantly changes his weight and adjusting his float to the water he is fishing. He will fish a run I just got done fishing and pull out fish… that is demoralizing to a certain extent.
He keeps on telling me you need more weight man and I keep fishing with my setup. I guess I get complacent and/or lazy about adjusting my weight and float and keep fishing the same set up. Adjusting weight is a pain in the butt for every different run depth, but if you want to catch more fish you need to do it. The shop sells a neat split shot remover made by Slick that I do own now that makes it easier to take off and put on split shot. By no means am I an expert nymph fisherman, although I constantly tell fisherman in shop that split shots and the right amount are more important then fly selection. So I need to practice what I preach and adjust my set up to the water condition and catch more fish. I am not a competitive style fisherman any more although I would like to keep up with my fishing buddies.
This blog comes to you from Ron Young of Fins & Feathers of Bozeman, Montana.
