Our now evolving, new era sport tends to view dry fly fishing as an elitist method and as limiting yourself, with Czech nymphing, innovative new streamer patterns and a chucking “meat” culture of oversized flies, and bearded flatbrim fish bros with fish tattoos contributing to the new trends. Its all for the gram. While the old soul in me thinks some of it is obnoxious and cheesy, there are undoubtedly some positives that have resulted from the surge in popularity and content produced within the sport. Fisherman are getting better, quicker, and pushing the sport further with new methods, new destinations, and of course better flies. Fly design is improving and as tyers learn and share through the many mediums available in 2019, the result is better fly designs that allow you to catch more fish. In terms of method and approach, I again think dry fly fishing has lagged in attention and popularity in the new culture of fly fishing. I see a million articles and posts about mono leader euro nymph set ups, jig nymphs, and game changers. Have dry fly fisherman not gotten better or are they all dead or resentful anglers hanging on to obsolete methods? I doubt it- but it seems like this is the case if you are an avid reader of material relating to this sport. So since it’s cold, and I like to dry fly fish, I decided to write down some thoughts on how I’ve grown to approach various dry fly fishing scenarios and subtle importances that have helped raise my game over the years.
THERE ARE TWO TYPES OF RISING FISH: (1) Spooky/Dumb (2) Educated/Domesticated
Understanding the situation facing the river or stream you are fishing should have a large impact when it comes to your approach to the fish you are casting to. Well known/pressured but thriving trout streams create an almost stocked fish behavior in the wild fish that live there. They are used to people, and aren’t so easily put down, or scared out of their lie. In these situations, you can make more casts to a fish than you would to a fish that is spooky and in a low-pressure environment where over-casting is likely to put the fish down. In pressured waters where fish have become domesticated, that fish knows you are there, you just need to fool him. On educated but domesticated waters, the key is ruling out flies quickly and finding the one that works. You need to be able to test, and rule out the fly within a short time in order to find the fly that works in an efficient manner. The obvious take away is being accurate with your casts and getting a good drift regularly is important, but its also about being efficient in repeatedly covering the fish. Avoiding unnecessary false casting, and not over extending the drift too far below the fish to allow for picking up line quickly and directly into your first back-cast when trying again is important. Letting the fly slowly go 20 feet below the fish, stripping in for 10-15 seconds, getting back in the groove with too many false casts, and delivering the fly 6-8 feet above the fish means you at most get two drifts per minute assuming those drifts are over the fish. And that’s not efficient when you are fishing to an educated fish where several fly changes and a good amount of time are already likely going to be needed to get the fish to take.
Oppositely, on waters where there is less pressure (spooky but dumb fish), your positioning and ability to get the fly to the fish with a good, or even decent drift the 1-2 cast is the focus point. Sometimes, you even compromise on position knowing it is not the best place to cast and present a fly from, but is the best overall place to not be detected and get a decent drift. The fly is likely to be relatively unimportant as long as it’s somewhat relevant.
THERE ARE THREE TYPES OF RIVERS: (1) LIMITED DIVERSITY BUT PROLIFIC HATCHES (2) DIVERSE AND PROLIFIC (3) NON DIVERSE AND NOT PROLIFIC
Fish adapt to their environment and their knowledge of what the food options are impacts their behavior. Starting first with limited diversity but prolific hatch rivers (ex: only caddis, sulphers,midges and tricos hatch- but they come off heavy for 6 months). These are rivers where fish see a few bugs, in large numbers, for a very long time. The result is the fish are very stage specific, and get off the adult stage bugs quickly after being caught a few times, and because eating in the film is also just less effort. Due to pressure and out of efficiency, the fish often turn to emerger or pupa stage flies as their preferred source of food. When fishing a non diverse, but prolific stream, having good and often local flies is important. The fish see patterns imitating the same hatch for a long period of time, raising the bar for what will fool them as you get later into the season for that given hatch. You will also need many different patterns that imitate the same insect and stage. For instance, on heavy caddis hatch rivers, caddis pupa are a stage the fish tend to focus on, which can provide some of the most intense but challenging dry fly fishing an angler can experience. The fish are right in the film, and you are trying to fish a dry that you can make out on the water, but which looks to be in the film or slightly submerged to the fish, You have your lafontaine caddis pupa with the big wing, the medium wing, the wing you cut off with nippers to make it look smaller after the fish wouldnt eat it as is, the no wing pupa, the soft hackle greased with floatant pupa approach, and so on. Bottom line, on non diverse rivers where you know what the fish is eating, don’t change stage of the insect, change patterns to give the fish different views of the same insect/stage. As a last ditch effort, sometimes going contrarian with niche but against the grain patterns works and helps distinguish your fly from the millions of others in a prolific hatch situation. Proven fishy patterns in small-med sizes like the Griffith’s gnat, buzzball, mole fly, and other fish catchers can bail you out when you have tried 30 different caddis pupa patterns and not gotten a look on a fish you know is in fact taking caddis pupa. Finally, I don’t think you can emphasize enough where you start your drift matters. 1-2 feet above the fish. Not 6-8 feet.
Secondly, diverse and prolific hatch rivers are rivers where there are many different species of bugs that come off during the course of the season, with many of those hatches being heavy. On these rivers, usually there are several bugs coming off at the same time as hatches overlap, adding more variables regarding what a rising fish could be eating. On these types of rivers, observation is obviously important to see if you can identify what the fish are actually taking. It won’t always be as predictable as it is on a non-diverse prolific river with fewer bugs. The reality is success in these situations has a lot to do with having a well-stacked box of the many potentially necessary patterns as much as anything. You will need more flies and will need to cover the bases. I tend to change flies faster in this scenario than I ordinarily would in a non diverse but prolific stream because there are more things the fish could be eating, so you are forced to cover more bases during the hatch window than you would on a river where only one bug is hatching.
In a complex and diverse hatch situation, I do believe that sometimes changing fish rather than changing flies is a good strategy, but not the fish next to the fish you were just casting to. When I’ve been schooled for a while and I feel like time is running out during the hatch, my move is to change fish. When I change fish, I tend to look for a spot that provides total safety and has a quality rising fish nearby. When a fish feels safe, they get dumb, sometimes dumber than the other fish you have already casted to in the middle of the pool or out in the open. So when you have covered a fish to death, with everything, don’t cast to the one next to it. Take a step back and survey the pool and see if you can find a nose somewhere protected a bit away from where you have been recently fishing within the pool. It may be a harder cast in a tight spot, but a less selective fish. I also think changing fish can work during times that some big bugs are around, but most fish are taking smaller dries. The fish that are taking the larger dries can usually be identified because the rise form is far more aggressive and obvious. Find those fish, and toss the bigger dry over them after you have failed to entice the many other fish taking 22 blue wings to take your fly.
Finally, in diverse and prolific complex hatch situation, I think your best chance to fool fish is early on in the hatch when the bugs first start to come off. Hatches evolve, so the earlier you can throw to a fish once they start rising, the simpler the situation will be. As more bugs come off, both in specie and in numbers, the more difficult it will be. Add in the fact that cripples, spinners, and everything in between enter the mix the longer that the hatch goes on, its fair to say the fly selection aspect of the equation becomes more difficult. Be there for the start of it, and make the first fish count (make sure its the big one in the group) as things get going.
Turning to the last type of stream, Non-Diverse and Non-Prolific dry fly rivers don’t have many bugs period. Sometimes though, these rivers provide shots at dry fly opportunity that are easy to convert on. The obvious example is when you see a rising fish that doesn’t have a ton of bugs, usually they take what floats by. They don’t have a choice. But secondly, rivers that don’t have a lot of bugs on top, don’t have a lot of bugs under the water either, so the fish are opportunistic. This opens up blind casting and allows you to almost nymph a stream with a dry fly using larger dries and searching patterns. You assume in waters like that terrestrials and other food sources play a role in the fish’s diet, and also use these waters to your advantage when other rivers are in between hatches and blind fishing is going to be required anyway to drum up fish. Drumming up fish in waters where bugs are rarely around is often easier than drumming up fish in waters where the fish are spoiled and accustomed to bugs on the water in numbers regularly, because they wont rise unless there are good numbers of bugs on the water on most occasions making in-between hatches a bad time to hit these waters. So there is a window where generally low bug count waters are favorable (when other prolific hatch rivers are in between hatches), and its nice to use heavy tippet and big flies for a change.
A final thing I’ll say about dry fly fishing- and why I love it so much is you get to choose your target. You can find the nose that you want, control the size of the fish you are fishing to, and over time become a hunter as much as you are a fisherman. And after a while, it is all about the thrill of the hunt.
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