Swinging Emergers?

[Randyflycaster]

Just curious: Do any of you folks swing emergers? If so, do you use the same techniques as when you swing
soft-hackle flies?

Thanks,
Randy

[Donald Nicolson]

I'm a little confused. This may be confusion by a common language.
By swinging, do you mean fishing across and then down stream?

[Old Hat]

Hi Randy,
"Emergers" is a pretty broad class of flies. What type of emergers were you thinking of?

I think of flymphs, a lot of spiders and other soft hackles as emergers and fish them as such. Every so often I will fish them as nymphs but for the most part as emergers. There are two flies that I will swing that one might not think of and those are the Quigley Cripple style and Elk hair Caddis. I will swing so that they skip or "flutter" about on the surface of the water. The Quigley Cripple works very good for this.

Donald, for the most part, swinging here is a simple cast made quartered down and across then swung like a pendulum on a tight line to the near bank. It is often coupled with an initial dead drift to set the depth.

Carl

[Randyflycaster]

By emergers I mean traditional, non-soft-hackle, emergers, e.g. CDC emergers.

By swinging I mean casting upstream or three-quarters downstream, as Old Hat described.

Randy

[tie2fish]

Interesting ... I've never thought of CDC anything as being "traditional", but since "emergers" as a pattern genre are relatively recent, I suppose the use of CDC on them could be considered traditional. In any case, since emergers are supposed to represent either newly hatched insects and/or those in the process of hatching, they ought to behave as such and move at the mercy of the currents. A well-mended swing can certainly mimic that condition.

[Ruard]

Interesting ... I've never thought of CDC anything as being "traditional", but since "emergers" as a pattern genre are relatively recent, I suppose the use of CDC on them could be considered traditional. In any case, since emergers are supposed to represent either newly hatched insects and/or those in the process of hatching, they ought to behave as such and move at the mercy of the currents. A well-mended swing can certainly mimic that condition.

Leon Links has written a book on CDC and he writes about Marc Petitjean who has done research about the origin of the use of CDC for Fly tying:
the first use as such must be around 1920 by Charles Bickel and Maximilien Joset, who lived in the Swiss Jura. So they are not as traditional as spiders but pretty traditinal I think.

Here in the Netherlands we had not heard of CDC untill 1980.

Greeting


Ruard

[Old Hat]

In that case, I haven't. Not that it wouldn't catch a few fish, I just think there are probably better patterns suited for emerging insects in the swing. I would think the emergers you are describing would not be as lively as I would like.

[Mataura mayfly]

Randy, try it- if it works- use it.
There is no "correct' answer and sometimes it take a bit of out of the square thinking to trigger new responses. OK, maybe if you were fishing with Marjan Fratnik you might want to try for a different presentation, but in my small way of thinking- there is no reason you could not drift your emerger cast upstream , until the line draws near right angle to you, give the line a sharp small strip to jerk the fly under the surface and swing it downstream as a cripple Dun or drowned emerger.
If tied as a true emerger on a light wire hook, odds are it is not going to sink very deep and may not give you a nice "Leisenring lift" at the end of the swing that a more true flymph might- but the flymph might not do as well presented upstream either.
There are patterns and styles of fly that (in my opinion) might do what you are asking better- but there is nothing to say an across & down presented cdc emerger will not take fish.

Personally I often drift and swing (as described above) two dry fly patterns here with some success. The Cochybondhu and the Greenwell's Glory.

[William Anderson]

Hey Randy. I'm assuming the type of emergers you're referring to are best suited to sight casting to rising fish or to some rise form indicative of emergers in the area. A downstream swing seems like an inappropriate presentation for that type of fly. Flies that become mobile/active during a longer drift may actually emerge if presented well, swung if you like that method. I'm biased to soft hackles for that purpose. Most emergers I've seen on all the other sites and mags and shops etc seem to be designed to be drifted under a dry or indicator. It seems more disruptive than productive to swing this combo in my mind.

That being said, the right fish at the right time may surprise you. A gorgeous brown I took earlier this summer hit a cdc and elk that turned soggy. I did intentionally swing that fly into the prime holding position and it got hammered. All the entomology speculation would carry on about ovipositing caddis or rising caddis. Could be, but I think the food source arrived in the right place at the right time in the right way.

Please, please swing some emergers and report back. Any information can only help. Presentation can get muddy, so I like to see pat answers overturned. =)

Nice question.

[Donald Nicolson]

I thought that you might find this article from my web-site might be of interest -
http://donaldnicolson.webplus.net/page15.html

Lawrie called them 'hatching duns', or in modern parlance - emergers. He usually fished them
as the front fly on a pair, with the tail a nymph or spider. But also with the 'hatching dun' as tail.
His book "The Rough Stream Nymph" was originally finished in 1939, but Adolph Hitler's
intervention, delayed publication until 1947. His nymphs were all Skews style and the
spiders Border or North country style.[/ size] .