Other "Tactical Teams"

[skunkaroo]

If you'll pardon the expression, Mike... "Wow!" I've been just browsing through your posts today and I can frankly say I am totally bowled over by both the wealth of information and the breadth of its reach.

Let me crave your indulgence and ask you to comment on the "long rods" mentioned in your treatise above.

This past weekend I took one of the light weight "spey" rods I've been asked to field test (an 11' 6wt), and in spite of its light weight classification I found it quite cumbersome to handle (as a soft hackle rod) due in part to the weight and in part to the awkwardness in the sometimes tight quarters of the stream. I'm a fan of longer rods for almost any fishing situation, but I honestly can't imagine the backache involved in using a 12' rod for an average 6 hour outing. What, short of an intensive weight lifting program, would you suggest to make this an enjoyable exercise?

My question is partly tongue in cheek, but partly serious. With a rod of this length would it be more appropriate to suggest a 2-hand use, rather than single?

Aaron

[Otter]

New here and glad to see some familar faces.

Having witnessed the effectiveness of French Nymphing last june, I spent the rest of the season figuring it out - and admitedly having only fished nymphs dead drift NZ style in the past it realy opened my eyes to a world below the surface. Yes I had read loads in books , internet stuff etc but my previous tentative attempts at nymph fishing were pretty poor and I soon lost interest. With the French Leader setup results were pretty instantaneous and I soon realised that there is less barren water in the river then I previously thought. As the season progressed so did my ability to fool more and more trout - I always try and take note how the rig was behaving when a take came and add it to the list of possibilities.

I soon discovered that whilst dead drift yielded many fish, various manipulations yielded many more. All my research on French Nymphing concluded in general that one should cover the water quickly never really covering the same water twice - my experience on the water Dry Fly fishing and nymphing NZ style taught me otherwise, why should french nymphing be any diferent. Yes its accepted that your first cast is likely to be the most sucessful but one cast presents the fly in one manner 1/2 dozen casts in a different manner over what you know to be productive water is to my mind more logical.

As I progressed I soon realised that the percieved notion that French Nymphing was for long distance, while it may allow one to do so that really it was all about removing the fly line from the equation. No fly line meant less drag free drifts - common knwoledge, and with a drag free drift came many fish. More importantly no fly line meant that every small movement of your rod could be used to control the drift in pretty precise ways. Using a ten foot rod I could speed , slow , lead the drift quite well, and the diffent nuances led to may more takes.

Truth be known, I did not understand the why - but I know that there is always more than one way to skin a cat and was more than pleased to have a few methods that worked. Having read many of mikes previous postings elsewhere espousing long rods, braided leaders and manipulating the flys I knew I was touching on this.

Thanks to mikes thread I now have a much clearer picture of what happens subsurface in response to how I manipulate the rod and manipulate how much of the braided sighter lies on the water.

Many thanks mike, the Why certain things work is a lot clearer.

Norman

[skunkaroo]

New here and glad to see some familiar faces.

Having witnessed the effectiveness of French Nymphing last June, I spent the rest of the season figuring it out - and admittedly having only fished nymphs dead drift NZ style in the past it really opened my eyes to a world below the surface. Yes I had read loads in books , internet stuff etc but my previous tentative attempts at nymph fishing were pretty poor and I soon lost interest. With the French Leader setup results were pretty instantaneous and I soon realised that there is less barren water in the river then I previously thought. As the season progressed so did my ability to fool more and more trout - I always try and take note how the rig was behaving when a take came and add it to the list of possibilities...

Norman

Welcome Norman.

I've been quite curious about "French Nymphing" since I encountered the term about two and a half years ago. I wonder if you have any useful sources that I might be able to access? I've fished competitively over that time and some of the characters I've fished with swear by this method. I'm not sure it's for me, but it's a case of "know thine enemy" and something I would like to get more familiar with.

Thanks and welcome,

Aaron

[Otter]

Hi Aaron

There aint a whole lot of detailed info on it on the net. Ill see what I can put to-gether , you will soon realise that basically it is very much along the lines of what mike has been talking about for years re long rods, leaders etc...

[skunkaroo]

Thanks. That's more or less what I had heard as well.

Aaron

[Otter]

I used black rings for my dropper for all my nymphing since june. I was a bit dubious at first for from reading over the years for as many that espoused their use as many again if not more criticised their use severly - I am more than happy with the results and the versatilty they provide. I have not used silver ones , and would be more than surprised if their use did not scare the better trout.

To anyone that has lough fished traditional style in front of a drifting boat or better still shared a boat with those highly competent with this style will quickly spot the simililarity to mikes tactical rigs . I do not know the answer to how many actually vary their leaders other than changing flies - many that I know use the same leader no matter what wets they present. They change their flies, they change their fly lines etc... but few actually change their retrieve based on the type of flies they fish. The most sucessful possible do based on certain knowledge, others quite sucessful will vary based on what has previously worked until bingo during some arbitrary manipulation a fish seizes. I would reckon that that is the basis on which many a decent angler works.

If I am correctly reading what mike is saying then with the right tool for the job , and with a lot of time to experiment having done as much homework as possible on the nature and behaviour of the nymphs, pupas, emergers that your starting tactic would in many instances be the correct one - though with fish nothing is 100% certain all of the time.

I know with certainty that using leader combined with a sighter instead of fly line has improved my nymph fishing immensly.
The key downsides to this method is that in anything more than a light breeze getting the nymphs out there can be extremely difficult.

If mike is correct in his assertions that "in General" the bigger trout will only take a fly behaving in a correct natural manner then I reckon It would be a very interesting challenge to prove to yourself that his assertion is right , wrong or indeed beyond your skills to judge. Maybe just holding this thought every time you cast your flies may improve your concentration on the job at hand each time you present your nymphs or wets.

I suppose the greatest fun over the winter months is setting yourself challenges and goals for the next season.

I cannot say whether what Mike writes is a load of rubbish, the writings of a genius or a bit of both but by God it makes you think beyond box and the repeated mantras that we have all read in various books . magazines etc......

One interesting thought that I had as I read Mikes writings on using what we would consider as extremely long rods is whether the reason that there are so many methods used by us due to the fact that we are all severly limited by our tools and thus sucessive anglers have developed many fancy techniques to overcome the limitations of the tools rather than change the tool. Of course as pleasure anglers pursuing such change may not be pleasurable for some and so it would take a strong enquiring mind, with the will to investigate outside the box and the time to do so. The unsurrmountable fact of the matter is that were a 14th rod with a homemade polypropylene line be the ideal tool it could never become fashionable for the tackle industry could not afford for it to be so.

I have a niggling feeling that I will try a long rod, and a builders line - with the current recession theres any amount of it available - and when my fishing friends see me performing contortions with such a beast I can always blame the recession for not being able to buy a decent fly rod & line.

[Otter]

As the saying goes "One Swallow does not make a summner", so allthough I was surprised at the time when the following occured, I also considered it a one off event that would not be repeated too many times in a season.

Nymphing up a long run , where the majority of fish lie on the far side of the stream, I decided to come inshore to fish a small very shallow run on my near bank. Had I been fishing dries it would have been a couple of quick casts made on the move as I waded through it. The holding areas of the run are no more than 4 yards by 3 yards quickly tailing off into water 8" deep. My first three casts yielded 3 fish, one being over about 13"-14" (bear in mind average size is about 11") - I was chuffed with myself for taking the time to come quietly back to my own side and fish it, and it was a huge lesson in my nymhing/wet flies learning curve. Allthough I cannot recall exactly how many I caught in pretty much sucessive casts but I reckon around the 6th fish I near wet myself as it tore downstream. A fine fight ensued , and luck was on my side when the dropper ripped off in some weed and she duly came to the net. I laid her alongside the rod, a quick picture and straightback to the river with her.

I estimate that she was about 23" by far the my biggest wild brown in 7 seasons fishing this river. I have hooked a small number of similar sized fish, but all were either during serious caddis hatches at dusk or from almost unfishable, inpenetrable lies. After my jangling nerves recovered, I continued with further casts in this run and ended up with approx 14 trout. Only 3 of the trout were in the small classification, 7 average, 3 well above average, and 1 a specimen.
What surprised me the most was the capture of the specimen from such a shallow run, during the day - and more surprisingly that such a capture took place after much disturbance in what was quite shallow water.

A few days later I seen her again ( I am making assumption here), in slightly safer water, slashing at a sedge, I was happy that she had recovered from the battle , truth be told even a few days later my adrenalin levels had not calmed down.
Two months later she was captured again by a friend of a friend, who had seen my photo and was pretty certain it was the same fish and the capture took place roughly where I had seen her slashing at the sedge.

Whilst all percieved wisdom, mikes included would argue against the likelyhood of such an occurence, it did occur and taught me some very valuable lessons. The main thing I learned is that quite often larger trout can be found in the most unexpected places, and whilst such places may only see their presence at infrequent times , building up a knowledge of such lies is vital to success. With all the best techniques for catching the better trout, the first and most important step is to find them. Sometimes I evny those that fish water with a clarity that allows you to spot such fish, and yet the challenge faced on waters such as mine makes each discovery of such lies a major achievement and gives a sense of success, actually catching and landing the trout were it there at the right time would be a complete bonus.

[skunkaroo]

It's always interesting to gather different perspectives on the nature of "knowing" a stretch of water. I'm not surprised that many of them coincide with my own meagre observations on the water.

It's only been in the last ten years that I've really had the chance to become intimately familiar with a stream. It's a relatively short dirty little suburban spate stream, fecund with runoff from heavily fertilized lawns and sudsy car shampoos, and susceptible to chemical spills from the nearby rail line and mafia type disposal companies--a less than pristine spot maybe, but "home waters" none the less. When I first moved here I honestly believed it to be a dead little drainage ditch for the three municipalities that it runs through. Thankfully, mostly out of desperation one late summer day, I made my way to it's banks and managed to hook but not land a small trout... and the rest, as they say "is history".

Well maybe not quite. Since that fateful day I've come to know and haunt almost every metre of that little stream, and I've managed many good trout in many trouty looking spots. However, I've also managed to find trout and other species consistently in some of the most unlikely water. As of late, depending on the time available I try and fish the unlikely water first and reward myself by venturing into the usual trout haunts as a reward. It's been a good strategy, and has taught me more about the variety and breadth of holding water than any book or DVD could ever hope to achieve--and there's still so much more to go.

As to large fish rising after a disturbance, I have found that generally it happens most frequently in the places you would expect it--turbulent pocket water, riffles, tailouts, etc. A fish takes, is released and almost instantly another is in the net (love those days). That said, I fished one shallow depression in a fairly flat unremarkable stretch of water on my stream last December and netted one progressively larger fish after another in water that should rightly have been spooked after the first fish or two. While it may have been more than good luck, I still have to come down on the side of conventional wisdom in this respect--softly softly, the fish come.

---

You both write about using rings for your droppers and while I know it makes a great deal of sense, it's not something permitted in competition angling (at least in the competitions I've participated in). In competitions reattaching droppers after a breakoff or where they've shortened to the point that they're not usable is something I've had to wrestle with--particularly when seconds count. In response I came up with a solution that proved more than adequate. I would start with a 10-11' leader with three droppers using the typical surgeon or water knot + tag configuration. As the droppers shortened to the point of being unusable, I would snip the dropper off at the original knot and attach a new dropper directly to the leader immediately above the knot using a double clinch or improved Trilene knot and then slide it down to and snug it against the original dropper knot. Necessity is the mother of invention, and while I know this is niether orthodox or novel, it allowed me to work quickly and still keep my droppers relatively short for duration of the competition.

AAron

[flyfishwithme]

Interesting point about droppers Aaron.
Like you, I need to replace droppers all the time as my guiding has been built around fishing traditional hackled flies and you can only begin to imagine how many tangles a client can get into when fishing three flies.
Like you I moved from a extended dropper at the knot to attaching a dropper above a knot.
I have now adopted another way that may interest you. In fact I make up a few of these and carry them with me.
What I want is a dropper the same diameter as the point fly, Obviously you can't get that tying a dropper off a knot. As my leaders for guiding stop at a 6x tippet (horror if I went lighter, I would be replacing the tippet too) so the trick is this.
Take a 12'' piece of 6x and tie a Perfection Loop in one end. I keep this to about an 1" long but you could go longer or shorter. I loop this over the leader above a knot. Visualise this. As you look at the leader, place the loop of the dropper behind the leader. Now bring the dropper point up in front of the leader and through the loop. Pull tight and it should come up tight around the leader. Slip down to the knot and away you go.
You will find that it sits out at right angles to the leader like a Paternoster Rig (hence keeping the loop 1" long) and you can remove it very easily by snipping one of the loop sides and pulling it.

[skunkaroo]

Pull tight and it should come up tight around the leader. Slip down to the knot and away you go.
You will find that it sits out at right angles to the leader like a Paternoster Rig (hence keeping the loop 1" long) and you can remove it very easily by snipping one of the loop sides and pulling it.

Interesting technique. You don't have the occasional loop opening on you during casting and what not? I guess with the 6x mono (?) that's less of an issue than with stiffer higher diameter materials. I'll have to give it a go, though I must say that in the absence of pre-tying the loop, my method would probably be a bit quicker. Do you store your prepared droppers in any special way? With flies attached?

Aaron