Facing Downstream

For more than a century, since the disciples of Frederic Halford imposed the rigid dry-fly protocols on the English chalkstreams, anglers have accepted that the most effective approach to a trout is from behind. That is, casting upstream at them. Most of the time, this makes perfect sense for presenting a dry fly, and no one disagreed with it, much. The reason, of course is that trout feed facing up- stream, which makes it much easier to approach from below without you or your line being seen. And, most importantly, it has the advantage of eliminating or reducing drag.

G.E.M. Skues gave all those correct thinkers a bit of a fright by suggesting that a nymph, which pretty much everyone in the high-toned dry fly church considered a rude, working class ‘wet fly’, was consistently more productive when fished upstream like a dry fly — only sunk. Skues had observed, and we now all see it clearly, that trout eat most of their food subsurface. So, you know, feed the fish.

This heresy caused quite a stir. You definitely get the impression that Halford and his acolytes were more than a little tetchy about this dry fly business, and many of them considered Skues to be beyond the pale. Halford and Skues fell out over it, but Skues had the last laugh by outliving Halford by 35 years or so, revenge enough in itself, and had plenty of time to present his case. We are all the happier for it. The thing was, Skues loved to catch trout. That’s pretty much all he did, too, apart from writing and thinking about it. Reading Skues you will agree that he would have been a hard man to fish behind. A feeding fish usually wound up in Skues’ bag.

Skues’ approach to the nymph was simple, you sighted and stalked the fish from downstream, and cast to him exactly as you would a dry fly. Everything was the same, except that the nymph was under rather than on the surface. Now, this isn’t really much different than the wet fly approach of W.C. Stewart, essentially a team of soft hackle wet flies worked on a quartering upstream cast and kept right at the surface. Stewart employed a draw, lifting the rod tip, as the flies drifted downstream, but I suspect this was no more than enough to keep in touch with the flies. Both approaches require constant attention to where your flies are and a highly tuned sensitivity to the trout’s movements.

Very few, if any, fly fishers on those streams had anything like Skues’ skill or perseverance. One big reason they preferred the dry fly was certainly because it was easier — you can see the fly. Better yet, you can see the take. So part of the reason for the objection to Skues nymphing was he would catch fish when others didn’t, a combination of skill and deep understanding of trout behaviour. It seemed Skues just had too big an advantage all round. And he was on the river almost every day of the season.

Not that there weren’t legitimate reasons to argue against wet fly fishing on those hallowed streams. To many, the wet fly meant ‘raking’ the river. Working step by step downstream, machine-like, like a salmon angler, or worse, a rapacious Scottish coal miner on his day off, fishing a team of two or three flies in a deadly, scythe-like sweep and destroy attack. On the chalkstreams this meant disturbed water, lined, spooked and ‘pricked’ fish. And, let’s face it, it had something of the working class about it. For the toffs, this was all bad news, especially when everyone else is working carefully upstream in their plus-fours. You can see this nymph thing was a problem until it was understood that Skues’ methods were exactly like upstream dry fly fishing, just harder to do.

DOWNSTREAM WET FLY

One real disadvantage to the downstream swing is that you approach the trout from the direction it’s facing. With a long line there’s no way you’re going to see the trout first. You’re ‘fishing the water’. The long line and leader helps, keeping you below the trout’s visual horizon and ‘window’, but that line scything its way down the run is sure to be noticed. If the fly doesn’t get its attention first, the line will almost certainly spook the fish, especially if there’s a strong sun and line shadow.

Those old arguments against downstream wet fly fishing still hold pretty well everywhere where large, spooky trout are the quarry. The customary New Zealand approach is definitely upstream, working cautiously and circumspectly with dry fly or nymph. Until lately, that is, with the new appreciation of the double handed rod, including the so-called ‘switch’ rod, and the downstream ‘swing’. There’s probably no advantage on small streams, but there’s a definite place for this tackle on the larger rivers, where deep, fast water and limited back cast room are the rule.

Fishing downstream has some real advantages, but the primary one for its adherents is ‘feel’. The tug is the drug, as they say, and fishing upstream doesn’t have that electrifying, sometimes heart-stopping impulse of a fish taking on a tight line. It’s addictive, and I have a couple of pals who still find it hard to go cold turkey and face upstream. The biggest disadvantage is hookups. For every fish you get the hook into there are many that leave you with nothing but jangled nerves.

LINE MANAGEMENT

Pricking, jagging, missing, plucks, short takes, dropped fish, etc, are all a regular feature of the downstream swing. And for some reason you get a lot of small fish, probably because big trout just won’t chase a fly like a small fish will. But for those who have developed some finesse, the managed downstream swing is good medicine for large trout. These days there are special rigs and tactics for fishing a fly deep and slow, and flexible hook ‘stinger’ rigs combat the problem of poor hooking. Like a salmon or steelhead, a large trout will move to a fly if it swings in front of its nose. Line management is the deal here. The fly is dragging the moment it hits the water, but managing the speed and depth of that drag is the issue.

The quartering upstream cast is your primary move on streams of moderate to fast flow. It’s a matter of degree just how much upstream you make your delivery cast. This allows time for the fly to settle and for the fly, the sinking line, or tip to get down to the level you want. With no drag, a weighted fly will plummet on a slack tippet, and very often a fish will take almost immediately without any subsequent feeling imparted to the angler. So, line management is job one. Knowing where your fly is, and watching the line or leader for the slightest hesitation is a skill that takes time to develop.

Something that came as a bit of a shock to me many years ago was just how many takes you miss with no indication of it even happening. I once watched a Scottish grayling angler, fishing across and down through a stretch, lift his rod on every drift. This was before the advent of the so-called Czech nymphing techniques, so it was unusual and very interesting to discover that he did it because he reckoned he got takes on a very high proportion of the passes made through a run. He just couldn’t feel or see them. Even watching an indicator was too slow.

THE SWEET SPOT

Grayling are suck and blow feeders, and the fish have often taken and ejected the fly before you can respond. That Scottish angler’s tactic was to strike at the sweet spot in every drift, every time. His success rate shot up tremendously with that little wrinkle. It doesn’t sound all that relaxing, but the more determined among us might want to work that knowledge into their tactical schema. It’s really about a highly developed sensitivity to what’s going on out there under the surface. Assume there’s plenty going on. Trout can be too quick for your trigger finger too, so staying focused is essential for sunk line work.

The sweet spot is that point at which your nymph or wet fly is just beginning to change direction from its downstream tumble to the curving, upward movement it makes as the line tightens on it. It’s the same deadly stimulus as the upstream tactic employed by Frank Sawyer so many years ago, and called the ‘induced take’ by Oliver Kite. Vernon Hidy labelled it the ‘Leisenring Lift’ for the more across and down presentation. It’s no mystery why it works, it mimics pretty closely the rise to the surface of a natural nymph, and it’s undoubtedly a strong chase stimulus in itself. At any rate, it’s the manoeuvre that forms the basis of your down and across repertoire, but, one way or another, it’s incorporated into just about every drift you make, upstream or down.

The Czech nymph method and its variations, are a longish rod, short line version of this quartering and lifting tactic. Full contact with the fly is the thing to strive for. Again, the results can be eye opening. For one thing, it’s simply weird to discover how tightly trout will hold in shallow fast water, and take more or less under your rod tip, in places you normally wade through to reach proper ‘trouty’ water. What we know now is that trout spend a great deal of time in shallow, streamy runs with cobbled bottoms, for the simple reason that it’s where their food lives. They don’t leave it all that readily either, unless you step on them or wave your arms around too much with all that dry fly false casting.

WEE WETS

There’s still a place for the long line wet fly, though, even on hard fished streams, where fishing across and down is usually regarded as déclassé. One of my favourite methods is fishing the sparsely hackled ‘spider’ or ‘soft hackle’ wet fly made famous on northern English and Scottish border streams. I prefer the across and up cast with a long drift and slow downstream swing onto the dangle. I like to be positioned as straight across from the fish as possible, so it’s not just a matter of gaining depth on the drift. The wee wet ‘spider’ is deadly when fished right at the surface, Stewart style.

As W.H. Lawrie noted so long ago in his great little book, The Rough Stream Nymph, the soft hackled, semi-submerged wet fly does a great job of representing the mayfly nymph as it rises and drifts at the surface before emergence. Lawrie’s own designs for the ‘hatching nymph’ as he called them were, as far as I know, the first true, purpose built, emerger patterns. As with the deeply sunk nymph, takes often come right at the sweet spot as the line tightens and begins to swing, although Lawrie intended his patterns to be fished drag free.

The difficulty in fishing the ‘wee wet’ as a natural insect, rather than as an attractor, is managing drag, knowing where your fly or flies are, and noticing the take when it comes.

GOING DEEPER

For deep work, a long leader defeats the purpose, even with a weighted fly. A fast sinking line or tip and a shortish leader is the way to get that fly down to the level you want, and this requires some care to not sweep the water clear of fish with careless haste and long casting. Too much weight in the fly or sink-tip and you will find yourself stripping line to keep the fly from hanging up on rocks and weeds. Fishing a fast swing will produce a lot of plucks, misses and small fish.

When it comes to weight, some anglers feel you really can’t have too much of it. With heavy flies, you might want to forget your nice tight-loop overhead casting. A nanosecond of ‘creep’ and slack line will invite a bracing ‘clousering’ of your rod, a pierced nostril, or worse. The open oval, constant tension cast is more the thing. And if you are into the deep and dirty, heavy freight school of Skagit style fly rodding with T-14 tips, there are plenty of heavy metal patterns to choose from these days, from weighted Intruder style streamers to heavy ‘nymphs’ with a load of tungsten beads and long waggly legs for built-in action on the swing.

These days, with so much fishing pressure on less water, the trout stream is rapidly becoming no place for the complete duffer. Facing downstream has its advantages and disadvantages; it would be a mistake to do it just because it seems easier.