Proper Dropper

One of the keys to success in sport is performing simple skills consistently well. One of these skills in fly fishing is ‘nymph below dry’, where the angler suspends a lightly weighted nymph beneath a floating dry fly acting as an indicator and a fish catcher.

Nymph below dry is a versatile method that will catch lots of trout all around the world. It’s a great way to search up a river and to help you understand how the fish want to feed on a given day, by presenting them both a dry fly and a nymph. The technique itself is quite simple. However, there are a few key things we need to focus on to make sure we are maximising its potential and fishing both flies as effectively as possible.

The key to success when fishing a nymph below a dry is achieving a drag-free drift. That is, a drift where your flies are drifting at the same speed as the current around them, never faster. If your line and leader are too straight on the water, and the current pushes or pulls on that line, this will drag your dry fly and nymph. This results in fewer fish taking your dry, and the drag will lift your nymph in the water column, so it is no longer fishing at depth.

THE CAST

Before you have even made your first presentation, you have an important decision to make: do I fish with my line on the water or off the water? If you can get close enough to your target, fishing with your line and leader off the water will allow you to get a clean drift, as no current can pull on your line or leader and drag your flies.

Most of the time, when there is current and broken water, you will be able to get quite close to the fish on our small to medium-sized streams. This is always my aim; if I can fish with my line and leader off the water, I will. I typically fish with a couple of feet of fly line out the tip of my rod, managing the drift by moving my rod tip downstream and retrieving some line with my left hand.

On larger rivers and in long flat pools you will need to cast longer because you can’t wade close enough to your fish, either because the water is inaccessible or, in flat still water, there is a risk of spooking them. When casting longer, it is important to make the cast so it lands with slack in your fly line and leader on the water. This prevents the current from pulling on the line and dragging your flies.

The way I like to achieve this is with a slight deceleration on the final forward cast. Remember, the fish only see the presentation of the flies, not your cast, so emphasising how well your line and flies land, then drift, is the most important thing.

THE LANDING

How the dry and nymph land on the water is critical to the setup of the drift. We want both flies landing in the same current line, with the nymph landing upstream of the dry.

This is important because if the flies land in different currents, they will pull against each other and slide across the current until they are fishing together in the same current line. Whilst this is happening, the flies are dragging, and the nymph will not sink to depth quickly. This can take up a large portion of the presentation, and the flies may only be drifting effectively for the second half of the drift.

If our flies don’t land with the nymph upstream of the dry, we also won’t have any take detection. When a fish takes the nymph when we are fishing it beneath a dry, we rely on the current pulling the dry under to tell us that the nymph has stopped drifting or is in the trout’s mouth. If the nymph lands to the side or downstream of the dry, a fish can take the nymph, and in the amount of time it takes for the current to take up the slack and then pull the dry down, the fish will most likely have already rejected the nymph.

THE DRIFT

As I have already mentioned, we are looking for a drag-free drift. It is important to remember that a short, clean drift is more desirable than a long drift with some drag. Achieving a nice six to twelve-foot-long drift is ideal on most of our small to medium sized streams. Typically, the longer you allow your flies to drift, the more likely they are to drag.

Because of the length of drifts I am aiming to achieve, there is very little need to mend because the line is either off the water, or I have built in enough slack with the initial cast to allow it to be drag-free. However, there are times when you want to make longer drifts when in deep water. This is because you need to give the nymph more time to sink to depth and the fish time to move to the flies.

This is where making a mend can help extend the length of your drag-free drift. A mend is simply a repositioning of your fly line and/or leader on the water to ensure the current will not pull your line and drag your flies. If you can position your line and leader in the same current as the flies, then you shouldn’t need to mend. But if you must cast across currents, you may need to make a mend into the current midway through your drift to extend its length.

Just remember to make a mend without dragging your flies — you must have slack in your line before mending.

WATER TYPES

A nymph under dry can be effective in many situations, as long as you focus on the right water and change your cast and presentations to suit the water type. Glides and flat pools, where the water is uniform, are quite straightforward to fish, and presentations can be made everywhere. In glides, where the water is faster flowing, it is important to be thorough and make multiple presentations systematically across each area to ensure you have given the fish a chance to see and move to your fly.

In flat pools, the water is generally slower and each presentation takes much more time. This gives the fish more time to see and then move to your fly. Due to their uniform flow, these water types can be fished with longer casts with fly line and leader on the water. However, if you can get close enough to the target, then there is no reason why you can’t fish with line and leader off the water.

In fast flowing runs and pocket water, you need to focus on areas that will allow you to achieve efficient drifts, where the nymph can reach depth, and both flies can fish together without drag. To achieve this, you should avoid the extremely fast, broken or complicated water and instead target the softer water. In a run, these areas are current seams, where fast and slow water join, allowing you to fish the slower paced water adjacent to the middle of the run. This water is not only ideal for achieving a straight drift with the nymph and dry, but is also where trout can feed and not expend excessive energy.

Pocket water has lots of nice currents to target, where rocks and boulders slow the pace of the water. It also has plenty of slack water behind larger rocks and boulders, which are referred to as pockets. These pockets are great areas to make short presentations, landing both flies in the pocket for a short period of time, even if they remain static and don’t drift.

These runs and pocket water lend themselves to fishing with line and leader off the water. This is due to the currents moving at different speeds, and any line or leader in a different current to the flies can ruin the drift.

THE SETUP

I like to fish nymph below dry on a 9’ or 9’6, 4-weight rod. The length allows me to reach over currents and manage longer leaders. The 4-weight allows me to protect lighter tippet, such as 6X and 7X which improves the quality of the drift and increases the sink rate of my nymphs. I fish a 10-foot tapered leader to a tippet ring, then attach my tippet below the ring.

Rigging the dry and nymph correctly can greatly improve your catch rate with the dry fly. I have roughly 120cm of tippet attached to the tippet ring. 50cm below the tippet ring, I attach a short dropper (same diameter tippet as the main line) of about 5 to 10cm in length using a triple surgeons knot.

The dry is tied off the dropper and the nymph 70cm below the dry. This allows the dry to fish and drift more freely because it is not tied in line with tippet attached at the eye and off the bend of the hook, which inhibits the dry’s ability to drift and turn with the current. The fish are also able to take and inhale the dry properly when it is tied off a dropper because there is no line impeding or pushing the fly away from the mouth.

At first, rigging your dry off a dropper instead of tying to the bend of the hook may feel more fiddly; however, it gets easier, and you will notice the improvement in hook-ups on the dry. It is also much easier to change the dry fly because it is just one knot. All of the anglers that I compete with and against at the World Fly Fishing Championships each year rig the nymph and dry like this, so I highly encourage you to do the same.

FLY CHOICE – DRIES

When selecting flies, I keep things very simple. I am a firm believer that the presentation trumps fly choice, provided your fly is in the ballpark. When fishing nymph below dry, I am fishing to catch fish on both the dry fly and the nymph, so the dry needs to be a fish catcher, not just an indicator.

On our rivers, it is hard to go wrong with a mayfly or caddis pattern and my preference is to fish CDC dries. They are ultra buoyant, floating high in the water, making them very visible and most importantly, they are very responsive as an indicator. Because of this a size 12 or 14 is ideal. Once you start fishing with bigger dries, the dry fly becomes more of an indicator.

FLY CHOICE – NYMPHS

The nymphs I like to fish below a dry are never big or heavy flies. It is amazing how you can get a light fly down on light tippet with a nice drag-free drift. As soon as you start fishing with heavier flies, you will find the casting becomes more painful, and the drift becomes less natural, with the nymph fishing more like an anchor rather than drifting and wafting with the current.

For this reason, the weighted nymphs I like to fish below a dry are generally 2, 2.3, 2.5 and 2.8mm tungsten beaded nymphs. These weights will get you to depth, drift naturally and still be held up by your size 12 and 14 dries. I also use these different weight nymphs to achieve different depths whilst keeping the length of the dropper the same.

In slow or shallow water, I will be fishing 2 or 2.3mm tungsten beaded nymphs. As the water gets faster or deeper I will change to 2.5 and 2.8mm tungsten beaded nymphs. Once I find I can no longer get deep enough with these flies, I will either extend the tippet length from dry to nymph, or more often than not, change technique to straight modern nymphing.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Nymph below dry is a very simple technique, but that doesn’t mean it is easy to master. The approach changes depending on the type of water you are fishing, be it pocket water or longer, flatter runs. Taking the time to read each current and making the right cast is everything.

You will find that attention to detail on fly choice and rigging will improve the conversion rate of takes to fish landed.

I hope with this simple approach, you will find success on our many great Australian streams.