What’s really needed is some clever technical name like “Pre-emergent Taut drifting” or “Kinetic Nymphing” – something with enough action verbiage to engage the print media into reams of “how to” literature.
I figured it was trolling mostly, what with the wind blowing you in one direction and frantic paddling to counter wind drift, hoping to preserve your orientation to the bank and fly.
Kelvin used it to great effect and converted us skeptical types after only a couple hours on the water, more importantly, it produced fish during midafternoon when everyone else was thinking sandwich.
The above picture shows the bottom of Manzanita Lake and its stunning water clarity. Them monstrous feet are submerged – and the vertical weeds are about 6 feet below me. Getting a fly in the weed is a bad thing, and the fish instinctively head for those tough stalks the moment they’re hooked, with us collectively losing a third of the fish on the initial sprint downward.
The trick is to use tackle that keeps the fly about midway between weed and surface. This is the exclusive turf of the intermediate sink line – one of the slowest sinking lines available – or adding 5 feet of tippet and a beaded nymph on a floating line.
Sink tip lines would work as well, but the key is to keep mindful of the depth to the weeds, if you stray into the deep water the fly passes above their visual range, too shallow and your fly is toast. At the right depth, the cruising fish will oblige you. We landed about ¾ of the fish using a simple “fling and retrieve” and the balance from dry flies and nymphs during periods of insect activity.
Pre-emergent Taut drifting flies start with the J.Fair Wiggletail nymph (in brown above), Olive was the preferred color – which matched my most productive, the Algae CarpKiller. I had these in the box from the Little Stinking and equipped with a 4mm bead were heavy enough to drag 5 feet of 5X down to the appropriate depth.
My deteriorating eyesight has a new wrinkle for me to overcome with each trip – and the larger tippets and bigger hooks of Kinetic Nymphing gives me a chance at threading a tippet come dusk.
Tradition is useful as long as it doesn’t interfere with the fishing, and delicate sensibilities are trod upon with gusto, it’s all part of the obsession. Unfortunately there’s more hours between bugs than with bugs and with us weekend warriors, every hour is precious.
Nice looking water. I probably would have tried something with a weed guard.
Wouldn’t mind trying my hand at that water. Looks good.
The weed guard would work fine, but you’d still have the fish bolting for the bottom on the hook up … it’s “pay me now or pay me later.”
Me, I always harken back to my salt water bait fishing days, “if you ain’t losing tackle, you aint where the fish are..”
Holds true for all fishing.
Whenever I snap a fly off in a tree, my brother is usually around to bear witness, and invariably he’ll point at the stream I’m standing in and yell, ”You might catch more fish if you tried putting your fly down here in this water!”
He’s a funny guy.
Very clear water, man I wish our water looked that clean over here. I mainly troll for trout over in our lakes but the flies would be the only way to go in there it seems. I would snag up all the time odds are.
I want to look into more snagfree style of rigs, if they even exist that is.
They make a variety of weedless hooks, but that’s the easy part. If you’re dragging other terminal tackle you’d need to proof that as well.