Improve your nymph fishing by doing this one thing!
It’s been said over and over that 90% of trout eat subsurface. Some days 100% of the time the fish will be eating subsurface. This is why fly fishermen and women nymph fish. If your looking to catch fish the odds are high of catching them using something that is going floating through the water column. There are clients that love indicator fishing and clients that hate it. I will always have a dry fly rod rigged and ready to go on my guide trips because when a hatch is going off that’s what I’ll get clients to throw. The reality of it is that most of the time that’s not the case here in the mountains of NC. The five main insects in NC is stoneflies, caddis, midges, blue wing olives, and terrestrials. The majority of these insects life besides terrestrials are spent underwater so nymph fishing is usually the best method for putting fish in the net. We are going to keep this simple. When I’m fishing indicators, my set up is the following:
My fly line connects to a section of 3.5 ft fluorocarbon (15 pound) line that connects to a tippet ring using a loop knot. I attach my tippet to the tippet ring using an improved clinch knot that connects to my nymph. Pretty simple setup.
The key here is using a loop knot that connects to the tippet ring. This is a game changer. The tippet ring can freely move around the loop knot while fishing and it creates a 90 degree angle from the butt section of the leader to your fly. Check out the setup below.
This 90 degrees angles helps get the flies straight down underneath the indicator. Try this method the next time your own the water and see if it doesn’t help put more fish in the net. Thanks for taking the time to read the article!
