Split Personality

     Go west, young man...  That's what I hear everytime I rig up my rod these days.  Go west.  When choosing my setup, it's always hard to take a look at my big streamers and keep them in the box.  How I love to use heavy leaders and just haul & shoot those bad boys out of the end of the rod into some nice pocket water.  Strip, strip, bam!  YouTube videos of Colorado, Montana, and Utah play in my mind as they yield big, yellow browns and I say, I can do that too.  But, uh, I really can't.  I wade in the east, and it can happen during periods of luck, but it doesn't last long.

     To go "east" probably means that today I should have fished with a #18 CDC Olive or a #20 Griffith's Gnat on 7X.  I understand that.  I don't like it, but I understand it.

     But the west isn't so far away when it comes to plan B, and it's not all that far behind plan A.  The west gave us the big dry fly indicator with a dropper nymph setup- obviously what we like to call dry-dropper. 

     So I spent the last two days up in the Catskills but didn't get in the quantity of fishing that the blog has come to expect.  Spent a little more time relaxing and working off a minor cold that lead to some achy joints and excessive reading of fishing magazines versus fishing itself. 

     Two hours euro nymphing at the West Branch on Sunday produced for me only a 12" brown that threw the hook on me. How is that even possible?  I'll tell you - low, clear water- the arch enemy of a euro nympher.  I chose the wrong method, and that's on me.

     But, earlier today I did get out on the 46-degree water of the Beaverkill for an hour after breakfast.  And I brought at least a portion of my western personality.

     No pictures of fish today--partly because I took the day off from work and didn't want the iPhone buzzing in my pocket or seeing ten unread emails when I selected Camera View--and partly because I was wading above my wading belt which means "no phone zone".  Thus, for once, it was mercifully out of reach.  But, finally, I picked up a couple of fish --a brown and a rainbow each about 12"-13"--as the plan came together. 

     The rig was simply a #8 orange stimulator dry fly with a #16 BH Pheasant Tail trailed as a dropper via 30" of 5X FC.  Tied to the eye of the PT was another 16" of 6X FC, ending in a #20 black zebra midge.  The brown took the PT and the rainbow took the midge.  I'm pretty certain I missed a few strikes on some longer casts.  This is a deadly rig in terms of attracting strikes but your hookup percentage is definitely a lot lower by the time you recognize the strike and send the energy from rod tip down to the tip of the tiny hook on a zebra midge! 

     You know, don't get me wrong, I love almost all forms of fly fishing but I do have to rank the dry dropper pretty high on the list.  All elements of it are the things I enjoy about fly fishing.  Euro nymphing is very successful but after several outings of it, I do miss the traditional fly casting--you know, with fly line instead of 18 feet of mono-sighter-tippet.  With dry dropper, you get that element back, but, you continue to fish the nymph(s).  That means you don't have to be a slave to entomology, unless of course you wanted to be. 

     Some key tips.....

• Load up your stimulator with Aquel (great stuff) before it sees any water, and keep Loon's Top Ride (powder) handy after a few "dunks".
• If you fish with a large dry fly, don't go lower than 4X leading up to it.  You want some turnover after the dry fly and thus, you don't want to lose energy from the cast at the dry fly, you want it to go through the dry fly.
• Every once in a while, STOP FISHING, and let your stimulator "unwind" its twists.  The nymphs will "unbalance" the stimmy. It can spin like a helicopter when you cast your rig with wide loops and thus, needs some uncoiling from time to time.  Maintenance will prevent failure.
• The longer your nymphs trail, the more important a 30-foot, and not 40-foot, cast becomes.  It's otherwise so difficult to sink the hook with all that fly line out and deep running nymphs, all in time to beat the clock on a trout ejecting your phony fly in half a second.
• Pick the right water; nice for flat pools that do have enough current to move your offerings.  In an area like that, you probably won't get strikes on the dry fly because of the inspection time that a fish gets but you never know.  October caddis anyone?  The important part is to fish the nymph(s).
• Part of committing to the nymph(s), I think, is to have at least one of your bugs with a bead head, which will get the slack out of your dropper and enable you to register the take.  This means you may need a larger, bushier dry fly, and fewer resulting strikes on it.
• Don't forget to practice this method on panfish in the summer. Getting some bluegill experience in August pays off with October trout!