Best Methods for Indicator Fishing for Trout | How To

[Music] foreign Whoa man these fish are so hot you know there are lots of ways to catch fish on nymphs and wet flies people have been swinging wet flies for hundreds of years but one of the most effective ways of catching fish on subsurface flies is nymph fishing with an indicator or a dry dropper and we're going to show you lots of different ways and some Advanced tactics for catching fish on nymphs and dry droppers foreign [Music] that fish has already refused that fly and you're gonna have to try it just a slightly different pattern the roll cast pickup is a great cast to use in a lot of fishing situations this is a beautiful wild Trout from a small stream just a gorgeous little fish I say hit that bank let's go to that grass bed [Music] the Orvis guide to fly fishing is supported by [Music] Orvis fly fishing main office of Tourism Yellowstone Teton territory rainbow Ranch adipose Boatworks [Music] Global rescue [Music] crowd Unlimited Oscar Blues Brewery remember sitting on a dock fishing a worm you may still do it now either for your own fun on a lazy afternoon or with your kids fly fishing was some kind of indicator is just slightly more sophisticated than bobber fishing but your indicator much more than being just a signal of a strike is a drift indicator it tells you in what current Lane your fly is drifting and by carefully observing your indicator it gives you a hint on whether your fly is drifting naturally with the current when I first learned to fish nymphs we didn't have sophisticated indicators and we used a direct upstream or almost direct Upstream approach and watched our floating Line This is a nice clean way of fishing and I still use it at times today especially in Clear Water when I can see trout in the current but most people agree that the use of a separate indicator on the leader is an easier and more effective of way to do it most of the insects in Crustaceans trout eat are weak swimmers and they don't swim against the current or swim across current Lanes drift with the current at the same speed as bubbles and debris and it's a Trout's job to sort out the food from the junk and it's our job to make sure our nymphs drift in the same way because although it's difficult for us to perceive a nymph that is not drifting naturally from our perspective trout do this all day long all their lives and the slightest hint of suspicious activity alerts them that what is Drifting by is not food getting the right depth is also important most times trout stay close to the bottom of a river where the current is slower and it's easier for them to hold their position they may ignore something drifting more than a few feet above them during aquatic insect hatches though when there are insects throughout the water column trout May range from their spot on the bottom to grab something in mid-water but when they're not actively feeding you'll do your best shoving your flies in their face there are all kinds of different indicators that you can buy in a tackle shop and they all have their purposes different ones for different water types I carry a ton of them first and foremost is the extremely popular and Infamous thingamabobber and it's soft plastic filled with air so it floats really really well and to attach this you merely fold your leader over slide it through the hole bring the loop around the other side of the indicator pull it through and it's snug and as long as your leader is fairly thick it won't slide up and down the leader and it's very easy to loosen that up and then move it any place in your leader similar to the thingama bobber is one called an airlock and it's a little bit harder plastic still filled with air but this one you just twist off the top and there's a little rubber grommet inside there you put your leader through a slot and then you screw down on there again it floats all day long really easy to move on the leader and doesn't put a kink in your leader then there are also hard bodied types that are solid either a cork or foam or plastic here's one that has a little tab in it and again you fold your leader over you pass it through there and you Peg it in place so it doesn't slide on your leader now these work great and they're easy to move around but these two things tend to catch on your leader and and get tangled so not my favorite but they are easy to use and they do float all day long here's one that's very similar to the thingamabobber except this one is solid cork so again it floats all day long bounces along on the current really nicely and like the thingama bobber you double over your leader butt you pass it through the ground the hole there you pull it around the other side and you snug it tight another one called a Twist on this is made these are small they're made out of some sort of uh some sort of high-floating plastic hard plastic maybe styrofoam or something like that and you just put the leader inside there and you twist it around there's a rubber band and then that holds the leader in place then there's a type I don't really like very much they're really easy to use they're made out of foam and they have sticky stuff on the back and you pull them off and you fold this over your leader and then it holds it in place now some people like them because they're very sensitive they're very light and very sensitive but you can't move them on your leader and you find them all over the riverbank because they come off and they never disintegrate so I don't particularly care for this kind of indicator and then there's yarn indicators one of my favorites the nice thing about yarn indicator is you make them yourself so you can make a yarn indicator as small or as large as you want another Advantage is it's biodegradable it's sheep's wool so that if you lose this on the stream no big deal it's biodegradable just like any animal fur is so this comes in a kit and it comes with a little tool that has you you cut a piece of tubing and you slide it on there you Loop Your Leader through the tube you slip the tube over the leader Loop and then you just hold that Loop open and you take as much or as little yarn as you want you put it inside the loop you snug it down and you've got a nice little wool indicator any size you want so for slow water like this flatter water I really like a yarn indicator if I'm going to use an indicator at all the yarn is much easier to cast it's less air resistant it lands a lot lighter on the water and also yarn indicators are so much more sensitive than the hard plastic ones sometimes it's slow water it's difficult to detect the strike but that yarn will really really bounce and wiggle when you have a strike sometimes you have to do something because your yarn indicator may start to float low and you can't see it so a couple things you can do one is you can make a couple of quick false casts just like you would a dry fly to dry it off and that should help but if it still continues to sink and you can't see it it's easy enough to just bring the indicator in take the same Dry Fly powder that you would use for a dry fly the desiccant powder the white powder dip it in there grind it around a little bit make sure it's thoroughly thoroughly dried and now that indicator will float high for another hour or two foreign told you the yarn indicator Works in Flat Water that fish I had thrown I had actually thrown a hard plastic indicator over into that area earlier and and made numerous drifts and never caught a fish but that yarn indicator was just sensitive enough that I was able to see the strike it was a very subtle strike and the yarn helped me out [Music] yeah buddy took a Hendrickson nymph pretty wild fish [Music] barbless hook comes out quickly a great do-it-yourself indicator was developed by Colorado guide Pat Dorsey you take a small rubber band used for orthodontist braces and you wrap a loop part of your leader around it five times you then slip a section of polypropylene macrame yarn that you've fuzzed up with a comb into the loop pull the band up to Snug the yarn trim the ends if desired and you're set to go you can make your own indicators of any size and color that you want one of the most effective and subtle ways you can fish with a nymph is to use a dry fly for your indicator we call it a dry dropper and you just tie on a big fairly visible High floating Dry Fly you tie a piece of tippet on the bend of that hook and you put a nymph underneath it now you have to be careful you can't use a super heavy Nim because it'll drown the dry fly and this kind of thing works better usually when there's a bit of a hatch going on there might be a few fish Rising but when you know the fish are looking up at the surface or they're more active it doesn't work that well in super cold water where you know the fish are glued to the bottom foreign [Music] was hung up that was weird I was hung up on a branch and I tried to tug it loose and I got it loose and there was a fish on the end that ate the nymph foreign fish [Applause] [Music] wow fish has got some girth on him [Music] [Applause] of course the added bonus is that you might also catch a fish on a dry and you get to use two different kinds of flies at once best dry flies to use on this are highly visible foam body drives one of my favorites is the chubby Chernobyl it combines a foam body with a highly visible yarn Wing which shows up well on the water and sheds water with a single false cast but any heavily hackled or foam Body dry fly with a hair or yarn Wing like a stimulator or a hopper pattern will work parachutes are also good in larger sizes you can even use smaller dries but you'll need to combine these with lightly weighted or unweighted nymphs like the pheasant tail it's always great when things come together when you get the fly the rigging and the drift right you'll do well of course if you're fishing over trout that's a Hollywood is it a cutthroat on the big nymph again that's a pretty fish [Music] wow that's a hybrid [Music] hey you always want to try to use as small an indicator as you can get away with this big indicator I have here is just way too heavy for this water you'll notice I can't really false cast with it it's bouncing all over the place and when it hits the water it makes a big Splat it's probably going to Spook the fish and it just makes casting tough so go with an indicator that's that's big enough to float the Flies but not so big that's going to make a big Splat on the water the size of the indicator is based on two things the weight of the Flies and or weights on the leader you're using and also how visible it is smaller indicators are sometimes hard to see in heavy water and if your flies and weight are too heavy a small one can get pulled under quickly if you can't see your indicator or if it sinks right away switch to a bigger one to carry a variety of sizes and styles so that I can match water conditions the color of your indicator is a personal decision based on how well you see and water conditions in heavy water you might choose the one you think is most visible but in heavily fished areas sometimes fish are frightened or suspicious of brightly colored indicators so a clear or white one to match the natural bubbles in a river might be a smart move I wanted to try a squirmy worm in here it's it's a fly that a lot of people look down on um but it's kind of interesting it's not a not a typical fly I've got a copper John on there which is a a very very typical um you know Catskill fly or typical nymph but I want to try a squirmy worm just to see uh just to see what would happen and this fish obviously like the squirmy [Music] pretty hefty barbless hook and Away goes the placement of an indicator on your leader is critical A good rule of thumb especially in Faster water is to set your indicator about one and a half to two times the water depth above your first fly or away this is because in fast water the indicator is on the surface where the water is faster but trout are closer to the bottom where the current is slower so your fly drifts at an angle to the indicator through most of the drift the faster the water the more you want to favor a longer depth and conversely in really slow water you might need to set your indicator at just about the water depth especially with heavier flies once you set your indicator initially it's likely you'll have to move it you can gauge this by looking at a number of things first you should be occasionally snagging bottom or you should see the indicator ticking along the bottom it looks like the indicator is stuttering a bit if this is not happening every half dozen drifts you know you're not getting deep enough and need to move your indicator up the leader three to six inches closer to the rod tip snag and if you're not losing flies you're probably not fishing deep enough on the other hand if you're getting hung up too frequently every two or three casts it's time to raise the indicator a few inches to move your flies a bit off the bottom trout don't eat right on the bottom they feed just above the bottom beside your indicator height you should also adjust the weight of your flaws it's really a combination of indicator placement and weight and you can adjust based on either or both most Anglers and guides agree that if you can get the right weight by using weighted flies you're better off because putting weight on the leader makes casting tougher and Tangles nastier this is why a smart angler will have flies with different weights some unweighted some with brass beads and some with tungsten beads which are heavier than brass and of course to further fine tune your weight you can add weight on the leader to add sink rate to your flies we'll deal with added weight on the leader shortly most people fish two nymphs at a time where it is legal to use two plugs I'm gonna rig up an indicator rig the way I normally do it with it with an indicator from start to finish so I had a I had a 12 foot leader on here 4X liter and I put in a knot and I tied on a piece of 5x fluorocarbon most people like fluorocarbon for nymphs it sinks a little bit better a little more abrasion resistant when it goes along the bottom so I've got a and I like a long tip it longer than most people because this 5x cuts through the water better than a heavier diameter tippet so I go with a very as light a tip it as I think I can get away with given the amount of snags and the size of the fish and everything so I got 5x on here first thing I do is tie on my two flies Okay so I'm going to put a big nymph on top I'll use a I use a rubber legs commonly known to guides as a turd because it's brown and kind of plain but it's a good subsurface fly so I'll put that on first you have to be careful to get those rubber legs out of the way when you tie it on all right test my knot so I have my first fly tied on there and then I'll put a second fly on and uh I'll go for my fluorocarbon here and I'll use 5x there too it's 8 inches or so just to start so I've got another piece of 5x and I'm just going to tie that around the bend of the rubber legs so I've got yeah about eight inches there and then I'll put on a smaller nip we'll see whether the fish are going to prefer a bigger nymph or a smaller nymph and they'll you know it's 50 50 which one they take they'll take the upper one just as readily as they'll take the lower one depending on what they like so I'll get kind of a hendricksony looking jig fly and I'll tie that to the lower piece jig hooks are great because uh it's a lot harder to snag them on the bottom because they ride hook point up all right so now I got my nymphs on there hopefully I can get away with not having to put split shot on my leader if I were to put split shot on my leader I would put it about double the distance between those two flies so I'd probably put the split shot about right here here's the first fly there's the second fly in the middle and then I put my shot here I'm going to try to get away without shot so the next thing I'm going to do is going to look at the water and try to figure out how deep it is and it looks like it's about three feet deep so I'm gonna do one and a half to two times the water depth with my indicator because your your your rig is always going at an angle so I'm going to come up you know somewhere around six feet and then I'm going to put an indicator on the leader and I try to get as small an indicator as I get away with and I also were Fisher spooky like a white indicator because it looks like bubbles on the water less likely fish tend to shy away from pink and orange indicators in certain streams so this one's an airlock indicator and you just unscrew the top of it you put your leader through the slot and you tighten this down you'll probably lose about a dozen of these tops over the course of the Season luckily when you buy them they give you extra tops so now I'm ready typically when tying two flies in line the larger heavier your nymph is tied to the tippet and then the smaller nymph is tied to the bend of the larger fly with a piece of tippet that is about the same size as the tippet or one size finer the upper fly tied under your tippet is usually the biggest and heaviest you think you can get away with and is often considered merely an anchor to get the smaller fly down you can make the dropper length anywhere from four inches to 20 inches and there's really no rule of thumb on exactly how long to make it I have an experiment with different dropper links I find that if I make my dropper Too Short fish often take the upper fly and spit it out and then get foul hooked on the lower fly so if I foul hook a fish I'll tie on a longer dropper [Music] okay Blake Blake put a longer drop around here we thought we weren't quite getting deep enough and Wham fish just started taking the bugs pretty heavy tippet on here the waters the water's um not super clean so we can get away with 4X liters so we can put some pressure on these fish and get them in pretty quickly especially since they're going to get all Full Of Weeds yeah a little grass heads too grass on there you know what I find is is when the grass goes down and gets over their eyes they stop fighting I have noticed that in Spring creeks and stuff [Applause] that healthy fish on the other hand if the water is fast and deep and I need to get that smaller lower fly as close to the bottom as possible I'll use a shorter six to eight inch dropper holy that thing just stopped well you know I thought that indicator was was a little um I thought that indicator was a little deep because I kept hanging up so I just shallowed it up for this little spot in here well that's a nice rainbow nice which fly did he eat get us again it's the purple cat is another way that is less likely to tangle is to tie the second fly to the eye of the first so you have two knots in one eye this typically lessens the chances of foul Hook Fish and is also the best solution if your upper fly is barbless you can also add a dropper above your heavier fly by leaving one tag end of your surgeon's knot or blood knot long then using that as a dropper or you can tie a tippet ring to the end of your leader and then tie two pieces of tippet to the ring usually when fishing two flies on separate pieces of material the bigger fly is tied to the end of the tippet and the smaller fly to the dropper but you should experiment there are no firm rules in this game the best and cleanest way to fish below an indicator is to use one or two flies with enough weight to get the flyer flies down quickly below the indicator without adding weight to the leader the faster and deeper the water the heavier the nymph you'll have to use for instance in a small stream that is maybe three feet deep at the most a size 14 bead head nib with perhaps a size 16 unweighted nymph tied as a dropper maybe enough weight however in a fast Deep River you might need a big weighted stone-flying infant size eight with a heavier size 12 bead head on the dropper in order to sink down through that fast current of course you have to balance the size nifs you use not only to the water type but also on what you think May appeal to the fish so if you are in a fast Deep River but everyone says the fish are taking little size 18 mayfly nymphs or Midge larvae you'll need to add weight to your leader you won't find nymphs in that size heavy enough to sink down in fast water that's where you either need to get that tiny fly down deep behind a heavily weighted fly or else use split shot or other weights on your leader weight added to your leader might be needed when the water is too fast or Too Deep to get your nymphs close to the bottom just based on their weight that's when split shot comes in so how do you turn it when your weight is right when you have enough weight well you want to be close to the bottom and I want to fish this slot over here it looks pretty good there's some soft water behind a big boulder and I know there's some fish in there so how do I know my weight's good enough well I just casted a rig with two weighted flies over there and I wasn't ticking bottom at all ever it didn't snag at all and also when you watch the bobber it's kind of subtle but if you watch the bobber or the indicator you can see that it's moving a little bit faster than the bubbles on the surface and what you really want is for that bobber to kind of lag behind those bubbles a little bit and it's very subtle and you have to watch it for a while but after a while you'll get the hang of watching that indicator just slowing down a little bit more than the bubbles so I'm going to put one small shot about eight inches above my top fly okay so I've got one small shot on there and it's better to start with a small one rather than put on a big glob of a shot because if you put on one big one it might be too heavy and then you got no other option to remove it you put on one and it's not quite good enough then you can just add another smaller one so I put the shot on and I watch the indicator and I notice that the indicator was moving about the same speed as the bubbles maybe a little bit slower and also I ticked bottom once at the end of my drip so I know I'm getting there I'm going to try one more shot and see if that does it and the second split shot did the trick oh thank you [Music] know what I'm not going to lose any more flies [Music] everyone wants to know where to add the shot on your leader A good rule of thumb is to start about eight inches above the upper fly if the water is fast and you feel you need to get your fly closer to the bottom you can put the shot a bit closer water is slower you may want to move your shot as much as 18 inches away any further than that defeats the purpose of adding shot because it's just not close enough to get your fly down deep should also mention that some people put their shot between the two flies but I typically don't do it that way unless I'm experimenting I often get asked how you decide what two flies or even three in some places to try when using a multiple fly rig like everything else in fly fishing there are no rules but I do have some suggestions for you the first option is to use different sizes and I almost always do that you might want to try a big nymph or Beat Head combined with a smaller mayfly or caddisfly knit or a stone fly and a worm for early season when you first start out you're guessing one option is to go with a popular pattern for a particular River and then add another one on a whim that way you can go with a sure thing and you can experiment or if if you've been observing the river maybe you see a tiny caddisfly and a larger mayfly hatching but no fish rising in that case try a mayfly and a canis pupa and if everyone tells you the Prince Nymph is the hot fly try a large one and a small one the possibilities though are endless have fun and experiment so one of my favorite rigs for fishing a dry dropper is a fly called the chubby Chernobyl it's a foam bodied fly it has highly visible wings and I use that as my dry fly and then I'll tie a bead head in a chubby Chernobyl will float or will suspend even a smaller bead head fly so it's a great fly to use in this kind of rig so I'm gonna just grab one of my High floating chubby chernobyls out of my box and tie it onto my tippet just the normal way and then I'll put a piece of tippet on the bend of the hook with a clinch knot and I usually use fluorocarbon because that sinks a little bit quicker than nylon so it'll help that nymph sink a little bit better so you can use typically people use 5x you could use 4X or even 3x in heavier water or when you're fishing a big fly or you could go as light as 6X if you're fishing a little tiny nib but I'll put on 5x here and usually your dry dropper is going to be anywhere from 6 to 20 inches can be longer but uh I'm gonna just take a piece of 5x fluorocarbon and I'm going to tie it around the bend of this dry fly so this one happens to be about a foot long maybe a little bit longer and then I'll take a kind of a generic bead head you're not trying to scratch bottom when you're fishing a dry dropper you want it to hang in mid-water somewhere you're looking for fish that are looking up and then I'll just put on I don't know a little copper John copper John is a very popular fly size 16 copper John on the end and then you're ready to go that's all there is to it a dry dropper rig so you can also try to get deeper with a dry dropper Arrangement and you can put on a long like a five foot piece of tippet it's not easy to cast but it can sometimes be very effective particularly when the water is deeper so again normally dry dropper is fairly short dropper but you can go with a big drop or a big long dropper and it can be it can be effective so I'm going to try that so now we got a fish on the nymph with the dry dropper on the long dropper went to the longer dropper and that seemed to do the trick probably just needed to get that nymph a little bit deeper [Music] and one for the copper John [Music] thank you although you need a high floating visible dry try to make it one that's appealing to the trout for the season or for that particular River in June or July try a stonefly imitation in late summer try a grasshopper fly the reason for this is that not only may you catch fish on the dry sometimes if the dry is interesting enough fish will rise up take a look at the dry decide not to take it but they might see the more subtle nymph and decide to eat it instead oh yeah there we go Hopper eats so your dry fly is a lure a strike indicator and an attractor all in one well we've been fishing a dry dropper for about two hours a hopper and a nymph and we've got one fish on the nymph but we finally got a fish to either eat the hopper so we've been waiting for the surface eat and nice rainbow 88 to Hopper [Music] now that we've explored some options for rigging up nymphs let's take a look at how to fish these Rigs and how to detect those elusive strikes there's a fish everyone seems to have questions about rigging nymphs with indicators and dry droppers but people seldom ask about where and how to fish them these aspects are equally as important so let me share some tips with you honestly the best place to fish nymphs with indicators is in water with a broken moderately fast current like I have here in front of me you also want to look for places with a uniform rather than swirly current for a number of reasons first it's hard to follow an indicator and get a good drift in swirly current and second although trout May hide under swirly currents from predators when they feed they like to be in a more uniform current because it's easier to hold their position and capture their prey it's always a good idea to start first in Faster water especially because fish here have to grab quicker and they're easier to catch and Strikes are more apparent when a trout grabs a nymph and fast water here's what happens during a nymph drift regardless of whether you're using an indicator or a dry dropper you make a cast and the nymphs begin to sink as the nipsin indicator drift Downstream the nymphs get deeper and finally hang directly below the indicator if all goes according to plan this is the place you're most likely to get a strike although trout can eat the nif anytime during the drift and sometimes they take a nymph as soon as it hits the water sometimes the surface current moves much faster than the current below or if the indicator lands in a different current Lane than the Flies the indicator will pull them off to the side either of these introduce drag and pull the nymphs so they move counter to natural stuff drifting in the current and they don't look realistic to the fish there are two ways to fix this issue one is to make sure you cast your line flies and your indicator in the same current Lane another is to add more weight to your leader so that the weight helps to counteract the pull of the indicator okay I wanted to fish straight Upstream in this pool but I see some water under that tree that looks a little bit better and I don't want a way that's too deep to wait over there so what I'm going to do is instead of mending because I don't particularly care for mending unless unless all else fails so what I'm going to try to do is reach my rod tip out over there as if I were standing in that current Lane so that without mending I can still get a pretty good pretty good drift so I'll show you how to do it here [Music] foreign [Music] by watching your indicator carefully you can often tell if your flies down below are dragging or not an indicator that seems to ride in a perky manner on the surface at the same speed as the current or even slower is what you want so just to make this clear there's a difference between a dragging indicator and a lagging indicator okay a dragging indicator is when the indicator slides across currents when when the line tightens and you pull it back toward you and it goes across the currents a lagging indicator is one that's in the same current as the Flies but it's just going a little bit slower than the surface current because the water down below is always slower than the water on top so to get that indicator to try to match the fly speed you want it to be going a little bit slower than the top current this is not to say you can't fish indicators across stream or even Downstream you'll get a shorter Drift But by making a reach cast or a slackline cast mending and maybe feeding some line into the drift you'll be able to fish nymphs in any directions if conditions won't allow you to fish Upstream like when you have slow current on the opposite side of the river in this case casting Upstream gives you almost immediate drag so you're better off moving up and casting Downstream to the fish from an upstream Direction this is probably a good time to visit my friend in casting Guru Pete kutzer for some tricks on casting with indicator and dry dropper rigs [Music] but Sir with the Orvis fly fishing schools today I want to talk about a very fun and effective way to catch a lot of fish and that's using two flies when you use two flies there's a couple different scenarios that you can use those two flies in one really common way is with a large Dry Fly and a nymph below it sometimes called a dry dropper sometimes you can fish with two streamers you may even fish with two nymphs underneath a strike indicator and that can be a very deadly technique in a lot of situations but when we have two Flies what we want to do is open up our Loop and so there's a couple things that we have to do in our cast to help open up that Loop when we're casting we're always told and you probably heard me say it before or heard somebody else say it before we want to travel in a straight path and that straight path is kind of like this Rod right here you see it's a nice straight line that straight path we want to travel in that straight path on our back cast to that stop and then we again we want to travel in that straight path forward into our stop if we take that straight path and just bend it a little bit that's going to help opening up that Loop or open up that Loop giving you a little bit of a wider Loop preventing those multiple fly rakes from hooking each other so when we cast I like to imagine stopping at my eye level you know somewhere around eye level right here and that allows that Loop to jump out with a nice crisp stop getting out to that fish well that tight Loop can be a little dangerous so rather than stopping here at eye level what I'm going to do is just stop a little bit lower just a little bit that little bit of a lower stop opens up that Loop gets those Flats to turn over safely without hooking each other and land on the water gets you into a good fishing position another great technique when you're fishing with a dry fly and a dropper or if you're fishing with two nymphs is a cast called a Tuck cast with the Tuck cast I'm going to stop that rod and make a quick little lift with my raw tip just a little bounce if you will that quick bounce forces that nymph over the top a little bit more aggressively getting it to land first sinking a lot quicker this is going to get you into the strike zone a little bit faster catching more fish make the cast quick lift nymph Lance first now we're in that Strike Zone we're making that good cast stopping that Rod tip a little bit lower is going to help opening that Loop up preventing those Tangles these are great techniques when you're fishing with a dry dropper setup two streamers or a two nymph rig with a strike indicator and some split shot that's a lot of stuff it's easy to get tangled with that give these casts a try and I'm sure you'll catch more fish manding is often needed when fishing with an indicator and you can usually extend your productive drift with men's just be careful to mend enough that you go all the way to the indicator but without moving it moving the indicator moves the Flies as well and it can introduce a move that might turn the fish off if the water next to you is faster than the water your flies are drifting in mend Upstream but sometimes the water between you and the Flies is moving slower in this case in order to avoid drag on the Flies you need to mend Downstream but trout will sometimes take a nymph that is dragging especially if the drag is not too severe strikes to a dragging nymph often come at the end of the drift when the Flies rise off the bottom and may look like an emerging insect but if you want to play the percentages ninety percent of the time dead drift is the way to go you can often get very long drifts with a nymph and indicator or dry dropper from a drift boat or raft especially if the boat is moving at the same speed as the current the person from the bow casted a slight Downstream angle to the boat and just follows the line with the rod with an occasional mend shortening up or feeding line into the drift if the boat pulls away slightly you can never be quite sure when a fish takes your fly when using an indicator as a friend of mine often says hook sets are free also the faster the water the harder the take because the fish are grabbing something that's moving faster and in this kind of water the indicator will sometimes even plunge underwater just like a real bobber in slower water the tank might be more subtle and could be just a minor hesitation in fact in slower water you may miss some strikes with a plastic indicator so you may want to switch to a more sensitive yarn indicator because these will register those subtle takes much better than the plastic ones when fishing with a dry dropper strikes will not be as apparent as when fishing with an indicator because a fly just gets pulled under with a plastic bobber there's more resistance to move so it jumps with a dry fly it just gets pulled under easily so when using this kind of rig anytime your dry even begins to sink you need to set the hook so a lot of people wonder when do you play the fish on the Reel well usually I say the fish is going to tell you the fish is going to take off pull this line from your hands and go and you're not going to be able to stop it so that's that's when you play a fish from reel but this fish he's not going to really take off that much I can let a little line slip through my hand if he goes but I'm not really going to worry about getting the line on the Reel but then if you're going to land a fish in mid-water like this the fish can sometimes get tangled in your line so sometimes you know just to get the line out of the way um you sure you got the fish under control you can reel the line in and then you don't have to worry about the fish slapping around in your in the line at your feet but again this isn't really a big enough fish that I need to play it from The Reel I could Strip This strip this fish in just fine [Music] here's one final nymph fishing trick if you have trouble with drag and tricky currents or if you just have trouble sensing when your fly is dragging try the two indicator system here you take two relatively small indicators of different colors and attach them from 8 to 15 inches apart with the one closest to your flies at the point you would normally set it for a particular depth the second one goes closer to your fly line because you have two different color indicators watch the relationship between the two as long as the one closer to your fly line is Upstream of the one closer to the Flies you'll get a decent drip but because the current moves the fly line and butt section of your leader at a faster rate because they have more surface area once the upper indicator drifts even with the other and especially if it drifts Downstream of the one closer to your flies it's time to mend the line mend enough to move the upper indicator Upstream of the lower one and you should again be getting a reasonable drift that was a fish [Music] nice [Music] we have to lift him pretty hard in here tight because of the grass okay [Music] can't go too far on those with those indicators [Music] nice fishing with an indicator is about the most productive way to fish most Waters but that doesn't mean you'll land all of them sometimes it's just that kind of day what happened there was the fish got Downstream of me and it's really hard when they're pulling when their mouth is facing straight upstream and you're yanking them back up the small hooks like these little tiny nymphs I've got on are going to pull out no doubt about it it's gonna happen so don't beat yourself up about it if that happens to you if you you know if you get a big fish and it's Downstream and it gets off it's gonna happen just don't you know don't feel like you did anything that was your fault sometimes you just sometimes you just have weed all over yourself much nicer that's the way I like it stay Upstream of me so you don't get off [Music] foreign [Music] just shut up Jeremy [Music] seriously am I doing something wrong playing these fish no [Music] that fish took on this Wing which doesn't always happen with an indicator [Music] [Music] catching fish with nymphs catching trout with nymphs using an indicator or a dry dropper is one of them catching trout is fun catching trout how many hours daylight we got left catching fish on nymphs using indicators and dry droppers is one of the most effective ways to catch trout it works all season long day in and day out works when dry flies don't works when streamers don't there's a bit of jargon involved and there's almost sometimes a sixth sense involved in knowing when the fish take the fly but you'll get it and you may come up with your own way of fishing nymphs [Music] foreign [Music] guide to fly fishing is supported by Orvis fly fishing main office of Tourism Yellowstone Teton territory rainbow Ranch [Music] adipose Boatworks Global rescue crowd Unlimited Oscar Blues Brewery [Music] thank you [Music]

Channel: Orvis Guide to Fly Fishing

Views: 96,030

Keywords: orvis fly fishing, tom rosenbauer, the new fly fisher, brook trout, brown trout, rainbow trout, trout

Id: CkciC7G1ns4

Length: 52min 18sec (3138 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 22 2023