Perfect Fly Fishing Journal – February 2022
Index:
- Euro/Czech Stye Nymph Fishing
- Tips on Fishing Tailwaters During Late Winter-Early Spring Months
- Why Use Perfect Flies
- Aquatic Insects – Imitating Black Flies
- Perfect Fly Selections
Euro/Czech Style Nymph Fishing
A recently popular fly fishing method but one that has been around for years and one that goes by many different names is most recently called Euro or sometimes Czech nymphing. In recent years, it has become popular enough that rod manufacturers are selling Euro Nymphing Fly Rods. There are Euro nymph leader and special rigging and even Euro nymphs.
The entire concept is nothing more than making short presentations using a tight-line fishing method often using a section of colored line called a sighter, weighted nymphs and means of which suspends your flies off the bottom and putting you into direct contact improving strike detection. Typically, one uses a long, very light and sensitive 2 to 4 weight fly rod with two or more flies spaced several inches apart. I’m not trying to be funny, but from a presentation standpoint, it is very similar to fishing with a cane pole.
Many trout anglers use a method of presenting flies to trout they call high stick nymphing which is the same technique. I have used the high-stick method for several years now, but like most other anglers I know, place the flies directly on the tippet as opposed to using short dropper tippets off the main tippet. The method allows one to present the flies in a precise area quickly as opposed to making an overhand or roll cast and allowing the flies to drift with the current and/or be retrieved to the targeted area one thinks fish are holding. An angler can get a fly in a certain target zone or area quickly, which results in covering more places or targeted areas in less time.
Years ago, when I was fishing the BASS pro circuit, Dave Gliebe, a California angler, became highly recognized for a method he called Flippin. It was simply a method of presenting bass lures vertically. The cast is made by presenting the lure with an underhanded swing cast whereas the lure is dropped vertically at a precise point. For example, when bass are holding underneath a log or lily pads, one can present a lure in a vertical manner precisely and quickly thereby covering more target zones in less time. It was and still is a very effective method. When the technique caught on, special longer and somewhat stiffer rods were designed and built to make “flipping” easier. The method was used by another California bass angler named Gary Kline, a very successful angler I have had the opportunity to fish with twice during major BASS tournament including one he won on Lake Powell Arizona. The flipping method quickly became popular and is still used today by many bass anglers.
Most rigs include a section of line called a sighter. A Sighter is a section of high visible line, usually made of monofilament, that is tied between a short section of leader or sometimes directly to the fly line, and 3 to 5 feet of tippet. It makes it much easier to control the depth of the flies because you can see exactly how much line is below the sighter. For example, you may fish with the sighter only inches above the water or with it a foot or two above the water based on the depth of the water you are fishing. Nymphs can’t swim so they are always on or very near the bottom and you should keep your bottom fly very near the bottom. The overall length of the leader and tippet should be about the same length as the rod you are using. Normally, rods from ten to twelve feet long are used that range in sizes from a 2 weight to a 4 weight.
We will soon be selling our own brand of Euro/Czech, High-sticking fly rods in 3 and 4 weights at a length of 10 feet 6 inches to 11 feet. We will also soon be selling our own brand of rigging for Euro/Czeck style leaders and tippets. We will have these items in stock by this Spring. Like all of our own brand products, they will be of high quality at much better prices than other similar product because we won’t have any middlemen to increase the cost to our customers.
Euro style nymphs all have weighted head and none of the generic patterns I have seen look much like real mayfly nymphs. Real nymphs don’t have bead heads and the different species of them look as different and in many cases more different from each other than mayfly duns. I like the concept of what many call Euro or Czech nymphing which is practically the same as high sticking with tandem rigged nymphs. It can be very effective. But there is yet another problem with the Euro stye nymphs. They have fixed weights and in deep water they can be slow sinking. Depending on the current, slack or strong, they may or may not have the right amount of weight to drift behind the tippet as intended. In slack water, they may not get separated from the tippet and you would have two tippets hanging almost together. In fast deeper water, they would string out but may not have near enough weight to sink. The system works much better where you add the right amount of weight using slit shot, leaded or non-leaded types. That allows you to adjust the flies to the depth and speed of the water.
We will soon be selling generic Euro style nymphs just for those who insist but I won’t recommend them over our Perfect Fly nymphs which look like the real things and are named after the real things. Also, I prefer to use a mayfly emerger, or a caddisfly or midge pupa fly for the upper flies. Nymphs stay on or very near the bottom. They can’t swim.
Tips on Fishing Tailwaters During Late Winter-Early Spring Months
Tailwaters, the types that releases water from the bottom of a lake, offer a big advantage to anglers during very cold weather. They offer warmer water to fish. If the lake is deep enough to have a thermocline, the temperature of the water released from a bottom discharge average about 39 degrees F., regardless of the air temperature. If the air temperature is much lower than 39 degrees F., the water will gradually get colder the further you are fishing downstream of the discharge. Of course, if it is much warmer than 39 degrees F., the water will gradually get warmer the further downstream you fish. My tip is, if the air temperature is below forty degrees, fish the upper part of the tailwater the near the dam the better. The water will usually be warmer.
Always, the big factor in fly fishing tailwaters to consider the strength and amount of the discharges from the dam. It can vary from too strong and high to wade to too low and slow to drift. Tailwater almost always require one to check on the amount of the discharges at the time they plan on fishing the stream. In many cases the company or government authority controlling the releases from the dam provides very good information as the times and amount of water being discharged which determines the depth of water and in other cases except from first hand reports from others, good information isn’t available. You need to learn or know the best discharge rates and water depths for both wading and floating the river including the points at which the stream is too low or too high to fish for wading and/or drifting.
Another difference in freestone streams and tailwaters is hatches may vary according to the section of water due to the varying temperatures of the discharges due to different distances from the discharge. In warm weather, the water at the discharges near the dam is always colder than the water gets a good distance below the dam. In cold weather, just the opposite can be the case. The water can be colder the further you fish downstream from the discharges. This may result in the need to fish different flies to imitate different insects, depending on your location in a tailwater.
During the winter months, you can just about always count on midges being one of the main foods you will need to imitate. Midges have three stages of life-the larvae, pupae and adults and you need to be able to imitate each stage. One reason they are so important is the fact there is usually a lot less food for the trout to eat during the winter months. We usually recommend fishing the larva and pupa imitations rigged in tandem with the pupa fly about 16 to 20 inches above the larva fly. The reason is that the midge pupa is the stage of life that accents from the bottom to the surface of the water.
Other important foods you should be able to imitate in many if not most tailwaters during the winter months are leeches, sculpin, various baitfish, aquatic worms, black flies, winter stoneflies, and blue-winged olive mayflies. There are many others depending on the particular tailwater.
Why Use “Perfect Flies”
The short and simple answer is you will catch more fish, but we realize that is a big, bold, and blunt statement. It’s also one that deserves far more justification. A much better short and simple answer is Perfect Flies resemble the real foods fish eat much better than any other flies on the market; however, that statement also deserves more justification.
First, consider what I think is a plain and simple fact about artificial fishing flies. The more a fly looks and behaves like the food the fish are eating at the time and place one is fishing, the higher their odds of success. Perfect Flies meet those criteria better than any commercially available trout flies. Once knowledgeable fly anglers have closely examined and preferably used Perfect Flies, they rarely if ever, disagree with that statement.
Let’s closely examine what I just called a simple fact about artificial fishing flies. I repeat, the more a fly looks and behaves like the food the fish are eating at the time and place one is fishing, the higher their odds of success. Fish see both an artificial fly and the real foods they imitate under an infinitesimal number of lighting and background situations. To make that simple, fish see both flies and the real foods they imitate very poorly or very well, depending on many things such as the distance the fish is from the fly or real food, the background (bottom, bank, weeds, sky, etc.), the speed of the fly or real food; the speed of the water; the color of the water; and many other factors. In simple terms, they get something between a good look at the fly or real food, or a quick, poor glimpse of it. It is possible for a fish to try to eat that fly or real food item under any of those possible variations. This results in anglers being able to catch fish using flies that doesn’t look much like any of the natural foods in the water it lives in at times. It also results in an angler not being able to fool a fish with a fly that doesn’t closely resemble the natural food it is feeding on. In other words, an angler may be successful in catching a fish under either of these two conditions. It simply becomes a matter of how often and how many fish can be fooled with the fly, or an angler’s odds of success. It doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar or a Las Vegas bookie to determine which situation would have the highest odds of success.
I had known from years of fishing experience for many different species of fish in many parts of the world the way you catch any fish from a panfish to a marlin is to first determine what is the most plentiful and available food the fish were feeding on and then to either use that food for bait, alive or dead, or to use an artificial imitation of it. I’ll admit that process became more complicated when I started fly fishing exclusively and especially for trout due to the large number and types of food the fish rely on for survival. Quite frankly, that just made it more challenging and interesting for me.
I had produced videos on fishing for several years, including many on the subject of saltwater fishing that have sold more than any others world-wide. I thought I could accomplish the same thing fly fishing for trout. Later, I discovered there were many more problems with doing that than I anticipated. Angie and I quickly became frustrated in attempting to produce instructional videos on trout fishing when attempting to show close-up video of the real foods in the water in streams throughout the nation and how to match those foods with flies. We discovered that we couldn’t find flies on the market at the time that closely resembled most of the real foods and insects that trout feed on. Out of the hundreds of flies we purchased from different sources across the nation, very few actually looked like the real things they were supposed to imitate. Many of them didn’t even acknowledge what they were designed and tied to imitate. Many of them were called “pretty flies” that were never even intended to imitate any natural food fish eat. Yet another problem was that most of the flies on the market then and now are dry flies that are supposed to imitate adult stages of life of insects, even though most of the food fish eat are eaten below the surface of the water. We finally gave up on producing most of the programs we set out to produce because we couldn’t show video or pictures of flies that came close to imitating most the real foods that we were acquiring video and photos of from streams across the nation.
We realized that we had acquired video and photos of the real foods nationwide and that one way to solve the problem was simply a matter of getting good fly tiers to come up with patterns that closely matched those pictures and video. As you may expect, that too became a big problem that took a few years, but one we eventually solved that eventually resulted in what we called Perfect Flies.
If you haven’t used Perfect Flies, please check them out. We also sell the generic patterns, but we do not recommend them over our patterns, not because they are our patterns but rather because they are much better imitations of the real foods fish eat. By the way, they are named after the real foods they imitate as opposed to many generic patterns the names of which do not even indicate what they are supposed to imitate.
Aquatic Insects – Imitating Black Flies
The common two-winged biting black fly is not generally recognized as an important trout food but that shouldn’t be the case. They can be very important in many trout streams, especially some tailwaters. Black Flies are true flies of the Simuliidae family. In some cases where scientific studies have been made, the black fly turned out to be the major source of food for trout. Of course, that isn’t commonly the case, but it is common for many trout streams to have good populations of the insect and wherever that is the case, they rightly should be considered important. We developed and sell Perfect Fly imitations of the Black fly larva, pupa, and adult stages of life.
We acquired samples of the real things from the South Holston River in northeastern Tennessee, a very good tailwater trout stream. We and many of our customers have used them successfully throughout various trout streams from coast to coast. Black fly larvae live in colonies, sticking to rocks in riffles. They filter plankton from the water. Colonies can be found in very fast water.
The naturals are small. We offer imitations in hook sizes 18 and 20. Black flies are also called buffalo gnats, turkey gnats and many other names. The larvae of the black flies require a lot of oxygen, and you will only find them in trout streams with faster moving water. They can’t survive in warmer water or polluted waters.
Click here to check out our Perfect Fly “Black Fly” patterns: https://perfectflystore.com/product-category/flies/perfect-fly-trout-flies/stillwater-misc/
Perfect Fly Selections
We have many different Fly Selections that help anglers determine what to use at various locations and times of the year.
Custom Fly Selections: Our most popular type of fly selections are our custom selections that anglers can acquire for specific stream locations and times. They can be purchased for a short or a long trip to any of hundreds of trout streams within the United States at any time of the season. This type of selection allows one the opportunity to set a budget he or she is comfortable with, or to choose what we call our Good, Better, or Best selections. They can select to get flies only, or to have them come with a suitable fly box. We will put the flies in the box and provide a map or plan of the box to indicate the name of the fly, or if one chooses to use their own fly box, we label the flies so one knows the names of the flies. If requested by the customer, we will make notes as to what time of the day and any specific conditions to fish each of the different patterns. The names of all Perfect Flies identify the food or aquatic insect and the stage of life that the fly imitates.
Year-round Fly Selections for various sections of the United States: The selections are as follows:
Central Rock Mountain Streams of Colorado, Utah and Nevada
Mid-Atlantic Streams of Kentucky, Ohio, Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia
Mid-West and Great Lake Streams of Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, and Wisconsin
New England Streams of Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont
Northeastern Streams of New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania
California Streams
Pacific Northwestern Streams of Oregon, and Washington
Southeastern Streams of Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee
Southern Rocky Mountain Streams of Arizona, and New Mexico and
Great Smoky Mountains National Park
Yellowstone National Park
Specific Types of Fly Selections: These are for selections of certain types of flies for various species of fish.
Blue-winged olive selection
Deluxe Trout Midge Selection
Deluxe Trout Terrestrial Selection
Flats Fly Selection (Saltwater)
Inshore Fly Selection (Saltwater)
Pre-rigged Dropper Selection
Pre-rigged Double Nymph Selection
Stream Selection
Steelhead Selectionhttps
Click Here to see the details of these selections: https://perfectflystore.com/product-category/flies/perfect-fly-trout-flies/pftf-selections/