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IMPORTANT
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NYMPHING - part one
Our September 1999 contribution from Terry Lawton
Upstream nymphing is an exciting and challenging way to take trout in a river - particularly in shallow,clear water when you can see everything happening. Why do we fish nymphs and upstream? The reason is that fish take the vast majority of their food below the surface. And by fishing upstream, you approach the fish from behind so that there is less chance of it seeing you.
Nymph fishing is all about endeavouring to represent a nymph swimming to the surface to hatch into a fly. The late Frank Sawyer maintained that general shape and colour, together with size, are of greater importance in an artificial nymph than an exact copy. So we are not always try for an exact match of hatching nymphs.
There are two points that are fundamental to successful upstream nymphing: locating feeding fish and accurate casting. When dry fly fishing you are casting to a fish that has risen - and thus feeding - and you are operating in two planes only. When nymphing, your quarry may not always be so easy to see and you have to cope with a third dimension - the depth at which the fish is lying.
TACKLE AND EQUIPMENT
Rod length is not critical to successful nymphing. You need a rod suited to local conditions and one that is not too short as it may make line control unnecessarily difficult. A rod of between eight foot six inches and nine feet is ideal. A floating line is all that will be needed and also a floating leader. You are unlikely to be fishing at depths great enough to need a sinking line or leader.
I prefer a long (eight foot) braided leader, greased to make it float, and a tippet of up to four feet. I finish the leader with a loop tied with a surgeon's knot to which I tie the tippet. While the choice of tippet material is likely to be one of personal preference, double strength or fluorocarbon material does have the advantage of much reduced visibility, particularly when casting close to a fish, coupled with enough strength to be able to keep a fish out of a weed bed. You control the depth of drift of your nymph by greasing more or less of the tippet. For a fish lying deep in the water, you will not want to grease any of the tippet; for fish feeding just under or even in the surface film, you will have to grease all but the last few inches of the tippet. The weight of your nymph and the speed of the current will also influence how deep you can fish.
For newcomers to nymph fishing, detecting a take can seem to be impossible. To help detect subtle takes, I use a fluorescent putty-type indicator. You will need only a tiny piece - it must be so small that it does not affect casting nor act as a float. I roll a tiny pinch onto the end of the leader. The putty is available in different colours and whilst its use may upset some purists, its use can make the difference between catching or missing fish in difficult conditions. The great thing about it is that it gives you something to concentrate on, particularly if it is difficult to see the end of your leader due to the light or wind-ruffled water.
It is much easier to detect a take when you are fishing for fish that you can see. So the last piece of essential equipment is a good pair of polarised glasses. Not only will they help you to spot fish in the water, but they will help you to see its reaction - if any - to your nymph and whether or not its your fly.
Nymphs, with one exception, must sink straight away so always use leaded ones. Soaking your nymph with saliva will help it to sink first cast. If you tie your own flies you can make them with different amounts of weight to cater for different water depths and flows. The only exception to this is when you are casting to fish feeding on emergers in or just under the surface film and you are using an artificial nymph. Bead heads can be useful if you need a nymph to sink quickly - a fish lying in a hole or in a short run between weed beds. Sometimes you will get an immediate response but there are times when the flash of the head can be too much and put off a fish if you don't take it within a cast or two. Use with discretion.
WHERE DO WE START?
If there are no fish rising or obviously feeding, how to you decide which fish to cast to? If there is a choice of fish, go for the one that is highest in the water ie nearest the surface. Such a fish is more likely to be feeding or at least showing interest in food. You may even see a flash of white as it opens its mouth or it may move to one side to intercept a passing nymph. Fish that are lying very close to the bottom, hardly moving, can be caught but they often need waking up and then made to feel hungry. If there is a choice, go for the fish nearest the surface.
Some fish may be "on the fin" and taking nymphs. Other fish may be bulging and taking nymphs just below the surface and the tell-tale bulge will give away their position. Sometimes a fish will move about chasing nymphs, making it difficult to know just where to cast. If you fish blind or fish the water in the hope of intercepting a fish, you run the risk of frightening fish that you have not seen or do not know are there.
When you have identified a fish - either that you can see feeding or likely to show interest - in an approachable lie, the objective is to cast your nymph up and across the stream and to allow it to follow a dead drift, at the same speed as the current, back down towards your fish. By casting up and across you can keep your line away from the fish. Casting straight upstream and alongside a fish is the best way to scare it, particularly on a sunny day in low water when the shadow of the line will spook it. If you are casting to a fish lying close in under your own bank, there may no other way to cast than straight upstream and hope that you can achieve a shepherd's crook cast to keep some of the line away from the fish.
Having made your cast, you need to retrieve line as the nymph floats downstream towards you. In fast water this happens very quickly. The stillwater man's figure of eight retrieve which is designed to impart movement to a nymph, is not needed on a river. Always hold the line between the index finger of your rod hand and the handle: this allows you to trap the line when you need to tighten into a fish. (I prefer to talk about tightening into a fish, rather than striking, as the latter can sound too aggressive and you may simply yank the hook out of the fish's mouth.) Try to retrieve the line in good size coils which makes it easier to cast again at the end of the drift. Too much slack line can make it impossible to tighten into a fish quickly enough.
When you lift off and cast again will depend on whether or not your nymph may be seen by another fish but, to ensure that you always fish upstream, you must lift off when your nymph is still in front or upstream from you. There are times when you will want to fish a very short cast and the fly will be well upstream and on other occasions you will want to fish the cast out to the bitter end, perhaps by raising the rod so that only the leader is on the water.