Hi all,

its amazing what you can learn in your first two hours (hole in my waders -getting cold) nymphing but I have a couple of questions.

I was fishing our fast running pools where barbel are known to haunt, casting upstream with a 8'6" 4 weight (Ok I got that - next time I'm taking something longer) and letting the nymph (Czech, GHE and finally Red Montana) flow downstream. My leader is about 9', sinking polyleader with a bit of mono on the end and I have the indicator near the top of the poly leader.

I'm having trouble visualising what the nymph is doing under the indicator - I do mends to stop the line leading the indicator and occasionally the mend will drag the indicator as well but I guess this isn't going to hurt much. Is there an occasion where the indicator is dragging the nymph? At the end of the flow I can drag the line upstream and deposit the indicator closer to me but still downstream and let it flow upstream

How do I get the right height of nymph in the water? How fast do you have to be? The indicator stopped in mid stream just for a split second, and a second time made a bounce totally unlike the usual behaviour in water. There is no way in hell I'm going to be able to react that fast. I also find there is resistance lifting the line and indicator off the water and then the resistance to the rest of the rig - kinda feels funny.

Any reason I can't just stick a maggot on a hook?

Any (useful) comments?

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Have a look at this shortened clip from my DVD (compression for web use isn't brilliant, but you get the idea).

3 most important things are:

1. Location of the fish within the river (reading the water, which the DVD covers in more detail)
2. Having your point fly hit depth (i.e. within inches of the stream bed) in only a few seconds (less than 5)
3. "Contact" with your point fly to detect takes

You must always have the rod tip and tip of fly line travelling downstream ahead of the point fly, and the leader must be as straight as possible between the tip of the flyline and the point fly (no slack)


If the point fly (or any other fly) is travelling downstream ahead of the fly line - you have no bite indication at all and grayling quickly blow out flies from their mouths once they realise they are not actually food. (you will hardly ever feel a take - it is all visual and all subtle)

Use level (not tapered) monofilament from the tip of the flyline and make the overall leader length just a little less than the length of the rod.

In VERY slow flat water - it can be useful to use a floating indicator (yarn, very buoyant fly or even an out and out Fish Pimp style bung). However, most of the time, just a brightly coloured section of braid attached to the permanent loop of your flyline is what is required.

The default setting is to always keep this braid just half an inch or so ABOVE the surface of the water (not touching - so that only monofilament is in contact with the water)

Where you cannot reach far enough to do this, if the water is steady paced enough (if too fast it will whip the flies out of the feeding zone too quickly and too shallow) you can cast a little line - but hold the rod tip high and only lay the last 18" to 36" of flyline on the surface. You must still have a perfect contact between the tip of the flyline and the point fly when you do this (the first part of the czech nymphing section of the DVD shows this approach - it is more difficult than the default approach of holding all the line off the water and tracking under the rod tip).

The best advice I can give, is for you to lose the indicator completely. They are a hinderance, and will only serve to make life more difficult for you. If you really must have some bite detection, use an inline indicator, like one of the short sections of coloured braid that the Czech nymphing guys use, or simply attach a short section of flyline, into the leader, with nail knots. Easy as pie.
Rely on detecting the take by feel, and the visual element picking up slight movements in the line. By using a flaoting indicator, you are halving you chances of bite detection, by only concentrating on the visual. Somtimes the fish has spat the fly out, before the indicator has moved.
Focus on getting the line, between the rod tip and the flies, as straight as possible, and controlling the de[pth, which is easy. You will feel..bump bump bump... on the bottom, so you simply lift it up a tad, so it doesn't snag on the bottom... and wait for the smash...