Im hoping someone can explain to me the mechanics of nymph fishing with long leaders because I just can't get my head around it!Every article I read mentions 20ft plus leaders.I was in a boat at thornton yesterday and I hadn't had a pull after about 4 hours and a few moves,there were two lads in a boat getting one a chuck,I asked what they were doing and they said small black buzzers,just chuck it out and leave them,not on the bung just a floating line.so i did as they said after half an hour I'd had nothing so he shouted over and asked me what my set up was,he said make my leader longer and put a really heavy buzzer on the point and two smaller ones on droppers,I did this,chucked it out and left it as he said,after a few minutes with the end of my fly line well sunk down I had one on the middle dropper!I dont doubt that long leaders work I just need to understand how and why?I had fished the bung earlier with small black buzzers and not had a touch,how is that different from leaving a floating line out?

Hi Russ L

Let's be clear from the start, imitative nymph fishing is all about copying the food you expect the trout to be feeding on and, perhaps more importantly, copying the way that food is moving in the water. Every form of invertebrate trout food is at the mercy of wind and wave. To be truly imitative, you have to present artificials in the same way the trout expect to see them. Most of what I see being described as nymphing is little more than pulling with nymph patterns.


Imitative, or dead drift nymphing is best used on waters rich in buzzer pupae, corixae, hoglice and caddis. It does not work so well on lochs that are more dependent on terrestrial trout food.

Tackle: The sensitivity of light tackle is better suited to this style. I use a 9'or 9'6" rod, with 5-weight floating lines, switching to 6-weight if I want to fish with heavy flies.

Leader Length: Leaders for nymphing are usually a bit longer than the norm. The length, depending on what you are trying to do, can be anything between 15 and 24 ft. Standard start-off length for me is usually around 20 ft. If I reckon the fish are feeding in the top 3-4 ft of water I will use the shorter leaders of 15-18 ft. On the other hand, if the fish are in 10-12 ft of water, in anything more than a gentle breeze you will need the longest leader you can manage; plus a heavily weighted point fly.

It's importanrt you stay in contact with your nymphs by taking up slack line. If you let your nymphs drift around in the breeze this is better than suspending them under a bite indicator which acts as a float and drags the fly line along.

BK

We'll know for sure when a fish writes a book However, in the interim, it's obvious it does make a difference given your very own experience recently. You have to think what was different between the methods. List all the possible differences and it's one of those Which one has to be determined by an elimination process, but there may not be enough evidence to say for definite which one, so we are back to probability and experience to work it out over time. I'm no expert, that's for sure, but obviously the "long leader and leave them alone" approach produces a (very) slowly sinking buzzez....if that's what the fish wanted, then that method was producing it. The addition of the heavy buzzer on the point put your long leader at a distinct angle in the water, thereby fishing different depths more effectively.....it's very possible you could catch more without it by finding the right depth and presenting all three buzzers in that area for longer etc etc....the permutations are many, just keep thing about it....somedays it doesn't matter that much, some days it absolutely essential Just my humble thoughts on the matter

Fishing for rainbows and stocked browns is often a matter of finding the depth the fish are feeding at .
Long leaders allow you to fish your 3 or possibly 4 flys at different depths ,
you will often find that as the day progresses different positions will take the majority of the fish .
heavy point flys dont need to be leaded ,you can find heavy wire hooks in the coarse fishing departments ,dont seem to get fly hooks in heavy wire these days .

__________________
Andy Wren
Winter grayling taking a year off !
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