Hi, so I'm going to give the duo method a proper try next week. I know there's some conversation about whether you tie the dry fly on a dropper, or attach line to the bend of the dry fly hook, but that's NOT my question today. I'm interested in what depth I should tie the second fly on from a practical point of view. So I know the answer is probably "use the depth that the fish are eating at" or some other such wise comment , but in practical terms it's difficult to know, particularly on a new water a) how deep the water is and b) at what level the fish are feeding.

So, what is the practical solution? Do you start with a long(ish) length (18"?) and progressively shorten it? What is the opinion of the forum on the best practical approach.

Cheers
Stuart

I am no expert but seem to have some luck fishing a bit deeper than 18". The river I fish is up to 6' deep in parts but on the shallower runs I have had success with flies at 3' deep in 4'ish of water. I occasionally include a spider on a dropper nearer the dry fly and if the fish are feeding on emergers i will shorten the dropper to about 18" with an unweighted nymph.

As i say no expert but it works alright for me.

Dan

I've had some success, but also far from being en expert. However, starting deep and shallowing up if necessary is best I think. The nymph is not supposed to "hang" under the dry really anyway, its supposed to run through like a nymph, reaching the end of the run and being lifted out before it gets to "hanging" under the dry - ie the dry is acting as an indicator rather than a float. No hard and fast rules though, if they want it hung a short way under the dry as a float, fine, do that. Hopefully the dry will get fish too. For what its worth, the first time I tried this method I already had a dropper set up so just tied the top dry onto that for speed. It worked fine, very well in fact, plus it keeps the dry hook bend free of obstruction for hooking purposes and I did get a lot of fish on the dry too, so I quite like the dropper method. The other way I've been told about which also keeps the top dry free of obstruction is to tie the top dry on, then tie the nymph section on to the line above the dry fly and slide it down til it buts up against the dry fly eye. Almost like tying the nymph off the eye of the top dry rather than the bend.

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Hi All.

Why not fish a moveable dry, then you can fish it at what ever depth you like.

You can have a look here for so information, ac game angling in the home page section( sorry it's a little big )

Try to get a sense of the depth of the water based on the colour. So where you are standing (probably in the margins) the water will be a certain shade of whatever colour the water is (tea in most of yorkshire!).

Use that benchmark to gauge the average depth of fishing lies that you are going to cast to. Then set the length of mono from the dry to the nymph to be ROUGHLY 20 to 30% longer than that (very approximate). So if you are wanting to fish the fly at a depth of around 2 to 2 and a half feet go for somewhere around 3ft of mono from the dry fly to the nymph.

You can then adjust the actual depth that the fly fishes by changing the weight of the point fly (as JeffR already said - you want the nymph to trail behind the dry, not to hang below it). I usually start heavy and work back towards the surface.

The good thing is that when you have got the right weight of fly - the shallow water tends to be faster and the deeper water tends to be slower; so that the combination of depth and pace virtually cancel each other out as you move along the river and you don't have to switch flies all the time.

In areas where you do start to snag the bottom too often - simply reduce the length of the drift (and do - say - 3 mega short drifts along a line that you would normally allow one longer one to run through). Once you get into the more pernickety situation of competition fishing, you will often find that getting the right fly weight to allow you to do tons of really short (say 18") drifts is far more effective than trying "long trotting" drifts that are yards long. This is most likely because the most attractive movement for the fish is the "dead drift but diving for cover" action of the sinking fly or the "sweeping upwards ready to hatch" movement at the lift. With a shorter drift - a greater proportion of the total time in the water is taken up by these two conditions...

You're probably all sick to death of this clip by now but a very simple example of the kinds of water that lend themself to duo fishing and an illustration of leading the dry fly with all of the leader off the water is given here:

Note that the drifts I show as a demo towards the camera are probably a bit too long to be perfect - and that because it is a demontration to a static camera; I stay in the one place far too long (and even virtually repeat the same drift a couple of times). Once you have put one decent drift through a spot, then don't recast to the same place (you might only have to vary the line by six inches either side, but definitely try to make each drift unique).