lots of info on the forum about upstream nymphing, im new to river fishing, how can i fish it downstream.

It would have to be a very special situation to make downstream nymphing better than upstream nymphing. One can fish flies by swinging them downstream for an induced take, but not for what is normally thought of as drag free nymphing.

There are multiple disadvantages to downstream drag free nymphing.

Since you cannot see the take, you must either rely on an indicator or on feel. Then when you strike, you pull the fly out of the fish's mouth rather than into it. Hooking is a problem.

Secondly, should you hook the fish, you are pulling the fish back to you against the current. The fish has an advantage. When you nymph upstream, the fish is pulling against and not with the current. You have an advantage.

The fish are facing upstream toward you, and may see you or any distrubance from your wading. So you more likely to spook fish. When you have to pick up to recast, you pickup will be over the area you are fishing so again you can spook fish.

When fishing heavy multi fly rigs, the standard arialized cast is not practical. The water tension cast with an upstream (lob) is often used. You can't use this on downstream casts.

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Silver Creek- "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought"....Szent-Gyorgy

If you want to fish downstream, you might have more success fishing with traditional wet flies like Peter ross, Invicta, Teal Blue and Silver etc than you will with nymphs. Fish them "across and down" on a reasonable lightly tensioned line. (I am very open to correction on this advice though.) That's for trout, if you're fishing for winter grayling then I don't know.

It is possible to get drag free drifts downstream. Indeed when fishing his Klinkhammer, Hans Van Klinken feels he can get longer drag free drifts when fishing downstream.

However that's a difficult technique. Getting drag-free drifts is a lot easier when fishing upstream. I'd encourage you to fish upstream most of the time on rivers. It's hard at first keeping in contact with the flies and stopping a large loop of line forming on the downstream side of your rod-tip, but you'll soon get the hang of it.

so i take it i enter the water downstream and work upstream. what should i be looking for as a take? how long should i be leaving my line in the water? the river i fish is quite fast at the moment do i need to mend my line accordingly? would you recommend a strike indicator

Don't write off using the downstream nymph. In March and until the big flies start coming off I mostly fish down and across and always take fish and not just the wee stuff.

I fish medium paced deeper water where the trout will be lying early on, and work a single, heavy nymph on a long line and long leader carefully mending the line as required. Most takes are on the lift.

I find downstream more effective with an induced take in this type of water than upstream nymphing which works better later on in the faster shallower water.

As soon as the MB's and LDO's start hatching I'm pointing upstream with the trout for the rest of the season.

Did I misunderstand the question?

Were you asking about downstream nymphing which is totally downstream, or techniques which begin with an upstream cast but end downstream of the angler?

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Silver Creek- "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought"....Szent-Gyorgy

Hi', Scott. If you want to fish a downstream fly at depth, your best bet is to start with an upstream cast, at about 45 degrees to the bank at your back. As the line drifts back towards you, raise the rod to take up the slack; because you are not putting tension on the line, the flies should sink, and the current will aid that sinking. Track the flies and line tip through the arc of the travel of the sunken flies, keeping the rod at a steep angle. You will soon learn how to track the flies, keeping in contact with their progress by watching the loop of line drooping from your high rod tip to the water, and you use the exposed leader as a bite indicator. When you have tracked the flies around to the point where your rod tip, line and leader are at right angles to the opposite bank, the flies will be about as deep as you can get them, without adding more weight.
At this point, you are going to start fishing downstream with flies that are already sunk, and to keep them down in the water column, you have to fish a slack line, which means that as the line, leader and flies swing around, you must now lower the rod tip in order to feed some slack into the system.
While watching the connection between line and leader, think of the end of the line as you would a swing-tip bite indicator. The system is slack enough to permit a fish to take without feeling your presence, the slack loop of line allows the fish to turn away or down with the fly, and you tighten as the leader dabs away, swinging the suspended line.
There is a limit at which you are lost for spare line, when the rod is low and pointing down stream at an angle; then the pull of the flow will buoy the leader and flies up through the water column, which could induce a take. At any time after you reach the point where you have the rod etc at right angles to the opposite bank, a check on the tracking movement of the rod will cause a lift. Dropping the rod and tracking will produce a little slack, which permits the flies to sink a little. You may,with pratice, learn to mend upstream in order to put slack line on the water. It is absolutely essential to use a high stick action, to keep the line off the water, to track the gear around smoothly, and to watch the leader where it enters the water like the proverbial hawk. If you really wish to excel at this method,which the Americans claim is the Leisenring Lift, I would advise you to borrow someone's 11ft number 3 or 4-wt, if you can find one. I was using an 11ft, 5-wt home-made rod, based on a Hardy Fibatube set of carbon blanks, long before I ever heard of the Leisenring Lift. I came up with the idea to help some kids to get around the problem of tight line missed bites, while fishing across-and -down. They learned to strike by sight, rather than touch, and they caught quite a few trout by slack-lining downstream. I don't know of another way of doing it. Sorry it took so long to describe. I should say that it is also possible to see upstream bites that register as you raise the rod to take up the slack. It's easier to do than it is to describe. Cheers, Jada.
PS. You could always try long-trotting with a small red worm. No problem there; but that is too easy, I hear you say!!.

Good post Jada, thats pretty much exactly how I fish spiders and nymphs downstream.

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“Where the footprints end the fishing begins”

+1 here!

Johan

Now that I understand the question, a good way to extend the downstream drift is to "stack" slack line into the drift. This done in two ways.

If the line is directly downstream from you, you can stack mend by flipping extra line out of the rod guides into the drift. This is called stack mending.

If the drift is away from you, you do roll cast stack mends into the drift. This is done by having loose line available at your feet. Then learn to roll cast this line so that it collapses into the line of drift. The line that is roll cast provides the slack line so the drag free drift is "extended" further downstream than if you terminated the drift without stacking line.

Both are explained in the references below:


Extreme Nymphing | How to get longer drifts and cover water more effectively for tough steelhead

Fly-Fishing Western Trout Streams - Jim McLennan - Google Books

Trout Lessons: Freewheeling Tactics ... - Ed Engle - Google Books

West Michigan Fly Fishing Ventures Guided fishing trips on the Muskegon river

Working the Line - Technique - American Angler Magazine

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Silver Creek- "Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what nobody has thought"....Szent-Gyorgy