Breathing life into your flies

[afishinado]

Great article about moving your flies as opposed to dead drifting.

I often dead drift first with my plan B being adding movement to my flies. There are times when a little movement is the key to getting strikes. In highly pressured streams some fly movement is the sign of life to a fish. But, I suggest you try to see how little you can move your flies on the water.

https://www.hatchmag.com/articles/evolving-beyond-dead-drift-breathing-life-your-dry-flies/7711128

 

[redietz]

afishinado wrote:

I often dead drift first with my plan B being adding movement to my flies. There are times when a little movement is the key to getting strikes. In highly pressured streams some fly movement is the sign of life to a fish. But, I suggest you try to see how little you can move your flies on the water.

I agree. Movement is plan B, but sometime necessary. I figure I'm less likely to spook fish by trying the dead drift first, then try some motion if that doesn't work.

Leonard Wright wrote a whole book on the subject called Fishing the Dry Fly As a Living Insect. He referred to his preferred movement as "the sudden inch", which gives you an idea of how much motion he was talking about.

 

[afishinado]

redietz wrote:

afishinado wrote:

I often dead drift first with my plan B being adding movement to my flies. There are times when a little movement is the key to getting strikes. In highly pressured streams some fly movement is the sign of life to a fish. But, I suggest you try to see how little you can move your flies on the water.

I agree. Movement is plan B, but sometime necessary. I figure I'm less likely to spook fish by trying the dead drift first, then try some motion if that doesn't work.

Leonard Wright wrote a whole book on the subject called Fishing the Dry Fly As a Living Insect. He referred to his preferred movement as "the sudden inch", which gives you an idea of how much motion he was talking about.

^ I have that book. It gives some good insight into how and when to move a fly to elicit a strike.

If a dead drift doesn't work on a riser I'll let him rest, and if he's still rising, I often try to give the fly some movement before changing my fly. That's best done on the edge of the fishes window and not right on top of him since it's very difficult to mimic an insect's movement without making a disturbance with your leader and tippet.

Like I wrote above, making the bug seem alive often triggers fish to hit, but too much movement or disturbance will likely put him down.

You have to experiment and try different things. It's really fun thing to try, much like a chess game.