George Daniel: Great tips and vids on rigs and nymphing

[afishinado]

Below is a link to George Daniel's site. I'm not sure if you will find a more knowledgeable (or nicer) guy to learn about fly-fishing for trout in PA (a ditto for Amidea Daniel, his wife).

There are a series of great tips and videos on nymphing and rigging as well as streamer fishing by George.

I've been doing the clinch knot trick for adding droppers for years now, and this is the first video I've see mentioning it and showing how it's done.

There's also a good tutorial for rigging an all mono leader for tight-line nymphing.

https://www.livinonthefly.com/blog/

 

[just_jon]

I’m switching. Will also explore this knot on my dropper wet fly leaders.

 

[ryansheehan]

Watched the video but I'm a little confused. I swear at the 2:08 mark he ties a surgeon's knot but calls it a 3 or 4 turn clinch knot.

 

[afishinado]

ryansheehan wrote:
Watched the video but I'm a little confused. I swear at the 2:08 mark he ties a surgeon's knot but calls it a 3 or 4 turn clinch knot.

I went back and checked it out. He misspoke, he ties a surgeons knot 20" or so above the point and used the lower tag of the surgeons knot as a dropper > pretty standard stuff.

The tip is when the dropper is trimmed off a time or two and is too short, clip off the dropper and tie a piece of line with a clinch knot above the existing surgeons knot and slide it down to the surgeons using it as a stop knot instead of clipping the whole tippet off and starting over.

As I wrote above, I've been doing this for a long time and it really works well. I will retie with a surgeons if my tippet is really beat up, but adding a dropper with the clinch knot is a great shortcut if the tippet is in good shape.

 

[ryansheehan]

I really like the idea of just tying above the knot, it's a great tip. I always tie off the tag end when using a dropper above the point. Most of the time I nymph in line but I've been doing more and more drop shotting.

 

[ryansheehan]

afishinado wrote:

ryansheehan wrote:
Watched the video but I'm a little confused. I swear at the 2:08 mark he ties a surgeon's knot but calls it a 3 or 4 turn clinch knot.

I went back and checked it out. He misspoke, he ties a surgeons knot 20" or so above the point and used the lower tag of the surgeons knot as a dropper > pretty standard stuff.

Btw, I've never tied a dropper off using this method, I've always tied off tag while stepping down tippet. Thanks for posting, not so standard for me, excited to give it a shot.

 

[Skook]

Anyone tie off droppers using 6" or so pieces of tippet pre-tied with a small perfection loop on one end?

I saw this in a video, and it seems like a good system. The idea is to wrap the dropper line around the leader just above a knot, slip the end through the perfection loop, pull through, and snug it down above the knot, which acts as a stopper. You can easily add a new dropper simply by backing the line through the loop, removing it from the leader and adding a new pre-tied dropper.

With this system, I think you could match the dropper line diameter to the fly, too. For example, if you're fishing a really small dropper fly, your dropper can be of a thinner line diameter than the leader, which would allow the fly to move more freely than if it was attached to the tag end of the heavier leader material.

It would take some experimenting to see whether a very thin dropper line would be too limp and be inclined to tangle around the leader, though. However, the dropper tends to extend at a 90* angle from the leader similar to the clinch knot dropper George Daniel shows in his video, which should help prevent tangling.

 

[redietz]

Skook wrote:
Anyone tie off droppers using 6" or so pieces of tippet pre-tied with a small perfection loop on one end?

I saw this in a video, and it seems like a good system. The idea is to wrap the dropper line around the leader just above a knot, slip the end through the perfection loop, pull through, and snug it down above the knot, which acts as a stopper. You can easily add a new dropper simply by backing the line through the loop, removing it from the leader and adding a new pre-tied dropper.

Yes, I do this from time to time and it works fine.

 

[GonnaFlyNow]

Afish,

Just wondering, I think if you used an improved clinch knot and a long tag, you could also tie off of this as well. I have seen numerous iterations of this rig.

Also, I notice that GD could use some editing in his books/videos. Anyway, I really like his stuff and the adaptations I see on this website.

All good stuff.

On a recent trip to NY, I tied pretty much the same rig. The only issue I had was that I left the rig on the counter and only realized it when I got to the river.

Cheers,

 

[afishinado]

GonnaFlyNow wrote:
Afish,

Just wondering, I think if you used an improved clinch knot and a long tag, you could also tie off of this as well. I have seen numerous iterations of this rig.

Also, I notice that GD could use some editing in his books/videos. Anyway, I really like his stuff and the adaptations I see on this website.

All good stuff.

On a recent trip to NY, I tied pretty much the same rig. The only issue I had was that I left the rig on the counter and only realized it when I got to the river.

Cheers,

There are a ton of ways to tie in droppers > tags on surgeons or blood knots, perfection loop with dropper pulled through, clinch knot around tippet.......

Here is a video of a nymphing seminar by GD that someone posted. It gives details about how droppers are tied along with a lot of other helpful info

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ObcDRwrlbuo

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e7wwl1zPpNY

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=krs85oX5Hfk