Drag can be good for nymphing

[JustFish]

Just finished reading an article on using the "J-hook" technique for nymphing. Do you ever wonder why you get most of your hits on the last third of your drift? I know it happens to me and I assumed the fish liked the fly beginning to swing which is one of the reasons. Another is it gives the presentation a different look with a little motion, you have more contact with the fly. A lot of times when we make upstream mends we put the indicator upstream of the fly thus missing a lot of hits. With a little drag you often get a more solid hookup.

It's not hard to do, you cast quartering upstream pause to allow slack to build up.

Then make a small upstream mend not going all the way to the indicator leaving a "J" down stream of the indicator(BOBBER)

Feed line into the drift to keep your loop. Narrowing the loop will make a slow steady rise while widening it will make it emerge fast.

Something I have been kinda doing for awhile(a bastardized version though) that really seems to work well.

 

[jayL]

I enjoyed that article.

I do think that the drag gets strikes at the end of the drift, but I also think that's when the flies are at their deepest, and the indicator is also directly downstream of them by then... I'm sure I'm missing strikes on the first half of the drift because there's slack between the indie and the flies. I've been working on mending to fix that, and have found that I've detected more strikes in the first half of the drift.

 

[JustFish]

Well using this technique also gets your flies deeper quicker. I have been kinda doing this for years funny I didn't know there was a name for it. :-D

 

[jayL]

I know how much you'll love to head that I prefer the TUCK CAST to get em deep. I learned it at the orvis store.

:-D :lol:

 

[JustFish]

jayL wrote:
I know how much you'll love to head that I prefer the TUCK CAST to get em deep. I learned it at the orvis store.

:-D :lol:

I am speechless!!! :lol: