Nymphing

Nymph fishing is the most common method I use and will be discussing this form of fly fishing the most in this blog. I started out fly fishing like most, using dry flies. I started out fishing small streams in wilderness areas where the fish readily rose to dries. These areas included Eagle Cap Wilderness in Oregon, the Sun Valley area in Idaho and the mountains just above the Washington State border in Canada. I taught myself how to tie flies and used these exclusively.

While studying at BYU, I watched someone catch brown trout from the Provo River with nymphs. I was intrigued and started studying nymph fishing. I nymph fished from the mouth of Provo canyon all the way to Deer Creek Dam. I noticed a couple of things nymph fishing. The size of the trout I caught was consistently larger. The number of trout I caught was higher. Although I admit it is more fun to watch the fish rise to the dry fly, I obtain even more joy catching more and larger fish.

I constantly experiment with different methods and in future blogs I will go into the details of setting up the different rig systems. I will illustrate the setups of various dropper systems along with the weight and strike indicator methods. I will discuss the pros and cons of each and my experience using these.