Friends Don’t Let Friends Euro

I hate Euro nymphing. There. I said it. Flame away in the comments. I’ll wait here, practicing my single-hand Spey and breaking down that fictional Paul Maclean “Shadow Cast”.

“They call it ‘Czech-style’ nymphing,” my salty fly-fishing friend, Chet, drawled through gritted teeth. That was almost 15 years ago, when we were chatting about the nymphing style making its hushed entrance into the American fly-fishing zeitgeist. It was a bit of a novelty then—which is how we got on the topic—and an intriguing way to catch fish. It certainly made sense. Get your flies down fast to make contact with the bottom, where the fish are. Lead your flies in sync with the current. Keep your line tight to feel subtle strikes. Lather, rinse, repeat. 

But I just don’t like it. And I consider acknowledging what I don’t like a personal growth milestone.

I didn’t always hate Euro nymphing. I will confess to a period in my fly fishing when I coveted a 10½-foot 3-weight Euro rod. I never got the rod, but I did dip a toe in with some Euro-specific line and a spool of sighter tippet to rig my favorite 9-foot 5-weight. That worked just fine, bringing fish to hand a handful of times, including a solid 18-inch hen on the Truckee in a riffle you would tumble into if you fell out of the car.

If you like indiscriminately catching a lot of fish, then by all means, fish Euro. It’s a highly effective way to catch fish. Fly anglers on international fly-fishing teams all fish a variation of Euro style in competition, be it Czech, Polish, French, Spanish, or Hobbit. Okay, there’s no “Hobbit-style nymphing,” probably because those smoke-ring-blowing, second-breakfast-eating Shire-dwellers fish only dries. Hobbitsesss…

Euro nymphing certainly neutralizes some of the challenges of getting flies down into the zone, achieving and maintaining a drag-free drift, and keeping slack out of your system. That doesn’t mean it’s an easy way to fish. Like every other aspect of fly fishing, it can take a while to get good at it. But I’ll argue that tightline nymphing is easier to learn than casting a tight loop 60 feet to a gentle sipper—or than learning upper-division Calculus.

There’s plenty of good info out there for the Euro Nymphing Curious. I’ll recommend EJ Melzer’s article, “The Euro Nymphing Evolution,” in the Summer 2025 issue as a great primer on the history and how-to of Euro nymphing. In that same issue, Matt Callies’s “At the Vise” article lays out everything that goes into tying (and fishing) Euro-style flies. And John Fellner’s beautiful story about his son embracing Euro nymphing and then putting it to the test in friendly competition against none other than Craig Ballenger on the Upper Sac ties together all the feel-good Euro vibes you could want. 

Looking back at those articles, even though they’re all about Euro nymphing <ugh>, the main takeaway is that there’s always something to learn from trying something new. And constantly learning is one of the things I love about our awesome sport.

Mike Mercer summed it up nicely in his February 22, 2026 “Less Weight” blog post:

“I will readily agree that a proficient Euro-nympher will hook more fish than I on any given day … (Author’s Note: Hooking more fish than Mike Mercer seems sacrilegious.) I encourage anglers to fish in the way they enjoy and to always keep an open mind so as to learn from each other and the fish.”

Mad respect for Mike’s perspective on the effectiveness of Euro nymphing and his encouragement to fish the way you like. I just happen to find fishing Euro to be as much fun as I would find eating poutine for sport. And eating poutine should never be a sporting activity. You eat poutine like a regular person: after midnight and as your next bad decision of the night.

I’ve definitely learned a thing or two from the times I’ve fished Euro, so I’m not a complete hater of the subject. Euro nymphing has added some new weapons to my fly-fishing arsenal. The technique gave rise to the jigged Perdigon style of fly, and those have become my default point fly when I fish sub-surface. It also made my downstream hooksets fire. Tightlining the Euro rig downstream lends itself naturally to a downstream hookset. Now if only I could transfer that skill to my non-Euro endeavors consistently. There sure would be a lot less swearing on the water. But, man, I just can’t come back around to saying I like fishing that way.

So why the sharp words for Euro? Simply enough, I like casting and fishing long drifts. To me, fishing Euro is flop-drag-repeat through a porthole-sized window of water. Flop. Not cast—flop. That’s how I learned the Euro “cast,” and how I hear it taught whenever I’m in earshot of a Euro lesson. Drag. Because that’s what that duck looks and quacks like. Aaaand Repeat. Compare that to cast-mend-drift-drift-feed-drift-swing on a long, buttery run. One of these looks like the balletic grace of fly fishing. The other looks like fly fishing tweaking out on six espressos.

Also—and brace for impact here—is flop-drag-repeat really fly fishing? I have a guide friend who says of Euro, “It may be fishing with a fly rod, fly line, and flies—but it is NOT flyfishing.” I’m not gonna tell you who this guide is, because Euro nymphers might stop booking with him. But he’s excellent, speaking truth, and I need him available on weekends.

The guys over at the Flylords podcast chatted up Euro nymphing in their December 18, 2025 “Hill to Die On” segment, taking umbrage with the notion that “Euro nymphers catch the most fish”—and then going on to say Euro is definitely not sexy. Agree! Their postulation that it was “catching” and “not fishing” rang true to me like church bells on a 40-degree Sunday morning. I go fishing to fish, not necessarily to catch.

Here’s the thing, though. Hand over heart. Fly fishing is our awesome sport precisely because it makes room for all of this—the casters and the floppers, the Hobbit dry-fly purists and the streamer chuckers, the people who measure a day by fish counts and those who measure it by the quality of one epic 60-foot cast to a rising fish they never hook. I don’t have to love Euro to respect those who do it. I just reserve the right not to do it myself and, possibly, just maybe, to get a tattoo about it someday.

If my wife ever loses a bet. Hopefully, my position on Euro nymphing doesn’t mean I need to go into witness protection—or start saying yes when asked, “Is Pepsi okay?” I’m curious whether there are any other “Friends don’t let friends Euro” people out there. If there are, and we become anglers non grata, I guess we can seek refuge by living on tostones and tater tots on the azure waters of Belize, where I don’t think anyone fishes Euro.

Disclaimer: The views expressed here are entirely those of the author and not necessarily those of the publication. California Fly Fisher and its editors will not coordinate Curtis’s witness protection if the tightline lobby tracks him down—on Ambergris Caye in Belize (wink).