I bought a new guitar, an acoustic guitar, a nice one. No electronics; no pickups, no amplifiers, no pedals. Wood and strings and not much else. Pure natural sound. Sitting on the couch for a month straight with nothing much else to do, I played the heck out of it. The cats listened and rarely commented. I played the same songs over and over and over again. That’s what you do with guitars. I was practicing. I wasn’t practicing to prepare for anything. There was no upcoming gig. I was just trying to play shit better. That is good enough. And that is dry fly fishing.
Fly fishing is a casting sport, or at least once was. Or at least I insist it is. It takes practice to be good. And the results that come from practice are satisfying. A good cast is a thing of beauty, regardless as to whether the cast results in anything other than a good cast. Ostensibly there is a purpose to the good cast and that is to catch a fish. But it isn’t just that. Fish happen. Good casts are earned.
The sport of fly fishing has broadened. Had to happen. And it’s a good thing. More people are now doing it than ever before. It is again a thing, like it was after The Movie came out. We can blame social media.
Not too long ago it was proclaimed that fly fishing would soon die out because there was no new recruitment of young anglers. It was cynically said that all the kids were busy playing video games and were not interested or allowed to go outside and do outside stuff other than oppressively parentally observed soccer. I was one of the guys who said that. (I like cynicism, by the way. It is an art in itself, and also takes practice to do it well, but that’s another story.) However, in this case it was fake news. Lots of young folk are getting into fly fishing, and they are driving the diversification of fly-fishing techniques. Pushing the boundaries, if you will. Creating synthetic electronica dance music on their computer machines, to force the creating and practicing music analogy a bit further.
Go to YouTube and search “nymphing techniques.” (You better add “fly fishing” to your search or you might get some unintended interesting, yet prurient results.) You will find literally tons of videos (just kidding, videos don’t have mass… do they?) describing the effectiveness of a multitude of subsurface techniques, and of the boxes of new flies being tied, resined, UV’d, then filmed, for that same subsurface purpose.
Many of these new sophisticated techniques are very effective. And to be honest, they do have an art of their own. Or arts of their own. And, oddly enough, they are mostly Euro.* You would think that Great American xenophobia and a thoroughgoing American ignorance of geography might be a limiting factor, but you don’t have to know where Poland, France, or the Czech Republic are to adopt their nymphing techniques. None of these Euro techniques could be said to have art to their casting, unless it is an art not to tangle your complex, multi-fly, multi-weight, nymph ring and swivel rig on any cast, because re-rigging those setups is a monstrous bitch. Most of these techniques barely involve a fly line at all.
So casting in a traditional sense isn’t desired or even possible.
I’m not really bashing these techniques or the flies. They are interesting and novel and innovative and productive and are bringing a new enthusiasm to the sport of fly fishing.
But contrary to popular belief, these techniques are limiting. Not limiting in an effectiveness sense, because if the conditions are right you can just about clean out a hole using them. But that’s just it. You’re fishing a hole. (That’s obviously a little overstated; the techniques are multifarious because they are developed to fish different kinds of water, but I still have a point to make, so let me do it as obtusely as possible.)
One of the most apparent limitations of these techniques is, oddly enough, geographic. This seems odd, given that they are almost all named after European countries. Rivers and parts of rivers with conditions and areas that are conducive to these nymphing techniques are frankly crowded these days because all the folks are seeking the same kind of water that works for the new techniques they want to use. I’m not into naming names, mainly because I don’t what to give any hints about where I do or conversely do not fish, if, indeed, I fish at all, and maybe I don’t, but I’m not into crowds — a covid party is not my natural milieu. I’ve been fishing places with dry flies and catching fish and almost always having these places to myself. And I’m actually casting, or at least practicing casting.
It has been reported that there are more miles of running trout water in California than there are in Montana. (I don’t know if that is actually true, and I don’t really care, because now in America things are true because we want to believe them, and are no longer believed because they are true.) But, like in Montana, 90 percent of the people are fishing 10 percent of the water, and one of the reasons for this is nymphing, Euro and otherwise. But if you get off the beaten path, if you look for waters where a dry fly properly presented will produce, if you look for waters whose names don’t start with a “T,” “S,” “M,” or “Y,” you will find that you are having a really good day on the water, and doing it with less people around.
Recently, on a camping trip to a less-known smaller stream I’ve been fishing for years, we ran into a guy holding a fly rod and got into a roundabout tentative conversation with him. Once we mutually determined that we could talk freely with each other (we determined we shared the same current outrages — sorry, it’s a sign of the times), he said that he had done poorly that morning, only catching one small f ish. Of course we asked how he had done it and he showed us his nymph rig. I’ve always done well on this water and I’ve never once used anything but a dry fly and told him so. So much for us being on the same side of the discussion. He looked at us skeptically and gave us the “Ya, but nymphs catch lots of fish” retort. After we set up camp my old lady (please don’t tell her I called her that!) rigged a glass rod with a purple dry fly that appealed to her and fished the same water as our new friend did. She got ten. In less than an hour.
I’m not just talking about fishing rivers, streams, and creeks other than the popular ones, the “T,” “S,” “M,” or “Y” waters, because this is true even on the latter: if you learn to dry-fly fish, if you really put as much effort into doing it well as you put into the new nymphing techniques, you will find that you fish different water than that which is nymphed — water that doesn’t get as much pressure, water with far fewer folks messing it up. And you will be fishing at times other than those when the nymphers are at it. And you will be doing it much more artistically. And you’ll actually catch fish.
I can tell by the fact that you’ve made it this far that you are a thorough and determined reader, so as such I assume that you have noticed that I haven’t mentioned any specific techniques for dry-fly fishing, like fishing upstream, and how to mend, or mentioned any gear recommendations, such as whether to use a weight forward line or perhaps a double taper, or that I haven’t mentioned any specific flies to use, like suggesting using attractor dries, or hatch-matchers, or terrestrials, and when to make the choice to use any of those. You are right; I haven’t. Back in the day, in the way, way back, when we heard a new song we wanted to learn, we put the LP on the turntable and repeatedly backed up the needle and played parts over and over and over until maybe we could mimic what Jimi or Keith or the other Jimi was playing. It was hard to learn this way, but it could be done, sometimes successfully. Now you can type “Kashmir guitar tutorial” into YouTube and be presented with twenty instructors showing you exactly how it’s done, and fifteen of them will be correct. But you’ll probably get no results if you type “I Wanna Marry a Lighthouse Keeper guitar tutorial” into YouTube. Dry-fly f ishing is kinda like learning to play “I Wanna Marry a Lighthouse Keeper” on the guitar. You need to do it on your own. You need to earn it. And the rewards will be greater. Just don’t annoy anyone by playing “I Wanna Marry a Lighthouse Keeper” for them.
* It can be argued that most nymphing techniques are actually American inventions: effective bobber techniques were developed in the 1980s by Hixon and Schubert; high-stick nymphing, which is akin to many of the Euro techniques, was developed in the 1950s by Ted Fay and Joe Kimsey. However, those techniques were fairly regional, being used mainly on the waters north and east of Redding. The diversity and sophistication that we are seeing with these new Euro techniques, especially with the rigging and flies developed for them, are new.
