Catching Suspended Trout

By Brown Hobson

Most fly anglers who have fished for trout a few times or more understand that most of trout’s diet is consumed sub surface.  I have heard stats that suggest trout consume over 90% of their food under water.  That means a Thingamabobber with split shot or a heavy Czech nymph rig dragging the flies to the bottom will work all the time right?  While nymphs on the bottom (we have a blog post on adding split shot coming out early in 2015) will often work that is not always true.  Fish in lakes suspend in the current why wouldn’t river trout?  The answer is they do and nymph fishermen often miss out on those fish that are in the middle of the water column.  I was guiding a few weeks ago and could see trout feeding and couldn’t catch them with my standard nymph rig (nymphs within 12 inches of the bottom).  I saw an occasional trout rising and more trout darting back and forth in the riffles feeding.  A long time ago I learned that I must change not just flies, but rigs whenever I am not finding success catching fish.  So we took the strike indicators off our leaders and switched to a Parachute Madam X Dry Fly with a Soft Hackle about three feet deep tied off the bend of the PMX Dry Fly.  Many of you know this rig as a hopper and a dropper or less specifically a dry dropper.  We instantly started catching trout on both the dry fly and our dropper nymph.  We had the exact same soft hackle on our nymph rig, but it wasn’t getting eaten.  I knew they were eating caddis pupae and that the soft hackle should work because I saw caddis pupae in a stomach sample I had taken earlier in the day.  Obviously we had the right fly in the wrong part of the water column.   As soon as we got the fly off the bottom and in the middle part of the column fish nailed it.  They also ate our dry fly.  There were no hoppers or stoneflies out, but the trout were only a few feet from the surface and were opportunistically taking our dry.  This great dry dropper action lasted a few weeks, but I still do catch most of my fish under strike indicators close to the bottom.  I do always remember to try dry dropper rigs if I get stumped nymph fishing, and usually have a couple extra dry dropper rods rigged in my boat so I can switch easily.  If you don’t have the luxury of carrying two rods try the ORVIS dropper box.  It lets you pre tie Dry fly and Droppers and carry them tangle free.  Below are links to an ORVIS Blog article from Cliff Weisse of Three Rivers Ranch on how to rig dry droppers and a link to the ORVIS Dropper Box.

http://www.orvis.com/news/fly-fishing/pro-tip-a-better-way-to-rig-droppers/

http://www.orvis.com/p/dropper-rig-fly-box/76kh

 

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