Shallow nymphs, duh.

[Baughb]

Spent a few days up near Mammoth and on a local creek... I came to a wide, slow, glassy, section of the river and proceeded to watch some large and small fish grab emergers just under the surface. FINALLY the light went off and I tied on some unweighted and small bead headed nymphs, put no weight on the leader and successfully took a number of good fish from that section. My brain just never put the equation together and I "discovered" what y'all have probably known for years. I felt silly but will happily justify it in that a truth come upon is often more memorable than a truth told/read.

Just sharing.

Bob

[Ants]

Hi Bob,

It is certainly not an isolated event.

I remember a period of several days on the Upper Kern where I was energetically floating flies past some (very) noisy sippers. The trout must surely have been tormenting me. I was so fixated on surface flies, I didn't think about other options.

As a matter of practice, it is hard to be objective in trying to figure out what is happening on the water. There are many fish catching options. Some work better at times.

Ants

[duckdog]

When the fish are focused on the surface I will usually start by throwing a dry fly with a floating nymph or an unweighted nymph about 18" off the bend of the dry. If it's an unweighted nymph I will treat half of the !8" tippet with floatant. Same with caddis, I hang a pupa off of the dry. Most day's they just want the nymph in the film, some times it's split with some on the dry and some on the nymph. But there are day's when the dry is what they want. I had one of those day,s in January, so after a while I just clipped off the nymph. I just want to make the fish happy and givem what they want. Figuring it out is half the fun.