River set up for short & long leader nymphing – competitions

{{+1}}River set up for short & long leader nymphing – competitions{{-1}}

Please read this article in conjunction with the companion article:

Fly fishing tips

At the 2012 World Fly Fishing Championships which I participated in as part of the Australian team leader lengths were limited to twice the length of the fly rod. Whilst at the "Worlds" that limitation was a rule variation I know that FIPS Mouche is currently considering incorporating that limitation in leader length into competition fishing rules.

Over the last few years myself and most other competition fly fishers have to differing degrees come to grips with the French leader style of fly fishing. That technique for me had evolved into fishing a 9 meter Hends Camou leader. It was a good set up but for me but it had severe limitations on anything but a windless day or a day with slight winds at your back. If the wind was in your face or if a little stronger even at your back I had real problems managing what in those conditions was an alarmingly light and increasingly inaccurate set up.

As an alternative I have come up with a "longer leader" set up which is a combination of a thin fly line running line and a 4.3 section of Hends Camou leader and as I will explain below I think is a better set up overall that a French leader.

Leading up to the "Worlds" I was a man on a mission and experimented with quite a few different fly line options including silk lines. The line I settled on as I moved through that experimentation process is a 1# weight Orvis Hydro Superfine forward taper fly line. I chose this line, firstly because it’s dull olive in colour, which is prerequisite for a nymph line for me, and because the running line is finished the same as the forward taper and floats very well and most importantly is only 0.6 of a mm thick and 58 feet long. I have that line loaded on my reel back to front so that I fish the running line and the forward taper is connected to my backing. Off that thin end of the line I have connected with a nail knot a 4.3 meters leader taken from the middle of a 9 meter Camou leader. I initially take a 4.5 meter section from directly above where the Camou leader is 0.3 mm thick and cut the butt off about 4.5 meters (the extra 0.2 meter is taken up in the nail knot to the fly line and the leader half of double uni knot I use at the business end) above that. At the thin end I add two colours (that’s around 60 cm) of Cortland bi colour indicator line. I then have 50 cm of 0.2 mm Grand Max followed by up to 1.8 meters of .12 mm Grand Max tippet. the 50 cm of Grand Max is important as I find that the step down in thickness allows a stronger tippet connection than if I tie my fine tippet directly to the 0.3 mm indicator. This is a great set up and with 3 or 4 meters of the Orvis fly line outside the rod tip it’s as close as I could find to fishing a 9 meter Camou leader.

In fact in some respects for me this is a better set up than 9 meter Camou leader because the fly line is about 10% thicker than the butt of a 9 meter Camou leader and consequently my Orvis running line set up is easier to cast over longer distances particularly in windier conditions. Sure the 0.6 mm running lime is slightly heavier than the first 3 or 4 meters of the Camou leader that I used to use, but I must say that it’s still light enough for it to be held off the water with an 11 foot rod. In faster water particularly there is very little tendency of the hang of that heavier butt section pulling your fly or flies toward you particularly if your using reasonably heavy flies.

The process of preparing and fishing in the Worlds has led me to a better understanding of my fly selection for river fishing. I am now a firm believer that in shallower more sensitive water it's best to fish just one fly over a given section of water and then if that is not successful fish a different fly over the same water. This is actually a page out of the rule book for successful French leader fishing where it's called the induced take and if you can fish multiple flies to a fish with natural drifts without spooking the fish then it definitely does work. With one fly also it is much easier to stay in contact and that of course means feeling more takes and hopefully if your reflexes are quick enough more fish.

If your fishing in a competition and you only have a limited amount of prime water I certainly opt for fishing just one fly at a time and if that fly or subsequent flies are not inducing takes then working though a number of different fly options. Nearly always the choice of fly should be a tungsten bead head fly and the choice of bead should be a weight that in combination with the dressing of the fly is going to get it down close to the bottom. If you not touching the bottom occasionally then your probably not beep enough. The flies you work through in those bits of prime water should be selected for a reason and generally I fish 2 or 3 "bait" flies over a section of water then a "shock" fly. Each fly is quite different to the other and if you have fished with stealth and cunning, and with natural drifts and consequently have not spooked the fish then you will be surprised to see that when fish get used to the first fly you offer or just don't want it how readily they will still take one of the subsequent offerings if its to their liking.

These are some of the teams of flies I have worked through using this process.

Kokra River Slovenia:

Mowamba River Jindabyne

Tumut River Tumut

Eucumbene River Adaminaby

There are however plenty of times when 2 flies are better than 1 but I now fish them differently. If I have a large section to river to prospect and I know I can't give all that river the attention I would give prime water when fishing through my selection of 2 or 3 "bait" flies and a shock fly then I do fish 2 flies. My heavy fly now always goes on the point and my second fly goes on a 15 cm dropper 70-80 cm above the point fly. What happens then is that if I can fish my leader vertical which is much better than laying across the water then I have much better contact with both flies.

Prior to coming top grips with this concept, when I fished 2 flies most of the time, I always fished my heavy fly on the dropper around 80 cm up from the point and my lighter (often unweighted) bait fly on the point. It was that fly that the fish saw first and I now believe that I missed countless takes on my point flies because with 80 cm of tippet sloshing around I just was not feeling the takes.

It's important to get as natural a drift with your fly or flies as possible and that is where the longer and more sensitive river rod comes into its own by allowing me to keep the rod tip in pace with the movement of the water, and as much as possible above the fly or flies with the tippet fully extended so that I don't miss any takes.

My approach to fishing sections of rivers, particularly in competitions, is to fish what I regard as the best water first. That would normally be done by working though a number of different fly options as described above. I would then start with the fly that had the most success on the prime water as the fly I would use as my point fly in a two fly team.

I do fish 2 tungsten bead head lies in really fast or deep water and in that case I pick two contrasting flies from the flies I would generally work through as single flies for the water in question.

When it's not a case of fishing two heavy flies in fast or deep water in most cases the second fly I choose in a 2 fly team is generally an unweighted or lighted weighted non bead head fly including these: