3 easy ways to get your fly down deeper (where the big ones are!)

For a long time, I caught most of my river trout on the surface, and started to think I was a pretty hot dry-fly angler. I wasn’t. Instead, I’d come to rely on dry flies because I couldn’t catch much on nymphs, streamers and other subsurface patterns. And the reason, I eventually learned, was because I wasn’t fishing deep enough. River fish tend to hold near the bottom, where the current is slower. Plus, most of their diet is subsurface. So, for consistent success, you need to get your fly down deep. Here are a few options…

#1  WEIGHTED FLIES

The classic method of weighting flies is to wrap lead wire around the hook shank, hidden under the body material. This does the job, but it presents logistical problems if you also carry unweighted versions of your favourite flies. Unless you possess superhuman perception, weighted and unweighted size 10 Woolly Buggers look and feel virtually identical. I tried many organizational schemes to deal with this, but on the water, those plans all fell apart.

Finally, I decided to only use weighted flies tied with visible external doodads, such as metal cones and beads. Now I know at a glance exactly how much weight is on a fly. Cone and bead heads also add flash, and give larger streamers a slight jigging motion, which can be very attractive to fish.