Dry fly drag ?

[fly_guy12955]

On Sportfishing on the Fly tonite, they were casting out drys, letting them float till they were straight down stream,,then strip them in like you would a streamer. They keep the strip just slow enough the fly would stay on the surface but it was a pretty still a pretty clippy retrieve. The char were killin' the dries on the 'strip retrieve' back upstream.

Now on bass and such, I've done quite the similar thing. But that's bass.

 

[Rip Tide]

Fish expect to see their food behave in a certain way.
Anything other than "natural" is not comprehensible to them and therefore not food.

Fooling fish is what we do. How you chose to do it is up to you.

 

[waterfordcreek]

Just watched it....they usually bore the heck outa me.

But now...In the loop...Fly nation...TnFF...gamefisher and that OTHER show.

The only TV i watch all week....well...except for a couple 10 or so baseball games...


Jim

 

[fly_guy12955]

What I was getting at is,,I rarely terminate a drift just because it's not playing out text book perfect.

Strange things can and do happen. Rest assured the fish haven't read that same book.

And here were guys 'stripping' dry flys upstream. One never knows....

Mike

 

[aggieoutlaw]

I will let my dry fly sit out on a lake until it sinks then slowly retrieve it and the technique works surprisingly well. Of course I stumbled into it accidentally b

 

[mikel]

I will let my dry fly sit out on a lake until it sinks then slowly retrieve it and the technique works surprisingly well. Of course I stumbled into it accidentally b

I do the same thing, and when I'm smart I switch to a soft hackle real fast and strip it just under the surface

 

[aggieoutlaw]

Exactly my trick. Tough to pull off. But it works in my water

 

[dwtalso]

I discovered just recently that the trout I fish for in a couple of tiny streams seem to key on a little drag with Elk Hair Caddis. I have been told and read here and there more than enough times that this was a waste of time.

I found this out accidently when I left a fly hung in the weeds at the end of a drift. On these little streams I have to drape the line across the grass and try to get just the fly and a little leader on the water. Drifts are from a few inches to a couple of feet but the trout are aggressive so strikes typically occur a fraction of a second after the fly hits the water. When a strike doesn't occur the leader winds up pulling through the grass on the bank and the fly extends downstream. Usually I lift the rig up and prepare for the next cast before the leader gets stretched out downstream.

One time I didn't and the fly "dangled" in the current making a pretty serious wake. I looked away to plan the next cast and, bam!, trout on. This worked about 10 to 20 percent of the time the whole day.

I've been letting my caddis "dangle" at the end of a drift on these streams for a few trips now. It can end a slump some days. Go figure :shrug:.

 

[medic77]

It's funny this came up because this has worked for me too in a place that I can't ever catch fish. I was at the Poudre river in Co and was flat getting skunked for 2 days. I caught my first brown on accident while I was digging out a new fly while I let my line drift mid stream. Let me say that it turned on after I let the fly drag at the end of the drift.

 

[team7x]

The best written about this subject is "Fishing the Dry Fly As a Living Insect " by Leonard Wright; a 1988 or earlier publication if you can find it. He explains in detail how to fish a caddis with movement. I came upon the book in a bookshop specalizing in old books...however I believe Amazon may have it.

 

[JoJer]

The first fly I ever tied was a hank of red doll hair (Ariel, the little mermaid-long story) tied to a bait holder hook with black sewing thread. I was dangling down stream while I messed with a knot or lit a smoke or some such and...caught a trout. It's the Big Guy's way of letting you know you're not as smart as you think you are.
Stimulators are made for this technique. Fish it as a dry, swing it subsurface, strip it back.