Dirty azz nymphing or ....

am I swinging softhackles. Half the time it's presented upstream dead drifted with tight line, the other half quartered down and across and swung.
So my grandson was sick today so no play date. I tied up a few of my favorite bead head soft hackle hares' ear's and posted them up this morning.

Since I was headed somewhere I'm not as familar with I took my favorite old soft Sage 9' with a 6wt floater, as it's just so versatile. I set up with the one with the pull through partridge tail and orange hot spot on the left.

First cast I found a colorful little trout

Caught a bunch of trout, and then, what's this, a short fin graying?

So I was just tickled. Actually found a couple spots with a few. As I kept going I just couldn't believe my eyes when I saw a dark form and bright spots roll in the seam.

My first salmonid slam and on one fly.

 

[Tom Butler]

Hi Tom,

Always appreciate your reports and your photography quality. You also get out there waaaay more than i do these days, which makes me jealous.

Question for you - can you explain/show your rigging approach for that two nymph setup? I grudgingly use nymph rigs when streamers or dries (or dry/dropper, or single soft hackle, or single nymph…..) aren’t producing, but either my presentation, my rigging, my lack of commitment to the approach, or some combo of all of the above usually results in not-great results.

Again, thanks for your posts - you help make PNW forum engaging.

Any time I'm fishing a standard dry fly line in moving water I use the same same setup, dry nymph, streamer, whatever. I have a base from an old 7.5' or 9' tapered leader for 3x usually (or 2x) (4' and 5' respectively) and at the .011" diamater I surgeons knot on 18"-20" of .011 (0X) bicolor sighter, and there I have a 2.5mm tippet ring. (I do like 2mm but just don't have any now). From that I then put on tippet to depth, length from ring to first fly varies. Usually something like 18" 2X, 2' 3", 2' 3 or 4X. Each tippet section is surgeons knotted, and a 8" or so tag is left from the top section. New tags can be added by tying a new tippet section using a 5 turn uni-knot ABOVE an existing knot, use lots of slobber to snug. Use a heavy fly on the end and lighter above, or heavy on the dropper and lighter at the end depending on what you want to accomplish. I often have a dry up top, as the second or often third fly, for an extra sighter/bobber/indicator but they catch a lot of the fish as well.
Bases kept on old spools, tippet down on foams.

The sighter is because anything near me I fish with as tight a line as I can and keep as much line off the water as possible.
For fishing them this pretty well describes it. When I read this I wished I'd heard of Davey Wooten long ago. But it's kinda where I was at when I found it. The one thing I don't like in the diagram is the line is ahead of the flies in most of the positions. I usually try to start with some form of reach cast and keep my presentation so that the flies get to the fish before anything else.
https://davewhitlock.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/FFMP-11-07-TRADITIONAL-Wet-Flies.pdf
Hope this helps.

 

[Zak]

Tom has it down! Lazy alternative: take whatever tapered leader you currently have on and tie an extra 18" of tippet to the end with a triple surgeon's knot leaving a 6" tag on the existing end. Clip the part of the new tippet that points up to the reel and presto, a two nymph rig! The Davy Knot conserves the tag during fly changes.

 

[Tom Butler]

Tom has it down! Lazy alternative: take whatever tapered leader you currently have on and tie an extra 18" of tippet to the end with a triple surgeon's knot leaving a 6" tag on the existing end. Clip the part of the new tippet that points up to the reel and presto, a two nymph rig! The Davy Knot conserves the tag during fly changes.

There is a pretty good chance both base leaders started that way.

 

[Bugmeister]

Thank you Tom and Zak. The setup looks pretty close to what i rig up now, which leads me to wonder whether other things are at issue (my presentation, fly selection, and/or commitment to the approach as I just don’t enjoy it as much so tend not to stick with it for very long).

 

[Steve Vaughn]

Nice report Tom, as usual. We have to meet for some fishing. Either here in the Tri-Cities chasing smallies on the Snake/Columbia/Yakima or chasing trout out your way.

 

[Tom Butler]

Thank you Tom and Zak. The setup looks pretty close to what i rig up now, which leads me to wonder whether other things are at issue (my presentation, fly selection, and/or commitment to the approach as I just don’t enjoy it as much so tend not to stick with it for very long).

Fish it with confidence, if Dave and Davey approve, something about it must be right. It's pretty much what I already figured out from Dave Hughes as well. Just take some time and commit to it. Then later you can apply it with confidence as you like. If you follow the presentation suggestions in the article it should work out for you unless the fish aren't cooperating. When I didn't get out as often I often made the mistake of trying to learn new things when the fish were not being cooperative in the first place, then gave up.

 

[Tom Butler]

Nice report Tom, as usual. We have to meet for some fishing. Either here in the Tri-Cities chasing smallies on the Snake/Columbia/Yakima or chasing trout out your way.

I think that would be fun. I'd be up for either of those.