A Little Help, Please

[treehooker]

I just returned from fishing Roaring Brook. I got skunked, which ain't unusual for me, but it's because I'm unable to solve a presentation problem.

I fished the Cotton Hollow area. This water flows at an appreciable incline, and the brook is a series of broken pools. Right now the water is very fast, so the only holding water for trout is right beneath the ledge at the heads of the pools, where the water gets sucked back upstream and eddies around. The water acts as it does in what would be called a "corner" in a mountain stream pool.
The only way to reach the fish is to drift the fly back upstream in the eddy until it reaches the lie.
Problem was, though I had some hits, I could not hook up.
On stream, I attatched a strike indicator to help me detect hits, but I don't even know if I had them positioned at the right point on the leader to work properly, since its sometimes hard to judge just how deep those holes are.

After giving this considerable thought, I've come to the conclusion that (aside from my reflexes being too slow) my failure to hook up on the hits was because they spit the fly very quickly---something like this happened to me on another stream last week, too. And I'd bet I had strikes I never even knew about.

So the problem to be solved is this: how does one allow enough slack in the line to get the fly to drift into the lie, but keep a tight enough line to detect strikes and set up?

The only thoughts I've had so far are to drastically shorten the leader---I mean to a foot or less (since you don't have to turn the fly over anyway)--- and to find some way of coloring the leader.

I'd be really frustrated if this wasn't such a challenge, at least for me.

Any thoughts? What do you guys do when confronted with this situation?

[pvansch1]

Five foot long bright orange furled leader, very supple, very visible.
What town is Roaring Brook in? PM me about the the leader.
Pete

[The Fisherman]

I fished a WTMA on Saturday that was much as you described: a series of waterfalls creating churning eddies of undulating current.

I take a more zen approach to this kind of fishing: I'm going to miss some fish. I'm going to hook the hungry ones.

I fished a Stimulator with a Copper John dropper for 1 hour. I got two fish, a brook and a brown. Both struck with conviction, the brown twice in a row before he was hooked.

This doesn't have the technical imformation you were hoping for, but I think a shorter leader, a shorter distance between nymph and strike indicator, and more importantly a short line approach with eagle eyes and a ready hand will produce better results.

I'd have to actually see the water to solve the problem. :wink:

[treehooker]

Fisherman:
Now, that dropper....
That Copper John is a bead head fly, isn't it?
Which means its going to slow that Stimulator down quite a bit...

You didn't say which fly the fish hit...was it the Stimulator or the Copper John?

Because if it was the Stimulator, that might give a clue as to a real technique for fishing the back eddies.
I think you might have provided more technical information than you think.

A dropper sinking to the bottom while the lead fly floats up in the water column, slowly drifting into the cone-shaped dinner plate of Mr. Trout. Narrowing, Narrowing...Ding, Ding, Ding! Dinner is served....

You might just could have something here.

Thanks, F

Zen Koan: When is a trout caught when it is not caught?

[Troutfitter]

Not to speak for the Fisherman but we do employ similar techniques. I use a bouyant dry fly with a beadhead dropper. The trout will take either fly and express a preference depending on conditions.

[The Fisherman]

Well, great minds and all that.

I fished that rig in the interest of scientific knowledge, specifically "Which will they hit?" and "Will they be more interested in the subsurface dinner due to the high water?"

I didn't think the Stimulator was that slowed down, but that my have been due to the high, fast water.

The Brown hit the nymph, the Brookie took the dry.

[treehooker]

Oh..see, I had a totally wrong idea of what you describing, sorry. I guess I didn't read carefully enough--my ignorance of the Stimulator--that's a dry..what..stonefly pattern?
I thought BOTH flies were subsurface and the dropper was holding the point fly to a slower drift.
So what you and Grady are saying is to hang the subsurface pattern off a floater. Approach the problem from the top down instead of the bottom up. Well, that makes sense.

Thanks for giving me new persective on this problem.

[The Fisherman]

You have the setup correct. The idea is to see what the fish like best. Stimulator is a good searching pattern. Can imitate anything from a hopper to a stonefly to a "I want to eat that" from a trout's point of view.

You could certainly do a double nymph rig with a strike indicator. Let the indicator and flies swirl and boil in the riffles, eddies, and waterfalls. I've had success doing that. A lot of times the fish will strike almost as soon as the flies enter the water, so be ready.

[AaronS]

That's good advice from the fisherman.
Often I'll fish a similar rig (not neccesarily with a copper john, but some other beadhead impression of an insect I think they might be on) . I like this kind of rig on small streams and also on larger streams in slow moving water - both situations where stealth is needed. I like the stimulator as my indicator not always to see if the fish will take it, but because it's a more natural indicator than a bright orange piece of foam. If the fish hits the stimulator -which they do- its a bonus.
Another nice thing about this kind of rig is that the stinulator can be tied at any point in the leader, allowing the subsurface fly to be fished at various levels without any major leader surgery.