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Want to increase your trout hookups? Tandem — or "dropper" — rigs offer key advantages: they allow you to present more than a single pattern, they reach fish at different depths, and your surface fly acts as an "indicator."
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Fly Fishing Gear Review
Chest and Hip Packs: Going Minimalist
MY FULLY-LOADED, 24-pocket vest days are now few and far between. The benefit of less weight hanging around your neck or shoulder? Greater comfort, and because this gear is smaller and designed to fit more securely, there's less chance of snagging. Also, the gear's all right there, generally in one or two compartments that are easily repositioned around your waist or chest — so no more awkward reaching into eight different pockets when you fail to locate that split-shot.
Fly Fishing Video
Advanced Nymph Fishing: Hinged Leaders
"THE LEADER CONFIGURATION is a tapered leader from the fly line, then we put a perfection loop on the end of that leader, then put the indicator just above the knot of the perfection loop. Then I've tied a perfection loop on the end of the tippet, then to the fly. That's going to allow the fly to hang straight down, so it's going to hinge there, and it's going to fish this nymph at a constant depth — at least as constant as we can try to get it. This is for situations when the fish are the mid-water-column depth and we're trying to keep a drifting nymph or larva in that column of water."
Fly Fishing Gear: Saltwater Leaders
Saltwater Leaders: "Tippet In Your Favor"
THE TIPPET is the weakest, thinnest, and last section of your leader. One side attaches to the leader and, barring the need for a bite or shock tippet, the other end attaches to the fly. The tippet has to be supple enough to let the fly swim naturally, thin enough to be inconspicuous, but at the same time, strong enough to be able to land the fish in reasonable time. You need to consider all these factors in selecting a tippet to suit the circumstance.
If you follow one of the many leader formulas, such as the popular 50/30/20 (5 0 percent butt section, 30 percent midsection, and 20 percent tippet) a 10-foot leader would give you about two feet of tippet-20 percent of 10 feet.
Fishing Flies
Inside the Box: Gary Merriman
IN 1984, Atlanta fly shop owner Gary Merriman landed the largest Pacific blue marlin ever caught by a single angler (1,649 lbs). But among saltwater fly fishers, he is known for authoring the tarpon Toad, a pattern that suddenly make Florida Keys tarpon want to eat flies again, in the early 1990s. This week MidCurrent takes a peek inside his saltwater fly box.
