FISHING A DRY AND DROPPER is one possible combination. You can also fish two wet flies or two dry flies. You can even fish three (or more) wet flies or one dry and two wets, if the wets are small or if the dry fly is large and floats well. You are limited only by your fly selection and imagination.

Two Dry Flies

As I've grown older, I have more difficulty following a size 24 dry fly on the surface, especially if the flies float flush on the surface, such as spent spinners. Fishing two dry flies at once can help solve this problem. Tie an easy-to-see dry fly as your indicator fly and a size 24 Trico or other small pattern off the bend on 16 to 24 inches of tippet. Follow the indicator fly to help predict the smaller fly's location.

Two dry flies aren't just for older anglers. Many experienced midge fishermen use two flies — one larger and the other small — to help them track their miniscule patterns. Small dark terrestrials (or other patterns) are also hard to detect. If the trout are finicky, use a smaller dry, but even a size 18 indicator fly is easier to see than a drab little size 24. Use the first dry to help gauge the location of the second fly, and set the hook if there is a disturbance in the water near where you think your fly is or if the indicator fly hesitates or twitches.

Fishing two dry flies also helps you cover more bases if you don't know what surface flies fish are feeding on. A few years back I was on the river during a fantastic Sulphur hatch in which flies emerged for more than a half hour and trout fed with frenzy. In addition to the duns, Sulphur spinners rode the surface, laying eggs before they died. Some trout fed barely underneath the surface on emerging duns while others ate floating, dying spinners. Because I couldn't figure out exactly which phase fish were feeding on, I tied a spinner pattern to the bend of my dun. That evening I caught several trout on each fly, and the experience taught me a valuable lesson: If you're not certain of the insect phase trout are taking, try several at the same time.

Sunken Dry Flies

After bobbing along on the water's currents, many insects sink. The spent Trico spinners that have floated in fast water downriver for a mile eventually end up under the surface, where fish continue to feed on them. Sometimes the largest trout feed on the sunken insects. To catch difficult fish, I often fish a weighted spinner below a dry fly during and after a spinner fall, especially below riffles where the broken currents may have submerged spinners. Several species of mayflies also dive underneath the water to lay their eggs.

If I live to be a hundred, I'll never forget the lesson an old angler taught me more than thirty years ago on Falling Springs Branch, near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. I've written and talked about this incident many times, but it deserves to be restated. This old man kept catching one trout after another (at least seven fish) during a Trico spinner fall. I fished a hundred feet away and across stream from him, and in an hour I managed to land one small, wild fish. I cast my size 24 Trico over every riser in the area. When he caught his eighth trout, I had enough. I called out to him over the riffled water and asked him what fly he was using. He didn't answer me, and I thought the old man was partially deaf, the stream's din muffled my voice, or he was ignoring me. In about ten minutes the spinner fall ended, and the old man wound up his line and headed for his car.

As he turned and walked away, he muttered four words that still haunt me today: “I'm sinking the fly.” He never once looked at me.

I pondered the man's words on my two-hour trip home that afternoon. Then it came to me in an instant: That old codger was fishing his Trico spinner pattern under the surface as a wet fly. It made a lot of sense. Some of the spinners sank. Why not tie some patterns to copy them? I tied a half-dozen spent-wing wet flies, adding five wraps of lead wire to the hook shanks, and looked forward to using them soon.

But soon didn't happen for more than a decade. In early August 2002, 2,000 miles away from Falling Springs Branch, Jerry Armstrong and I were committed to teach a one-week fly-fishing program on the Ruby River at Upper River Outfitters near Alder, Montana. I arrived at the lodge one day before the workshop to get the lay of the land and to fish the river. I arrived on the Ruby around 8:30 A.M. and diminutive, clear-wing Trico spinners already filled the cool morning air. Wind gusts blew them into my mouth. When the females started landing on the surface, the trout began to rise. I began casting and casting, but nothing I used worked.

Within minutes after I started fishing, several registrants for next day's class wandered down to watch their instructor. The pressure was on. Tomorrow, I planned a talk based on my book How To Catch More Trout. I fished for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes — and couldn't catch a trout. My students could probably sense my discouragement. Would they listen to anything I said in the upcoming program if I couldn't catch any of these trout? I glanced over at the group across the river, and I saw them whispering to each other. What would I do? How could I teach the class tomorrow to people who clearly saw I couldn't catch one trout, let alone more trout?

Then, I had an idea. Since there were only a few trout rising during this dense spinner fall, I thought about trying one of the sunken spinners I had tied up years ago. I dug through my box of Tricos and found the weighted patterns — still intact — that I had tied fifteen years ago. I quickly tied one on 24 inches of tippet to the bend of a size 16 Patriot and began casting. On the second cast, the Patriot sank, and I set the hook on a 12-inch rainbow. Two more casts, and I caught another trout on the spinner. By the sixth trout, the group across the river began applauding. I was safe for tomorrow.

Another way to catch fish during the summer doldrums is to fish sunken terrestrials. Terrestrials fall into the water all the time, and those that don't swim to shore often end up under the water. I have fished weighted ant and beetle patterns for years. I add a copper bead as the front hump of a cinnamon ant pattern to sink it quickly. Many anglers overlook sunken grasshopper and cricket imitations, but trout don't.

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