Yours or hers? And what colour?
Euro nymphing on rocky rivers
- Thread starter kingf000
- Start date
That remains to be proven. Someone needs to sit at the bottom of a swimming pool with a stop watch while someone else casts identical thickness leaders and identical weight flies onto the water. The person sitting on the bottom of the pool then times them to see which hits bottom first.
Somehow I doubt there will be a significant difference.
Drop shot is the way i often go.Same setup as you would for euro.But my flies are on polish style droppers.I normally have my bottom dropper 6-8 inch above my shot.I mostly run 0.16mm tippet main line.0.12mm tippet for droppers.Sometimes go 0.14mm main line.Fish don't sit right on bottom.Your bottom dropper is drifting right in there face.(normally)
It would be rude to tell a ladies colour!
eddleston123
Well-known member
atr
Well-known member
Well, with identical setups the amount of times you snag the rig will tell you everything you need to know. Cuts out the middleman.
With tungsten beaded nymphs I doubt if the difference would be that noticeable, as the proportion of extra weight from the tippet would be small. However, I've noticed a big difference between fluorocarbon and nylon leaders when using light buzzers. Once the tippet breaks through the surface tension, it would be breaking the laws of physics if the fluorocarbon did not sink quicker than nylon. http://www.ultimauk.com/advice_cent...n will take on average,want to be much faster.
On a short drift (5 to 10 seconds) every split second counts and on a three nymph setup one or even two are unweighted. The weighted one is supposed to take the others down. Not to be mimicked, but competition anglers tend to smash the train through the surface, just to gain a longer drift in the business area.
I'm sure you are right, but if you work out the weight of a 1 metre 0.14mm tippet it comes to 0.035g for fluoro and 0.022g for nylon. My typical heavier tungsten beaded nymph weighs around 0.5g, so you are comparing 0.535 with 0.522, ie about 2.5% difference!
A lot of other factors to consider here.
Flat calm.
Light ripple eg 1"
Slight ripple eg 3"
Moderate ripple eg 5-6"
Light wave eg 7-9"
All of those will affect the sink rate of the leader because they set up subsurface drifts or in the case of the flat calm the denser surface film will be harder for the material to penetrate. As soon as you get subsurface drift it slows the sink rate of the leader. Dick Walker did some work on that back in the '60's before fluoro was created but I suspect subsurface drifts haven't altered.
I think Bob said that for this technique fluorocarbon comes into its own right, and he's right. And I think you said it makes a difference with unweighted nymphs, and you're right too. I'm not saying you can't fish this technique with nylon, I'm saying from experience you're better off with fluorocarbon, especially if you fish thin tippets and unweighted nymphs on the point.
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Your river sounds like some i fish.Fast deep at bits with big structure on the bottom.I could lose a dozen nymphs a day sometimes euronymphing.But even when fishing a drop shot rig on these bad snags sections.I like to fish from the top down.(well spring/summer).Have a few casts in an area drifting high in the column.Then add weight & fish deeper.I like adding a couple of small lines of solid paint.I add this below my sighter.Then i can gauge the depth i am at when I am rumbling along bottom I feel the shot bouncing.When i first started trying drop shot I used weightless flies.But now I use quite a few bead head nymphs in the mix.I don't go above 2.5mm on the bead though.Sometimes fish wan't the flash or a hot colour.Especially when the rivers holding colour.Cheers
Losing nymphs is part of the game. I sometimes lose 20 nymphs in one session. If you don’t snag the bottom, your not fishing deep enough.
The tippet thinkness affects the sink rate quite a lot, thinner tippet offers less resistance and therefore get’s the nymhps to the fishing depth quicker. I usually fish .14 mm tippet which is fine even for fish in excess of 3lb. Wouldn‘t dare to go thinner but I know that some people do.
Cheers,
sebastian
The tippet thinkness affects the sink rate quite a lot, thinner tippet offers less resistance and therefore get’s the nymhps to the fishing depth quicker. I usually fish .14 mm tippet which is fine even for fish in excess of 3lb. Wouldn‘t dare to go thinner but I know that some people do.
Cheers,
sebastian
OOps, made a mistake in the calculation. The corrected version is 0.026g for the fluoro and 0.017 for the nylon, so with the 0.5g nymphs, the corrected difference is 1.7%. For a 5mtr leader I use with buzzers, the figure comes out at around 30%. Not surprising I notice the difference there!
You are assuming that the leader sinks at the same rate along its length and we all know that it doesn't. At one end you've got a fly and 5metres away you've got a floating fly line. So you are making the assumption that the fluoro is so heavy that it will drag the fly line down at the same rate as itself. 10 seconds out on the water will soon disprove that.
I think you just need to get on, go fishing and forget about 0.026 and all the rest of it. Concentrate on catching fish and stop worrying about whether your fly is 1 centimetre deeper than you would like. Too many trees and nowhere near enough wood.
Totally agree Bob, get out there and try different things, the fish will let you know when you get it right or wrong.
The one thing that getting into Euro Nymphing has shown me is to rethink my approach and attitude to stretches of water. I have fished a stretch on the let's say the Duo method and struggled and then gone back through it with the Euro Nymph and caught. In the past, I would have thought the fish are not there or not feeding, now I just realize my presentation was all wrong.
What Euro Nymphing has shown me is that when I am not getting bites changing tippet thickness, fly size as well a fly pattern can all prove to be the trigger the fish need to take the fly. The big gain is this change in attitude is now improving my dry and wet fly techniques as well.
Andrzej,
The problem is that we are talking about different things on this thread. We might have started off talking about Euro nymphing, but have since quietly slid into buzzer fishing on stillwaters. Two different styles and methods. The OP needs to make his mind up what he wants to discuss.
Having said that my basic point above applies to both.
The problem is that we are talking about different things on this thread. We might have started off talking about Euro nymphing, but have since quietly slid into buzzer fishing on stillwaters. Two different styles and methods. The OP needs to make his mind up what he wants to discuss.
Having said that my basic point above applies to both.
I know my mind - ESN. I simply added the buzzer fishing to show the physics, maths and understanding behind my observation, that I've noticed very little difference between fluoro and nylon with short line ESN and heavy nymphs, but big differences with long leaders and very light buzzers. I use fluoro for nymphing for it's (debatable) lower visibility and harder wearing, and I do seem to catch more fish with it. For long leaders I mix and match with nylon/fluoro depending upon whether I want the whole leader to sink rapidly, or just the front part of it. The assumption I'm making about the floating fly line is it will float. Not necessarily true as the thicker end of the fluoro leader will drag the fly line under. My calculation was based upon the 0.25mm fluoro that I use in the centre of the leader. I agree, it is only an approximation but with the longer, heavier leader and lighter flies, it's obvious that a more dense line will sink noticeably faster than a less dense line, as I have found.
