There's more to nymphing than bobbers

"Chuck, what are you doing?"

We had just launched on a not-quite-treacherous stretch of water. It was too early in the day, and possibly too early in the season to expect much dry fly fishing with the salmonfly hatch. It could happen, we told ourselves. There were telltale nymph shucks on the rock near the high-water line and in the willows. We had seen some adults flying around.

The ever-hopeful guy in the front seat started with a big salmonfly dry. He was busy fishing - hitting the slow-moving seams and pockets near the big rocks along the edge. The guy at the oars was giving me his usual hard time.

I tried to confuse him further with an answer he'd have to ask me to explain. We both enjoyed the banter.

"Tracers," I said.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Kind of like anti-aircraft automatic gunfire," I answered, without looking up. I was smearing small bits of Strike Putty, a Playdough-like strike indicator material onto my 2X leader tippet at four-inch intervals.

The tippet was about five feet long and attached to a heavily weighted #4 salmonfly nymph with an accurate silhouette and plenty of built-in wiggle.

For this kind of fishing, I want to graduate quickly from the tippet into the taper. The strands must be about the same diameter with the taper graduating up immediately above the knot - usually a three-turn Surgeon's knot. Overall leader length might wind up at about ten feet, maybe more.

The tracers, as I call them, start about two feet above the fly. Each one carries only enough Strike Putty to put a visible stain on the leader. The heavy fly will pull the tracers underwater, and that's what makes this rig so effective. The tracers drift naturally and add underwater visual contact with the fly.

I lob short and easy casts above the lies I want to fish. I want the nymph to be at the depth where the fish are when it gets there. I high-stick, or lift the rod enough to have no slack in the line above the water. I watch the tracers, focusing on the deepest one I can see. When I lose sight of that one, I watch the one above it.

If my fly were tethered at a set depth below a bobber it wouldn't drift naturally into the lie.

When anything stops or moves where the current didn't take it, I set up. When I see the tracers move I'm onto fish that often wouldn't move a bobber.

I'd barely finished explaining this to the guy at the oars when a tracer about three feet deep moved upstream. I set up and hollered, "Pull out!" He saw what had happened and beached the boat. A few minutes later he netted a big rainbow, well over twenty inches long and weighing about four pounds.

"I see what you mean," he said.

I'm not totally against strike indicators. Don't get me wrong. But they're not always necessary and when relied upon habitually they can cost fish.

My tracers are, technically, strike indicators. But they don't float and so I don't use or think of them as strike indicators. Some Euro-nymphing leaders setups, either self-made or pre-packaged, do the same thing - they add a dimension of visual contact to the nymphing game.

When I renew my vest contents this season I'll make sure that I'm carrying fresh Strike Putty - the stuff tends to dry out and become useless over a couple of seasons. Mine is at least that old.

I also carry a couple of the rubber core twist-on bobbers (indicators, pardon me) or small, ball-shaped thread-on indicators and the New Zealand yarn setup with a special tool to attach small tufts of yarn to the tippet.

I also carry a couple of bigger yarn indicators, the kind with rubber rings to attach to the leader. I can trim them out as necessary. Too much yarn indicator is like trying to cast a hummingbird - and on windy days it's worse.

A key principle with indicators is this: don't use more indicator than necessary. When I see YouTube videos of guys fishing #18 Perdigons two feet under a ping-pong ball bobber, they're usually catching small fish.

There are better ways to go - and using no more indicator than you need, or possibly none at all, is a good place to start.