Weighting nymphs - how much?

[Crazywader]

New guy on the forum. Hope you don't mind me butting in so soon with a question.

Gary LaFontaine's recipe for tying a "Cased Caddis" in his book, Caddisflies, calls for weighting it with about 5 turns of weight. On the other hand, Dave Hughes' recipe for the same fly recommends 12-15 turns for full weight however mentions underweighing and also omitting it completely. And, finally Skip Morris recommends 12-15 turns.

Are these recommendations based soley on the depth of the water they were in or were they fishing them differently?

Crazywader

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Nirvana is big Browns and no one but your buddy in sight for miles

[mike N]

The rule I learned was 20-hook size= number of wraps.

This is for standard nymph hooks and 0.015" lead.

Things will vary when you get into larger sizes, bead heads, or more sophisticated paterns, but if you follow the rule above for weighted nymphs, you will be on the right track.

MN

Others may disagree but I always heavily weigh my nymphs. I also tend to shortline high-stick as much as possible. I believe this enables me to control depth more by how much line I have out. In my opinion it's better to have toomuch weight than not enough. They say if you aren't snagging bottom on a regular basis you are not deep enough. I tend to fish fast water and want the fly to get down quick. It seems that if the fly is not heavily weighted I constantly have to add more lead to the leader to get it down. Constantly! Everywhere I fished it seemed I added more lead, so I just started weighting my nymphs as heavy as possible. I usually start around the point of the hook and wrap all the way forward plus I add a beadhead. All my weighted flies get a beadhead and if I tie with no weight they don't have a beadhead. You can also use two different thread colors, black for your weighted and tan for the unweighted ones to help you tell on the water which is which. If you happen to be fishing water that is really slow you might see that your heavily weighted fly sinks and then sits on the bottom. This is a situation where an unweighted nymph is called for. I don't fish that type of water too often or if I do I switch to a dry fly. Therefore 95% of my nymph fishing is with a heavily weighted fly. Put on as much lead as you like and then see how they fish. I personally don't like attaching more stuff to my leader than neccesary so I try to avoid using shot. Like everything else in life you have to find out what works for you. You may have a wierd little technique that the books and mags don't recomend but if it works for you then have fun. Don't be a slave to the recipes and when in doubt either try both recipes or find the average, why not 10 wraps? :wink:

[jbird]

I typically fish with 2 flies when nymphing, one heavily weighted and one lightly or unweighted. The heavy fly will get the system down and the unweighted fly will move a little more naturaly with the water currents but will stay deep. And I too, weight my heavy bug with all the weight I can cram on it. Makes for fun casting :D

Jay

[Crazywader]

Thanks for tips.

I typically throw my nymph into the top of the riffle and let it pop out just above the rocks in which I think something might be hiding behind. It effective but I'm not certain there's a better way without using more weight which usually causes :x those messy unintended tangles.

I like the 20-hook size. Where'd you get that from so I don't claim it as my own :wink:

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Mid-day in the summer the fish are mostly deep so doing what ever you need to get down makes sense.

More weight will get you deeper like on the fly or on the line above the fly. Using lead wire or non-toxic wire and bead heads (standard and tungsten) will get you down more.

Having a longer piece of straight tippet material between your fly and your indicator will get you deeper.

Using the lightest tippet you can get away with will get you deeper.

Using fluorocarbon tippet will get you deeper too.

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I have to confess that at one time I was a "nymph-O-maniac" myself.

Back in the 1960s (pre-indicator time) we were learning the "Ted Fay" method of "high sticking/short line nymphing". We first learned about this from veteran Sacramento fly fishers Jerry Lyerly, Neil Hansen and Joe Patterson.

We got so "bad" that we only carried weighted wet flies and weighted nymphs, some split shot and one spool of 3x tippet. We got to where we did not carry any dry flies on freestone streams because we though it was for "losers" who wanted to catch the "dinks" on top. We were as bad as any of the "indicator commandos" you will run into today.

I believe it was the 1980s when the indicators started showing up on the scene. I put some of them in my vest so I could use them and be able to talk about them in my fly shop.

Today I am only interested in fishing "my way" which precludes the indicator about 95% of the time. I don't need to catch fish as badly as I did many years ago so I just fish methods that allow me to fly cast more.

[mike N]

The dearly departed Andre Puyans taught me the 20-HS standard. As the others mentioned above, the ammount of weight may be revised based on personal prefrence and desired perfomance. I like to keep it simple though and stic with my formula for most nymphs.

MN

[Crazywader]

It appears from everyone's responses that the weight is there only to get the nymph down on the bottom and not for some secret fishing technique. Thanks.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Some people put weight on the leader and not in their 'bugs'. They say it gives their nymphs more movement in the current and they don't get hung up as much.

Some weight the flies some and add weight to the leader to get down more. Most common way.

Some put tons of weight in the nymphs and none on the leader. They think adding weight to the leader deadens the "feel" to the fly.