Drop-shotting

[jonbo]

I've been trying the "drop-shot" rig lately. I'm mainly interested in applying it to Spillway Creek. I know it holds plenty of fish, but since it was changed by The Flood to the heavy pocket water that it now is, I hadn't been able to figure out how to fish it effectively. Bobber nymphing, I hadn't seemed to be able to get my flies down before they'd passed through the pocket. Swinging/stripping emergers hasn't worked for me either what with the difficult conditions.

So, anyhow, I began to tight-line it, you know, dedicated euro-rod, 25' of MaxCham, sighter, all that. Initially, there was no real improvement, actually for a pretty long time.. I had the same luck that I had bobber-nymphing there, 2 or 3  of fish in a morning, but thinking I ought to be able to do a lot better. Well, I think a lot of it has been the learning curve of managing the rod tip-leader-sighter connection through the drift. I think maybe I'm starting to improve there, realizing the degree of attention I have to pay to that section of the leader and control its angle and other things. I think I learned quite a bit a few weeks ago watching Gui pull fish after fish out of a couple of the pockets. Standing a hundred feet from him his leader angle appeared to be just exactly the same about all the time. That could only come from paying very close attention to the connection between the rod tip, the leader, and the sighter to where it enters the water. Another thing in my case lately is that I've gotten more and more comfortable casting the leader. I think maybe I haven't been able to fish often enough to move quickly up the learning curve. You have to pay attention to a whole bunch of variables at once. I think some of those guys in the UTube vids who catch one fish after another are able to fish almost daily.

The other change I made the last couple of times I've fished has been to drop-shot.  With the split-shot on point I've been fishing  a couple of beadless nymphs on dropper tags. Maybe the upper one is an emerger. The lower nymph I have placed so that if the whole rig hangs down the nymph hangs about 3 inches above the splitshot. I've started doing quite a bit better since I started rigging this way, catching about 6 fish in about 3 hours of fishing. That still isn't great I don't think, but a distinct improvement from before. I adjust the amount of shot-weight fairly often depending on whether my target section is faster, slower, deeper, etc. I try to get it so that I seem to contact bottom 3 or 4 times through the drift. My hits have come on mayfly nymphs like hare's ear, for example, caddis larvae, and Pat's.

Again I don't know if my success improvement has been more from just getting more competent with the long-leader plus sighter system, or from drop-shotting. One advantage of the dropshot method I'm sure of is that those shot don't hang up very much! They are definitely more hang up free than even a point nymph on a jig hook. A hypothesis I have about fishing beadless nymphs is that they move more freely (naturally?) in the water than weighted nymphs and therefore might induce more strikes. But with all the variables I've described above, and more, it's impossible to know how much the beadless nymphs are responsible for my improved hookup rate.

I'm still fishing with a traditional setup mainly at Evening Hole and Hickory. The rod I'm using, an Echo Shadow X 10 ft, 3 wt, performs pretty well both with a standard tapered leader on wf line, and with the long leader "euro" method. When I move down to those areas I just want to be able to relax and fish! The flats are a lot more conducive to an indy or to swinging an emerger.

I'm hoping to be able to give it another try next week!

[darrelln09]

Very happy to hear you are picking up more fish! So what kind of drop shot are you using and how do you attach it? I can see how that setup would snag less.

[jonbo]

By "drop shot" I mean I'm using split shot at the very end of the tippet where the anchor fly would normally go when nymphing. (I think that's the term a lot of fly-fishers use.) I wanted an easy way to keep adjusting the anchor weight, and also liked the idea of not having a nymph hook that would hang a lot. That part's really worked out so far. I also am "testing" the theory that unweighted flies on droppers might drift slightly more freely or naturally than beadheads. Not enough data, yet.

[turfdawg]

There’s much more, IMO, to euro/tightlining than most people think. They think that you just drag some heavy flies across the bottom and set the hook when you feel something. Diameter of tippet, length of tippet, weight of fly, style of fly, type of cast/entry angle, sighter angle, etc….. all play a huge role. IMO it’s just like other styles of fly fishing, you do it correctly and it can be a great tool.

I very seldom switch from my “mono rig” because I can euro/tight line, dry dropper, use a suspension device (love new Zealand wool when I can), use small streamers/jig streamers, drop shot, etc….

If I want to fish small unweighted flies I often use the drop shot method also. When I want to get down really fast and really have contact to the weight I use some 1/64 (I think) jig hooks with the hook cut off instead of split shot.

What ever method someone enjoys is how I believe they should fish. With my skill level the mono rig is a good choice to around 30’ away. If I need to fish farther than that then fly line is a much better choice for me.

Jonbo, I’m glad you are having better luck with the euro rig. I guess I should have made a new post, so sorry about that, but I just wanted everyone to know that we aren’t competition fishing with their rules so we can adapt like using a drop shot method.

[jonbo]

Man, doan hijack my thread! No, just kidding. I like it when we talk about methods and variations. TDoggie, you must have been reading that Dom fellow some, at "Troutbitten". I haven't gotten around yet to cutting the hooks off of jig hooks for sinkers. I still have a bunch of split shot that's been working well for me. I have started using his backing sighter. I really like it, very visible. Now that I think about it I first got tempted to use split shot and weightless nymphs by taking a guided trip on the San Juan. That's what he had me doing, and man, did we clean up on some browns! But he put the split shot a little further up the tippet, letting the nymphs trail. Well, it was an egg and a SJ annelid, I think.

Then I remembered someone saying that we amateurs basically started using bead-head nymphs because the competition guys had to. We just copied them. There's no particular law that says we can't use split shot or any other sinker stuff, instead. I started using split shot in between a dropper and a trailing fly. Since moving the split shot to the dropper position both my tangles and my bottom hang-ups have been reduced. I'd like to think that my flies behave more "naturally" too, but I really don't know. I've put too many variables into the equation to know which is making what difference.

[darrelln09]

Apr 8, 2023 19:16:31 GMT -6 jonbo said:

By "drop shot" I mean I'm using split shot at the very end of the tippet where the anchor fly would normally go when nymphing. (I think that's the term a lot of fly-fishers use.) I wanted an easy way to keep adjusting the anchor weight, and also liked the idea of not having a nymph hook that would hang a lot. That part's really worked out so far. I also am "testing" the theory that unweighted flies on droppers might drift slightly more freely or naturally than beadheads. Not enough data, yet.

Yes, I think "drop shot" is the right term and one I recognize. My question was about how you attached it to your tippet. Do you just pinch it on? Do you use any knots to keep it from slipping off the end? The use of a jig head with the hook cut off makes sense and would obviously keep it from slipping off.

Also, I had a conversation with someone at Sowbug who was using a dry fly as a second dropper on their Euro rig. The idea is to keep that dropper knot just above the waterline so the dry fly would trail along. That seems like it would work as long as the water depth doesn't vary too much.

[jonbo]

I tie an overhand knot at the end of the tippet and put the split shot just above it. When I think about it, the knot is probably unnecessary. The split shot grip pretty well alone. If they should slip off while hanging up in a crevice, so what? If you're going to lose something, it may as well just be the split shot. Dom at Troutbitten swears by the cut off jig hook. He claims that it rolls on the bottom more effectively than split shot, hangs up even less, I guess. I haven't bothered with it, yet.

I keep adjusting things around. I started fishing weightless nymphs with split shot for weight a few months ago. The guide I used at the San Juan had me doing that and we had a very good day. Of course, I couldn't tell if it was his rigging-up method or a lot of the other things he knew how to do right like exactly where to fish. It made me want try the split shot way, though. He had the split shot several inches above the anchor fly. When I tried that by myself I was tangling some, not too much, but basically whenever I let my concentration slip while casting. Putting the split shot at the anchor position seems to have mitigated that. I make my bottom tag so that if I let the finished "rig" hang straight down the split shot hang about 2 inches below the bottom fly. That amount of spacing seems to not tangle while letting the bottom-tag fly be pretty close to the bottom. I donno. Maybe putting the split shot above the anchor fly gets that anchor even closer to the bottom. That way IS a little tanglier, though.

I'm finding that my main problem with Spillway Creek is simply getting around. I fished with Gui at the Mystery Fly Tourney, and he just trucks through there like Evan used to. Me, I'm like, "Aaah", Aaa! I'm terrified of spraining the devil out of my ankle, for good reason, I think.