European or Czech Nymphing Introduction

[LopatNympher]

Everyone here contributes to this site in a major way. Given my inexperience,I'm happy that I can do the same.

[LopatNympher]

I have been doing something with my shortlining that has been producing some intense strikes and I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this as well. At the end of the drift I lift the flies up and drag them across the top of the water a for a few feet before flipping back upstream. Last evening on the Bushkill I actually had a fish hit it so hard he broke my 5x tippet. The last couple of times out I'd say I got about 5 fish in this manner.

[SherpaB]

Sounds like a the long version of the Vladi wrist snap...cool...I will have to give it a try..thanks for the info.

[alanb_ct]

Lopat: Glad you are finding success! I call this "hopping my dropper" and variations thereof and have been doing it since I started Euro nymphing. In general, it pays to let your rig swim to the surface, drag the anchor along and "hop" the dropper up and down. Davy gave me this notion when I saw what he does with wet flies. Fish will often come right out of the water to hit either fly. We wrote about this on the forum before if you want to look for it.

[LopatNympher]

Yeah, it seems to drive some fish crazy. The first time I did this it was by accident and the trout scared the crap out of me when he went airborne after my fly. One thing I have noticed is that this really comes into play when caddis are around.

[sholgate]

LOPAT! I never saw the 18ft regulation. You are right! Wow, I spent the weekend in the French Creek FFO section and never gave it a thought. Although most of the time I am using 12ft or so. I only measure by "longer than my 9 1/2 ft rod, shorter than ..." You get the idea. With my rod being relatively short, going up to 18 ft. seems unlikely. Besides I am really beginning to enjoy fishing some put and takes for some "missed thems."

[VTflyfishing]

[quote author=Nymphmeister In the Salmon River in NY, the 2 FF areas have a max leader length of 15 feet, and you can only use one fly, and whatever weight you have on has to be "castable"- in other words, the weight of the fly line must propel the fly, not vice versa. That's good to know that PA has an 18' max for FF only areas, thanks for the heads up.
[/quote]

May 1st to August 15th you can not use any added weight to your leader in the fly fishing only zone.

[Davyfly]

I would love to know why that rule came about, what was the reasoning.

Davy

[LopatNympher]

I was bored one night and read the PA rulebook. Thought the info might be useful.

[LopatNympher]

Davy, I think they make rules just to have them.