Great website for fly pattern tutorials

**Nymphmeister** · 11-26-2007, 05:12 PM

Loren Williams is a guide in his late 30's from Liverpool, NY who grew up in PA and now lives & guides in upstate NY on the Salmon River and surrounding tribs as well as trout streams near Syracuse (Ninemile, Skaneateles). His website, flyguysoutfitting.com has some of the best fly tying tutorials I've ever seen. While I don't know the guy, I can tell you he is an excellent tier. In addition to commercial fly tying & guiding, Loren has also been the official fly tyer for Team USA as well as a successful competitor for Team USA. This experience has brought him fishing around the country & world and into contact with all sorts of different ideas on fly design, patterns and fishing techniques- it's evident when you look at some of the flies. His tying is precise and logical, forming flies that are durable, effective, nice looking- all tied without a single wasted thread wrap, one hallmark of a true expert tier. Check out his tips section, he has a really good article about Winter fly fishing for steelhead, as well as cool tutorials on making yarn indicators and setting up a right angle nymph rig for trout or steelhead.

You will probably notice when looking at his numerious nymph tutorials that Loren is a big fan of tungsten beads and lead wire, usually in conjunction. He mentions that he does not use split shot for trout, instead relying on a "team" of 2 or 3 flies to get down. I'm guessing this in part comes from the competitive fly fishing he does- the rules don't allow you to add weight to your leader, only your flies. Czech or Polish nymphing jumped into the limelight out of the competitive fly fishing scene, and now it's all the rage on the internet and in magazines. It basically entails fishing 2 or 3 weighted flies with no shot or indicator on a non-tapered leader (straight tippet) on an extremely short line, keeping your rod tip low and ahead of the flies. The drifts are short, about 5-6 feet long, and the rod almost pulls the flies as they drift downstream in a straight line tracking under your rod tip. As soon as they pass your position, a wrist roll lifts them near the surface and they are lobbed back upstream. Strike detection is both visual & tactile- a Rio Nymph line helps, or use a fluorescent braided loop on the end of your line. As you can imagine, some of the flies they tie are basically a weighted sinker to get the other flies down in faster, deeper flows. Sizes typically range from #6-16 (tied on a scud type hook, the Czechs have their own somewhat unique barbless design- Partridge actually manufactures 2 Czech nymph hooks, but you can use a standard scud hook just fine), with #10 or so the most common. The Poles weave their flies, and the Czechs use a shellback design with dubbing and ribbing- flies are tied slim and with a minimum of appendages, so as to sink quickly. Patterns usually imitate Caddis larva & Scuds (often both), and are tied in both drab, natural colors and bright attractor shcemes, often with a hot spot of bright red, orange or pink dubbing wound between the thorax and abdomen.

The technique was originally created for Grayling, a fish that is common in Europe and tolerates a very close approach by the angler. Practiced with stealth in broken water, where it works best, it is also very effective on trout. Those who have watched competitions and seen it in action say it often outfishes the indicator and split shot rig most of us use by a wide margin. One fisherman will fish 200 yards of water and catch 5 trout, and then a Czech or Pole with come in after him and catch 30. Aaron is skeptical, bit it's definitely something I want to play around with. Europeans tend to use a 10' #4-5 rod for it, with tippet in the 4x-6x range. Poles use 2 nymphs, with the heavy one on the bottom and the lighter, smaller one up top. Czechs normally use 3, spaced 20" apart on droppers, with the heavy one in the middle to get the other 2 down. Leader length is usually the rod length or shorter, and you typically fish with only 1 to 3 feet of fly line beyond the rod tip. Rod tip stays low and ahead of the flies during the drift, leading them in a straight downstream path. High sticking puts a bow in the line that makes strike detection more difficult, so keep your rod relatively low and parallel with the surface. This method is most suited to shallow to medium water of a medium to fast flow- you have to be able to stand within a rod's length of the water you intend to fish.

Remember that Europeans typically fish in streams that are fished hard with no C&R regulations, which means the left over fish are the ones that are hard to catch. I some cases, where a similar stream here might have 100 fish in a 200 yard stretch, they might only have 5. This has bred techniques that are both efficient & highly effective, so don't discount this method as just another form of short line nymphing and dismiss it before you try it. I suspect we could make some modifications to it- like substituting split shot for the middle fly in the Czech rig. A Polish angler I know here in the Northeast uses this technique but puts a big Tungsten Prince on the bottom and a Tungsten Pheasant Tail on top as the dropper, and he does well with this technique. The first time he fished the Neversink he caught a bunch of trout, all in the 16-20" range- so I guess it doesn't just work on grayling and small trout (primarily what they catch & fish for in the competitions- you score higher by catching a bunch of dinker trout than you with fewer & bigger ones). Where I don't think this method works is in slow or deep water, or spots the trout cannot be closely approached. They say after you learn the method, you will be able to spot the proper water. In most pictures of Czech or Polish nymphing, the fishermen are usually standing in water no more than knee deep- although they could be fishing to a deeper trench or slot just beyond them. The beauty of this method is partly in the high degree of strike detection- with virtually no slack, you detect the strike almost immediately and can make a very quick hookset. They say you can cover water very quickly too. I believe, but could be wrong, that the method was developed primarily in relatively high gradient, small mountain streams.

**Nymphmeister** · 03-09-2008, 11:13 PM

Seeing that Loren Williams just joined the site, I thought I'd bring this thread back from the grave.

Fascist Killer · 03-10-2008, 09:53 AM

I'm psyched. Can't wait to hear more details.

**Brown_Trout** · 03-10-2008, 10:44 AM

[quote author=Nymphmeister link=topic=1059.msg9717#msg9717 date=1205118820]
Seeing that Loren Williams just joined the site, I thought I'd bring this thread back from the grave.
[/quote]

Sounds good. We should try to get Loren to join the fly-swap.