Drop shot Nymphing

[Skook]

One of the cons for me with drop shot nymphing, is wasting a lot of tippet when changing flies

You can tie blood knots in your leader as you step down from thicker to thinner sections. For example, tie a blood knot to add the thinnest piece of tippet approximately 6" above the shot. Then, you can pre-tie and carry short droppers simply by tying a perfection loop in a 4"-6" piece of tippet. Place the short piece of tippet above a blood knot and around the leader, run the end of the tippet through the loop and pull tight. This creates a short dropper that will stay in place wherever you decide to place it. If the shot snags bottom, the thinnest piece of tippet should break first or, better yet, shot slides off, so there is a good chance you'll only lose the shot and need to retie the last bottom section or add a split shot.

Depending upon the original length of the short dropper, you should be able to change flies a few times before the dropper gets too short to work with. When that happens, just run the end back through the small loop, remove the dropper from the main leader and add a new dropper. There is very little wasted tippet using this method. You never cut the main leader to change flies.

 

[laszlo]

So the blood knot prevents the perfection looped dropper from sliding off the tippet

 

[Skook]

So the blood knot prevents the perfection looped dropper from sliding off the tippet

Yessir!

I learned this particular technique by watching a Kelly Galloup YouTube video. Here are links:

Drop Shot Nymphing

Basic Nymphing and Drop Shot

 

[PennKev]

One of the cons for me with drop shot nymphing, is wasting a lot of tippet when changing flies

You only have to change out a few inches per tag. There are a variety of ways to add or remove dropper tags that minimize how much tippet needs to be used for changes. One way is to just clinch not the new new tag to the leader above the knot from the original tag. The new tag will slide up occasionally, but this rather simple method works well. Personally, I usually tie dropper loops in the bottom section of my leader and tie my final bits of tippet off of them.