nymphing rig preferences?

[afishinado]

MKern wrote:
I tie mine off the bend, but have noticed that 95% of my fish were caught on the second fly. I Started leaving the tag end of the knot from my first fly and tying my second to that and notice my hook up rate on the first fly increased a ton.

I feel that the tippet between the flies was keeping my first fly out of the fishs' mouths. But the second way allowed the fish to have better access to the hook.

+1 Discovered that ^ a long time ago.

I now always tie the top fly (flies) on a dropper. I just leave the bottom tag end of my surgeons knot long (3-4") and tie on there. Also I try to keep the flies 20" or so apart to prevent flies from foul hooking a fish that's hooked on one of the upper flies.

I do tie off the bend at times with a dry / dropper. But sometimes off the eye...it depends on the dry fly on how it is tied (some float better tied one way or the other).

 

[MKern]

I leave anywhere from 8" to 20" as a tag for the second fly.

I would like to add that I prefer hooking fish on the last fly. I feel that sometimes when I hook a fish on the first fly it can foul hook itself on the second (especially if it runs downstream) and pop the first fly out of its mouth.

 

[Bonzoso]

Long tag on clinch knot serves me well. Always seemed to get hairs and feathers caught when trying to tie on hook bend.

 

[johnw]

I also tie the droppers off the hook bend but find as others I catch 99% on the bottom fly to the point that I wonder why I'm using two flies. However some great ideas here that I'm going to try.

 

[1hook]

MKern wrote:
I leave anywhere from 8" to 20" as a tag for the second fly.

I would like to add that I prefer hooking fish on the last fly. I feel that sometimes when I hook a fish on the first fly it can foul hook itself on the second (especially if it runs downstream) and pop the first fly out of its mouth.

I foul hook fish a lot when I nymph. Enough that it irritates me, I always figured it was just bad luck drifting over fish but maybe it has to do with what your saying

 

[MKern]

If I can keep the fish upstream it really doesn't seem to be a problem.

I swear I can feel it happen after the fish has swam downstream.

 

[bigjohn58]

Long tag ends can cause major tangles when a fish is caught! I like to keep mine about 4-5 inches.

 

[1hook]

How many flies is it legal to fish? For some reason I never did more than two

 

[bigjohn58]

3

 

[ryanpgh]

Like many others on here, I also tend to catch (in my non-mathematical estimation) around 70% on the bottom fly. I have a simple explanation to this however (and i have no idea if i'm right or not). I believe its simply a matter of getting the trout's attention. I think many times, a trout sees the first fly and its gets his attention and then it decides to strike the 2nd fly if it was unsure about the first. Probably a very simpleton explanation, but it makes sense to me. Using this reasoning, I tend to keep my top fly a bit flashier and larger for several reasons. Obviously larger/heavier so it gets the rig down and i do believe BIG FISH eat BIG FLYS from time to time. I fish a lot of the limestone streams and there's some monster browns in some of those waters. I like to use a big old yellow stonefly or girdle bug to entice BIG FELLA or simply get the attention of any trout. Now that I have your attention with that big yellow monstrosity, oh wait.. here's something a little smaller and simple right behind it just in case you were undecided Mr. Trout (like a size 16 or 18 pheasant tail or similar).