Most refusals on a dry fly are not about the pattern. The fly was the right size and roughly the right color, and the trout still turned away because the fly moved a fraction faster or slower than the bubbles beside it. Drag is the whole game in dry fly fishing, and everything else on this page, the casts, the leader, the choice between a dun and a cripple, exists to buy you a few more inches of a fly floating exactly like the naturals around it.
Drag: what the trout sees that you do not
Every real insect on the surface moves at the speed of the film right where it sits. Your fly is tied to a line lying across several current speeds at once, and the moment faster water bellies the line downstream, the fly gets towed. From above you might see a tiny wake, or nothing. From below it is obvious.
The fix is slack, placed deliberately. A leader that lands in gentle S-curves gives the current something to straighten before it reaches the fly. A long tippet, 3 or 4 feet of 5X or 6X on flat water, lands with more slack than a short stiff one. On a tailwater like the Green River's A section below Flaming Gorge, where the water is glassy and the rainbows have seen a lot of flies, an extra foot of tippet often does more than switching patterns.
The reach cast and its cousins
The reach cast is the one cast worth practicing until you do it without thinking. Make a normal forward cast, and as the line unrolls, move the rod tip upstream so the line lands angled up-current from the fly. You have pre-mended before the line touches the water, and the fly gets a free ride until the belly catches up. Across-and-down presentations to a riser on a far seam almost require it.
Two others earn their place. The pile cast, where you stop the rod high and let the leader collapse in a heap, is for straight-downstream feeds to a fish you cannot get beside. The wiggle cast, shaking the rod tip side to side as the line lays down, throws slack across the whole line for long drifts over mixed currents. On the meadow water of the Henry's Fork at Last Chance, where the current looks uniform and is anything but, one of these is in play on nearly every cast.
Whatever you throw, mend as little as possible after the line lands. A big mend moves the fly. Lift only the line that needs to move, and do it early.
Reading the rise
The shape of a rise tells you what the fish is eating and where. Learn four of them.
- The sip. Just the nose breaks the surface, sometimes with a small ring and a bubble. The fish is taking something stuck in the film: spent spinners, cripples, emergers that never made it. Fish a low-floating pattern.
- The head-and-tail. Nose, dorsal, then tail roll through in sequence. This fish is eating emergers just under the surface. A fly dressed to hang in the film, not on it, gets more takes than a high-floating dun.
- The splash. Water thrown, sometimes the fish clears the surface. Something is moving fast: a caddis skittering, a hopper kicking. A twitched fly is fair.
- The bulge. The surface swells but never breaks. That fish is feeding on nymphs a few inches down and is not a dry fly target yet. Watch it and wait.
Note the rhythm too. A fish rising every eight seconds can be timed; cast so the fly arrives when the next take is due. A fish that rises twice and goes quiet needs a longer, more patient drift.
Matching the stage, not just the bug
A mayfly gives a trout four separate meals: the nymph rising to the surface, the emerger stuck in the film, the dun standing on the water drying its wings, and days later the spinner falling back dead with its wings flat. During a good hatch the fish often lock onto one stage and ignore the rest.
The emerger and cripple stages are where most of the eating happens, because those insects cannot escape. On the PMD water of Silver Creek in June and July, a Harrop PMD or a PMD Cripple in 16 to 18 will usually out-fish a full-hackled dun. Same with Baetis: an RS2 or CDC Baetis emerger in the film gets eaten on days when a Parachute BWO gets inspected.
Spinners are the stage people miss. Trico spinner falls on the Missouri below Holter happen at first light from July into September, and the fish are sipping flush-floating spent flies in 20 to 24. Show up at nine with a parachute dun and the fall is over and the pattern was wrong anyway.
Caddis follow the same logic. An Elk Hair Caddis rides high and imitates an adult; an X-Caddis with its trailing shuck imitates one that is stuck. When fish are slashing at caddis and refusing the Elk Hair, tie on the shuck.
Where to put the fly, and where to stand
Land the fly two or three feet upstream of the rise, in the same lane. The line and leader should land off to the side, never over the fish. If you cannot get that angle, move. Ten steps upstream solves more refusals than any fly change.
On big rivers with multiple seams, such as the Madison between Quake Lake and Ennis, wade to the seam edge and cast up it rather than laying line across faster water from the bank. On flat spring creek water, get well below the fish and cast up, since a trout's blind spot is directly behind it.
Tippet size follows fly size: a 16 caddis on riffled water is fine on 4X; a 22 Trico on flat water wants 6X or 7X, because heavy tippet resists the small currents that let a tiny fly wander like the naturals.
A routine for the next riser you find
Stop before you cast. Watch for a full minute and count the rises. Decide the stage from the rise form. Pick a position where line lands beside the fish, not over it. Make one cast with a reach, and if the fly drags, fix position before fly. Two clean drifts with no take, then change to the next stage down: dun to emerger, emerger to spinner. Most refusals are drag, and most of the rest are stage.