20-20 Vision

Fishing with a dry fly is a whole lot more fun than with a nymph. Let's face it: seeing the nose of the fish come up out of the water to slurp a floating bug is waaayy more exciting than watching your strike indicator stop moving (which means you've snagged the bottom a lot more often than it means you've got a fish). Plus, casting an unweighted dry fly is much more enjoyable as well. My motto during those tough days on the stream where nothing seems to be working is: "If I'm not catching fish I might as well be casting a dry fly." Yes, there are some times when I'd rather make graceful (well, graceful for me) 40-foot casts with a dry fly and catch no fish than lob a tandem nymph rig loaded down with 5 sinkers and catch half-a-dozen.

But some of the Western tailwaters are so rich in underwater bugs that unless there's a mad hatch going on, using a dry fly is essentially tilting at windmills so nymphs are going to be my reluctant choice. And if I'm going to use a nymph rig I might as well be good at it--and so that's one of my goals for FRAA2008: espouse the nymph. Uh, when it can't be avoided that is.

On second thought, there is one aspect of nymph fishing that seems cool to me. It's the idea of catching a 20-inch fish on a size 20 nymph. I've caught a few 20-inch fish on size 18 nymphs but I'm not sure that I've ever actually logged a 20-20. As an aside, I'm really not sure who the genius was who came up with the sizing system where a size 20 fly would be smaller than a size 16 fly which would be smaller than a size 12, but I'd like to meet that guy and help him do those simple tasks he cannot do by himself like tie his shoes and hold a fork. But I digress.

Tailwaters like the South Platte and the San Juan are famous for large trout that subsist on a steady diet of ridiculously small bugs and since we're going to be fishing both of those streams, I'm determined to gain a modicum of proficiency with tiny nymphs or die trying. And hey, who knows, I might catch enough lunkers that after it's all said and done I'll decide that I love fishing with nymphs after all. Call it 20-20 hindsight.