Afishionado: The stubborn guy with a fly rod

The fly-fishing angler who won’t fish with nymph imitations is a stubborn fool. He will stand there, 20 feet downstream of a fishy-looking pool, and hope for a rise. He will hope for a trout to nose into the surface and give away both its position and its interest in devouring a fly on the surface of the river. There being none — no flies on the surface, no trout rising — the stubborn bastard will convince himself that he can fool a trout into taking his floating dry fly. So the hard-headed (or too-lazy-to-change-his-fly) fellow will start casting dry flies to places where he’s convinced trout are foraging. He will catch nothing. But that will not stop him; he will not change his approach. 

Meanwhile, the fellow 20 yards away, who chooses to fish with nymph imitations — weighted flies that drift along the bottom of the river — will catch trout after trout.

That is because he knows from experience that, 98% of the time, it is pointless to cast floating flies when there are no signs of rising trout. He knows that, most of the time, trout feed on aquatic larvae, the nymphal stage of the mayflies that eventually appear on the surface of the river. He will stick with nymphing — the high percentage form of fly fishing — until he sees evidence of rising trout.

Meanwhile, the dullard casting dry flies will catch nothing; he will eventually backcast into a leaning sycamore, and he will lose his fly. Given an opportunity to reboot by mischievous but well-meaning fly fishing sprites, he will fight off logic and choose to tie on more tippet and another dry fly. He will start casting again . He will catch nothing and grow tired and frustrated and lose all hope — until next time.

VIDEO: A fly angler using nymphs catches a feisty brown trout, without any help from his dad.