Time for more on mending line when you’re trout fishing!
We’re back from a short break in our series on mending – Chris Price, our manager at Chile West, writes the series, and he’s been out for the last couple of weeks hosting a group on a fantastic trip. Don’t worry, you’ll hear more about that later!
Nymphing and the ‘Complete Mend’
Let’s say that you are drifting in a boat, using a strike indicator and the current is fairly uniform.
Make your cast at a 90 degree angle to the boat, or slightly upstream, and when you make the mend, ‘hop’ the indicator slightly upstream of where the nymph landed.
The nymph should now be just on the downstream side of the indicator. This is critical. This allows the nymph to free fall in the current, getting down to the bottom much quicker as there is no drag on the leader. The indicator is literally pushing the nymph down.
If the nymph is upstream of the indicator it will take much longer to get down, because the leader will have drag and will have to cut through the water to get down below the indicator. In this situation, the indicator is pulling on the nymph, lifting it off the bottom.
Eventually, depending on current speed and depth in the drift, the nymph will start to drag behind and start to lift off the bottom. This is when you need to re-mend. Make a ‘complete mend’ all the way to the indicator and then some, hopping the indicator up and over the nymph to allow it to free fall again. Remember the ‘lift and lay’ technique we spoke of in a previous post.
The most common mistake in this situation is to mend only the fly line. This will do nothing to your nymph or anything else below the surface – if anything it will only drag the nymph off the bottom, and leave it playing catch up. Remember, nymphs do not hold in the current nor do they streak downstream faster than the current.
[…] We’re wrapping up our mini-series on mending your fly line. Written by Chris Price, our manager at Chile West, this group of posts so far has covered an introduction to mending, Belly, How to Lift and Lay, and Nymphing and the Complete Mend. […]