Winter Dry Fly Fishing Tips
By Bob Randall on Saturday, January 5th, 2019 in Fishing Wisdom, Flies, No Comments
Winter Dry Fly Fishing Tips by Allen Gardner
The Winter Hatches including insects, sizes, colors and fly suggestions.
When you can fish dry flies in winter?
How you should fish dry flies during the winter months?
Where you can find rising trout during winter?
Time of Day
For the best times of day, focus on the warmest parts of the day, usually 10 am – 3 pm. Early morning can produce well with nymphs, but as weather warms, dry flies will begin to show up. They won’t hatch all the time, and I’ve found that blind casting to trout during winter with dry flies to be as
successful as winning an argument on politics of opposing opinions. It’s just not worth your time. If you see fish rising however, the game changes and get your dry flies on!
Fly Tying Suggestions
The best advice for tying midges is to tie small. Small sizes, small portions, etc. Less is more with midges of all stages.
Use Unbalanced Leader
The purpose of leader beyond the obvious tying on of flies, is also to transfer the energy and power of your cast down to your fly. While most times you want as close to 100% energy transfer as possible, I’ve found with winter dry flies, that an unbalanced leader stops the power 1-3 ft short and allows the fly to land as soft as a natural insect. This goes a long way in creating a good presentation. The key here is to take something like a 9ft 6x leader, and then tie 12-36 inches of additional 6x to the end. This short-loads the leader and makes it hard to transfer energy to the fly. The end result will be that your leader almost unloads and lays out, but the last 12-24 inches just stops and flutters to the water. This lands the fly just how you want it and is a great presentation. In order for the line not to get all messed up around the fly, you need to have a good cast and cast at an angle to the trout.
Read the entire article by clicking here.
With permission of Allen Gardener of The Catch and the Hatch