Trout Tactics

Now that you know the food items fish eat and know your basic casting principles, it’s time to get to the meat of fly fishing presenting the fly. Presenting the fly isn’t just about casting; it’s the entire strategy of not only putting the fly where the trout will eat it, but also allowing the fly to move in a natural manner.

Dry-Fly Fishing

In most dry-fly fishing, a “natural” presentation is dead-drift, which means your floating fly is moving at the same speed and direction as the surface current. [Some insects such as stoneflies and caddis skitter or crawl across the surface of the water and require a “skated” dry fly. Other surface flies such as bass popping bugs require an active retrieve but aren’t normally referred to as dry flies. The Editor.

Dry-fly fishing is considered by many anglers to be the most enjoyable kind of fly fishing. In subsurface fishing, you usually guess or try to predict where the fish is, you can’t see your fly or track its progress visually, and the strike is not visual—you must feel it or get visual clues from a strike indicator.

Conversely, fly fishers love dry-fly fishing because they usually know where their quarry is, they often observe the fish feeding—which gives them accurate insight into what they’re eating—and, most importantly, they can see the fish take the fly.

A trout eating a dry fly is the singular moment in fly fishing that sets it apart from all other types of fishing. So how do you get to that point? A good dry-fly presentation has three critical elements position (of the angler), casting, and then mending and line control.

First, you must walk, wade, or maneuver your boat in the most favorable position relative to the fish. You may be the world’s best caster but unless you move to the best position, you are not planning your presentation.

The best position is one that gets you as close as possible to the fish without the fish seeing you, and one that inherently helps you defeat drag. Of course, the depth and speed of the water, trees and shrubs along the bank, the riverbank itself, and many other obstructions limit your options.

If you are fishing a river that is easy to wade, a uniform 2½ feet deep, with a golf-course manicured riverbank, you can stand wherever you want but in most waters, things are complicated and you’ll have to do more strategizing.

There are five main presentation positions, each is described relative to the position of the fish downstream, down and across, across, up and across, and upstream.

The upstream presentation is often the easiest and most effective for dead-drifting dry flies because you are downstream or directly behind the fish. While you are in the trout’s “blind spot” (directly behind it) you can often get close to the fish—regularly within 30 feet or less.

Because the current is coming directly toward you, all you have to do is make a straight upstream cast directly over the fish. There is very little mending or fancy casting involved.

The fly line should land behind the fish, the leader should land just behind the fish, the tippet just over the fish, and the fly should land in front of the fish in its feeding lane. If you cast too far and allow the fly line to splash down on top of or in front of the fish where it is watching for food items (or predators) you will likely spook the fish and lose your opportunity. This is called “lining” the fish.

When you make the right cast, the fly lands just upstream of the fish. As the fly and line drift downstream toward you, put the line under the index finger of your rod hand, and with your opposite hand, strip in line to remove slack from your system.

In most other dry-fly presentations, you often need to introduce slack to create a dead drift. However, in an upstream presentation, the distance between the fly and your rod tip begins to shrink as soon as the fly touches down, and you are usually standing in the same current speed as your target.

You must remove slack efficiently so you can effectively strike when the fish takes the fly and so that if/when the fly passes the fish, you can effectively pick up the line and quickly cast again. If you have coils of loose slack you won’t be able to strike or cast—you’ll just end up with a tangle of line around your legs.

The upstream presentation is most effectively and commonly used on big rivers when fish are rising in shallow water close to the bank, and also in shallow tailouts and other areas where you can sneak up behind the fish. In small creeks and streams it is often the only presentation possible—close shrubs and bushes and spooky fish often prevent you from coming at the fish from any other angle.

The up-and-across presentation presents a more complicated scenario. If the fish is upstream from you at a 45-degree angle you are potentially in its field of vision, therefore the distance to your target is often greater than in an upstream presentation.

More importantly, when the fish is up and across, you generally have the current working against you, pulling at the line between you and the fish, and making the fly act unnaturally.

Imagine that you are standing in the center of a medium-size stream, and a trout is holding near the bank, upstream from you, eating drifting mayfly duns. Because of the current and streamside foliage, the middle of the stream is the only place you can stand. You make your first cast perfectly (you think) and the line unrolls at a 45-degree angle across the stream, and the fly drops just 4 feet ahead of the trout.