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- Written by: Rich
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Now that we covered a small tidbit in the last piece on a very unique indicator situation, let’s expand upon the topic some as I discuss the types of indicators that I personally like and the pros and cons of each. Disclaimer; the type of indicator you choose is entirely by personal preference. If indicator fishing is something you’re very well versed in, then you know all too well that pretty much all indicator types will sacrifice one attribute in order to excell in another. My suggestion is carry a variety in your pack or vest as there truly isn’t a perfect single option out there, and hopefully I will clearly and concisely articulate which one will fit the situation you are presented.
Stick on or Palsa Indicator
The stick on style, also known as the Palsa Indicator is one that I always have a packet or two kicking around in my hip pack when nymph fishing. They take up little to no room in a pocket and are a viable micro indicator in a pinch. They are easily stuck to your leader by removing the paper backing from the adhesive side, folding them over and sticking the tacky side to itself. The foam is rather light and they are approximately 1/4” in diameter so they impede your casting very minimally at best. If you know you will be fishing a very constant depth that will not need changing then these will fit your needs. The biggest problem with these style of indicators is just that, once affixed to your leader they cannot be adjusted so they are very limited in versatility. The sensitivity and minuscule size of these however makes them a very viable option when fishing slower margins with micro nymphs under a variety of situations including the winter months when a trouts metabolism slows and they take up primary residence in just that type of water. The other drawbacks to these indicators are a little more obvious; they gum up your leader with a tacky adhesive, one time use only, they will not suspend with heavier flies or weight, and they can slip off easily once water logged. There are some techniques utilizing multiple Palsa indicators spaced evenly along your leader that can be used, but otherwise look at these indicators as a quick pinch in some very specific situations like in the article from last week.
Air-lock Indicator
The Air-lock indicator has become my only choice when it comes to rigid indicators. Many are fans of the Thingamobobber, but I never quite liked those much. Simple reason is you are forced to loop your leader through a hole and around the indicator to lock it in place, and whenever you do this you inherently create a kink in your leader. Secondly, if you have to slide these types of indicators lower on your leader on thinner diameter material, they simply just do not hold. Typically if I have to turn to a hard indicator, I want something that is going to maintain its position on my leader so that I do not have to constantly make adjustments after every cast. The Air-lock indicator does precisely that and it comes in a rather wide variety of sizes as well. The whole premise behind the design works on a pair of rubber grommets or o-rings that seat your tippet onto a post that is threaded like a screw. Down the middle of the post is a groove that you place your tippet into and then screw the cap down to sandwich your tippet between the two grommets in a straight line so there are no kinks in your leader. The beauty of the system is it not only leaves your tippet and leader kink free, but it actually holds as well and you won’t spend time readjusting the depth at which you set your indicator; basically set it and forget it and fish on. The other plus is they come in four sizes from a small 1/2” diameter (the size I use the most) up to a whopping 1.25” diameter which can suspend an anchor in the heaviest of water. The down side to these indicators for me any way is they are essentially a rigid plastic sphere with trapped air. These can often be clunky and not the most delicate of a presentation when landing on the surface of the water, and from my experiences rigid indicators although float very well are usually on the lower end of the sensitivity spectrum. If I am fishing this time of year in lower water conditions and targeting fish in the slower margins, these are my last ditch resort indicators. Otherwise if the water is heavier and I need to use more weight, these are my indicators of choice.
Yarn Indicators
Yarn indicators are nothing new but they are a type of indicator that from my experiences I just cant leave home without. The biggest pro with a yarn indicator is hands down the level of sensitivity they offer. Even the slightest touch of your nymphs will be seen in the yarn. Depending on what kind of yarn system you use will dictate the number of pros and cons. From my experiences, the Dorsey yarn system is the best system for the simple fact that it doesn’t kink your line like the store bought o-ring type yarn indicators. The other beauty of the Dorsey system is the angler controls the size of the indicator based on the amount of yarn you use in the indicator and how long you leave the fibers. Personally I like the fibers short and dense, and a small yarn comb or section of Velcro works well to brush it back to life if it gets water logged. Mucilin, Gink or Loon’s Aquel all work well as floatants and can easily be worked into the fibers to help these stay afloat. Personally, I like to treat my yarn prior to fishing, like the day prior so the floatant has a chance to dry out. If I have the time, and can pretreat them, then I will typically use Flyagra as it is the best gel/liquid floatant that I have used when applied in this manner.
Balloon Indicator
The last style of indicator that I am fond of is the balloon. My buddy Mike turned me onto these years ago and since then I have always liked these. For a less than ten dollars you can get yourself a bag of 500 water balloons which will in essence last you several seasons of fishing. The trick to making your balloon indicator is to keep them small, I don’t like to inflate them anymore than the size of a quarter, more often than not a nickel sized balloon is all I need and not only will float a good amount of weight but are as sensitive as yarn. The downside to these however usually lies in how you affix them to your leader. Mike used to buy small black rubber O-rings like the ones you’d see on most commercially sold yarn indicators. The key to those is you wanted to purchase them in sizes less than a quarter inch, and when you tied off the balloon you’d simply tie them around the O-ring. We all know that whenever you loop your leader through and around them you would inevitably kink your leader so I borrowed Pat Dorseys yarn idea and translated it to the balloon indicator with great success. I personally like to use the micro rubber bands that my daughters use for hair ties when they braid their hair. I stumbled upon these one day snagged a couple and now that’s all I use to affix them to the leader. For about six dollars you can get a bag of 500 of these little rubber bands that can be reused as well. For a great video on how to set up the Dorsey Indicator system, check out this video from the guys at Troutbitten. The only real drawback to affixing them this way is they will still slide around when dealing with smaller diameter tippet, so build your leaders accordingly.
So, as you all know I like to have options in any of the systems that I fish. My suggestion is to try them all and see which one’s work best for you and adopt them to your systems or fine tune them to your liking. A couple of things I have prescribed to in my flyfishing is I don’t abide to two terms; never and always as there is the chance that on any given day things you can get thrown a curve ball. So be ready for it so you can hit out the park. Lastly you can always run the dry dropper this time of year, which is a very viable option, more on that in another post, and below is the exact set up that I have been having some great success with in the last few weeks on my home waters. Have fun and check your water temps.
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The title pretty much sums up the content in this piece, but in all honesty I like many feel if you consider yourself to be a well rounded trout angler, you would be remiss in not fishing with an indicator under the right circumstances. I realize folks, tight-lining, euro-nymphing czech-nymphing or whatever coined term used to fish weighted nymphs is the “cool thing” these days; many think it is the only way to present nymphs. I see many anglers on my home waters regularly fishing exclusively in this manner. And in many situations they do very well, but when they begin to fish this way in some varied water types, their productivity often goes down as they stubbornly will not stray from this method of angling.
I will say, it is a highly effective and productive method when employed by the angler who is extremely adept and efficient at (1) controlling depth, and (2) maintaining that fine line between staying in contact with your flies at the correct speed without literally dragging them through the water column. But, from a guide’s perspective, often it is a difficult concept for many anglers who have minimal experience fishing with nymphs in general. Depth control is often a subject that many struggle with regardless of skill set or experience.
I had this conversation with good friend and Pennsylvania Guide Lance Wilt of Outcastanglers just the other day. We were discussing how the masses of anglers we encounter solely wish to fish nymphs in a tight line set up as they have been led to believe that this is the only way by which to fish nymphs if you want to have maximum success. As stated earlier, this is true if the angler can consistently control the depth of their flies, come in contact with them at the onset of their drift and never lose that contact, (which can be inherently difficult with a variety of variables, wind being the most common, or using improper angles with the rod tip while working a particular piece of water). If the angler doesn’t perform any one of these things, they will either lose flies continually as the system hangs bottom and snags, or they miss many fish as they fail to detect the strike of a fish as they never fully have control of their system.
Look, let me set the record straight, I am by no means denouncing the use of a tight line nymph rig in favor of the indicator (“suspension”) rig. What I am trying to convey here is experiment a little more and don’t be locked into fishing your flies in just one way. Oh I know, now you might have to spend some time re-rigging your entire leader, pinching on some added weight and a dreaded indicator to your line. First world problems I know, but hold on a second. You very well may not have to do nothing more than change the distance between your flies and adding an indicator, and you might even find that you will most likely be fishing lighter flies as well.
I’ll give you a scenario and see if you can visualize it. You’ve been fishing a moderate paced section of broken water somewhere in the vicinity of the gut of a run to start your day. There has been little to no insect activity so you have been working your two fly rig through this middle portion of the run right at the current seam, which has an average depth of about 3-4 feet. Your success has been relatively consistent, but it took some moving around a bit to locate the fish in what has typically been a productive run. The fish are positioned here as a result of the lack of insect activity and are currently not being super selective as a result; more so opportunistic. Your tight line rig under these conditions has your sighter approximately 40 inches above your dropper as a result of the aforementioned water type.
Slowly you start to realize you’ve stopped catching fish in that exact water type, and the insect activity has now started to increase as you begin seeing the flanks of fish in the shallow margins at the immediate head of the run you are fishing. Now the average depth is anywhere from a few inches to no more than 2 feet and the current speed is much slower from what you were currently fishing. Due to your current position, you could cross the river and put yourself in arms length of that water, but you would seriously run the risk of ruining that water entirely by crossing the river or walking up the bank. What you also realize is the bulk of the fish are situated and feeding in that slow seam at a constant depth of approximately 2 feet, and due to your position and the slower current speed, it is rather difficult to maintain a good drift with your nymphs without actually pulling your flies through the water column.
This is where a small indicator and either a single lightly weighted nymph or a pair can really come in handy, and you really do not need to change your leader or alter much, or even add weight for that matter. What I have found seems to work well in this particular setting, and I was doing this with clients way before “euro-nymphing” was even popular mind you, is keeping your presentation in a vertical position, in essence just like a drop shot system. The best way to achieve this with more than one fly is to make sure that your heavier nymph is on the bottom of your rig, with they lighter or unweighted nymph off a dropper tag above. What makes this system very deadly is you can literally split the water column in a variety of ways with 2 flies while also having maximum strike detection once you set your indicator to the proper depth. By using weighted flies and not added weight, you achieve a very high level of sensitivity and strike detection, and this can be fished in a variety of systems to include a mono rig if you are one of the prescribers to this controversial style of flyfishing. (That is a whole other topic that you can read up on, but I will save that for another day).
As a good rule of thumb I will set my indicator just shy of the depth of the water that I am fishing when encountering this type of scenario. In other words, if the water is 2 feet deep I will aim to put my indicator a few inches shy of that depth from the bottom most fly so that while it is drifting it is slightly off the bottom. Granted, in a perfect world the bottom may stay constant, if it changes then I adjust accordingly. Often however, the trout I am targeting are in a feeding mode and will move to intercept my flies, so if they are not exact to the depth don’t worry, just adjust accordingly until you start to have success.
What you also should try to achieve on every drift of your flies is a dead drifts, an elementary concept we all have pounded into our heads. This is often easier to do with a longer rod when fishing a seam across river from you as you can position the rod tip much higher thus keeping all of the line from the end of the rod tip to the indicator off of the water which in turn defeats any sort of potential drag as long as you track the rod tip with the indicator as it flows downstream. By simply continuing to follow the indicator with the rod tip you can slow your flies down to match the current speed and subsequently increase your chances of fooling the trout that are feeding in that particular water.
So the next time you’re encountered with a situation like the aforementioned, don’t just go through the motions and stubbornly struggle, lose the stigma and give the indicator a try, it might just save the day. And for the record, this is a very viable option when the river conditions are lower like they currently are in the summer months on your favorite tailwater fishery. There’s some other great options that I will articulate in future pieces, but until then go out and catch some fish, but first be sure to respect those fish by checking your water temps. The best bets this time of year are early in the morning or later in the day when the sun goes down, but if the water temperatures are too high, give the fish a break.
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- Written by: Rich
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The first round of custom stripped and dyed peacock quills went fast, so I made sure to add more this go around. I even added a new color, and I thank you all who purchased them. Things are going to be changing around here shortly, so expect to start seeing this website become more active with all sorts of fly fishing and tying things as my schedule opens up. So here is what we have in stock:
Neon Green: 11
*Purple: 10
Natural: 8
Brown: 9
Tan: 9
Rusty Brown: 8
Dark Brown:12
Sulphur Orange: 9
Olive: 8
Light Olive: 6
Golden Yellow: 8
Emerald Green: 2
Wine: 4
Black: 17
You can purchase them HERE with free shipping
Enjoy the video below of one of my quilled creations and happy tying.
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