10. How To Pick Flies For Euro Nymphing (10 of 20)

- [Tom] We all agonize over fly choice, but take a lesson from George. He keeps his fly selection simple, as instead of trying to match the hatch with a specific fly, in Euro nymphing, you're just trying to get something that looks tasty in front of a trout. It's much more about getting the fly down to the fish with depth control than it is about using the perfect fly pattern. George, talk a little bit about the flies used. Now, you can theoretically use any heavily weighted fly for this, right? They don't have to be tied on jig hooks. - [George] Sure. - You can use a standard Bead-Head Prince or whatever. - Those kind of fish hooks. But a lot of people use specialized flies, actually they're not specialized, they're more generic patterns, right? - Correct. - They're kind of almost nymph attractors. - Exactly. - How do you rationalize what fly to pick? - Basically, what I'm looking at is I fish about a dozen style of flies, no matter where I go. I just have some varieties of pheasant tails, hare's ears to cover most of my mayfly imitations. I have some soft tackle patterns to imitate some caddis along with some case caddis. Obviously, I have worms and what they refer to as junk flies for dirty water conditions or any time where fish are actually feeding on floating worms. For the most part, I'm looking at a fly more from a depth standpoint. I weight my flies according to three distinct weight classes. Most of my flies in the heavier section here are tied with a 532nd bead tungsten. This next one is tied with a 764th, one size smaller. And the next box is tied with a 332nd. So right there, I have three ways of adjusting my depth. Most of the time, I put the heavier fly on the point. Putting the heavier fly on the point keeps the entire rig right from the rod tip to the nymph. Also when you fish a heavier fly on the point, the lighter weight fly on the dropper, you're fishing two distinct levels in the presentation. So keeps it tight and you fish two levels. - George, we talked a bit about weight in flies and are there other considerations regarding the profile of the fly for getting it down? - Absolutely. What we're trying to go for, for the most part, is just trying to create as thin and as dense of a body as possible that's just going to quickly penetrate through the water column to achieve depth. And sometimes you obviously want the fuzzy flies floating more on the water column for emergers, but any time you're looking to achieve a deep drift as close to the bottom, try to strive for thin and dense bodies. - Okay. What would you consider a thin and dense fly? - This is a style of fly called the perdigon. It's just a hard body fly. The body can be constructed of thread or a floss that's coated with a UV resin hit with a light. But just something that's again, just very thin in diameter. This is just a V-ribbed nymph. It's a hard body nymph but you can see the dub collar and that's going to sink at a much slower rate than the perdigon. - Okay. Okay. Great. Good to know.