When it comes to trout fishing ... there's more than one way to drift a nymph
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Nymphing on Spring Creek, U.S. national fly fishing champion George Daniel casts toward the shoreline on a January morning near Bellefonte. In his first book, Daniel urges fly anglers to match techniques with conditions. -
George Daniel "Dynamic Nymphing" (Stackpole) $39.95
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BELLEFONTE, Pa. -- The limestone streams of central Pennsylvania famously pour from the ground at precisely the cool temperatures favorable to trout. But on a chilly January mountain morning on Spring Creek, the brown trout waited for some warming sunlight to break through the clouds.
Fingers frozen, breathing steam, I roll casted my line upstream from a pocket and drifted the nymph and its dropper past a tangled shoreline stump. Drift after drift through the icy current, and I couldn't get a pick up. My only consolation was that my fishing partner, a U.S. national fly fishing champion, wasn't catching anything, either.
In 2009, George Daniel of Lock Haven, Pa., won individual and team gold medals in the U.S. National Fly Fishing Championship. In 2008 and 2009, while serving as head coach of U.S. Youth Fly Fishing Teams competing in the Czech Republic and Portugal, he spent a lot of time with European competition anglers who fly fish differently than Americans.
Daniel realized that while most of a trout's diet is picked off the bottom, there are many ways to get nymphs to where they need to be. Three years in the making, his first book, "Dynamic Nymphing" (Stackpole), matches universal conditions with techniques from around the world.
"I was like a lot of anglers who have one technique that they go to all the time," said Daniel, standing on the bank of Spring Creek waiting for the sun to warm the water. "I learned to fish nymphs without indicators. Later, I came to like the European nymphing techniques -- the French nymphing, the Czech nymphing. Those are all great techniques, I have a lot of fun with them. However, those techniques alone will not catch fish in all conditions. There are times when you need suspension nymphing -- strike indicators. Sometimes wet fly techniques are a little more productive. Sometimes fishing a nymph off a dry is better."
PG VIDEODaniel said he titled his book "Dynamic Nymphing" to drive home the idea that there's more than one way to drift a nymph.
"It's all about creating a whole tool set -- an arsenal of techniques," he said, "so an angler can walk up to any stream at any time on any part of the globe, find the technique that works best for the given conditions and be able to catch fish. The book is about applying the right technique to the right piece of water at the right time."
Illustrated with instructive photos and line drawings, the book is a hefty 240 pages covering nymphing lines and tackle, weight, tight-line drifting, suspension tactics, hot patterns, reading the water; fishing in high, low, muddy and small-stream conditions; and includes a dust jacket blurb by Daniel's mentor, Joe Humphreys.
First Published February 5, 2012 12:00 am
