I have a confession to make. I think Euro nymphing is boring. Sure, I’ll admit it’s a highly effective way to catch fish, but in my view it has no soul. Tying one or two heavily weighted streamlined “flies” onto your tippet, then open loop casting them into a current seam and watching them dead drift is just plain boring. But despite all of that boring, repetitive motion, I catch fish after fish after fish. I’ll admit that Euro nymphing is not sexy, at least not in my hands, but man does it produce. It’s like eating plain oatmeal every morning, it’ll keep you alive and going, but it doesn’t have any flare or passion. I love catching trout, but I want the process to be romantic, not robotic.
I’ll admit that I don’t do Euro-style nymphing most of the year, but now that it’s winter, it’s my main fishing method. Like most places which trout inhabit, when winter sets in and the water temperature drops, the fish head to the bottom and don’t move very far to take a fly. So, I resort to Euro nymphing in winter to keep my fishing skills honed.
Euro nymphing often goes by different names. These include competition nymphing, contact nymphing, tightline nymphing, or the more sexy term “tactical nymphing”. They are pretty much all the same and involve using one or more heavily weighted, streamlined nymphs kept in constant contact with a tightly controlled thin line. The rod tip is usually held high and the nymphs are dead drifted through runs at varying depths. All of this combines to make a very effective method of catching trout.
Unlike tenkara kebari, in my opinion euro nymphing flies are sterile and most are lifeless. They are often colorful, many to the point of being gaudy, and generally don’t imitate any living aquatic prey. Still, they catch fish like crazy. Many are hard bodied and most are weighted with a disproportionately large tungsten bead. Why fish go after these colorful pebbles is beyond me, but they do. We often are in awe of a trout’s power of discernment when it comes to rejecting dry fly patterns on a spring creek, but in reality they must actually be really stupid since they’ll eat a perdigon nymph. Maybe they’re not as discerning as we think.
I do like Euro nymphing better than bobber (indicator) nymphing. I did that for years back before my tenkara journey began, but I found it also boring. The casts are sloppy and imprecise. I caught a lot of fish back then too, but I’m embarrassed to say that I spent a lot of time standing in beautiful waters surrounded by breathtaking scenery only to be fixedly watching a small plastic bobber float downstream.
I love tenkara. It saved my passion for fly fishing from withering away. I love the technical casting tenkara provides. Sure, I love to double haul as much as the next guy, but there is something about casting a light level line and unweighted kebari in a tight loop and placing the fly exactly where you want it to go, then keeping all the line off the water. It’s just magical. I also love the manipulation techniques which are intimately linked with tenkara. I love the flies, or “kebari”, and how they are designed to bring movement and lifelike impressionism to fishing rather than focusing on hatch matching or photo realism. For me, the dead drift is just that, dead. I love the life tenkara breathes into its artform.
Again I confess, I think euro nymphing is boring. But it’s winter and it’s all I’ve got until the sun works its way back north and warms the earth back to life. So, until the sun’s return, I’ll keep being bored by catching fish after fish after fish on party-favor colored flies which resemble little psychedelic ice cream cones, and I’ll keep dreaming of my tenkara days to come!
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All I can say Tom is that you must catch way too many fish. 🙂
I’m trying to keep up with you, Dave! :o)
I enjoyed your article Tom….as I ate my boring oatmeal as part of my morning ritual! I also employed ESN methods prior to tenkara. I came over to fixed line rods because if a 12’ Euro rod was good, a 15’ rod would be even better (for euro techniques). What I found was the casting was more fun, the manipulation was addictive, the history was fascinating, and the direct connection to the fish and surroundings enhanced my enjoyment tremendously. I can’t say that Euro-style is completely boring to me (yet), but more often than not I find myself sacrificing catch rate for a preferred fishing method. Often, I switch AFTER I’ve caught a number of fish in order to prove I can.
-Kris Franqui
Tom, Im almost ashamed that I didnt write this article…talk about reading exactly what is on a guys mind. I mean yeah, Euronymphing works but also it has never added a valuable image to my experience as an angler. Never get to see the take, because all I am ever watching is the indicator line. Like watching paint dry.
Here I am, your more stubborn and less cold-hearty counterpart, refusing to fish that way and also waiting for my Tenkara angling to return. Winter is long and fishless.
I was channeling my inner Jonathan when I wrote the article. “Like watching paint dry”, I like that. Perfect description.
I got into using fixed line rods as a more effective way of euro-nymphing – what I think of as “euro nymphing on steroids” but my experience has been the same as yours. The more I’ve become familiar with traditional tenkara methods the more my preference moved in that direction.
I was thinking last week how the most extreme variant on euro-nymphing is using drop shot to get the flies down the bottom in the even heaviest water. The experience of using drop shot is so unpleasant – just chucking heavily weighted rigs. I was thinking how much I hate fishing drop shot to the point I’d rather not catch a fish than resort to that method.
I was also thinking how much I’m growing to dislike two fly rigs as well. I find I foul hook fish much more frequently on two fly rigs – often when the fish takes the top fly only to be snagged by the bottom fly.
In terms of winter fishing I no longer us euro-nymphing flies but instead a small bead head streamer – a variation on the Garthside Sparrow. With an extra long section of tippet and by carefully placing the fly in the water column this is heavy enough to get the fly down to the fish but can also be manipulated in different ways as it bumps across the bottom. I will often fish a hole upstream and then fish it downstream using various manipulation techniques.
Thanks, August. I need to use the Sparrow more in my fly rotation. Great fly!
Thanks Tom. For years I listened to the Euro-elite try to differentiate all the favorite descriptors of their craft and it’s good to hear someone else share my view, i.e., that they’re all basically the same thing. One factor that may make all of the otherwise vanilla bead heads work well in winter is the possibility those beads are being interpreted by the trout as a drifting egg. (In fact, here locally you can use a tungsten bead on a bare hook and do just fine.) Finally, regarding a trout’s power of discernment, I’m firmly in the camp of folks who believe when the fish are in the mood to feed you can pretty much make anything work. In any season.
I’m with you, Gary. …”when the fish are in the mood to feed you can pretty much make anything work”, I agree, at least for my mountain stream trout. Cheers, man, and happy winter!
Thanks for the chuckle on this cold January morning. Where I live, fishing open water is not an option until May. I suspect your “confession” is as much about the boredom of winter as it is nymphing. What your thoughts bring to my mind is the notion that as fishers get more experience and successful they often graduate from catching any fish, to a lot of fish, to big fish, then finally to catching them the way they find most pleasing. I do enjoy the aesthetics of nymphing. The mystery of what lurks where you cannot see, the game of interpreting what the sighter is telling you. Most fly fishing involves focusing on something: a dry fly, a bobber, a sighter, bit of yarn, whatever. Like many, I too get bored with a steady diet of one method even if it is working well. I recall one evening at a productive hole in a small creek where I changed between a tenkara rod and a nymphing rod just to compare.
Hi Rod, decades ago I used to fish dry flies almost exclusively, but changed to nymphing for the very reason you outlined, “The mystery of what lurks where you cannot see, the game of interpreting what the sighter is telling you”. But I too get bored with a steady diet of just one method. Well written.
Tom, you took the words right out of my mouth. Sorry for the length of this, but it’s a topic that hits home. Much like Jonathan, I refuse to fish that way (unless it’s one of the few times I get out my Western Euro rod). With a Tenkara rod in hand. I rarely dead drift no matter where I’m fishing in the water column. Movement excites fish, especially bigger fish. I mostly cast kebari and western wet flies or flymphs. When I’ve got a nymph on, it’s not heavily weighted or it’s unweighted. This does two things… keeps me off the bottom, so I don’t hang up and blow out a run or hole and it easily allows for movement. I’m a Rich Ostoff disciple of his “Active Nymphing” approach. So I fish my nymphs just like I fish a kebari on the surface, making the same series of casts (dead drift with a lift at the end, 2nd cast gets movement of whatever variety seems to be working for the day, and last cast is a wet fly type swing). The fish don’t seem to mind that I’m swinging a nymph or a kebari vs. a wet fly. Here’s a summary of Rich Ostoffs thoughts on moving nymphs… “Active Nymphing challenges the prevailing notion that nymphing entails little more than lobbing a weighted nymph and dead drifting with the current. Even heavily-weighted nymphs can be cast at high line speeds with near dry-fly accuracy out to surprising distances. And manipulating the nymph during part or all of the ‘drift’, puts the angler in precise manual control of its speed, path, and behavior. Active Nymphing will open your eyes to the many advantages of moving nymphs, rather than dead-drifting too dogmatically, and will help take your nymphing for trout to new levels on all water types, from spring creeks, to tailwaters, to freestone rivers, to lakes.”
I should add, that I’m doing this in the Driftless, where our medium to deep water is usually lower gradient and slower than a high gradient mountain stream. A lightly weighted or non-weighted nymph on a high gradient stream is going to end up fishing almost like a kebari because of the speed of the water. In those conditions I’d go with a little bit of weight on the nymph to get down into the bottom half of the water column.
Active nymphing, I like the thought of it. Nicely described!
I think that if I ever get bored catching trout I’ll be having a huge rod sale.
Think of me kindly on that day sir. 🤣
Hi Tom,
I’m a fellow tenkara fanatic but also an avid euro nympher with a dedicated euro style rod designed to cast weighted nymphs and a euro reel to handle long (35 feet) and ultra thin (4x) leaders. Euro nymphing can be a beautiful, artful, as well as effective method. It’s definitely not for everyone, but I’d check out some videos from @OldDoninionTroutbum on YouTube before you generalize too much. This one is a great example: https://youtu.be/1ZvOJmQUdjA?feature=shared
He inspired me to take up euro nymphing in earnest (ie not just throwing weighted nymphs using my Mizuchi) much like your videos inspired me to take up tenkara several years ago.
All the best,
Dustin
It’s very effective, for sure. Thanks, Dustin. I’m partial to Devin Olsen for contact nymphing info and techniques. https://tacticalflyfisher.com/collections/media
Agree 100%, Tom! I know many ways I could catch more fish than I would using my typical tenkara setup and flies. But I’m not out there to compete. I don’t consider it much of a success if I caught a fish by matching the hatch. It’s a success for me if I caught a fish on the fly I wanted to catch a fish on and the way I wanted to catch it. Fishing just a simple sakasa kebari gives me opportunities for a diversity of presentations. The robotic nature of nymph fishing in general isn’t that appealing to me. I’d rather catch 2 fish on one of my beautiful kebari, than 20 on Perdigons. And speaking of which, the Perdigon is NOT a fly! It’s encased in resin and most of them are 100% synthetic. It’s closer to a Rapala than a fly!
Well said, Jason!
Tom, great article and the comments are just as valuable. I wrote a recent blog post about this topic in a very obtuse way. My point was that fly fishing, after two years back from a 15+ year hiatus, has changed for me and primarily because of Tenkara. At first it was all about what could get me more ‘success’ and that was nymphing with a Euro rod or Tenkara.
Then it was about learning about tactical/tight line nymphing from Dom over at Troutbitten. I can honestly say that I have achieved a good degree of skill at that type of fly fishing and it is pretty engaging. That being said, I am moving more and more over to the aesthetic side for my fly fishing experience and that means Tenkara keeps rising to the fore.
I told my wife that when I dream about fly fishing I do so with a Tenkara rod in my hand. The great thing about our favorite way to fly fish is that even if I don’t catch as many trout as I would with an ‘optimum’ set up…I will still catch plenty of trout…and every single one will be done in a way that fills my soul.
So, you’re spending all winter fishing in a way that you find boring and soulless? Sounds like a you problem, man. Do you need to catch all these fish after fish to eat them? Cause otherwise I’m not sure why you’re wasting your time. Fish something else if you’re so bored.
Also, try adding some fruit or nuts to your oatmeal. Very healthy, and more interesting to eat! 👍