Emergers: have we gone too far?

[Malcolm]

I was reading a recent post which mentioned the difficult situation where the Yellow May Dun was heavy on the water but nary a one took. This rang a strong bell in my mind because the same thing happened to me down the River Leven one night last year. I fished hard and eventually got a few but it was hard graft. More than that I actually had a YMD compara dun variant amongst the flies that I used.

It was only as I was going home that it occured that all the flies I used that evening were "in the water" flies. Yep, The emergers had taken over my fly box. Even that compara dun was a real low rider.

Don't get me wrong 90% of the time I think "in the surface is the way to go.

Next night same situation but this time I had a high riding fly tied with a very short palmered saddle hackle with a compara dun wing. The result was excellent. Since then I've carried a few high riders in my fly box and for good measure a few spent spinner variants.

Have we gone too far down the "in the water" route?

[Wildfisher]

Have we gone too far down the "in the water" route?

I think we sometimes get stuck in the track that worked last time. A few times this past season I found flat parachute patterns took fish when klinks failed. Trouble is I am a bit of a lazy bugger when it comes to changing flies. Incidentally I don't think I carried a single high riding, old style dry with me over the past few seasons when river fishing. I guess I have read too many Bob Wyatt articles..................

[Clan Ford]

I reckon we've not gone far enough - I think it was Buzz who once mentioned he was working on a subsurface hatching "pop up" fly.  Now that is the way forward :shock:

Norm

[haresear]

Assuming we are talking about upwings, I generally tailor my approach to rising fish by watching what they are taking, if possible. If it is obvious they are taking duns, then a true floating fly a parachute is my first line of attack.

Next is the comparadun/sparkle dun style)

If they don't take that, I'll try an F fly

If I'm still certain they are taking floating adults and I know my fly size is right, I'll try an upside down dun as a last resort (had a few bonus fish on these).

If that doesn't work, then a sunk abdomen fly (klinkhamer, DHE or whatever) is the next weapon.

If that doesn't work, I'll put a lightly weighted PTN on, tied to the bend of the bend of the DHE/klink.

It that doesn't work I'll probably move on to the next fish and come back later.

Alex

[scotfly]

Have we gone too far down the "in the water" route?

I don't think we can go too far. Fish are predators, they want the maximum return for minimum expenditure of energy. This of course means that they will normally target the most vulnerable stage, the emergence. Anglers are predators too, so we must exploit the trout behaviour and target them where we are likely to encounter most success.
Unless of course, you fish the chalkstreams where common sense is derided by many in favour of dogma!  :dunno (The battles I could have if I posted that on a chalkstream forum  :wall2)

[Malcolm]

I don't think we can go too far.

Maybe I worded it poorly. I am a great believer in the emerger and believe it's the way to go - mostly. However, the point I was making was that I personally had gone too far down the exclusively "emerger/low riding" route leaving no room for any other tactic to the extent that I had no high riding flies in my box! I'm fairly successful with the dry fly but on the the "Night of the YMD" I was snookered.

I reckon we've not gone far enough - I think it was Buzz who once mentioned he was working on a subsurface hatching "pop up" fly.  Now that is the way forward :shock:

Norm

Norm
We've been using pop up emergers on the River Leven for a few years now. Probably very different from Buzz's ideas but it's an interesting technique.

FWIW here's what we do. It's not unique being a variant of "booby fishing"!  

The fly patterns are CDC buzzers with a plastazote base to the wing. We've tried others but these seem to work best. The problem we had was getting the fly down without submerging the tip of the line. The setup we use is a floating line with a very short tippet - 4 to 5ft or so - at the end of a very fast sinking leader. What we found was that the tip of the fly line would submerge and hold the fly down. So we put Airflo take indicator on the very tip of the fly line.

The technique is to cast well up stream of the target, allow the leader to sink then haul back quickly on the line which pulls the fly under then release so that the fly pops up (more slowly than you might expect). I've yet to be convinced that it works any better than standard dry/emerger tactics and the set up is such that it is a pain to quickly switch.

I've personally given this up but one of the other lads uses it a lot.

[Tim]

Scotfly

No dogma on the chalkstreams I fish. DHE's with hares ear and stripped quill bodies, CDC & Elk natural and olive, and the mighty gold head GRHE keep me happy most of the time.

The Dogma comes from Farlows, Orvis and people who fish the overstocked middle Test.

Tim