Using Wet Flies & Nymphs - How To 

It’s amazing how much RU-vid videos can improve a beginners fundamentals, whilst being off the river; high and dry at home. Thanks for putting this content out there!

i just started fly fishing this year, im hooked! been going out every day before or after work. I had always loved setting up a dry fly with dropper nymphs. which worked pretty nicely. i liked how it gave me two opportunities to catch a fish, both above the surface and below the service. Today i tried something different and used a large nymph and a strike indicator, good god!! ive never had such a day. Went out for an early morning fish and an afternoon fish, using the large nymph and strike indicator both times. I put double digit number of fish in the net, and had probably 25+ fish on the line. Man i felt like i was cheating, there were a bunch of other fishers using traditional rods and reels with spoons or worms who werent catching anything, meanwhile i was putting a fish on the line almost ever cast.. what a day it was!!

Very good! Tom is the Bob Ross of fly fishing!

Tom thanks for all the videos. Here in South Africa fly fishing isnt as big as in the States yet it is one of the most rewarding forms of fishing for me. Thanks for all the info.

Tom did a great job presenting nymphing in this video. I saw him doing a presentation in Denver, where he demystified fly selection. All common sense, plainly and simply delivered. My all time favorite fly fishing book is from him: Reading Trout Streams; An Orvis Guide [Tom Rosenbauer]. I can go to any unfamiliar river and read it using the information learned from that book.

Awesome information in this video. Thanks Tom

My first fishing book was written by this guy. Tom Rosenbauer just clicked with familiarity in my head and it brings back some good memories of reading that book. (The book was called Casting Illusions)

Tom! you are one of the reasons of why i got into fly fishing! Thanks!

I just thoroughly enjoy your positive attitude

The best instructional video I’ve seen. Learned a lot. Thanks

I got my first fly rod today. So excited to catch some Idaho trout with it this weekend. I’ve caught plenty with bait and spinning gear but I’m ready to take on this new art form.

Thank you so much ,I'm a new fly fisher and this brought My productivity up about 80 %

I just recently discovered this channel. What an excellent series! Tom is fantastic at putting information in a very understandable way and condensing a lot of subtleties of a given technique into few words. So well done!

Water-loading is by far the most efficient and effective tactic when you can do it. Only other thing I would add to what Tom demonstrated is before you make the cast upstream, point your reel in the direction you want the cast to go and then cast where the reel is pointing. This a particularly good method to use when you are fishing an indicator rig with split shot because there is no false casting involved.

yeah! I love the trout magnet bobber as an indicator. It's a very subtle indicator and the trout can't seem to feel it! Just a wonderful product overall.

Thanks for posting this video. Very good information and presented very well. I will use these techniques and I dedicate the next brown trout I catch to Tom Rosenbauer.

VERY informative video. I appreciate the great edits, commentary, and video shots you did.

Outstanding tutorial!

Tom,you are a most amiable fly fisher,a delight to watch.

one of the most effective methods for sight fishing to trout is to use the hinged-nymphing system originated and refined by Dean Schubert and Dave Hickson back in the late 70's. They introduced it in an article in Fly Fisherman magazine back then. It's set up quite different than the methods Tom showed here. Usually its fished with a yarn indicator tied on the end of a 7 or 7½' 3x leader. Then your tippet material is tied directly behind the indicator using a improved clinch knot or an Orvis knot at a 90° angle to the leader. Slide the knot up against the yarn knot before doing the final "lubricate and tighten". Make the tippet equal to the depth of the water plus 6". Attach a single split shot 4" to 8" from the fly. I normally start at 6" and if I'm missing a bunch of strikes I'll move it a bit closer. If I'm not getting strikes, I'll move it farther away. But 6" works for most situations. When set up correctly and cast correctly the fly will end up within about a 1-foot circle of the indicator and the tippet will be tight between the yarn and split shot, allowing the fly to move naturally in the current with the 6" of slack from the split shot to the fly. When the trout takes the nymph, he only has to move it 6" for the slack line to move the split shot and the split shot to move the indicator. In fast water it often submerges the indicator, whereas in slow water it just causes the indicator to twitch. The trick to casting this is to cast it up in the air so the line extends entirely and whips the and shot down to enter the water first, with the indicator landing behind it. With this presentation, the indicator will feed slack to the fly and shot and the fly will sink to depth very quickly. If the indicator precedes the fly down current, it will keep tension on the system dragging it down stream and will typically take 5 to 6 times as long to sink to the bottom, if it ever does. If you try to make this cast in a heavy wind, it will cause problems. However, you can overcome that by making the cast with more power than you would normally need, or by using Joe Humphreys tuck cast or up-down cast. That will whip the fly and shot around nicely ensuring the indicator lands up-current of the fly and shot after the fly and shot enter the water. When sight fishing, I don't use the indicator to tell me that a trout has struck. Trout can suck in a fly and spit it out, particularly in slow water, without disturbing your indicator. Use it as a "drift indicator" instead. If you made a successful presentation, and you are getting a dead drift, your fly should be within about a 1-foot circle below your indicator. When the indicator gets within a couple of feet of the fish, then watch the fish. If you see the fish move his head to the side and snap back, Strike! If the fish physically moves over a few inches and stops, Strike! If you see the white from his open mouth...WAIT until he closes his mouth and strike! Those are all feeding moves and if you can see the fish well enough to discern a feeding move you will be very successful at sight fishing with this method. They won't all be strikes, but far more of them will be than waiting for an indicator to twitch. Plus, you don't need to use much yarn to fish small flies in slow water so your indicator can be more subtle. I taught the Orvis West Coast Fly-Fishing Schools with Dean Schubert for 10-years and this ended up being my primary method of nymph fishing thanks to his mentoring. I even caught big Grayling in Russia using this method back in 1993 on the Kola Peninsula. I was trying to see if Atlantic Salmon would take a fly presented like this. The salmon never got a chance to take it though because the Grayling absolutely attacked it.

This is up there with some of the best fly selection to presentation videos I've ever watched...AWESOME.

One of the best videos I’ve come across. Great information!!!

wow i wish we had rivers like that over here, looks like heaven for fishin

Love it. Thanks for videos. Very helpful. And yes. Drift boat fishing is the best!

All the way from Taupo,New Zealand,very helpful,thanks

Always trying to learn new tips, these guys know their stuff, constantly trying to add that new stuff to the arsenal

Thank you, Tom, sure wish I had water like this around my home.

These are reallly useful comprehensive explanations. Excellent thanks

I love most of these videos.They are so informative. There's always something new to learn about fly fishing.

Very informative!

Thanks for sharing. Tight Lines!

love this video, probably watched ten time!

I like the new fly fisher and love the infomation thanks i learnet so much

Great video. Very informative! Thanks.

Awesome vid, loved the whole video!!!!!

Great video! Thank you!!🎣👍👍

Tom ~ very informative video, especially the wet fly portion. We do a lot of Nymph fishing in our area and are more often using jig flies as our bottom fly. About 60/70% less hang ups which makes for a more enjoyable day. John K🎣

Just got done catching some little yellow bellied perch in a pond my first time fly fishing to build some confidence before I go fish a trout stream

Being new to the fly fish scene that water load cast was mind blowing very easy cast for the kids

Another thing about a yarn indicator is if you have trouble with it floating, put som dry fly floatant on it so it stays perfectly buoyant and is just as subtle as without

Awesome 👌 Thank you for posting this informative video!

Most informative tutorial I've watched in a long time, and im not even a fly fisherman. I do use flies with my spincaster, with one of those clunky plastic bobbers you described (or balsa wood) and i do catch fish that way. The fly fishermen sneer at me but oh well! I also love the respectful way you handle your catch. Leaving it in the water as much as possible, the rubber net, the gentle release. Real men don't knock the hell out of the fish they release. Subscribed!

Thank you for an insightful video. Any recommendations for nymphing in still water for carp?

Excellente vidéo ;-)

Thank you Tom 👍🤙🇺🇸

Gorgeous Brownie.

Fantastic video thank you..

I really want to go out fly fishing but the shallow water streams in Cali are far from where I live and it’s pretty rare for me to go fly fishing so I usually go fly fishing on a normal with spinning gear using a bobber.

great video thanks....

Very informative and well presented video. Will try these methods this autumn for grayling on the Welsh Dee. Also want to try north country spider patterns like partridge and orange, snipe and purple, waterhen bloa.

Great video. Good info! Thank you

Thank you

Great Video

Great video thankyou

thats a nice bobber ya got there

Wet loading... duhhh I am an idiot. Been fly fishing for 20 years and never once did I do this...I guess I mostly do non-moving water.. Still... Thanks Tom!

Do you have videos for sale on this? I've seen many videos on fly fishing and this covered a lot of things that a beginner would need to know. Great Job on the information guys, subscribed!

ive fly fished for most of my life all i can say is learn your hauls/mending and roll casts.

If I didn't know better, I'd say they were fishing the Clarks Fork River in Montana just west of Missoula. Western Montana, anyway. OK in my defense, I wrote this before they said the guide is from Livingston, lol. I live about 50 miles south of there and that scenery was just too darn familiar, lol.

I use a cube of cucumber instead of a strike indicator. Cukes float and kind of make the water taste good but the main thing is they float so I can see drift and strike.

Thanks for the video. What type of fly line is preferred for nymph fishing? A full sinking?

Great Video! I've been wanting to try this kind of fishing. Very easy to listen and watch.My question, might be kind of stupid, are you using a floating line or sinking line?

What was it you guys did to "burp" the fish?

Great video very informative,I’m just a newbie,Can I use wet flies on spinning rod?

Where are you moving to in Texas?

Strike indicators for newbies

I grew up using tiny leaf worms for trout. There was never a mistake strike. Very aggressive. I can't count the number of fish I must have missed when I switched to nymphing. Strikes only lasted a fraction of a second because I was waiting for the indicator to take off. I always assumed I was just hitting bottom. Same thing for drift. Someone left a bag of tiny marshmallows that was leaking them into the stream. 1 or 2 every couple minutes. Obviously they had a perfect drift and caused a rise in a specific spot. I must have cast 100 times there with no result because my drift was wrong. Once I figured it out, was completely different.

Ok now all wdfw need s to due is stock all eastern wa. creeks and streams

What rod is Pete Kutzer using?

Nymphs are each I use them all through the day and any time of year.

I’ve been fly fishing for almost 5 years and I still have no idea what I’m doing half the time lol

can you use these methods for pier fishing on ocean

I always thought that this was what we in England call wet fly Nymphs also come in this category as they are underwater and not floating great vid though

are fishing nymphs in pressured ponds effective?

Thts like bait fishing with a float . Is it really fly fishing

When i have to put a float and led on my leader, i stop flyfishing. There ar technics for that.

バーブレスフック使おうよ❗

must visit to northern areas of pakistan...........land of huge brown trout

Yes they're Brachycentrus

Yes it is, yes it does! Bend that 6 weight!

SUPER ...but don't you guys ever catch trout under 10" ???

Great video. I think the current arrow at 12:30 is going the wrong way.

A healthy river with Par and Fry...

how about a juicy worm people com onnn. trouts fav food

PLEASE...Practice catch and release. Ensure future generations will experience the love of fly fishing that we all know. You are all the guardians of your local rivers and streams that these Trout call home....If not you..Who??

About fly selection. I've caught more fish on zebra midges. But nothing else is biting than any other nymph. The other thing is the biggest joke I have period is if the fish looks at the fly funny set the hook

I like to dump 50 lb of Walnut husk Upstream

We catch trout with peas

Rip the kid in the back with the net

I have caught several fish in lakes, but yet to catch a trout on a fly in a river, I’ll keep trying.

If you need to use indicators, what’s the point of fly fishing.

Lol every damn river pretty much has the same dam bugs in them.

First time i've heard someone say lead is hard.

How about we skip the bobber and fish with fly lines and flies. ;)

Indicatorsand drop shots will ruin flyfishing

Why use a fly rod for this, I use spinning gear with great results.

Actually I like a LOT of things about this video. However, at around 20 mins, Tom "burps" a trout. Please do not do this. In fact, touch the fish as little as possible because doing so removes their protective slime and leaves them more susceptible to infections of various sorts. Using a rubber net is better than tailing a fish because tailing is touching them, while rubber nets won't remove slime or scales. I think the amazing Tom Rosenbauer would agree with this too, as we all continue to learn from the science being done at KeepEmWet.org.

I prefer not using the bobber. Let's call it what it is. Here's the thing: if it works for you, fine. But... if you are just avoiding learning how a strike is set, then I'd urge anyone watching this to forgo the bobber and pay closer attention to your line. I have an Orvis Powermatrix10 mid flex, and am fortunate enough to feel even the lightest "tasting". It feels like "chomp chomp" and then they spit it. When using my bamboo rod, I just watch the end of the fly line carefully. When it twitches, I attempt to set the hook. Sure, I miss some, but when I'm on, I'm on and the fish is THAT much more fun. All I'm saying is that even with a rod that doesn't transmit every little vibration, you can avoid using a bobber and not miss the extra credit lessons being offered that will enrich the whole experience for you. I've seen them being used, but never bothered with them. the old timers I learned from would never deign to fish the easy way, with a bobber, unless they positively needed to have some fish to eat, and in that case, they'd just drift a piece of worm. Ditch the "indicators".

dont use captioning if you aren't going to edit what your speech to text software "heard". its freaking lazy.

If your going to nymph fish get yourself a nice spinning outfit at Kmart. If your going to fly fish get some dry flies. Been doing this for over 50 years now and I know the difference.