Dry Dropper Situational Rigging

Dry Dropper Commentary and Situational Rigging Tips 

Fishing dry dropper at a distance has many advantages over indicator fishing when used in the right scenario. This method is used by guides and anglers across the world on a regular basis. The aim of this article is to increase the anglers awareness of the situation and what adjustments can be made to increase effectiveness. Spring and summer will find fish holding in riffle water almost exclusively. With water temps in the 50’s, high densities of trout will use long gradual riffles and pocket water to feed during prolific spring hatches. The presence of bug life dictates that we use a dry fly over an indicator to present the nymph for a few reasons: 

1: Increased sensitivity and strike detection with a well balanced nymph weight to dry buoyancy setup

2: We may catch a fish on the dry fly

3: Stealth landing of the dry fly for fish feed on or just subsurface 

The favored setup is as follows: 

Rod: A medium action rod, 9 feet is fine, preferably 10 feet or more. 3-4 weights are good as they protect lighter tippets but can still turn over an air resistant dry fly. I prefer longer rods for ease when roll casting and mending over currents. Thomas and Thomas 1003/1094 Contact II Nymph Rods are built to cast a true to line weight dry fly line with ease, and perform as be an exceptional tight-line nymphing rod. This is my favorite all around river scenario rod for this reason.

Line: Cortland Finesse 3/4/5 weight line to match the rod. This line is slick and lands easily on the water. With a decent belly to it, anglers can turn over a size 10 Chubby Chernobyl style dry on a long leader at 40 ft+ with ease. For windy scenarios or bigger rivers, the trout boss 5/6 weight lines have enough velocity from their heavier grain weigh to push through the wind and turn over bigger indicator style dry flies.

Leader: Tapered or hand built with a butt section to match your scenario. If fish are close to the surface and I’m using flies in the 14-18 range (2.3-3.3mm bead), I use a longer butt section for added stealth. Long butt sections should be composed of mostly heavier lines (25lb-15lb maxima). A well built butt section helps with turnover and accuracy. If I’m fishing deeper water and bigger flies, I use a short and aggressive taper in the butt section, because most fish are deep and don’t care if the dry fly is closer to the fly line. This allows the freedom to fish tippet lengths of up to 6ft below my dry fly, and will help the fly line turnover the rest of the leader. If your butt section is 8 -10 feet and your tippet is 6 feet, the total leader length gets towards exceeding 15ft which in non-favorable conditions, the accuracy and castability of the rig goes down significantly.