Dry flies and leader length

Sometimes adding tiny sections of extra tippet can make the difference between success and failure

I finally came across my first hatch of the season the other week: a trickle of large dark olives, which came down the river in tiny flushes, bringing up some trout on the far side of a deep corner pool every ten minutes or so.

Knowing mine would be the first dry fly these fish would have seen for at least six months, I was pretty confident of my first few drifts.

Hmmm! Despite little bursts of rises, a few subtle fly changes, and presumably winter-hungry trout, my carefully presented flies on my 3-weight were ignored.

This corner has a deep far bank, and the current was pushing in well after rain a few days previously. I’ve swum in this pool during very hot, dry weather (I’m not the keenest of wild swimmers!), and I know there’s some large boulders at the bottom here (because I’ve stood on them) that cause an upwelling from the flow that pours in at the neck of the pool. The main current also deflects off the far bank, causing a seam about two feet into the pool’s far edge; the better fish could be seen occasionally rising in this seam. In addition, there was a back-eddy between my position and the fish, pulling more than usual in the rain-fuelled, elevated flows. Was this complex mixture of currents causing my fly to misbehave? Was micro-drag putting the fish off? Something was definitely wrong; my dry flies were ignored with disdain.

Dry fly always throws up a few challenges, but I wasn’t expecting one so early in the season. I had to puzzle this one out.

The late Malcolm Greenhalgh came to my rescue. He was an advocate of a longer leader for dry fly on bigger rivers – at least 13 feet, he’d say, and so I thought about my options. My leader on my 8ft 9in rod was about 11 feet long, as I was hemmed in on my back-cast by overhanging trees on this small tributary. Could I go longer? Worth a try.

I gingerly added another foot of 5x to the tippet, wondering if it would make any difference at all? It most certainly did. Suddenly fish were taking a variety of the dry flies I offered, from Deer-hair Emergers to F-flies to Parachutes, so it wasn’t down to the fly itself.

I believe that extra foot of tippet gave me just that little bit more slack at the business end of the leader, lending the dry fly a more realistic and believable drift to the fish.

The fish were neither educated (the first fish I caught was still quite dark after over-wintering), nor were they pre-occupied on a certain stage of the hatch – they simply weren’t convinced by my flies’ behaviour when presented on a slightly shorter leader.

This leader extension has worked a few times for me before successfully, but I think one foot of extra tippet is the least I’ve ever added to make any difference.

It could be a challenging season, but we wouldn’t want it any other way, would we?