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Li'lDave

A question of weight

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With your trout flies how do you vary weight without varying the look of the pattern?

 

Thanks

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Coating with resin helps to get your flies down

Heavier gauge hook also helps

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Lead under wraps vs thread , wire is an in between weight. You can use plastic beads, glass beads, brass beads or tungsten, tungsten being the heaviest. I've used chenille under dubbing vs all loose dubbing sometimes in nymphs..

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...But, yes, weighted flies are usually a bit bulkier than unweighted. For weighted nymphs, I usually use a brass bead followed by 6 or 8 wraps of lead wire, of an appropriate size. That gives the thorax of the fly a "meatier" look. Of course, on an unweighted fly, you can get the same "meaty" look by using fluffier materials, but I rarely tie unweighted nymphs. Just my style of fishing....

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I'm chiming in, just because the subject of weight vs. unweighted flies interests me.

I don't add much weight to my flies. Usually, bead chain eyes are the main "weight" but that's just a side effect, since it's the "eyes" part I'm going for.

I fish, mostly, in a river that has wide, slow channels. But when I am traveling, I sometimes fish shallower, running streams or rivers. Granted, I seek out shallow areas, rarely fishing anything deeper than 8 feet or so.

 

I tied some bead heads, and found them to be too heavy. I like my offering to reach the bottom, but I don't want it dragging. Usually, once that happens ... it just snags up and I lose it.

Also, I think of the bugs we're trying to imitate, and NONE of them weigh as much as a weighted fly. I know, we're overcoming the line's resistance, but still ... fish prey on the tumbling, lost-their-grip bugs that an unweighted fly mimics, no?

 

So, my suggestion: Where are you going to be using those? What are the bottom conditions like? If it's rocky or weedy bottoms, a weighted fly is going to be hung up in there more often than not. If it's slow water, don't weight, wait. The fly will get down there with a little patience.

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An Alaskan guide named Ard Stetts has a system for fishing flies deeper w/o weighting them. He uses it now mainly on the deep brawling runs there for steelhead and big salmon but he perfected it in his earlier career on classic PA trout streams so, with adaptations, it might just be helpful for our tamer waters.

 

His basic approach is to use 3-4' of heavy Maxima leader spliced to the fly line via loops and then to a 3-4' section of T9 to T14 -- or Z9 --sinking line; which is also also attached at the other end to a tippet via loops.. The flies being unweighted hover above the sinking section and thus are less likely to snag bottom while still remaining in view of feeding fish. The system casts w/o 'hinging' and has none of the 'chuck and duck' aspects that make that style so unappealing and often dangerous and it also eliminates the need for full sinking lines on most moving waters . You can vary the length and weight of the T sections to match the situation. It readily adapts to two handed rod casts too.

 

Mr Stetts has several videos on YouTube that explain his approach in more depth.

 

Rocco

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A nymph pattern could be tied:

 

Unweighted on a light wire hook

Unweighted on a heavy wire hook

Copper wire under thorax (on some flies I wrap two or three layers of the ribbing wire under the thorax area)

Lead wire under thorax

Lead wire full length of the abdomen and thorax

Lead wire full length of the abdomen and a double layer under the thorax

Brass bead

Brass bead plus lead wire

Tungsten bead

Tungsten bead plus lead wire

 

Of course a bead does alter the appearance.

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some natural materials absorb a lot of water and will sink fairly well without additional weight being added to the fly--rabbit fur or "zonker" strips come to mind, as does Ram's wool. There is a kind of dubbing called "Quick Descent" that has bits of wire mixed in to help nymphs and small streamers sink.

 

Depending on the pattern, beads can be concealed by tying materials in the body of a fly, adding weight without significantly altering the look of the pattern.

 

If you need weight but don't want it to alter the appearance or action of your fly, your best bet is to weight the leader (or use a sinking leader or sink-tip line) instead of weighting the fly.

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I weight very few flies. I think a weighted fly doesn't drift as naturally as a non-weighted fly. When I do, I use the adhesive lead strips cut in to very thin strips and wrapped around the shank or laid on top of the shank. I also utilize heavier hooks. I seldom fish beadheads unless it's a Prince Nymph and don't tie that many either.

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Hmmm, I was thinking about saltwater trout. Apparently does not apply here.

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I used different diameters of lead wire, different densities of beads, and different diameter wire hooks to weight my flies. All I got was a cluttered and overstuffed nymph box, and it was difficult to figure out which fly was weighted how much. Plus weighted nymphs never seem to really get me down deep in fast water, I usually still had to use additional weight. I wondered that if I still needed split shot to get down, why was I weighting my flies?

 

Then 6 or 7 years ago I discovered the drop shot nymphing system and now I mostly tie my nymphs unweighted except for a couple patterns I think look good with a bead. My nymph box is now neat and tidy and getting my flies down deep is as easy as adding more shot or a little tungsten putty.

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