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A fly fisherman fishing in a river

Nymphing away his day.

4 Reasons to ditch the indicator and 2 reasons to use one

1– It Beats the Current – Match The Hatch, Match The Current

By Allen Gardner

The current when using a strike indicator is often your enemy.  When you ditch the indicator however, you negate nearly all of the effects of the current on your flies.  The current in a column of water does not move at the same speed.  Water on the surface of the river almost always is moving faster than the water at the bottom of the river.  When you have a strike indicator floating at a faster speed than your flies down lower (where the trout are) it drags the flies and the trout catch on and will ignore your presentation.  When you remove the strike indicator, the only drag that happens from the current is on your leader/tippet, which is substantially less than before.  This difference is a key part to why tightline nymphing is so much more productive than traditional indicator nymphing.
Keep in mind this is not the case if you’re using a strike indicator from a drift boat.  On a drift boat, you cancel much of effect of the current as you’re matching the speed of the current to your drift, but there is still some that happens from the difference in speed from the top of the water to the bottom of the water.

 2 – It Tightens Up Your Game – Shorter Casts = Better casts

There’s a reason 50ft casts are called hero casts, because it takes a hero to make them work.  I don’t care if you’re the best angler in the world, you have a lower chance for a successful hookset and landing of a trout the further out you cast.  It’s just science.

Read the complete story here . . .

About Allen Gardner:

Passion that isn’t shared with others is wasted. That’s why I teach every one of the 500,000 people who come to this site every year about how to become a better lifestyle angler based on my 15 yrs experience fishing. When I’m not on the river, I’m a husband, father of three, entrepreneuring, craft-brew-drinking, God-fearing man who’s just trying his hardest to love others and serve them the way I’m called to. I love a good laugh and not afraid to waddle down the bank of a river in a water master to get to the good fishing…

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