Euro Nymphing as explained by someone who can't Ian Cox
If I am perfectly honest, I think, one could Czech nymph with a surf rod, a half ounce sinker and a Penn 49 reel!
I first encountered Euro nymphing just over 9 years ago. That was at a clinic that was run by Xplorer and Bells at Nyala pans. It wasn’t called Euro nymphing back then. The Czechs were cleaning up the combination scene back there with something called Czech nymphing. What I said in an article I wrote for the Bobbin back then bears repeating:
"The connection between Czech nymphing and fly fishing is that while both use flies, with Czech nymphing two of the flies (one fishes 3 up) are really disguised sinkers. One does not even need a fly line. In fact aficionados of the style eschew these for ordinary fishing line (mono for the cognoscenti) topped off with a length of very light dacron. (Explorer supply it in various weights as Rio Extreme) The reason for this is that one does not cast. One instead flicks the sinker assisted fly a short distance upstream and follows the drift down with the rod tip taking care to ensure that it is always in direct contact with the line." The fly line seldom gets more than a meter from out of the rod tip. The trick is to be ready for the take as the scaly, which is a www.saflyfishingmag.co.za
much more diffident feeder than its Free State cousin, gently mouths the fly rather than tears your arm out of its socket. Dacron and mono apparently give one a much better feel for what is happening that a fly line. Back then any reasonably soft rod would do. That is no longer the case. The nymph stick has now entered the scene. This is a 10ft 3 wt rod with a very flexible tip. I am told this is very important. So much so that my much-loved stealth Infiniti 3wt was judged to be no good by my fellow editors. I was sternly told that I could not be seen in public representing the magazine so improperly dressed. So it was that I arrived at the recent Natal Fly Fishers Club Euro Nymphing clinic decked out with a Sage Nymph stick and the proper nymph line to boot. Now why you need a special line escapes me. You will see from what I wrote above that very little line leaves your rod. So why does having a special nymph line wrapped on your reel help you catch fish? Apparently, it does. You see Euro nymphers (or is it nymphets) do occasionally allow more line out of the reel than Czech nymphers do. This is apparently one of the niceties that distinguishes the one from the other. Sometimes you may get beyond the 30 ft leader this technique requires and on those rare occasion it is terribly important that the fly line be very thin so as to minimize drag. 84
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