Thanks for the kind words, Bruce. The mending is a very important part of this technique. Without mending, your fly is not drifting down close to the bottom and you will be fishing above the fish.

Here is another tip you can try the next time you are out that has caught me many fish I would have missed:

I was fishing a pretty fast current and when the fly was down and away from me, I just knew there had to be fish holding down close to the bottom at the end of drift and the fast current was lifting my fly line, leader and fly which was not good. As an experiment, I lowered my rod tip down into the water and could feel the bottom with the rod tip. I noticed that doing this caused the fast moving water to "crash" down on the fly line and this drove the rest of the fly line down which would take the leader and fly down with it. I could not see any of my fly line and was really just "tight line" fishing. I would just do some short strips, while holding the rod tip down under the water, and could actually feel the fly "ticking" on the bottom as I was stripping it back. This technique has caught me many fish. The most important thing to remember when doing this is do not set the hook with the rod when you feel the strike! Do a strip set and slowly raise the rod tip out of the water and fight the fish as you normanly would. If you attempt to set the hook while the rod is under water, you could possibly break your rod because the water on top of the rod is heavy. Try this some time and see how it works for you. After lowering the rod tip down into the water and holding it there, it is fun to watch the fly line go down and just disappear. It really works to get the fly down and is a lot like using a full sinking fly line. It only works on fast moving water after your fly has drifted down and straight away from you.

Just another technique I have discovered and use which really works.....