IS IT JUST ME?
I’m not exactly certain when it started, but the idea of putting something on your leader to enable you to detect a strike when you were fishing a nymph opened up an entire new nuance in the world of fly-fishing.
Now it’s important to understand that using an indicator while fly-fishing is not necessarily a new phenomenon. There are instances in several of the older fly-fishing books about fly-fishing with an indicator. Usually it was a large, high floating dry fly that was employed to tell the angler when a fish had taken his nymph; however this was a method that was used occasionally and was never the standard method of angling. Mostly it was used by the uninitiated, sort of like training wheels on a bicycle. Once the angler became more proficient at fishing the sunken fly the indicator was abandoned. It seems today that many anglers today never get passed the training wheel phase.
My first introduction to using an indicator while fly-fishing occurred more than 30 years ago, and interestingly it did not involve nymph fishing. Fishing small – #20-#24 – dry flies is a challenge even to a person with 20/20 vision. I have been blessed with good vision but seeing small dry flies, especially under certain water and lighting conditions is even challenging to a person with excellent eyesight. A good friend of mine showed me a trick that he used under difficult conditions. He simply attached a small [emphasize small] piece of yarn to his leader, dressed it with fly floatant, and used it as a means of keeping track of where his flies were on the water. In retrospect it seems that this was not truly an ‘indicator’ but a locator. This small piece of yarn allowed the angler to be able to see where their flies were on the surface. Then it was possible to follow the drift, adjust for drag, and strike when a fish rose where the angler believed his fly was floating. Under difficult water and lighting conditions it did make it easier to find and follow the cast, but it was only used as a last resort. Even this method seemed somehow not quite fly-fishing.
Before long I began seeing more and more fly fishers using indicators. Mostly I began finding their indicators along my favorite streams – those small round sticky disks that you stuck on your leader. Then I made a trip one spring to the Big Horn River and the first time I witnessed first-hand the wide-scale use of indicators. I watched with utter amazement as boat after boat went passed with anglers ‘casting’ what appeared to be a ball of yarn attached to their leader. These were called ‘big bird indicators’ and it seemed that everybody was using them.
I recently checked one of the major sporting catalogues and found no less than eight different types of indicators. You can still see ‘big bird indicators’ in use but they have been supplemented by balloons, something called a Thingamabobber, and just recently I saw something called a Uni-bobber. The Uni-bobber is actually tied into the fly pattern. The manufacturer states that they will also work as a micro Thingamabobber for small waters and spring creeks.
When I was just a tadpole I spent many hours fishing with a bait casting rig. One of the tools of the trade was a bobber. The most common bobber was made from cork and later it was replaced by a plastic model. The ones that I used were generally red and white. You baited your hook, determined how deep you wished to have it dangle below your bobber, attached the bobber at the desired spot on your line, and then you flung the entire mess as far as you could and sat back and waited. When the bobber began to twitch you reeled up the slack and when it popped underwater you set the hook. Not exactly rocket science, but effective.
When I started fly-fishing I thought that I had seen the last of fishing with a bobber. When the first strike indicators made their appearance in fly shops they did not call them bobbers, but now all that has changed. Somehow I cannot picture Skues fishing his nymphs under a Thingamabobber, or Halford fishing a dry fly tied with a Uni-bobber on the head!
My nephew has suggested that perhaps we should get some tiny balloons and fill them with helium. Think how well that would work in imitating caddis flies and damsel flies that just skip across the surface of the water. By adjusting the amount of helium in each balloon you could cause your imitation to just skim across the surface just like the naturals. Casting might be a trick but I am certain that someone could invent a cast or some type of rod/line combination that would do the trick.
The alternative seems to be Czech Nymphing. With this method you can practical eliminate the fly line since you fish the leader only. You don’t need to learn any fancy type of fly casting since you are not using the fly line to cast your flies. Now I’m thinking that this resembles fishing for bluegills with a cane pole. You just tied the line to the end of a long piece of bamboo and you lobbed it out as far as you could reach and when a fish took your bait, under your bobber, you lifted the rod and hoisted the fish ashore. Effective, yes, but so is dynamite!
It seems to me that fly-fishing, in its purest form, is less about results and more about method. To some extent it’s a method by which the angler willingly handicaps them self for the sake of the method. There are times when catching fish with an artificial fly attached to a flimsy leader and cast with a flexible stick is very effective; however there are far more occasions when other fishing methods would produce far more success with much less effort. If fly-fishing is not more about methodology than anything else then we might as well all go back to fishing bait!
Most concepts start out as straight forward approach to some particular issue, and are more or less pure in their initial phase. Government of the people, by the people and for the people was just such a concept. The idea is basically simple and straight forward, but unfortunately time has corrupted that concept to the extent that I doubt our Founding Fathers would recognize what it has become with the passage of time.
Likewise the sport of fly-fishing has suffered greatly with the passage of time. Maybe it’s just me but it seems that rather than progressing we are regressing. Lots of what passes as fly-fishing today looks more like the type of fishing that I did as a kid when a can of worms and a bobber were the two essentials for success. Now I wish I had saved some of my old bait fishing gear. I had lots of plastic bobbers.