Personally I think good nymph fishing in moving water is an art…I wish I was good at it…as is good dry fly fishing.
I’m thinking now with foam… dry fly fishing is almost like cheating also…
I was a dry fly fisher for most of my life, until I learned to fly fish still water, in a float tube. After having success with nymphs and soft hackles, I felt like I had been living a sheltered fishing existence. Things changed when I hired Guides and learned how to fish under the surface.
There is a lot going on under the water that you should be learning about and taking advantage of. When I started understanding more about an insects life cycle, I decided that it made more sense for a fish to stay in the safety of the depths and eat nymphs and emergers. Why would I expect a trout to feed on the surface exclusively? For my benefit?
I would recommend to anyone interested in learning to fish nymphs, to hire a good teaching Guide (Multiple times)
I spent my life dictating to the fish I fished for, “here is my dry and please come up and get it.”
I don’t know how many times I would only catch one small trout in a hole and wonder “are the rest of the trout down there laughing at me and they send up a low seniority, baby trout to bite my fly, just so they can prove I am not worthy of them?”
Doug