After
decades of getting tangles while trying to avoid them with such
ill-behaved rigs, I’ve come up with some strategies. But it’s the dead
of an especially cold winter here right now with river fishing a distant
dream, and I know that memories (especially my memories, and especially
at my age) soften and reshape themselves as their details slip away
over time. So I set up a rig like the one you describe—what many call a
“hopper-dropper” rig (heavy little nymph trailing off a big
grasshopper-size dry fly)—and took it out on a lawn. A lawn is fine,
though, since we’re talking not about fishing but about casting. Point
is, I just went out and proved to myself that everything I’m about to
tell you is valid.
There are several elements in play when you’re
trying to get two (or more) ill-behaved flies out smoothly. The first
element is vigilance—you just have to stay alert every moment as you
cast a troublesome rig.
I learned this with the old (and still
deadly), dropper nymph rig, with its soaring weighted nymphs and
indicator just waiting for a chance to bounce into a hair-pulling snarl,
a chance I dared not allow them. The components all seemed drawn
together like magnets. I used to sit and curse and cut up and retie
those rigs all the time. Gradually, though, I figured out that if I
concentrated fully on my casting, never letting my attention drift, and
did everything just right, I rarely got tangled. Sometimes (though not
often) I’d go a whole day with but one rig and not a single problem.
It’s the same with your hopper-dropper rig with that long tippet for the dropper: you
must give it your full and constant attention every moment it’s airborne.
The second element is patience.
Impatience—rushing
a casting stroke, not waiting for the flies to come around at the end
of a stroke before starting the next one, these sorts of things—will
catch up to you. And, typically, you won’t have to wait long until it
does. So take your time, all the time you need. It can help to talk to
yourself, repeating “I am not going to rush” or “Slow and easy” or, if
you prefer the classics, “Haste makes waste.”
Let’s pause to take
look at the casting stroke. Making the right stroke for a multiple-fly
rig is element number three. The stroke must be smooth—a slow start
building gradually to a quick rod-tip and, consequently, a quick line
speed. Any inconsistencies, jerks or stalls, and the line starts
bouncing and so does your rig and, well, good luck. Strive for control
in your strokes, for grace.
Still looking at the cast in general, I
believe that keeping the line away from the flies as they pass on
opposite sides of the casting loop is a boon with a rig of two or more
flies. So the fourth element is casting with a relatively open loop in
the line. That’s easy: just keep the rod’s tip travelling a little extra
at the end of the back and the forward casts—that widens the loop in
the line to separate its sides, the side that’s the line from the side
that’s leader, tippet, and flies.
Make the back and forward
casting strokes on different planes—element number five—and you’ve got
another way to help you avoid a multiple-fly tangle. (Actually, I
generally combine two-plane casting with open line loops when I cast a
problem-loving rig, and of course, as I mentioned, I also try to cast
smoothly and with patience.) By two-plane casting I mean that after
making a forward cast with the rod vertical, or close to it, you
smoothly lower
the rod tip to the side a little for the back cast. You raise the rod
tip again as you begin the next forward cast and so on. This makes the
line follow a sort of elongated
oval course—and not only does the rig stay away from the line, but instead of jerking around at the end of the stroke it
swings around, following a mild curve. Smooth, smooth…
Element
number six, the final element of casting an unruly rig without
problems, covers the surprise events, the kind that can come when you
tug the hook home but nothing’s there or when a fish just comes off on a
deeply bent rod and the rig comes flying at you. That sort of
pandemonium. You instinctively try to get everything under control, but
there’s too much chaos for you to tame and…
ta da: tangle! The
best solution I’ve found when the rig suddenly goes haywire is to just
drop the rod-tip and let everything fall; then draw in the line, leader,
and rig. You’ll have to fuss a little to work it all back out into a
cast, but the time you’ll lose is only a fraction of the time it takes
to chop apart a whole nasty tippet-riot and build a new one.
As
far as the second part of your question goes, Stan, about whether
there’s a better rig than the hopper-dropper for what you’re trying to
do, I’ll just say this: the hopper-dropper rig, with the big dry tied to
the tippet and the heavy little nymph on its own tippet knotted to the
bend of the big dry’s hook, is by now well established and widely
trusted. There are other similar rigs, but I haven’t found them any
easier to manage than the hopper dropper, so I can’t see any reason you
shouldn’t stick with it. Simply put: I don’t think a different rig is
the solution to your two-fly casting challenges; I do think my six
elements of taming troublesome rigs are.
