Adding Weight When Nymphing for Trout

When nymphing for trout in streams, quick adjustments can often be the difference between catching a fish or sauntering back to the car with your hands in your pants. When something is clearly not working for me on the stream, the first adjustment I make is a fly change. I tie on a fly with a different profile, color, or size to try and cue in on what the trout are feeding on below. While changing your pattern to adapt to specific stream conditions is vital, the fly you select won’t matter at all if it doesn’t intersect with feeding fish. Changing the depth where your fly is drifting is a critical adjustment that I have begun to appreciate almost as much as fly selection. The quickest way to alter the position of a fly in the water column is of course adding weight to your rig. Assuming the water flow is consistent, adding weight will lower the depth and removing weight will raise the depth. However, adding weights often disrupts the delicacy and precision of fly casting and can feel rather clumsy. With so many different methods of adding weight when nymphing, it’s hard to know which one will work best in a specific situation. This is a quick review of the most popular ways to add weight to your rig so that you can make quick adjustments on the stream and hopefully hook up with more fish.

Using weighted flies

The first method that you can use to change how deep a specific fly is drifting is to come prepared with a few variants of certain flies that are weighted differently. If you tie flies yourself, this shouldn’t be too much of a challenge. The use of bead heads and metal wire allows you to tie similar patterns with varying weights so you can be prepared for most stream conditions. As you can see below, you can tie a nymph pattern on these size 14 hooks and achieve a very similar final result but with three unique weights, allowing you to selectively change which fly you want based on depth without having to sacrifice your fly selection.

This method is great because it allows you to alter only one variable and see how this effects the bite. It also avoids the conundrum of adding split shot to your tippet, which reduces the castability of your line and is a tangle waiting to happen. If you’re presenting to particularly spooky fish, reducing the amount of clutter on your line can also be beneficial. However, this is a particularly labor-intensive method and requires some meticulous preparation. If you are as obsessive as my brother Grady is, you too will have 10 or more fly boxes with patterns of every conceivable weight and be prepared at any moment’s notice to make the requisite adjustment.

I would consider European nymphing, or Euro nymphing, a subcategory of this. This method involves using a heavy anchor fly on the bottom of the rig to get your flies into position, and a lighter nymph higher up to match whatever the trout are feeding on. While there is nothing stopping you from starting to Euro nymph with your current setup, there is a suite of specialized gear used to optimize Euro nymphing such as long fly rods (10-11’), extended leaders, and colored sighter material. When it comes to drift depth, many other factors must be considered including leader length, tippet size, and specific technique. I am relatively new to Euro nymphing, so I won’t cover it in detail here and I would encourage you to check out the plethora of online resources discussing the matter. Despite all this, you will encounter a situation where you won’t be able to add enough weight to a fly of a specific size, and therein you must add it from an external source. That’s where adding split shot will becomes an unfortunate truth.

Adding Split Shot Above the Flies

I would argue that this is the most common way anglers choose to add weight to their line when nymphing. This method allows you to choose whatever nymph you would like and simply change the depth at which it is presented. Additionally, it allows for quick alterations in depth by simply crimping on extra split shot or taking some off to achieve the preferred drift. This method is particularly useful if you have a pool that is fast, deep, and short, requiring a quick descent to the bottom to present in the strike zone. While casting inevitably morphs into a “lobbing” of sorts with the addition of external weight to the line, this method can be deadly effective in small stream settings where you don’t need a significant amount of length on your cast.

As you can see above, adding your split shot to the top of the rig draws your flies to around the same level as the weight. Therefore, if you are fishing multiple different patterns that are indented to target unique zones of water, you may find that they are not locating where they are intended. Oftentimes, the bottom fly will rise a little bit in the water column as it is farther away from the location of the split shot, but this variable based on stream condition. While this does put your flies within the sight of hungry trout, it also increases the chances of snags and catches, causing you to lose more gear in the process. If you are using a strike indicator, this would likely be your preferred method as you can adjust the position of the split shot from the indicator based on the depth of water you are fishing.

Adding Split Shot below the Flies (drop-shot rig)

Drop-shot rigs play an Uno reverse card and put the weight at the bottom of the rig. Instead of attaching a fly to the end of your line, you crimp on the split shots and add your flies via a dropper higher up on the tippet. If you position the bottom fly around 6-8 inches above the split shot, you can ensure that your fly is in the prime position for feeding trout so long as your weights are in contact with the bottom. Additionally, now your weights are interacting with the benthic debris instead of your flies, so if you get hung up, you may just lose a weight and save the rest of your rig (please use non-toxic split shot). Tying a simple overhand knot at the bottom of the tippet will help keep the split shot on for small snags but allows them to snap off if need be. Additionally, adding the weight in a spaced out chain (as shown below) can reduce the chances of hanging up.

Based on where you position the top fly, you can also fish multiple zones at the same time to increase your chances of interacting with feeding trout. Casting is still challenging and you will likely encounter tangles, especially between the two flies if you’re running a dual rig. Also, if you like to fish with a strike indicator, this method will be less effective as it is beneficial to be direct tension with rig to feel the bumps of the bottom and the subtle takes of a trout.

There are many ways to add weight to your nymph rig, and other ways that were not discussed here, but there is certainly no right way to do it. So - what should you use?

What do we do here at mg?

It depends on the situation (man, it always does, doesn’t it?). However, I tend to lean towards the drop-shot method as I like to feel the thumping of the bottom, confirming that I am right in the strike zone. Additionally, you can fish a nymph on the bottom and an emerger higher in the water column without having to sacrifice losing the additional weight. That being said, this method is not a catch all for every situation, so I readily add split shot above my flies or change to a heavier nymph if I think the drop shot rig is disrupting the presentation or potentially spooking the fish.

-Declan

I usually go for a dark colored split shot (black or green, and if you cant find them painted just get a sharpie) and put it between my flies. When I’m nymphing I like to fish two flies, but anything more than that is a distraction for me. I try to be super intentional about fly selection, and if I need to use weight I put it in between the flies. I hate strike indicators so I usually swing nymphs downstream, and if they aren’t heavily weighted, they ride up in the water column towards the end of the drift. I’m fine with that, it ends up looking like a bug swimming to the surface and I get a lot of takes in that phase of the drift. If I’m dredging a deep pool I just pile on the split shot, grab a big plastic strike indicator, and swing at everything.

-Grady

I’m partial to fishing unweighted nymphs whenever possible, since I usually fish small lazy rivers in western MA. I find that the action of an unweighted fly is much more natural in most cases compared to a weighted one. Frequent, careful mending is obviously key in these situations. However, I do find the urge to get into some deeper, faster moving water from time to time, and I typically fish a single nymph or a dry-dropper rig. Like Grady, I hate a strike indicator, so I’ll usually carry some polypropylene yarn with me and tie a 1 inch section just above my tippet knot to act as an indicator when I’m swinging single nymphs. If more weight is called for, I’ll begrudgingly switch to a more buoyant indicator.

-Max