Common Nymphs of Eastern North America

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The appeal of dry fly-fishing is undeniable, but if the only time you can go fishing does not coincide with rising trout, nymph fishing (nymphing) can be very productive, exciting, and rewarding. The purpose of this book is to help flyfishers and flytiers accurately imitate the most common nymphs and aquatic animals on which trout feed in eastern streams. Not only will this book help novice and seasoned anglers catch more trout, but it will likely add to your understanding of and appreciation for the animals that we imitate with fly patterns.

There is certainly nothing wrong with the fact that many flyfishers choose to fish exclusively with dry flies. It is undeniably exciting and gratifying to watch a cagy trout rise from the shadows to either sip a tiny midge pattern or explode into the air after a skittering caddis dry fly. On spring and summer nights on many trout streams, you can see people sitting and waiting for the hatch or for a trout to rise before they make a cast. Again, there is nothing wrong with taking in the splendor of a warm and peaceful spring or summer night and watching the water flow. Different flyfishers have different reasons for fishing only dry flies; nonetheless, some of us enjoy catching fish as frequently as possible and are not patient enough to wait for rising fish. Moreover, most of us must take advantage of the limited time to fish when we can get it, even if it does not coincide with good dry fly-fishing.

Some fly-fishing purists consider dry fly-fishing to be the only worthy use of their fishing time—presumably because nymph or streamer fishing is not enough of a challenge or sport for them. The majority of anglers who are sitting and waiting for the hatch, however, are probably not purists. More likely, they have never had a lesson in matching the “nymph hatch.” As with most things, a little bit of knowledge goes a long way. This book offers that knowledge along with detailed images and information about the nymphs that we most often encounter in eastern trout streams. This knowledge, in combination with a little bit of investigation, will help even beginning anglers choose the most appropriate nymphs to fish on their local streams throughout the year.

Experienced nymph anglers can usually catch at least some fish on any trout stream under even the poorest conditions. They are able to consistently catch fish for three main reasons. First, good nymphers can “read the water” and identify where feeding fish are likely holding. Second, they can naturally drift a fly right along the stream bottom, usually with a “dead drift.” Those two things are probably most important in catching fish with nymphs and require some experience and practice. The third ingredient of nymph fishing is the subject of this book—matching the nymph. You are probably already familiar with two common nymph patterns: the hare’s ear and pheasant tail nymphs. Both patterns do a reasonable job at imitating a variety of mayfly nymphs. Unfortunately, these patterns do not always work well; on some occasions, they do not work at all. We know that an Adams dry fly pattern can perform well for several gray mayfly hatches, but they are obviously not as effective when fish are taking big green drakes at night or tiny morning midges from the water surface. The same idea applies when fish will not move to your size 10 tan caddis nymph but will readily gobble a size 16 green caddis nymph. This is the case because, in large part, trout are selective feeders. Exceptionally big trout become even more selective (particularly brown trout) and will nocturnally hunt larger prey such as other fishes and large crayfish. What this means is that all but the biggest trout will consistently feed on the kinds of prey that are most available to them at any given time. Similar to masses of trout feeding at the surface on abundant and easily available dead or dying adult mayflies, trout will feed on certain nymphs when they are particularly available as prey. This guide will help you identify what kinds of nymphs are likely to be most effective at different times of the year and in different types of streams.

We suggest patterns that do very well at imitating the various nymphs, but remember that creativity and innovation are a large part of the fly-tying appeal. Thanks to microscopy and digital photography, this guide provides flytiers the ability to design their own nymph patterns based on high-resolution images. That, after all, is one of the most rewarding parts of fly-tying—fooling wary trout with something you have made with your own hands and imagination. The other equally important objective of this guide is to give flyfishers and flytiers a better understanding of and appreciation for the animals that we imitate with nymph patterns. For most anglers, there is a lot more to fishing than catching fish. That seems to be particularly true for people who have “caught the bug” of fly-fishing. We hope that this guide makes your fishing trips more rewarding by helping you understand animals that we imitate and their importance to trout streams and adjacent ecosystems.

Successful nymph fishing can be viewed in the same way that journalists approach reporting the news, which is the “five Ws and an H” (who, what, where, when, why, and how). Unfortunately, many flyfishers and flytiers overcomplicate nymph fishing due to a lack of knowledge about the nymphs that we imitate. In this guide, we hope to overcome that by adopting an approach to the five Ws that does not exist elsewhere in the fly-fishing and fly-tying literature. The “who” in our case are the organisms that nymph patterns imitate. As you are probably aware, many fishing and fly-tying books have drawings of nymphs or, more frequently, recipes and pictures of nymph patterns for the reader to imitate. What we have done in this book is provide detailed images of the real nymphs (the who), our suggested patterns to imitate them (the what), and information about their habitat (the where) and their life histories and behavior (the when and why). We have also provided basic tips on the “how” of nymph fishing, but that is not the primary goal of our guide. Many books detail various nymph-fishing techniques, so we will not reinvent the wheel. Instead, we describe a few basic premises. The five Ws in our book will help you catch more trout and, perhaps more important, make nymph fishing a more interesting and rewarding experience.

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