Here are a few stories excerpted from the end of Chapter Three in Fishing the Film. To put them in context, these follow GB’s discussion of the Dry and Dropper tactic. I have few other dropper-fly stories of my own, and they may appear in another book. Hope you find these enjoyable (and perhaps even vaguely educational).

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So, if a dry fly works well as a “suspension device,” why use a dedicated indicator instead of a dry? Well, if there are a lot of weeds or other in-stream debris present, then the fly the fish didn’t take may get snared in those obstacles. The end result can be a lost fish. This very scenario played out in New Zealand one time when I was fishing with my wife, Nancy.

Nancy and I were to meet our good friend, John Morton, at his little place on a New Zealand spring creek. As we rolled in, John came out rod in hand.

“There’s a big fish rising just above the bridge,” John called out as we got out of the car, “Come on, Nancy, you have at ‘em.”

We walked the short distance to the old wooden bridge, and located ourselves on the warped planking to watch for the brown. We didn’t have to wait long. The big fish appeared like a submarine from the depths and slurped something just below the surface, then sunk back to its lie near a bed of aquatic weeds. John had a small mayfly nymph suspended beneath a Goddard Caddis.

Nancy’s cast had hardly settled when up came the huge brown and sucked in the little nymph. At the hook set, it tore off down river “at speed.” As it passed by one of the wooden bridge pilings, the caddis imitation caught hold and refused to budge. We could see the monster brown spinning over and over, like a croc drowning a wildebeest, and then he was gone, leaving Nancy still attached firmly to the bridge by the reluctant caddis. It was not a happy place to be.

On another occasion, Jason and I were fishing a small Tasmanian stream with our friend and guide, Ken Orr. He had warned us that the fish were in shallow water, but eight inches? It was not just shallow, it was razor thin. And the fish were spooky. The browns were feasting on mayfly nymphs that wriggled around just above the bottom vegetation. The water was so thin, that it was all in the “film zone.” One could see the dorsals and tips of the tails as the big fish pushed around in the shallows searching out the delicate fare.

We had two problems to solve: One, how to cast to these cruisers? A line coming down anywhere near them would send them into instant flight. We had to cast at least 20 feet ahead of the fish, and very carefully at that.

This brought up problem two: how to keep the fly from sinking into the weeds 
while also keeping it in the feeding zone just under the film. The answer was a black yarn indicator tied on the tippet, literally four inches above the fly. We used yarn rather than a dry fly to prevent having the second fly catch in the weeds. We used black so we could see it against the shine of the glare on the heavily overcast day. We kept the indicator small—about the same size as the nymph, and we doused it heavily with fly floatant. It was not an indicator in the sense of a strike indicator—it was a position indicator. It also served as a suspension device to keep the fly in the fish’s feeding zone.

We’d cast 20 to 30 feet ahead of a fish, and then just wait (the basic Heave-and-Leave Tactic). Many times, the fish veered away before coming close enough to see the fly or indicator. Every once in a while, though, that dorsal/tail pair would home in, and suddenly the indicator would be dragged along by a nymph-eating brown. Once, a really fine male casually gulped my indicator—probably thought it was a midge clump—and I merely pulled the leader through its mouth and caught him in the far, rear corner of the jaw.

This use of an indicator to suspend the fly in the film zone can be applied in many situations. For example, another place where the suspension aspect of the indicator works very well is in lakes during a midge hatch. The pupae will swim to the surface, drift down a few feet, rise back to the film, drift down a bit, repeating this activity perhaps five or six times before finally getting anchored in the film to emerge. The fly is hung about three feet under the indicator, and the cast made into the general area where fish can be seen taking the pupae from beneath the film (indicated by bulging rises). The fly is allowed to settle for five to ten seconds. Then, the line is stripped with a long pull—about three feet—at a speed that will draw the indicator over the surface so that it just leaves a visible “V” wake in the film. This movement pulls the fly up to the film. The strip is halted, and the fly allowed to sink again; this strip/halt action is repeated until the cast is fished out. The strip/halt moves the imitation in a fashion that very nicely mimics the movements of the natural. I’ve had the fish take the fly while sinking, while starting the retrieve, while just under the film—really at any time—so always be alert to what the indicator, or other signs like the flash of a fish, are telling you. There are other action tactics for fishing the film that use an indicator or dry fly to suspend the sunken fly. These are addressed in Chapter Seven.