1. Choice of equipment Rods, reels, fly lines, fly floatants, clothes, glasses and other useful items.

If you going to choose your right or favorite equipment of rod, reel and line for any kind of Fly fishing, always think about 3 important points:

-       What I am going to do in terms of technique? do I fish with dries, nymphs, streamers etc.?

-       Which size or weight and function of a fly I want to cast?

-       What is the river or lake like in terms of size, water flow and current I want to fish?

Following these 3 questions we let’s have a look on the gear:

Rod: 

almost any length and weight of fly rods can be used for dry fly fishing. The length of the rod should be adapted to the size of river and the room for casting, but also on the varieties of the water current.

The less room you have to cast the more a shorter rod can help you placing your dry on the right place. Small bushy rivers and streams with lot of trees can be tricky, a short rod up to 8feet can help you as well as bringing yourself in a kneeing position for example can help a lot to get more casting space!

If you have to fish on further distance and handle a lot of various currents in the river, a 9 to 10 feet rod is doing a better job as you are able to take the line out of certain currents and mend your line properly.

My favorite set-up for dry fly fishing is #3 and #4 weight rods in 7,6 to 9 ft., but a 9ft. #5 is most of the times my standard trout rod to go

Line:

In fly fishing we always need to take care that the weight of the line we are using is heavy enough to cast weighted or big flies. Therefore, we need to adapt in dry fly fishing on the size of our dries we like to cast. It is a big difference if you like to cast a small #16 mayfly pattern or a big #4 stonefly pattern as big flies have much more air resistance and need some power in the line.

I prefer lines with a long belly for most of my trout fishing, also DT lines are doing a good job. Why?

As you fish for targets focusing on the surface your presentation is most the times the key to be successful! A well-balanced line compared with a well-balanced leader and casting skills can put your fly line carefully on the water without disturbing the surface and spooking the fish.

Some useful items:

The use of good polarized glasses is a must as you can’t beat the advantage to see the fish and your fly!

I don’t have a favorite floatant, but I prefer some liquid stuff which I can paste on the right spots of a pattern, which can be crucial for success!

I never put floatant on my tippet, Monofil or Fluorocarbon tippet shines and creates shadow swimming on the surface, so I degrease instead.

I use Amadou most often to get my flies dry after catching a fish, the more thick and solid the material is the better it works in my opinion.

 2. Leader material, build up, length and knots.

The leader can also be a crucial part to fish certain spots successfully! 

My standard dry fly-fishing leader is a tapered monofil leader of 12ft. and I connect a piece of 2-4ft. piece of monofil with a surgeon knot in the strength and diameter I think is useful concerning the fly and fish I am going for.

This standard can be adjusted in many kinds of length or diameter but allows me to change it quickly from one situation to the other!

long leader can help you in a lot of points:

- As one of the most important keys for success in a lot of dry fly fishing is NO DRAG, long leaders help to create slack line and your fly will not drag for a certain way.

- a well tapered and balanced leader will help to bring your light dry fly to the place you want it to present and will help you to control in which section of the leader and how much slack line you will create

- and last but not least a long leader will give you distance between your visible fly line and your fly!

3. Reading the water.

One of the most important things to do and to learn is reading the water!

Of course, reading the water will help you to find fish, but a fly fisherman needs to understand the current and what will happen to his line and fly. So therefore, this is the first thing to do before you will make your first cast. 

Rocks, logs and gradient are creating different currents and flow edges. This pattern of different current is like a picture, like a plan in your mind and tells you how to cast and how to handle your line to avoid drag and often times to give you a chance of a sometimes really short drift but long enough to make the fish eating your fly.

Reading the water is probably the most difficult thing to learn and can just been done in practice, practice and practice. 

4. Approach and stealth.

For me my position where I am going to cast is crucial as well. You can cast to a fish sometimes from many positions and sometimes just from a certain one. 

There is always one position which is the best and it is worth to find it before you get the first cast!

This perfect (or the best you can get) position depends on facts like distance, surroundings and current. That means i try to get as close as possible but far enough to not spook the fish, I check the surroundings to avoid getting stucked in a tree etc. and most important of all: I am conscientiously checking the current to find the best line for the drift of my dry fly!

5. Casting ability which casts are essential

Casting skills will always help you to handle certain situations. In fishing dry flies, I think the most important skills are accuracy and line control.

Accuracy is necessary to get the fly on the right place, line control is helping to gain accuracy as well to lay down the line softly.

To handle different current and create slack line a couple of presentation casts are useful as well as ability to mend the line properly in the right direction and with the right timing. As mending is often times difficult without pushing the dry fly under water, so I prefer to set everything right with my cast!

Good skills in casting also helps to find and see your fly in the water. If your cast is straight and controlled, you are able to imagine where the fly is! Often times it is tough to see a small dry fly in the current, but if you are confident in your cast you know where this fly is. 

Expert tip: try to keep your rod high at the end of the cast, so your line will straighten out high in a horizontal plane to the water totally. The whole line will come down as once and your leader and the fly will follow. This presentation allows you to have a very good and soft drop-down as well you get time to follow the line and the leader with your eyes and see the fly dropping down to the surface of the water. In this way it is much easier to find and see your fly from the beginning!

My favorite cast to prepare my drift are the Reach cast, the parachute and sometimes curve casts. 

A reach cast is a very effective tool in many situations. It allows you to bring your line, leader and your fly in the same current or on the flow edge between two currents. If you do it the right way your line system does not offer any attack surface to the current and you can get a much longer drift without drag. 

Expert tip: If you stop your reach cast while the line is still stretching out and push your rod at the end slightly backwards you can create some smart slack line which will help a lot to increase the length of your drift.

6. Entomology, what should we know.

Entomology is a huge topic, the more you know and understand the more fish you will catch for sure! But fish will be not impressed if you are able to name insect by their correct Latin name! If you are able to differentiate insect families and their behavior in life circle you are one step closer…

First one of the most important things to know in fishing dry flies is to separate between may flies and caddies flies and their behavior in hatching and egg laying. This knowledge will help you to present your fly correctly.

Second one is to differentiate emergers, adults and spents. A lot of times fish focus more on a certain stage of the insect and will not take others. For example if they are willing to take emergers in the surface they will refuse swimming patterns and often times it looks like a rise, but the fish just stops close to the fly and turns around, which will look almost as the fish took the fly but never had in his mouth.

7. Rise forms Can they tell us something?

A well experienced fly fisherman can differentiate rises and can get a good idea which family of insects and in which stage fish are taking.

To outline two examples, we can first have a look on taking mayfly emergers. The fish often times take these flies right under the surface and create a kind of rolling. The rise is smooth and slow, and we can see their back just breaking the surface. The emerger is sitting in the surface and captured by the tension of it. So this fly can’t move or escape and is an easy target for the fish, so that means there is no hurry and the fish can take it nice and slow.

The other example is a hatching caddis pupa. They are usually coming pretty fast to the surface and try to get away as fast as possible. The fish know about that fact and know to speed up as otherwise their effort will be for nothing. We will see big splashes and a powerful rise.

8. Fly selection, Size, shape, materials, which flies are essential.

I guess every single day someone is creating a new pattern, and these days in the world of www it is quite easy to get inspired and find new flies.

As everybody out there I have my favorite pattern and they are changing every year, some of them are created by my own, some are well-known but modified to my liking and some are just copied.

I use materials like CDC for many of my dries as I prefer most of my flies to be light and tender and these flies are very durable. But I also like to use foam for certain pattern like big stoneflies or cicadas. 

The range is from size 20 hooks to size 4, as you have to be prepared for any kind of hatch as nature is changing and it is even more unpredictable which flies will hatch and when than ever before! And we know that often times you need to “match the hatch” to be successful, so a good variety of dry flies the key. May fly emergers should be always included in a good selection, as often times they are the better choice!

If I had to choose only 3 go-to pattern I would go for a CDC mayfly pattern size 14, a deer hair caddis in size 12 and a big stonefly dry fly, which is my favorite fishing in the alpine rivers of Austria in the summer time – spectacular takes and quite often more successful, than any other method.

9. Presentation and drifts

I have already talked about presentation and drifts before. But I like to add some points which are important:

-       A dry fly can always be presented closer to the fish than a nymph as your fly will be in the focus of the fish immediately. If you lead the fish to much you might get in troubles because of the current as your fly will get a different direction and might not pass the fish in his feeding lane or drag

-       The drift of a dry fly can often times be short but efficient. If you can see the fish or know the place exactly try to get your perfect drift right there, it will be better to have a perfect drift of 3ft. on the right place than trying to get a long drift with lots of drag

-       The worst enemy of a dry fly fisherman is “micro drag”. Micro drag means that you can’t see the drag of your fly because of maybe distance, current or just because it is micro. The fish are often times much more sensitive on drag as we can imagine. We might think that we use the wrong pattern but it is just this micro drag why the fish refusing our fly! Grayling are pretty good in that ;-)

Expert tip: before you change the fly try to create some more slack line in a next cast to avoid drag or micro drag, more often it is the presentation that catches the fish than the fly pattern!

10. Upstream or downstream?

Both can be the right choice. 

Upstream is, if possible, the first choice as you approach from behind and the fish might not see or feel you. If you can get a position to cast right upstream it will be perfect and your line, leader and your fly will be in the same current with the same speed of flow and your strike can be perfectly done downstream and will set the hook. But upstream can become difficult if you have to cross different currents as you probably can’t get a good drift. 

Downstream is in many situations the better choice. For example, situations where you try to get your fly on the other side of the river, crossing lot of current. A nice reach cast downstream can help a lot to avoid drag and also it is easier to create some slack line in your leader as you just have to stop your cast at the end a little bit backwards! Sometime the advantage of having the fly first in the focus of the fish will also help.

11. Fighting fish.

Fighting the fish seems to be pretty similar in dry or nymph fishing. But always think about that you might have been to excited and struck too early, very often you are fishing very small hooks and fine tippet.

I like to fight fish as hard as I can, I really believe that the shorter the fight is going to be the better it is for the fish as I am a C&R dude