Two Fly Rigs

Most anglers are familiar with tying nymphs to large dry flies, or fishing with two nymphs, but their understanding of how and why rigging two flies is effective gets tangled. Fishing two flies is useful in unlimited fishing situations. When I am float fishing, I almost always fish two flies to cover fish feeding on the surface and subsurface (hopper dropper style). However, fishing two dries is also very effective. The first thing you should understand when you are about to rig up with two flies is that you are still trying to match the hatch. If you are fishing a dropper fly that has no similarities to the actual insects that are available to the fish, you are most likely wasting your time fishing a dropper. Many well known nymph patterns act as attractors. They don't necessarily look like a specific nymph, but have many similarities to the real thing. Your main concern should be with size, shape and color of your dropper. Most anglers rig up with two flies by tying the dropper to the bend of the hook. Although this is very effective, there are a few other ways which two flies can be rigged and fished. Here are few of my favorite rigs.......

The Standard, tie the dropper to the hook bend of the first fly. The tippet used for tying the dropper should be one X greater than the tippet tied to the first fly. Hopper tied to 3X, dropper tied to 4X. The standard way of rigging your dropper effects you dry fly in a few ways. First it may sink your dry if you try to tie a nymph that is too heavy to your dry. Second it makes the dry sit lower in the water. This makes a more believable presentaition for low riding insects such as hoppers and stoneflies. It also serves as a strike indicator for your nymph.

Several years ago, I had a guest who brought along another well known guide with him for a day of fishing. It was a great chance to learn something new from the other guide who was very respected in the area. The Snake River has a fall stone fly hatch which is a bit unusual. The male stonefly is flightless and has underdeveloped wings. He has to run across the river which makes him a favorite target for trout. This time of year also has nice caddis hatches. We started by fishing a fall stonefly pattern, with a caddis dropper. However this time, he rigged the caddis above the stone. The way this is done is by tying a separate dropper line. Tie a perfection loop, or double surgeon loop in the end of the dropper line. Then attach the line by threading the end of the line trough the loop above a blood knot. Attach the fly to the end of the dropper line. The advantage to fishing like this is that the large fly can still be cast directly to structure and the bank without having the small fly to worry about tangling. Also, the caddis can be bounced along the water by mending or lifting the rod tip. This also gave the stone fly the impression of running across the water. We had several times that day when we had two fish on the line at the same time. This is an effective way of rigging everything from dries to streamers and is a great way of improving your fishing skills. The heavier of the two flies always should be your lead fly.

When fishing two streamers I typically fish a light, unweighted streamer above my heavier lead fly. The flies should be separated by at least 2 feet. When fishing two streamers I also fish a clear intermediate sinking line and a level leader. I have had great success with type of rig and have even landed two fish simultaneously several times.