On a recent day on Armstrong Spring Creek, I waded in between fishermen at the extreme ends of the largest pool. For the next two hours I used variations of the Slightly Sunken nymph technique to hook 11 nice fish, while my two partners together hooked less than half that amount. I was not in competition with these anglers. I give you the numbers to demonstrate that being able to use a variety of very refined techniques is critical to your success as a spring creek angler.

Amidst the activity on the creek, my focus was on the fact that essentially no fish were truly rising, and rising steadily, to surface imitations. No dry fly, nor any floating nymph, would have done well in this situation. Every once in a while a new fish made a splashy, real surface rise, but then that same fish would fail to surface for many more minutes. I did not waste valuable fishing time by using my surface imitations.

Each fish that I caught during the two hours was engaged with no more than two or three casts before I changed terminal gear or switched to another target. Every single one of the fish that I hooked was a “sighted fish” in which I struck to the movement of the fish. Yet, I was using what is commonly known as a “strike indicator.” But I did not watch this indicator -- it was performing two other roles besides telling me when to strike. It carried the nymph or pupa imitation at exactly the right depth for the particular trout to which I was casting. It also told me exactly where my fly was at all times relative to the trout. When I saw the trout turn toward the indicator I set the hook -- well before the indicator had a chance to do its indicating.

During those 2 hours on the big pool on Armstrong’s, here is what my tackle looked like and what I was trying to accomplish with my casting.

• I was using an 8.5 foot 3-weight rod loaded with a 2-weight WF floating line.

• My leader was over 15 feet long, with the tippet itself comprising 5 feet of this length.

• The tippet was rated at 8x although it was closer to a true 0.004” in diameter. This fine, long tippet will land any fish in front of me because of the built-in stretch of the tippet, the light fly-line and my experience in quickly landing fish with such light tippets. I would not dream of using 8x tippets with the tippet lengths commonly used in most leader constructions (tippets of 24” to 30” in length); they break far too easily.

• In order to turn over this extremely long tippet I cannot use ordinary casting techniques based on slow casting rhythms that look so good on film.

• The tippet is thin because it more important to keep tippet size small when fishing under the surface than when fishing on the surface, since the surface obscures things and makes tippet size less important. Nymphing requires smaller tippet diameters than dry fly fishing, both because of the clarity under the surface and because of the need to allow the micro-currents to make the fly bob and weave as it moves downstream to the trout’s mouth.

• My “strike indicator” looks like nothing you’ve probably ever used. It is cut with a pair of fly-tying scissors to be smaller than the wing case on the size 18 nymph I am using, often much smaller. My cast must be to the exact spot I am looking at, for if my cast is off by a foot or two, I will never be able to see the indicator and use it to help me keep track of the fly in relation to the fish.

• When my cast hits the water, and once I’ve caught sight of the indicator, I stop watching it. I watch instead the trout and try to pick up an indication of the trout taking the fly.

• When the trout gives me its indication, my setting of the hook looks to the untrained eye as nothing short of violent -- it is very quick but very short. But the violent strike does not endanger the 8x tippet, and when the hooked trout makes its first strong run downstream, I do nothing but wait for it to stop and hope that it has not buried itself in the weeds or gone under a log. Then, I play it all the way back upstream to my net or, if it is an especially nice fish, I wade down to it. My percentage of lost fish is about the same as that of an experienced angler using 6x tippet.

• Finally, and most importantly, while I was using that day only a couple types of fly (a pheasant tail and a midge pupa), I carefully adjusted the density of the fly (whether it has any weight in it, for example), and the distance from the indicator to the fly, on each individual fish I attacked. I noted carefully how far under the surface the fish was feeding, and I made these adjustments continuously after only one or two casts to a particular fish. This constant switching of tactics requires experience and the use of something other than the old-fashioned “greasing” of the tippet to suspend the fly or the new-fashioned use of large bobber-like indicators that scare the fish or, worse, cannot be easily adjusted as to their distance from the fly.

This summary description of my technique, if it hasn’t already turned you off as “too technical”, is what this book is about. Be patient and plow through these pages and you will be rewarded. Here, I record what I’ve learned in almost 40 years of fishing these difficult waters. You will find a lot that’s new to you and a lot that is over a century old.