Intro | Bounce Advantages | Setting Up Your Rig | Open-Loop Casting | Extreme Nymphing| Nymphing Stillwaters| Bottom Weights

Setting up Your Rig
The distance between your buoyant foam or yarn strike indicator and the bottom weights should be about three times the water depth, so I use leaders from 8 to 16 feet long. You can fish a bounce-nymph rig without a strike indicator, but it works better with a visual reference.

I start with a 5- to 7-foot tapered leader and add 3 to 9 feet of 3X to 6X tippet. Long, thin monofilament allows the nymphs to sink faster and stay down without being pushed upward by the current. Use as light a tippet as possible given the size of the flies, the water conditions, and the size of fish you expect to catch.

Place the droppers 6 to 12 inches apart and keep them short (2 to 5 inches) to help avoid tangles. The bottom dropper should be about 6 to 12 inches above the weights. To make a dropper, connect two tippet sections using a double surgeon's knot or blood knot. Clip the upper tag end and leave the lower tag end long enough to attach the fly.

This rig is designed to drift with a taut line between the weights and the strike indicator and a slack line between your rod tip and the strike indicator. This gives you the advantages of both slack-line and tight-line nymphing. The taut portion drifts more slowly than the surface currents because of the weights dragging and bouncing along the bottom. This taut section transmits strikes better than standard nymphing rigs where there is often slack between the flies and the indicator.

The indicator bounces and twitches as the weights negotiate along the stream bottom, but the rig should not hang on the bottom if you use the right amount of weight. The flies should not drag on the bottom; they should drift suspended 2 to 12 inches above the stream bottom, so do not use weighted flies.

For bounce nymphing, use a 9-foot, 4- or 5-weight rod with a clean and conditioned floating line. Lighter lines are great if you can cast them with weight. Heavier rods and lines cast weights better, but the stiffness and water resistance of heavier lines reduces their effectiveness at achieving a natural drift.

Open-Loop Casting
Casting the bounce rig is more difficult than casting a dry fly. With a heavily weighted nymph rig you don't cast the fly line so much as lob the indicator and flies, keeping a wide-open loop. Tip casting and tight loops are for dry flies and will only give you tangles once you add an indicator, weights, and multiple flies to your leader.

It's essential to start the cast with no slack line between the rod tip and the weight. If you have slack in your system, strip in line or allow the current to pull the line tight to eliminate the slack before you cast. Using water tension to help load the rod, you can often cast the flies from downstream to your target in one smooth stroke.

If you must false-cast to lengthen your distance, wait at the end of each stroke for the leader to straighten and the weights reach to the end of their trajectory before you start the next stroke. The sudden stop that creates a tight loop when you are dry-fly fishing will cause the flies and weights to rebound in midair and cause tangles, so you must develop more gradual stops and starts for an overall smoother cast and fewer tangles.