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Presentation Methods

Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 7:14 am
by Old Hat
I am getting ready to form a presentation section on my website. Quick descriptions of wet fly presentations with a small diagram to accompany the description. I would be curious to note what general established presentations some of you may use and how you see them playing out on the water. I put together a quick background which I will use to place the presentation diagrams on. Here are the presentations I have compiled so far which are just some of the presentations I find myself using and the wet fly angler that I learned it from. I would be interested to know who might have first written description of some of them. Also if you use any of these, lets hear how you see them being used and what triggers might you see that would cause you to select a certain presentation. Do you have any others that should be added?

Induced Take - Sawyer or Kite
Leisenring Lift - (Leisenring's Deadly Curve) Leisenring
Hidy Subsurface Swing - Hidy
Greased Line - Nemes
Downstream Swing -
Escalator - Edwards
Crosfeild Draw - Hughes
Upstream Wet Fly - Edwards
Slow Water Mend -
Pocket Water Strip -
Snapcast -

For fun here is a preliminary preview of the background I will be working off.
reduxPresentation Background.jpg
reduxPresentation Background.jpg (73.83 KiB) Viewed 4896 times

Re: Presentation Methods

Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:04 pm
by letumgo
Oh boy...this is going to be GOOD! :D

Just looking at your diagram, has me thinking about how I would approach this water, the structures, the currents, where the fish might likely be holding (and which direction them may be facing), exploring the depths, and how to methodically break it down. Where would I stand? How short or long my leader and tippet set-up should be. And what time of the season it is (may impact the depth the fish are holding, and what direction their attention is focused, from substrate (stream bottom) to surface.

It may be sacrilege ( :oops: It's okay to laugh. I have no shame... :twisted: ), but I would add dead drift (dry fly style) and active retrieve/animated drift (Tenkara style pulsing of the fly in the surface film) to the list.

Will there be any mention of desiccants (ala "Frogs Fanny)? I when I fish wingless wets, and have struggled to draw a strike, burshing a soft hackle fly with Frogs Fanny has often worked magic. The fly suspends in the surface film (emerger), with a shiny bubble of air for the first dozen drifts. This has often been the "presentation" the fish have been looking for.

Man, I am really looking forward to your series of presentation methods.

Re: Presentation Methods

Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 12:59 pm
by Bazzer69
Oldhat, you’ve taken on a very big task and I admire you for doing so. In the words of Col Grey, “ I’m ninety and been fly fishing my entire life and damnit I’m going to die soon and I’ve only just scratched the surface “. I suggest you might purchase, if you’ve not already done so, books by all the fishermen you listed, there is great benefit in modernizing old works and bringing their methods up to date.
As far as the “air bubble” goes I’ve seen many Caddis emerging and I’ve never seen evidence of the bubble. I have seen water boatmen diving with a air bubble and BWO’s crawling from the surface to a good egg laying spot underwater. Gary LaFontaine says he’s observed it so it must be true!
B

Re: Presentation Methods

Posted: Thu Apr 25, 2019 8:35 pm
by Greenwell
One of the very best and most succinct descriptions of the Upstream Wet Fly technique that I have found is in River Flyfishing by L. Baverstock. However, Rob Smith's chapter on techniques is unbeatable for both depth and clarity.

The Crossfield Draw was described in Earnest Crossfield's chapter of the obscure book Fishermans Pie 1926, edited by W.A. Hunter

The book Greased Line Fishing for Salmon by "Jock Scott," penn name of D.G. Ferris Rudd, is a treasure trove of information on fishing wet flies. While written for the salmon angler, all of the methods have merit when applied to trout fishing. Among many other interesting topics, it details how Crossfield adopted A.H.E. Woods' techniques of greased (floating) line fishing for salmon. Trout fishing with classic wet flies, both winged and wingless, is pretty much just salmon fishing on a smaller scale. Get the later edition with the forward by Bill McMillan. Syl Nemes recommended this book to me and my copy is worn and dog-eared.

Edwards' Escalator and the Leisenring Lift are essentially the same thing under different names.

The Induced Take is almost out of place in the list primarily because it is a technique for fishing to visible trout or grayling while in most cases the others are methods for covering water or searching for unseen fish.

Re: Presentation Methods

Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 6:10 am
by Mike62
I'm really looking forward to this. I learned to fish using many of those tactics but they were never called by name, it was just something that you did to try and catch fish. Learning the history behind the methods and men who devised the techniques is like discovering them all over again.

Re: Presentation Methods

Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 8:16 am
by Old Hat
I draw distinctions between some of the presentations, although similar, from what I have experienced are considerations in the type of fly best suited and the type of water I'm fishing. I think we all take common presentations and apply to them specific situations and employ specific types of flies using those presentations. That is what I am curious about. We may all have our own on the water considerations for using the Escalator presentation or a variation of it. I think we could get some good discussion on what each of us may look for and our approach with each technique. The topic in this post maybe too much now that I think about it. Maybe it would be best to gather comments on specific presentations individually under their own topics.

Thanks John for taking the time to share your thoughts on those publications.

I use the Escalator most often for fishing along deeper banks where I let the fly sink and then feed line out as the fly drifts parallel to the bank, after the end of a reasonable reach, I stop the rod and let the fly ascend and swing out. I don't use it on sighted fish like I would with the Leisenring lift. It also incorporates mending at the beginning and stripping line off the reel which I don't do with the L. Lift. I most often choose a fly that is a little more robust than a spider, is a little heavier to get that sink going. This is where I will often use a wingless wet that could resemble a drowned terrestrial as well. Depending on the fly choice it is either about the slow sinker drift parallel to the bank or the gradual rise at the end of drift.

Like the Induced Take, I believe the Leisenring Lift and Hidy's Subsurface Swing were also predominantly sighted fish techniques.

Ray - Dry fly presentations certainly work well at times, however they are dry fly presentations. :)
I like the idea of the Animated Drift that you find in Tenkara presentations. So what type of water specifically do you look for that would push you to chose that technique at the time and are there specific types of flies that you use (only reversed spiders, spiders, flymphs, general wingless wets, etc). I know a person could use that technique with any of those but what would you chose most often and why? That's what I am trying to gather here.

Mike - I think that is how a lot of us came across them. Trial and error. That is the cool thing about wingless wets, their versatility for so many conditions and presentations.

Re: Presentation Methods

Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 10:27 am
by gingerdun
Hi Carl,

As you probably remember, in The Sports Illustrated Book of Wet-Fly Fishing (1961), Pete Hidy wrote a chapter on stream strategy, pages 29-53. You might want to take a look again. He gives a number of presentation ideas that are surely a mixture of things he learned from Leisenring, and from his own experience. As you can see in the SI book, Pete preferred smaller streams with complicated features such as boulders, logs, and islands. He approached it like a chess game, studying the water, and the trout activity, thinking several steps ahead to plan his strategy.

Re: Presentation Methods

Posted: Fri Apr 26, 2019 8:16 pm
by Greenwell
I think that as an overview you could break down subsurface presentations into three categories and then add the various refinements of those presentations under each heading.

For example:

1- Upstream
A. True Upstream
B. Upstream Nymph (Induced take)
C. Etc........

2 -Upstream and Across
A. Escalator
B. Leisenring Lift
C. Etc...........

3- Across and Down
A. Downstream Swing
B. Crossfield Retrieve
C. Etc..........

Obviously, these are just suggestions and I didn't try to include all the various methods, hence the "Etcs".....

In my slide show I break the basic presentations down as above and then, time permitting, I discuss the various ways one can fish a wet fly within each approach. Obviously, you will not be constrained by time so you could really flesh this out. This is a neat topic, Carl! I'm under some time constraints at the moment and am away for the next week but I'll be diving into the books as much a possible when I return.

Re: Presentation Methods

Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 6:41 am
by Old Hat
Thanks John, that is a great way to divide the methods out. There are certainly similarities between them. I have most of the more contemporary books but very few of the historical writings except for what is accessible online. I wish I had been able to catch up with you in Atlanta this year. I have never seen your presentation.

Re: Presentation Methods

Posted: Sat Apr 27, 2019 9:00 am
by ronr
These discussions are what makes this forum so valuable to newcomers to the game as I am. I've been trying to get my hands on as much information as I can about presenting soft hackles. I'm lucky to have a relatively small river in the area to experiment with these techniques and have enough fish in the river to teach me what works. Now if I can just figure out how to set the hook on a better percentage of grabs when swinging those flies.