I don’t fish nymphs nearly as much as I did at one time in my life. I resort to them when I am with my girls on a stream trying to put a bend in the rod for them as they are still young students in a classroom with a lot of room for growth. It isn’t because I have some sort of stigma against nymph fishing, it is merely because I no longer feel the drive to have to catch the most fish whenever I step into a piece of water, and also because I enjoy a few other facets a great deal more. Maybe I “nymphed myself out of it”, or I am a hopeless romantic loving traditional methods, or plainly I am just an idiot (far more likely), it just doesn’t get me as excited as it once used did.
There is no denying their effectiveness in catching trout, once you get the hang of fishing them, adjusting weights, depths and levels in the water column that you employ them, you can catch fish rather regularly. All of this can be accomplished in a few hours time if you are a good listener, have an open mind and are willing to put the time into developing this skill. And wholeheartedly, this one skill can be the catalyst in shortening the learning curve with fighting and landing trout; it no doubt was for me.
Despite not fishing nymphs nearly as much these days, I do however still enjoy tying the flies that fall into that class of patterns, and even still have some ideas kicking around in my head for future patterns I may play around with. One thing is certain, I am always open to tinkering with the many patterns that I already conjured up just for fun’s sake. The Quill Bodied Jig is a simple jig pattern that gained popularity at the beginning of the Euro nymphing craze that hit us late comers to the party over here in the U.S. It is a rather simple pattern that like many euro based nymphs just catches fish despite not looking like any specific food form (a characteristic of many of these types of flies).
In this tutorial I demonstrate a variation of the fly that adds another layer to the original pattern. Nothing groundbreaking or complex, just something fun to tie and fish. Spin a few up for yourself and go catch some trout, it’s been a long winter here and like myself, you are probably looking forward to longer days and warmer weather.