Fly selection is essentially exactly what is sounds like – what artificial fly do I choose to tie on? A common phrase you will hear fly fishers use is “matching the hatch.” That refers to the fact that during different seasons throughout the year, and even different times of the day, various insects in a larva or nymph stage will emerge from the riverbed, rise up through the water column to the surface, and metamorphosize into a flying insect. Often, it’s just one bug hatching, but occasionally it’s literally thousands of bugs hatching at the same time. Regardless of the number, this event is called a “hatch,” and it is literally like ringing the dinner bell for hungry fish. As insects float down the river, they form a conveyor line of food for fish. Hungry trout simply dart out from their hiding places to grab an easy meal. If you happen to be on the river during a hatch, the easiest way to catch a fish is to determine the type of insect that is hatching, and then try to find something in your fly-box that closely resembles that bug – you’re trying to match size, shape and color; with size being the most important. So, that’s the “selection” part of the equation. Unfortunately, the “presentation” part of the equation is far more difficult to master.
Even if you accurately discern the specific type of insect that a trout is feeding on, and you have the good fortune to have an artificial fly in your box that’s the perfect match as to size, shape and color, if your presentation of that fly to the fish is not virtually perfect, chances are you won’t be taking a picture of a fish in your net that day. So, what is “presentation”?
The easiest way to explain presentation it is to visualize the conditions under which trout feed on bugs floating down the river. Most of the insects drifting down the surface of the river are either dead or simply in a transition stage waiting to fly off. They are completely at the mercy of the current, and they drift at the exact same speed and in the exact same direction of the specific seam on the surface of the river they happen to be floating on. Fly fishers refer to that as a “drag-free drift” or “dead drift,” and that’s exactly what we try to replicate when presenting our artificial fly. That may sound easy enough, but the dynamics of rivers and streams throw us a curve ball. You see, not all water flowing through a specific cross section of any river is moving at the same rate. Typically, the current of water in the center of the river flows at a significantly faster rate than currents flowing closer to the riverbanks. So, if you’re on one side of the river, casting across the river near the bank on the opposite side where you believe a trout may be holding, your fly-line will land perpendicular across the flow of the river. Consequently, your line will be laying across several different speeds of current at one time, each pulling (or dragging) your line downstream at different rates. The mid-section of your line laying across the middle of the river gets pulled downstream faster than thes ections of your line laying closer to the banks of the river. Visually, if the river is flowing from your right to your left, it creates a large leftward bow-shape “(“ in your line, with the mid-section of your line being pulled down the middle of the river fastest.
