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Droppers need to be Dropped?
#1
Do you find the terminology confusing to try to talk about fishing more than one fly.

When you have a dry fly and followed by a nymph. Some people say the dry fly is the dropper and some people the nymph is the dropper.

Then you have John Barr's hopper copper dropper setup.

I find it that half the time I am unsure what a person is trying to describe when telling how to setup up a multi fly rig. There are so many ways to tie them on. I read and re-read what they have wrote and then decide what I think they are discribing only to some times change my mind later on.

I think we all need to come up with some completely different terminology to get away from the confusion.

I am the only one with this constant problem?
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#2
[font "Poor Richard"][green][size 3][center]How about the trailing fly on a tandem hookup?[/center] [center]It’s like I was reading some articles on fly tying and found that I didn't really understand what the writer was tying to convey. Seems like some folks have their own jargon that they will assume we all understand.[/center]
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#3
[font "Comic Sans MS"][black][size 3]I agree, that it gets confusing, specially this LEAD FLY thing. I have always called the last fly (farthest away from you and your line) the dropper meaning you are going to be watching the fly closest to you (the main/lead) but, in old English, it almost sounds the other way.[/size][/black][/font]
[font "Comic Sans MS"][black][size 3]This is what I call them and I am sticking to it![/size][/black][/font][laugh]
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#4
No doubt that with each activity there is a set of jargon one needs to learn.

With fly fishing and fly tying there seems to be WHOLE lot of it.

Year Before lastI came acros a fly called CDC & Elk Caddis that calls for type I CDC. It sounded like a good effective fly to me. I spent months trying to find this type I CDC. Every time I went to a different fly shop I asked them for it. Everyone thought I was nuts. ..... Well, I probably am but that is another subject.

Then I found an article on Fly Fisherman Magazine's website describing four different types of CDC. Then I realized the article was written by the same guy in Denmark that came up with the CDC & Elk. So I sent him an E-mail asking him where I could get this type I. It was then that I found out it was terminology he came up with to describe different forms of CDC feathers. He told me that one needed to buy CDC feathers in bulk. I gave up at that point as i did not need a life time supply of feathers.

It took another year before people around here started carrying small packages of the feathers. Or at least was that long before I realized the place that Hans had referred me to had products in small packages.

So I finally now have been experimenting with Hans CDC and Elk caddis. By the way the fly does not have any elk in it but does have a fine deer. There you go with needing to know the different types of deer hair you can get.

That was my attempt at a little humor.
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#5
That is another thing that causes confusion some times.

When a person writes - LEAD

is he/she meaning a weight or the front thingy. NO not that front thingy.
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#6
[font "Poor Richard"][green][size 3]Well here is a defination that I found on-line:[/size][/green][/font]
Dropper The secondary [url "http://en.mimi.hu/fishing/fly.html"]fly[/url] tied on the [url "http://en.mimi.hu/fishing/leader.html"]leader[/url] somewhere between the [url "http://en.mimi.hu/fishing/lead_fly.html"]lead fly[/url] and the [url "http://en.mimi.hu/fishing/fly_line.html"]fly line[/url].
A practice of fishing two flies at the same time, often one on the surface and a second underwater.
[font "Poor Richard"][green][size 3]Now what if you are fishing a solo fly then decide to add another fly using a lenght of tipet and attaching it on the bend of the original fly. By the above defination the origial fly becomes the dropper. Duh in the future because it is getting a little confusing,[Tongue] I will refer to the last fly in the set up as the trailing fly.[/size][/green][/font]
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#7
[crazy][font "Poor Richard"][green][size 3]That is the English language for you. Words that are spelt the same but pronounced differently inorder to give it a different meaning. Then there are those words that are spelt differently but pronouced the same. eg meat & meet. Pitty the foreigner trying to learn our language. No wonder that we have so many confusing terms showing up on this forum. Is it too early to start drinking?[/size][/green][/font]
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#8
I tie my first choice fly to my leader and then add some tippit off the bend of that hook and tie my"dropper" to that. That is what i know as a dropper fly. If i run 3 flies, the last 2 in line to the fish are the "droppers".
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#9
For what it's worth, here's the terminology that I learned. It comes from England and Ireland where the use of multiple fly rigs is very common.

The fly that is furthest "down the line" is the "point" fly. You can think of it as being at the "pointiest end" of the leader/tippet structure, or in the military sense of the "point" in a patrol who is the furthest out from the patrol's command.

There is only one "point" fly.

All of the other flies are the droppers.

In a classic structure, these droppers hang off of short bits of leader/tippet material which is fastened to the main body of the leader in any of the 100,000 or so ways discussed in a related thread. Sort of like this bit of ASCII Art tries to depict ("o" = fly):

--------------------------------------------------------o
[#ffffff]......................[/#ffffff]\[#bfdfff].[#ffffff]............................[/#ffffff][/#bfdfff]\
[#ffffff].......................[/#ffffff]o[#ffffff].............................[/#ffffff]o

Sometimes, we quickly rig up a multiple fly rig by simply tying a bit of tippet to the bend of the fly that we already have on our line, then add a fly to the other end of this bit of material. Well then, this added on fly, based on the above descriptions, is now the "point" fly, so the existing fly could be called a "dropper", even though it doesn't "drop". As in:

-----------------------------------------o-----------------o

Personally, I try to not get too hung up on what name to use for which fly. If I'm in doubt that "we" are all using the same definitions, then I just make a note somewhere that says "here are the definitions that I'm using". It works, or at least it seems to work. It works in fly tying, and it even seemed to (mostly) work at the day job (as I recall <G> ). I even try the technique at home, but it doesn't work as well here. Except with the dogs. <GG>
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#10
[cool][font "Poor Richard"][green][size 3]Thanks eBob I guess to some degree that makes sense. The fellow who first conceived of this idea had the right to give it any name he choose. [/size][/green][/font]
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#11
In my vast experience of fly fishing (almost 7 months now) I learned the first fly tied on was bigger and called the attractor. The next fly, tied on the bend of the first hook, was smaller and called the dropper. I took a class at a local high school and that was how the instructor named things. He taught us nymph fishing techniques so maybe dry flies have a different vocabulary.
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#12
Bioman,

I think you instructor was wrong.

But it certainly highlights the extent of confusion.

eBob probably has the correct info.
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#13
[font "Comic Sans MS"][size 3]That first diagram looks like the Czech/Polish nymphing or Dapping (m/s).[/size][/font]
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[font "Comic Sans MS"][size 3]And Bioman, you can tie on a big attractor, but you can also tie on a small fly. Doesn't have to be an attractor. I mean like a dry for surface action with an (of course either same size or smaller) emerger or a little deeper with a nymph for a dropper. Or two dries.[/size][/font]
[font "Comic Sans MS"][size 3]Or go two nymphs and size on that is an anything goes and experiment if you want the heavier first or second[/size][/font]
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#14
[font "Comic Sans MS"]That first diagram looks like the Czech/Polish nymphing or Dapping (m/s).[/font][size 1] [/size]
[Tongue][font "Poor Richard"][green][size 3]I don't even see Europe. Pray tell where did you hide that first diagram flygoddess?[/size][/green][/font]
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#15
[font "Comic Sans MS"][black]LOL I ment the diagram in eBob's post[/black][/font]
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[size 1]--------------------------------------------------------o
[#ffffff]......................[/#ffffff]\[#bfdfff].[#ffffff]............................[/#ffffff][/#bfdfff]\
[#ffffff].......................[/#ffffff]o[#ffffff].............................[/#ffffff]o [/size]
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#16
[center][blush][#ff0000]Oops![/#ff0000][/center]
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#17
This discussion and the one about attaching a second fly have been great for me! Its been good to learn more about fly fishing. The big thing appears to be : there is no wrong way to do it! Some ways may be more productive, but that doesn't mean other ways are 'wrong'. This has helped me get new ideas to try and find what may work for me and my personal style. With 5 new ways to try something, maybe I'll find one that I can remember that helps me catch more. Thanks again![cool][cool]
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#18
[font "Poor Richard"][size 3][green][cool]Hi bioman - your remarks are greatly appreciated. Sometimes I wonder if we go too far trying to solve a question of semantics versus a fishing solution. Doing some research on line I myself have discovered at least for me some new ways to approach using two flies in tandem. So I guess our friendly discussion on this subject worked out quite well. Good luck.[/green][/size][/font]
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#19
[center][cool][font "Poor Richard"][green][size 3]I sort of like this tandem setup. Might catch the loafers on the bottom or those out for a cruise.[/size][/green][/font]

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[#800000][font "Poor Richard"][size 3]The combination of a heavy beadhead and a more buoyant nymph can be deadly. Dead-drifted, this rig puts the larger fly on the bottom, while the bottom fly imitates an insect that has been knocked into the drift. If you twitch your rod tip, you can make the bottom nymph dive and rise again, which often triggers a strike.
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