Forum Home › Fly Fishing Tips and Techniques › Euro sighter question
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February 2, 2023 at 12:42 pm #26468
Dave Rodecap
ParticipantSo I picked up euro-nymphing rod off a raffle on Facebook a while back and I’ve only fished it twice. First time I skunked out, but last time I caught two with it.
Anyway, I’ve been doing a lot of watching and reading (Devin Olsons book, and video) and one thing I haven’t seen addressed has to do with the sighter. Generally speaking, I understand that the sighter is going to be above the water line, and maybe quite a bit above the water line depending on the water depth and how much tippet you have tied on.
But here’s my question: When you run into situations where the water depth is greater than the length of tippet past the sighter, is it generally “ok” or “not ok” to have a portion of your sighter below the water line. I can see if you are consistently underwater, then you’d probably want to add more tippet.
A specific scenario would be fishing the area upstream of the “boulder” at Montauk. In that riffle, you could have quite a bit of tippet between the water line and your sighter, but then if you fish the hole in front of the boulder, you could potentially be underwater with part of your sighter. Is that something I’d want to avoid so that I don’t spook the fish?
Thanks,
-Dave
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February 2, 2023 at 2:50 pm #26470
Kenny Klimes
KeymasterTo answer your question in a nut shell the answer is – keep the “sighter” out of the water while you ESN. Here’s some reasons why.
1. The sighter, if made of different material or is a thicker diameter than your tippet being used, will not drift correctly underwater (too thick of a diameter could slow the sink rate of the flies or slow the drift).
2. The sighter should always be out of the water so I would extend the tippet if going to fish in a deeper hole. In other words can’t be lazy – add more tippet and hold your sighter a little higher in the water.
3. Your tippet below the sighter should be the smallest you can get away with – one of our guys was shown how to do it with the tutelage of Jason Randall and caught a 21 inch brown on 7X tippet. It can be done!
4. Some of the latest techniques are using a paint contained in a Sharpie like pen to mark the tippet. So the entire leader is tippet with fluorescent paint used as the sighter
5. We just finished our advanced nymphing class – our next class will be ESN techniques. Watch for it
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February 2, 2023 at 2:50 pm #26471Keymaster
To answer your question in a nut shell the answer is – keep the “sighter” out of the water while you ESN. Here’s some reasons why.
1. The sighter, if made of different material or is a thicker diameter than your tippet being used, will not drift correctly underwater (too thick of a diameter could slow the sink rate of the flies or slow the drift).
2. The sighter should always be out of the water so I would extend the tippet if going to fish in a deeper hole. In other words can’t be lazy – add more tippet and hold your sighter a little higher in the water.
3. Your tippet below the sighter should be the smallest you can get away with – one of our guys was shown how to do it with the tutelage of Jason Randall and caught a 21 inch brown on 7X tippet. It can be done!
4. Some of the latest techniques are using a paint contained in a Sharpie like pen to mark the tippet. So the entire leader is tippet with fluorescent paint used as the sighter
5. We just finished our advanced nymphing class – our next class will be ESN techniques. Watch for it
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February 2, 2023 at 2:58 pm #26472Participant
Thanks, Kenny. I didn’t consider #1. That makes sense.
Looking forward to the ESN class!
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