I sat down with Ryan Jarvis from Monic Fly Lines to talk about a full season guiding the Upper Colorado, and the conversation turned into one of the most practical breakdowns of nymphing and streamer presentation we've done on the show. Jarvis guided out of Kirk's Fly Shop in Grand Lake for a year, floating everything from 5,300 CFS runoff down to low, clear summer flows, and the pattern he kept coming back to is this: anglers chase fly patterns when they should be chasing depth and drift first. Here's the breakdown.
Get Your Depth Right Before You Touch Your Fly Box
Jarvis's rule of thumb: you should be ticking bottom about one out of every ten casts when you're nymphing. Fewer than that, you're fishing over the fish's heads no matter how good your fly selection is. Trout are opportunistic eaters — if something edible-looking drifts into their zone, they'll eat it and spit it back out in a fraction of a second, but they won't move two feet up in the water column to chase it. That means depth and drift solve more problems than fly changes do. His order of operations when he's not getting eats: adjust depth first (add weight, lengthen the leader, or downsize tippet so the rig sinks faster), then re-check your drift, and only then start swapping flies.
The Aerial Mend Fix for Crossed-Up Nymph Rigs
If you're casting at an angle to the current — which is most of the time from a boat — your flies land two or three feet out of line with your indicator unless you correct for it. Jarvis's fix is the aerial mend: instead of waiting until your line hits the water to mend, you reach in the direction you want the line to land while the cast is still in the air, so the flies land already in line with your indicator. An overpowered cast (a curve cast) does something similar by hooking the final delivery. Both are worth practicing on the lawn before you need them on the water, because a nymph rig that's dragging out of line with your bobber is functionally the same as fishing the wrong depth.
Streamers: Let the First Two Feet Do the Work
Jarvis prefers a floating line for streamers on the Colorado, even in eight to ten feet of water, because he can control depth with fly weight and retrieve speed instead of fighting a sinking line on every cast. The technique he leans on hardest is the jerk-strip: the fly needs to start moving the instant it lands, not after two or three recovery strips. That means keeping your line hand on the running line as you shoot the cast, so you can start stripping before the fly even settles. His favorite producer was an unweighted mini sex dungeon in white — unweighted streamers move more naturally and telegraph an easy meal, especially fished tight to the bank with short five-to-ten-foot strips rather than stripping all the way back to the boat.
Casting: Stop Muscling It
The other thread running through this conversation is casting efficiency. Jarvis's advice for building distance without burning out your shoulder: keep your elbow tucked and let the rod do the work, and when you double-haul, bring your line hand all the way up to touch the reel on the back cast instead of starting the haul down low. A short haul only moves a short amount of line; a full-length haul moves the grain weight you actually need to load the rod. He also flagged something a lot of anglers don't think about — a lot of lines marketed at a given weight are actually built a size or two heavier, which feels good to beginners but works against you once your casting improves and you want more control at distance.
Gear
None of what Jarvis covers here requires buying new fly lines or nymph rigs — it's technique you can apply with what's already in your box. If you want a written reference to keep these depth-and-presentation habits straight before your next trip, our Tips and Tricks for Fly Fishing eBook covers this kind of on-the-water problem solving in more depth. And if you're brewing coffee before an early float, our FFIP Anglers Coffee Mug is a small way to represent while you plan the day.
