How many casts before changing your Dry Fly?

How many casts before changing your Dry Fly?

How Many Casts before changing flies?

I see this question on social media all the time. This question really has a lot of variables, these include water type, stage of hatch, time of day, are fish feeding from suspended position or returning to bottom, or are they cruising around. That's a lot of options and a lot of question marks to what your actually seeing.

 Here's some video from a float trip on the Main Stem of the Delaware River.  I was guiding my good friend Andy Gennaro and we were working risers on one of the Delaware Rivers large slow eddies.


This video shows how 3 Rainbow Trout, following an everchanging bubble line,  never feed in the same place twice. Think about it, if you have 3 fish and each is moving between 4 or 5 different locations, how many drifts before any fish actually sees the fly? If you're fishing to a previous rise form it could take dozens of good drifts before a fish sees the fly. If your continually changing flies, and choosing wrong, that number easily multiplies and often ends in defeat.
In this situation we chose a mayfly spinner based on the fact that we could clearly see Caddisflies and up wing Mayflies not being eaten. Sticking with our first choice fly and fishing to the heaviest concentration of bubbles rather than to the fish allowed us to take all 3 fish.
Capt. Kens Hackle Wing Spinner

Video's a bit long but these situations take time and patience

Conclusion and Tips
In this video we were able to anchor directly on the fish. The water was clear. We could clearly see the fish and the insects. Most of the time the fish were 20 to 25 feet from the boat. We could not see what they were eating but we could clearly see what they were not eating.  Most anglers don't have that much information when standing waist deep across 50ft. of moving water. Here's how I would break it down.
  • Watch the fish before casting and determine if you can see any comnination of the fish's head, dorsal fin or tail during the rise. This tells you the fish is feeding from a suspended position or cruising about. If there are a lot of rise forms visible it's most likely less fish than you think.
  • Do you see the fish's nose, white of mouth or a very gentle disturbance on the surface. This normally indicates a fish rising from and returning to the river bottom.
  • Mature Trout want the sure thing. If there are both Caddis and Mayflies on the water. Choose the Mayfly. They are more docile on the water and fish will choose them first based on the higher probability of a successful feed.
  • If they are picky or if there are too many insects on the water Choose Cripples, Knock Down Duns and Spinners. Due to their flush floating charateristics they signal vulnerability, most mature trout will swim past high floating natural insects or struggling insects to eat these cripple patterns.
  • Trade the rising fish 1 for 1 with your casts. If the fish rises you get a cast and a drift. Don't pressure them. 
  • Don't fish the rise form. Fish the food source / bubble line.  Land your fly where their next eat is most likely to come from.
  • If a fish rises to a natural within inches of your fly let the drift continue. In the Upper Delaware many fish follow a long way downstream to eat.
  • Always try to position well upstream of the fish and float the fly down to them.
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