The Dry Fly: A Beginner Trout Angler’s Best Friend

If you're just beginning your trout fishing career, here's why you should be fishing dry flies.

A Catskill style dry fly. | Photo by Thomas Freund

When I first started trout fishing, I was given an invaluable piece of advice: start with dry flies. Talk to any trout angler, and they’ll tell you that fishing with subsurface flies simply catches more fish than dry fly fishing does – and they’re absolutely right. Trout do the lion’s share of their feeding below the water surface; as a result, fishing with weighted nymphs or swinging a streamer is often the right choice. All that said –  start with dry flies. It will make you a better angler in the long run. 

Learning the Fly Casting Fundamentals 

Learning to cast a fly rod can be intimidating – watch Brad Pitt cast in A River Runs Through It and try to pick up a fly rod without a little tremor in your hands. To place a fly where you want it to land, a lot needs to go right. Namely, your fly line, leader, and tippet all need to cooperate. When you cast a weighted subsurface fly, the weight of the fly does a lot of the work for you. When you cast a dry fly, it forces you to learn to load the rod and send your line in the other direction. 

Get Control of Your Fly Line

Getting your fly to the right spot is only half the battle. Once the fly lands, it’s all about controlling your line so that the fly drifts in a natural way. Fishing with a dry fly allows you to observe exactly how the drift goes – if your line drags, you’ll see it. This immediate feedback goes a long way towards perfecting your fly presentation.   

Understanding How Trout Feed

One of the joys of trout fishing is learning to think like a trout does. If you were a trout, where would you eat? When a fish rises to a dry fly, you'll see exactly where in the run it decided to eat. With time, you’ll start to identify feeding patterns that you can apply to any trout river you’ll fish. 

A fall brook trout caught on a dry fly. | Photo provided by Jasper Taback

Fly Fishing Lessons That Transfer

In the life of every dry fly angler, there comes a time when a friend who has no business outfishing you does so by using subsurface flies. At that point, you may well choose to dip into the world of nymph and streamer fishing. The good news is that the skills you learn from dry fly fishing transfer seamlessly to other techniques. Start with dries, and you’ll be well prepared for any trout fishing you choose to do.