So I've recently gotten a lot of success tightlining/euronymphing but almost exclusively in deep, fast pocket water. The heavy flies and shorter casts of this style obviously lend themselves to this kind of water, but a lot of the water around me is slower moving pools or waist deep flats. When fishing this, the normal tightline cast is too short to reach fish, and a longer cast means less control of the flies and they snag on the bottom. Lighter flies make it harder to cast with a long mono rig, and harder to detect strikes.
Am I overthinking it? Do I have to change my leader beyond adjusting for depth? Lemme know what yall do in these slow water situations for tightlining. Thanks in advance, and tight lines yall
Euro/tight line nymphing is not the end all be all for all water types. There are definitely situations where dry dropper/indicator rigs or other fishing techniques are better suited.
If the water is that slow I personally wouldn’t be using a tight line setup and would be throwing dry dropper/indicator rig. Especially if distance is a concern.
Also it’s not always about feeling strikes. The sighter is extremely useful to visually detect strikes. Pauses, abnormalities in movement, added tension etc will let you know a strike potentially happened that you wouldn’t have felt.
If you are wanting to tight line it the best thing you could do is adjust your weight and go lighter. Too much weight in slow water and you will drag the flies and get unnatural drifts every time. Pay attention to your depth using your sighter as well. Track sighter height above water to know the depth you need to be fishing at.