Stillwater Nymph

Rickards Stillwater Nymph

Hook: 2x - or even 3x longTie sizes 10 through 12. He also ties and uses them in sizes 8 and 14. This version uses a Tiemco 5262.

Thread 8/0 Black for weighted. Olive for unweighted.

Wire: Tie this fly weighted and unweighted. Use black thread for the weighted versions

Tail: Sparse Marabou 1 times the shank length and sparse

Rib: Copper Wire

Body: Dubbed Seal and African Goat

Hackle: Saddle Hackle Palmered

Back: Marabou

Stillwater Nymph Notes:
It is said that the Stillwater Nymph is the most consistent pattern that Denny Rickards uses wherever he fishes.

The Stillwater Nymph primarily imitates two food items. A damselfly and a scud.

When thinking about this fly think long tail and short body.

When selecting marabou feathers for the tail don't use the stiffer portion at the top of the plume including the stem. Use the side portions that have move movement.

J. Fair. dyes and sells hackle that is well suited to tying stillwater flies.

When using this pattern to imitate scuds, when scuds are brooding out, their belly sack turn orange. So use a burnt orange saddle hackle for imitating scuds.

When imitating a damselfly tie them in weighted and unweighted versions. When damselflies are about and they are working near the surface use the unweighted version. If not probe deeper with a weighted version.

Real Seal is very hard to find. Arizona "Simi-Seal" is a very good substitute. J. Fair also sells a substitue called "Sub Seal".

It is recommended to use a short slow pull of about 3 or 4 inches at a time or a very short rapid pull. Remember it's the speed of the pull that varies not the length when using the short slow pull. Vary the speed, more than the length.


Tying Instructions:

1. Place hook in the vice and start thread wrap behind the eye of the hook. Cover the hook down from the eye to the hook bend.



2. Pick a small bunch of marabou from the side portion of the feather. You want this to be a sparse bunch. This provided more movement of the tail. Tie the tail in about the length of the shank of the hook. Tie in the tail and bind it down.

3. Once the tail is tied in pull the marabou fibers back over the tail and bind them down, tie back, with thread. These fibers will become the back of the fly.



4. Tie in the copper rib at the tie in point at the tail.



5. Select a feather that has fibers not longer then the gap of the hook. Tie in the saddle hackle by the tip. For this fly you don't want the hackle to be palmered. If you tie the hackle in palmer style the fly will have a tendency to spin.



6. Tie in a dubbing loop that is about 6 inches long. Use Olive Seal's fur for the damselfly imitation. Place the fur cross-wise into the dubbing loop. Hold the material with your hand to keep the material from spinning and then spin the dubbing loop tool while holding the material. Let go of the material and it will spin itself. Pick out the excess to create a consistent rope. You can add more material below to extend the length of the dubbing rope.




7. Once you have the correct amount of material in the rope continue spinning the dubbing loop tool. The key is to have the right amount of dubbing. If you use to much material it will tend to float the fly. Experiment until you get a sparse looking body with the fibers standing at a right angle to the shank of the hook. The dubbing loop for the stillwater nymph should be more sparse that the seal bugger.



8. Spin the loop tool a bit more and start placing wraps one in front of the other towards the eye of the hook. The seal fibers should be standing at a right angle to the hook shank. Wrap the rope forward until you just cover the lead wire and tie the rope off. Clip off the remaining rope.

9. Wrap the copper rib forward, with tight wraps. Tie off the wire at the head of the fly.

10. Once the copper rib is tyed off use a bodkin and pick the trapped seal feathers out. It is not as important to pick out the fibers as much as the seal bugger on this fly. Just pick out enough to remain buggy.



11. Wrap the hackle forward with 4 turns only. More than 4 turns will tend to float the fly. The other reason for only using 4 turns is to create segmentation. It also allows for the hackle and dubbed fibers to move and seem more alive. Tie off the hackle at the head.

12. Pull the marabou fibers from the tail forward over the eye of the hook to form the back. Rotate your vise, if you have a rotary vise, to make sure the back is positioned correctly. Tie off the marabou fibers.



13. Trim the hackle fibers that are sticking out upwards along the back. Trim the hackle fibers along the sides so that the hackle fibers are down and not out to the sides.

14. Whip finish and cement the head.


How to fish the Stillwater Nymph

1. The un-weighted version is best fished in the top two feet of the water column.

2. The Stillwater Nymph is best fished with slow pulls and pauses.

3. You can also use a steady hand twist retrieve. You can pop the fly with a pop on the downward motion of the hand twist retrieve to get a little more lively action.

4. You can also use the short quick retrieve. Short quick 1 to 2 inch strips.

5. Start with the low short pull, switch to the hand twist. finish with the short quick strip. Experiment.

Summer Day on the Lower Yuba

I've been fishing the Lower Yuba River in the evenings for the last week or so and decided to try floating the river from above Parks bar Bridge down to the Marysville Gun Club. Frank Rinella and my son Zack came along. Frank stated that the flows were about 3200 cfs. We set up our shuttle and got on the river about 11:00. The temperature seemed to be in the low 80's.

We were floating the river in my Fishcraft cataraft as I was taking it on a test run for our trip to Montana next week. The front and the rear of the raft arch up so that when rowing it rows more like a cat and is more responsive than most rafts. It has plywood floors and is a very stable and quit platform. With that said it is 3 times as hard to row physically that my drift boat. My arms are feeling it today. It's a great boat for more than 3 people and when rowing unfamiliar waters. It's pretty bomber.

The first thing I noticed was that the river was clearer than it's been in awhile, I'm talking spring creek clear. With a bright day this usually means stealth is of the utmost importance. In most of the runs there is a dark line running along each bank and the center portions of the river have been washes clean from the high flows. In some stretches in is literally like black and white. The high flows have scrubbed the river clean. Does this affect the bug life? I'm thinking that it does. To what extent I don't know. We didn't see a bug on the water until late in the afternoon and then there where only a few. I expected a PMD hatch late morning but not a bug to be seen.

The fishing was real slow with a few hookups from morning until about 3:00. We ran into Keith Scott at about 2:00 with two of his fishing buddies and they had picked up two fish to that time. At about 3:00 the sky became a little overcast and the fishing immediately picked up. To me this is an indication of how tough the Yuba can get mid-day in bright sun. We ran into Keith at the take out and he had picked up a really nice rainbow during this period on a dry. This fish would have been a fish of a lifetime for most anglers. Good job Keith!

We did manage a few fish to the boat along with a number of LDR's.





We were contemplating sticking around for the evening hatch but were just too tuckered out from a long day in the sun.

Zack jumped in the river many times during the day and kept cool. I wish I had that kind of gumption.







All in all a fun day on the Yuba, where the number of fish to the boat is kept in perspective. It's all about the joy of spending time with friends and family.

Webber Lake Report

I had the good fortune to be invited, along with my son Zack, once again, by Mike Williams to fish Webber Lake this last Friday. I want to thank him again for the opportunity to fish this beautiful lake with his son Todd and their good friend Rex.

The last time we fished Webber the wind was whipping and the fishing was what I thought pretty darned good. I had good luck fishing a Wiggle Tail and catching some feisty rainbows. This time I got the opportunity to fish Webber on a calm hot day with just a slight, if even that, breeze. What a difference a week makes. The water was much clearer and the fish were pretty selective and the fishing was challenging. Mike made the comment of "don't let anyone try to tell you the fishing at Webber is always like shooting ducks on a pond" or something like that.

We rigged up and kicked out to where the lake dropped off to about 16 to 20 feet deep and found pods of fish picking midges or callibeatis in or just below the film. The fish were actively slurping away. For me anyway, I was rigged up with an intermediate line and a wiggle tail. I cast that through the feeding fish with a slow retrieve and got a few bumps but no solid takes. There were a lot of empty midge cases in the film so I had a good idea what was happening. Unfortunately, this is all sort of new to me so I tied on a Rickards callibeatis nymph with a midge pupa dropper and started retrieving with a slow hand twist retrieve. I got one soft take but missed it.

I asked Mike about the fishing on Webber when the conditions are like this and this is what he had to say.

"You already know that Midges in lakes are abundant during the spring and fall. No different than streams. Webber with a mud bottom, is going to have a healthy population of Midges. We had Midges coming off yesterday and none of us figured it out, at least to the point where we could readily hook up fish. I saw the skins on the water that morning. I've thought about it today and it is simple. The fly I used was a Crippled Callibaetis, not an emerger like I said. My mistake, but important to remember because the two are so different. This fly probably represented a Stillborn Pupa, or the stage where the the adult is separating itself from the pupal husk. I greased the dear hair portion and fished it with a Cortland Clear Camo 7' sink tip. I didn't bring my floater. The intermediate sink tip pulled the cripple into or just below the film. Wham! A very slow take with the fish just sucking it in. I caught two and lost the third and then nothing. Todd told me later, today, that he watched the Midges splitting out of their shucks or husks about the same time. The bluebird day made it a beautiful day but a really tough day of fishing for us. Say the water averages 3' to 12'' ft deep throughout the lake where we were fishing. High sun, a pontoon boat, no wind, make the pontoon boat look pretty big to the fish. The sun penetrates through the shallow areas. You also have to remember the boat traffic on Webber can make fish spooky too. That doesn't help us. Last year when I fished out of my 14' Gregor I caught less than half the fish I would normally catch. The fish move off on us as we saw with our sidefinder equipment. Fun day though. We just need to continue to work on this. "

I believe that is a pretty clear insight. Like he said you just need to be ready for all of the possible conditions, with the right lines, right flies, and the knowledge of how to present them. For me this is a work in progress.
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Here's Todd with a Webber Lake Rainbow.

The few fish that came to hand on this day were nice healthy ones!

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Here's Zack lounging as he cruises in his pontoon boat.
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I decided to stick with the techniques that I am more comfortable with so I rigged up an intermediate line and tied on a Rickards Seal Bugger. I used the one with a black marabou tail, a body with a mix of 4 parts black Simi Seal to 1 part red Simi Seal with a burnt orange hackle run through it. I concentrated on the areas of the lake where the bottom dropped off from about 8 or 10 feet to about 14 to 20 feet. This is the area where I had consistently spotted fish on my fish finder. I alternated between 4 to 6 inch pulls to a long slow pull of about 20". I had quite a few takes but was not connecting regularly. I finally had a solid take and had a fish on. The fish rolled once and I got a glimpse of it and it seemed like a good one. As I worked the fish in I kept changing directions and making the fish go where I wanted it to go, attempting to get it in as quickly as possible.

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Here's a shot of the fish's back once I got it up in the water column
about 15 feet from my pontoon boat.

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I managed to get the fish to the net and it was a beauty. It spanned the whole width of my stripping apron which is about 24" and was very thick and heavy. Denny Rickard swears by his Seal Bugger for trophy trout and I guess he is right.

Although not many fish were caught on this day, lessons were learned, in a beautiful environment, with good friends. Zack had a fun day cruising around the lake and checking in with all of us and even had 2 or 3 fish on when he attempted fishing. Learning to get them in is his next step. All in all a fun day doing what we love to do. Goin' Fishin"