As a general fishing tip for using booby nymphs whilst fly-fishing start by fishing slow and deep in the early morning when the water is cold. As the morning progresses and the water warms with the rising sun start by fishing your booby nymph higher in the water column.

BOOBY NYMPHS Hook size 10 - $US each

If you find that you are still catching weed experiment with using a longer leader. You can use two different boobies on the same cast. One on a dropper ant the other on the point. You normally assume that the droppers are the fish catching flies and the booby point fly is just there to keep the line off the river bed but sometimes the point fly catches more trout than the flies on the dropper.

If you use a soft fly fishing rod you will have problems setting the hook at a distance. Use a mid action rod. An addition tip to help you set the hook is to use non stretch or low stretch backing. This tip will convert more takes into landed fish and improve your catch rate. Conventional wisdom is to strike upwards when you feel a nibble. I like to strike sideways as it produces direct contact faster in my opinion. It works for me. When fishing in the winter and are trying to use your booby fly as a fry bait fish imitation then create a disturbance to grab the big lurking trout’s attention by doing one big strip retrieve before deploying a slow figure of eight retrieve.

Love them or hate them you just can’t deny the sheer trout catching ability of the booby nymph fly pattern. I have found it a deadly pattern for early season fishing. It is an indispensable part of my sinking line tactics. I use different leader lengths from 10 feet to 3 feet. This allows me to present the flies at various depths while still using a fast sinker. Speed of retrieve can also be varied from the standard slow figure of eight, to short fast strips. Don’t forget to hang the booby just before recasting. It is amazing just how many trout will grab hold as the fly rises slowly to the surface. Never recast too quickly.

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