In my opinion, murky water is the absolute best time for euro nymphing. With higher flows, using a tightline rig helps get your flies down quickly and enables you to feel even the most subtle strikes. In this blog post, I'll discuss how to effectively euro nymph in high and murky water.
To start, let's talk about my rig. I prefer a custom euro nymph leader (which I might sell in the future) over store-bought ones. I find custom leaders to be more sensitive and have less stretch, allowing for better hooksets.
On murky water days, my euro nymphing flies look very similar, whether I'm fishing for stocked trout, steelhead, or wild trout. Typically, I'll have a smaller size 14 nymph, such as a pheasant tail or hare's ear, as my first fly, and a size 12 eggstacy egg (my favorite color is light yellow) as my anchor fly, 12 inches below my first fly. It's important to note that the size of the fly greatly depends on how deep and fast the water is flowing, but it is of utmost importance to get your flies down to the strike zone.
For all nymphing purposes, I typically use 6x tippet, but when the water is murky, you can get away with 5x. I've used a variety of different fly combinations in the past, but I've found that the nymph and egg combo is superior when the water is high. Eggs stand out in murky water and are a natural forage for trout in many environments. Spawning trout and suckers make eggs a prominent food source in trout streams, mainly in the fall through spring. Because of this, it's downright silly not to fish an egg at times.
I find that most of my fish are caught on my anchor fly, but sometimes I also get strikes on the nymph. It all depends on the mood of the fish and what they are feeding on. Some of my best days on the water and my biggest fish have been in murky water conditions. Last season, I caught my PB golden rainbow trout along with a large breeder rainbow trout during murky water conditions.
The truth is, when the water is murky, trout are more willing to feed. The current is fast, and the visibility is low, meaning that when a bug drifts past the face of a trout, it has much less time to examine it before eating. Because of this, a feeding trout will eat your flies much more readily when the water is murky.
As we approach the spring 2024 trout stockings, I am looking forward to more murky water days, as such conditions can produce some of the best days on the water.