Rob Saunders admires a nice rainbow trout caught and released from Buffalo Creek with the nymph bouncing method.

Most trout anglers know that trout spend most of their time feeding on or near the bottom, for the simple reason that is where most of their food lives. Nearly the complete life cycle of mayflies, caddis and stoneflies is spent on the bottom, with only a brief period of emergence for the given species to perpetuate. In general, the same is true of crustaceans such as crayfish and other natural food sources like sucker eggs.

As such, many presentation options slant toward putting the offering near the bottom. In the case of the fly fisher this often means getting some form of nymph down deep.

The key, though, is in not only getting a nymph close to the bottom, but in having it drift at a speed the fish are accustomed to, while also maintaining enough contact with the angler to detect the bite before the trout can reject the imitation.

All sorts of approaches have been developed to accomplish this, such as “high stick nymphing,” where the rod tip is held high keeping most, if not all, of the drag-creating fly line off the water; other strategies rely on a strike indicator (commonly called a bobber outside of fly fishing circles) to telegraph the take.

Recently — along the Delayed Harvest section of Armstrong County’s Buffalo Creek — I was exposed to another form of nymphing, called “bouncing,” by Rob Saunders of the Pittsburgh area.

“With bouncing the weight is placed at the end of the leader,” Saunders explained. “Droppers are tied on up the leader, to which nymphs are tied. A strike indicator is then fastened to the leader at a distance of about three times the depth of the water being fished.”

One advantage of having the weight on the bottom is that any snags usually involve just the split shot. The spacing of the droppers is engineered so that the flies ride anywhere from a couple inches to a foot off bottom. An overhead knot is tied to the end of the leader to inhibit the shot from sliding off too easily, while still allowing the weight to detach without losing any of the rest of the rig.

Rigging wise, Saunders starts off with a standard store-bought tapered knotless leader. But he only uses the butt section, roughly four or five feet. From there he ties on a few feet of 3X tippet material. At the terminal end of the 3X he ties in a section of smaller diameter tippet material, using a blood knot. He leaves one tag of the knot about six inches long to serve as the first dropper, and trims the other portion off at about a foot. He then repeats the process: Another blood knot with a six-inch tag for the second dropper, then 12 to 14 inches to serve as the point of the leader, to which the split shot is squeezed.

This system excels with small (size 14 or smaller), unweighted nymphs, hence the small diameter for the droppers. Saunders often goes down to 6X. Droppers are kept short to minimize tangling.

In use, the rig is fished upstream. Casts are more “lobs” than traditional fly casts. This isn’t a place for lots of false casting and classic tight loops. If a false cast is necessary to increase the length of the cast, it should be done slower, with open loops to keep from tangling the hardware. In many instances it’s possible to allow the rig to drift downstream, loading the rod for the next cast, eliminating the need for false casting.

As its name suggests, the idea of this method is to bounce the weight — the split shot — off the bottom. As the rig drifts, the strike indicator will lead the way, maintaining tension between itself and the split shot (and hence, the flies). The indicator will bounce and twitch frequently during the drift, illustrating the “bounce” component of the method. When a trout takes a fly, the indicator will stop, or even plunge subsurface. Thanks to the tension involved, and also the small hooks, many times the fish hook themselves. Any hook-setting by the angler should be subtle, as in just lifting the rod.

Saunders said that this system takes some patience on the part of the user. Initial patience to give it a chance to work, to gain some confidence in it; to resist the urge to attempt to untangle minor snarls by merely twitching the rod tip, which usually makes things much worse. He said to take the time to carefully untangle things by hand. But if given a chance “nymph bouncing” can be a highly effective tool for presenting nymphs.

Jeff Knapp is an outdoors columnist for the Butler Eagle.