Which is better? Fly fishing with nymphs or using live bait like night crawlers and meal worms? Find out in this fishing video... the answer might surprise you!
So before we get too far into this video I’d love to hear which technique you think is going to be more effective? I think the results of this video may surprise you, or maybe not. I’d also like to set some of the ground rules for how I fished with each technique. I basically decided to make it even I’d switch back and forth between the live bait and the fly rod for each hole. So as I walked up the creek the first hole would be fly rod, second live bait, third fly rod, fourth live bait, and so on. Essentially trying to give both the fly rod and the live bait and qual shot. I also tried to fish the live bait and the fly rod similarly, in that I used a worm and sinkers for live bait and nymphed with the fly rod so I’d be targeting the same fish, essentially allowing the fish to choose what they wanted to eat.
So as you can see the fly rod and the live bait went fish for fish, which happened for the rest of the day. I couldn’t catch a fish on live bait after I had fished it with a fly rod, but I also couldn’t Catch a fish on the fly after I had already fished it with live bait. I think the fly rod slightly edged out the live bait, but that was purely because it was easier to throw it In some smaller pockets as I was walking up the creek. At the end of the day It seemed like both techniques were totally interchangeable in their effectiveness. I actually enjoyed the fly rod better just because I didn’t have to deal with putting on a worm every time I caught a fish and I seemed to have caught some larger fish on the fly, but that could’ve just been luck. So what did I take away from this day of fishing? The first thing is that using a fly rod, specifically nymphing, is one of the most effective ways to trout fish bar none. We tend to think of fly fishing as making it more difficult on yourself, but if you take the time to get good at casting, making good drifts, and learning what bugs the fish are eating then it is just as effective as using live bait, even for stocked fish. I think we forget that fly fishing exists because trout eat bugs, and you can perfectly imitate the bugs the fish naturally eat with a fly rod, which just isn’t nearly as effective on a spinning rod if you even consider it possible. The other thing I learned is that if you’re going to drift live bait you should have a much longer rod, similar to that of a fly rod. This would have dramatically increased my ability to get good drifts and fish current seems more effectively with the worms. The pros to a spinning rod is it’s just flat out easier. I was 10 years old and could catch trout on worms on a spinning rod, in fact that is some of my earliest memories of trout fishing. Whereas fly fishing takes time to get good at. In other words if you don’t have much time to fish, or only fish a few times a year, a spinning rod and live bait is a cheat code. You can just throw out a worm and even without knowledge on how fish use the water you can catch fish because it’s live bait. Whereas getting good at using a fly rod may take 5 years of practice, with several of those years resulting in very few fish catches. So I totally understand why spin fishing with night crawlers is so popular among kids and adults who don’t have a ton of time to throw at learning a new skill. It's also worth noting that nightcrawler far outperformed the meal worms to the point where I threw them out and gave up on them. I’d also like to say that these were stocked trout, so it’s possible that a wild fish might be more willing to take the live bait just because they know what a worm is. But then again the biggest fish I caught on this particular day I still caught on the fly despite the fact that I threw a worm for half the day. I think one thing is for sure and that is if you plan on catch and release you shouldn’t throw live bait, it’s just so risky and could kill a lot of fish. I had to be super careful while I was fishing and totally prepared to keep fish if I had too. I think at the end of the day there are a lot of moving parts and excuses you can give to both sides. So the real question is… what do you think is better? The fly rod or live bait? Thanks for watching.
