Three Rig Wet Fly System

Want to increase your chance of catching trout? Try multiple flies at once. I will often fish three at a time to quickly see what they are interested on that day. By mixing different sizes and patterns, you'll know really fast what will work. The method I use is a three fly rig.

There are no real rules to this method, except for maybe one. Put the heaviest fly as the anchor fly, the fly that is furthest from the fly line. As suggested by someone else, this may also be the place to put an attractor pattern. When I'm searching, I'll often put a larger size 10 winged wet as the anchor that may have some brighter colors, a soft hackle size 12 or smaller as the middle fly, and another soft hackle or perhaps a winged wet size 12 or smaller as the top.

Building the rig can't be easier. Cut three pieces of two foot long tippet material (you pick the size), take two of those pieces and overlap the two ends by 7 or so inches, place your thumb at this spot and knot them with a double overhand. Refer to the diagram for a little better explanation. After the two are knotted, then add the third in the same overlapping fashion. The end of the rig is tied to a leader or you can simply use longer tippet material and tie it directly to the fly line. Having an actual tapered leader is not necessary. The basic idea is to have each fly approximately separated by the same amount of space when in the water. The top and middle position hanging off about 6-7 inches of line.

You would fish the three rig the same way you fish a single fly. Dead drift, up and across, across, down and across, or directly down. It doesn't really matter. The idea is to get the flies in the feeding lane and keep it there as long as possible. Dead drift is my favorite, but swinging it is fine. If you do swing it, try and slow it down a little with line mends. Before casting back upstream, be sure to let it dangle below you for a while and maybe go as far as dancing it around. You'll catch fish here as it rises and falls.

If you see one fly is getting most of the attention, you can swap your other flies for the similar working patterns.