dead drifting is where there is no drag on the fly mostly used for dry fly fishing and shot and indicator. mending the line is the most common technique to acheve a dead drift. fly fishing for trout in streams is a good book with lots of techniques and ways to fish a fly.

 

Craig, it's possible to write an entire book on this subject. Are you fishing dry, wet, or nymph? Upstream or downstream presentation? Sinking line or floating?

Just trying to prevent some of us from having to write a book with our answers.

 

That is why I asked the question, I figured it would be a good topic to address.

You don't have to write a book, maybe write a little about one situation.

 

Before I started fly fishing I used to dunk a lot of worms for trout. Most of the time I would cast an unweighted worm slightly upstream and just let it drift down then reel it in when it came back to the surface. This was very successful for me.

When I started fly fishing I couldn't catch a trout for the life of me. After about a year and a half of watching and making fun of me for this the friend who got me into fly fishing told me to fish the fly like I used to fish a worm. To this day it is how I start fishing any subsurface fly.

For me staying in touch with the fly is a matter of observing the line/leader knot or the indicator fly. When they pause or go backwards put some tension on the line to see whats up. The other thing is keeping the slack in your line to a minimum and positioning it to do the most good. This is where you could write a book to cover all the situations.