I somewhat recently fished a creek with a friend, and since he is a much more experienced fly fisher than me, I tried to just follow his lead. I noticed that when we found a spot on the creek that was both approachable and looked promising, he would subtly encourage a trade-off (you take this hole, I get the next hole) kind of thing. It seemed fair. Unfortunately, my impatience with the lack of action kept me moving. I noticed a couple of times that I had deviated from the unspoken agreement.

A week or two later, I was reading some publication or another about fly fishing and the author mentions a leap-frog method of fishing in pairs. He went on to say that the every-other approach doesn’t apply to "prime" spots. Prime spots should be alternated separately from searching spots. Here is how I now understand buddy fishing to work...

Approach spot #1 – not a prime spot, but worth fishing – Jason gets a fly wet.

Buddy (lets call him Brad) approaches spot #2 – downstream (or up) also not a prime spot, but he casts in.

Jason moves to spot #3 – leapfrogging Brad’s position on the creek.

Brad picks up and goes to spot #4 – leapfrogging Jason’s position.

Now, we are working down the creek… this is all fine and good. We re-join our anglers some dozen hops downstream…

Jason’s move places him in a prime spot (#1 of the day), but when Brad moves downstream he isn’t so lucky.

Jason picks up to move again, and gets lucky and hits another prime spot. This is where the system changes… prime spot #2 should be Brad’s. No matter who is next in the standard rotation, the PSR (Prime Spot Rotation) supersedes all.