Let it ride
By Daniel Galhardo
DON’T RECAST YOUR FLY UNTIL IT’S HAD A CHANCE.
It takes some time to learn how to read water well. But, at least when it comes to fishing mountain streams, the concept is easy to grasp: fish are looking for food and shelter, and don’t want to spend a lot of energy looking for food. Currents bring them food, slow water and breaks in the current gives them shelter. With that in mind we quickly learn that seams where current meets calm water may be the best places to target with our flies.
Once we learn this basic piece of information, we all want our fly to land with 100% accuracy where we suppose fish will be. But, hey, sometimes it won’t!
In recent days I have been taking a lot of people fishing. Most were new to fly-fishing and to tenkara. After giving them some basic instructions on how to open the rod, how to tie the line to the rod tip and tippet to the tenkara line and then tie the fly onto it, I would teach them how to cast.
It’s been said that anyone can learn how to cast with tenkara in a matter of minutes. I have found that on average it takes 7 or 8 casts to learn how to cast with tenkara fairly well, and I’m not exaggerating. But, like anything, it takes time to get the tiny fly to land exactly where they want. If I had to guess, I’d say that in the beginning about 70% of their casts will land in the vicinity of where they wanted. Perhaps 25% will land just off the target zone. And, of course, about 5% will land on the trees in front or behind them, but that’s a different article for a different day.
The 25% slightly off-target casts is what I’m interested in making a point about. Actually, it doesn’t matter if it’s 25%, 50%, or even if you’re
Read More »The Myth of Manual
IT’S A COMMON MISCONCEPTION THAT “REAL PHOTOGRAPHERS” ONLY SHOOT IN MANUAL.
It’s not true. Certainly not for me. I grew up using manual cameras. Cameras that didn’t even have light meters. In fact I’ve spent as much time looking at the ground glass of a view camera as through the lens of a DSLR. I’m perfectly comfortable with it but I recognize that the automatic features of modern cameras offer benefits that can improve my work and I see nothing wrong with using them.
What “real photographers” do, is understand their exposure choices. How a photograph is exposed has an enormous impact on its emotional content as well as its clarity and color palette. The proper exposure for any given image is a highly subjective thing and possibly the most important choice the photographer has to make. Whether in manual or automatic mode, there are choices to be made and good choices are never made blindly. The key is in understanding what your camera sees and knowing how to control it.
UNDERSTANDING YOUR METER
The first issue is understanding how your light meter works. There are two components to this. First, how the light meter judges a scene and second, how that judgment is influenced by the meter mode selection. First we will look at what your meter sees.
No matter how advanced your light metering system, it is still a dumb machine. That holds true for use in manual mode as well as automatic. This is where novice photographers go wrong in switching to manual mode. The meter functions in exactly the same way and the user either understands that functionality, or they don’t.
To put it simply, the camera doesn’t know what it’s photographing. It is only able to judge tone. To some extent modern cameras know about highlight and shadow but what they really see is the middle of the tonal scale. A value that photographers call
Read More »Catch And Release Is It’s Own Reward
By Louis Cahill
I SPENT A WEEK LAST YEAR AT THE PENLAND SCHOOL FOR CRAFT, TEACHING A CLASS ON BAMBOO ROD MAKING.
I was having dinner in the dining hall one evening with ten or so folks I’d never met. Eating with new folks every night is a sort of tradition at Penland and it’s a lot of fun. Every one was curious about fly fishing so I was answering questions and generally being the ambassador for all things fish related. It came up that I practice pretty strict catch and release. A woman at the table stated, more than asked, “what is it with you fly fishermen? If I’m going to go to all the trouble to catch a fish, I’m gonna eat it! What’s wrong with you?”
I am often honest to a fault and with out thinking I answered, “fish are, I think, the most beautiful creatures that live. Every one is unique. I think that’s the real reason I fish. Just to hold them and look at them. If I didn’t fish I’d never get to do that. I like to eat fish but I guess I just don’t have it in me to kill something that beautiful. ” When I stopped talking the table was silent and everyone was looking at the woman. It was uncomfortable at best. “Oh fine”, she exclaimed, “I feel just great now” and left the table. I didn’t mean to come down hard on her. It was a sincere answer and she did ask. Frankly it kind of shocked me that everyone else didn’t see it the same way.
Last year I had the pleasure of teaching my oldest friend to fly fish. He was so excited when he caught his first fish, a beautiful little brook trout.
Read More »3 Tips For Targeting Fall Browns
AUTUMN IS A GREAT TIME TO TARGET BIG BROWN TROUT.
This time of year brown trout are in pre-spawn mode and are moving from their year-round holding water to the spawning grounds upstream. This offers anglers the chance to tie into a nice mature fish that might be too reclusive to be caught the rest of the year. I had the chance to do just that while showing a buddy from Wyoming some of my favorite water in North Carolina. Here are 3 tips that helped make it a successful day.
Target Resting Water
The fish you are looking for are on the move upstream. Fish prefer to do their traveling at night, in the safety of darkness. That means that they are resting during the day. You will frequently find them in runs below water falls or long stretches of fast water. They will rest there during the day and take on the challenging water when they are fresh. Focus your efforts on the resting water. It worked well for us.
Use Your Eyes
Fish in pre-spawn mode will often hold where you least expect them. While fishing with my buddy Jackson the other day I stopped to take a leak on the bank and
Fishing Fast
By Owen Plair
There are a lot of situations where fishing fast is the difference in getting an eat or the fish not seeing your fly.
Either because the fish is very close to the boat, or moving at an angle where you only get one cast. When it comes to sight fishing, we’ve all had that surprise fish. That one fish that seems to come out of the magical hat in a split second, 30ft of the skiff. There isn’t much time to present a fly to those close distance, or magic hat fish, but here are a few things that will have you prepared for fishing fast, and putting more magic hat fish on the fly.
HOW DO YOU FISH FAST OR EXACTLY HOW DO YOU DEFINE FISHING FAST?
The first, and most important, rule is being ready and aware on the bow. Keep 6-9 ft of fly line out of the tip of your rod while holding your leader or fly in your line hand. This is called the ready position and it’s key to getting a good first cast off. Keeping 6-9 ft of fly line out of the tip of your rod will help your rod load faster on the first casting stroke and allowing you to get that short distance between 20-30ft of fly line out very fast. Sometimes that 6-9ft of fly line along with a 9-12ft leader is all you need for an up close, in your face shot at a fish. Holding your fly or leader keeps the fly ready to fish, instead of dangling in the water getting the chance to hook up on the bottom or on a piece of grass when you go to cast.
Line management is a big part of being ready to fish fast. Make sure you always have enough fly line stripped out from the reel, usually safe with 30-60ft, maybe more or less depending on the fishing scenario. Most shots are between 30-60ft in your average sight fishing situation, so no need to strip out your entire fly line off the reel. That will just cause more heartache with tangles, especially on a windy day.
You want to have your line in a safe area, where there nothing to snag. Whether it’s on the bow, in a stripping bucket, or on the floor of the skiff. Your fishing partner can help with line management while fishing and also going bare foot on the bow will keep you from standing on line. In the colder months wear thick socks!
Understanding how to read the water, and spot fish will help you greatly. The thing I find works best is
Read More »Weight is Great
Lot’s of days, more weight means more fish.
I’ve hesitated to write on this topic because it seems so elementary. Sort of a fly fishing truism but I’ve been encouraged lately after reminding several of my friends who are highly experienced anglers of this simple fact. If you’re fishing nymphs for trout and you’re not catching fish, the odds are very good that you aren’t using enough weight.
My split shot gets me laughed at. Fly fishermen have ideas about weight. I carry a box of the polite little split shot, made for fly fishermen, but I seldom use them. I go straight to the stuff made for the gear guys. I carry size B and BB but I also carry #7 (1/4 inch diameter) and I’m not afraid to use them. On several occasions lately I’ve been fishing with friends and come to deep runs where neither of us have been able to find fish. After we each fished the run thoroughly, I added one of those #7 shot to my rig and caught a fish on the first cast.
The fish are there in those deep runs but in the early spring with water temps still low, they’re hugging the bottom. They’ll eat a fly, they just won’t move for it. You have to put it right on their nose. It’s a changeling way to fish and dealing with heavy rigs requires making some adjustments to your casting but it gets results. I’ve always thought that the art of fly fishing is in showing the fish what he wants, not expecting him to eat what we want to fish. That often involves weight, lots of it.
The other day I found myself fishing a rig consisting of:
Read More »The Virtues of the Single Spey
The Single Spey is one of the most efficient, and most overlooked, casts for the two-hand fly rod.
Like a lot of anglers who picked up the spey rod to target steelhead, much of my early fishing focused on Skagit techniques. I spent my time perfecting the Snap T and Double Spey in the standard and off shoulder forms and pretty much got by with that. Later I added a Snake Roll for when things are tight but for years the only time I used the Single Spey was when working out my head. As I spent more time fishing Scandi style lines and traditional flies, I realized I was missing out by not using the Single Spey. I also realized I had never really mastered it.
THERE ARE SEVERAL GOOD REASONS TO USE THE SINGLE SPEY OVER A CAST WITH A WATERBORNE ANCHOR.
First, it’s just more efficient. There are fewer steps and less wasted motion than in Skagit casting. Skagit casting is great when you need to lift a heavy sink tip, but when you are fishing a floating line you don’t need all of that power. A Single Spey is requires less effort and saves you energy, so it’s less fatiguing.
It’s also much quicker. Not that we are out swinging flies because we are in a hurry, but it does get you through the run faster, which can be a good thing. If for instance you are trying to squeeze in one last run before dark, you’ll spend half the time casting with the Single Spey.
The Single Spey can also be a big help when the wind picks up. With a waterborne cast like a Double Spey, it’s hard to generate line speed without blowing your anchor. The slower pace of the cast allows the wind to carry your line, often making it hard to form a good D-loop and killing your cast before it’s even launched.
Since the Single Spey is a touch-and-go cast, it’s easy to step up the tempo while still making a good D-loop. It also allows you more line speed on the forward cast, which helps you land the line and leader straight. Even in the wind.
The more I use the Single Spey, the more applications I find for it. It may be one of the oldest two-hand casts but it has not outlived it’s usefulness. It’s worth taking the time to learn to do it well.
The real key to this cast is
Read More »Czech Nymphing: Dell Neighbours Talks Tactics & Rigging with G&G
For a while now, we’ve been getting requests from G&G readers about writing a Czech nymphing post. It’s a subject we’ve wanted to tackle on the blog for a while now, but neither Louis or I specialize in Czech nymphing. Furthermore, we’re not the kind of guys that write about fly fishing topics that we’re not experienced with. When we find ourselves in this position, we go out and talk with the professionals who are, gather the information, and then bring it back to you. Dell Neighbours, head fly fishing guide for Reel Job Fishing, is highly competent in Czech nymphing, and he’s volunteered to talk with us today about Czech nymphing tactics and his rigging recommendations.
CZECH IT OUT!
I often have clients ask me about my fishing style when I mention I normally don’t use strike indicators when I’m nymph fishing. Currently, there seems to be a growing interest with indicator-free nymphing for trout, so I was pretty excited when Kent asked me to write a post for the G&G readers about Czech nymphing. There’s many different styles and tactics out there for catching trout without strike indicators, but the primary method that comes to mind for most fly fishermen, is Czech nymphing. When you strip away everything to the bare bones, Czech nymphing is very similar to the traditional American tactic of high-sticking with nymphs. The only real difference lies in the rig setup and you don’t use a floating strike indicator.
Read More »4 Questions You Should Ask Yourself Before Chasing Musky on the Fly
Today’s guest post was provided by Charlie Murphy, a long time member of Gink & Gasoline and musky devotee.
For those of you who don’t know Charlie, he’s as laid back as they come, he eats, sleeps and breaths fishing 365 days a year, and he’s always got your back when you need him. Another thing we love about Charlie is he’s constantly finding ways to add humor into every situation. All these qualities make Charlie a great travel and fishing partner and if you ever have the chance to fish with him, we highly recommend it. That’s enough introduction, read below Charlie’s humorous but true correlation between the old school movie The Karate Kid, the character Mr. Miyagi, and fly fishing for musky.
Read More »Fly Fishing Tip: Use Tippet Rings to Extend the Life of Expensive Leaders
TIPPET RINGS ARE GREAT FOR EXTENDING THE LIFE OF LEADERS
Leaders have got quite expensive over the past couple decades. Recently, I saw a pack of two fluorocarbon leaders retail for $20.00 in a fly shop. That’s a pretty good hit to the wallet if you get out on the water to fly fish regularly. One way you can prolong the life of your leaders is to use tippet rings. The tippet ring takes the leader out of the equation by providing the angler a reusable anchor point to tie on tippet and attach flies. Climax manufactures and sells tippet rings, and although I don’t like using them for my dry fly fishing because they can create micro-drag, they work very well for nymph fishing and streamer fishing situations.
TIPPET RING RIGGING INSTRUCTIONS
What I like to do is take a 7 1/2′ tapered 2X or 3X leader and tie the end directly to the loop ring. I then tie 24-36″ of 4X-6x tippet to the other side of the loop rig and tie on my tandem nymph rig. This keeps me from having to cut into my leader when I’m changing out flies or if I break off on a snag fishing. The tippet rings are also very nice for anglers that struggle with their eye sight up close, and makes it very easy for them to rig up quickly. This isn’t for everyone but for an initial $5 investment, it’s a cool piece of fly fishing gear that can save you money in the long run and should be considered. For those of you that aren’t big fans of using tippet rings, furled leaders provide the same functional benefits. If you’d like to purchase some of these, we recommend going with our friends at cutthroatfurledleaders.com
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