The Right-Handed Strip Set
I’ve talked before about the importance of the strip set in saltwater fly fishing. I think every angler who’s tried their hand in the salt knows that you aren’t going to catch a fish without mastering this simple technique. Simple as it may be, reprogramming your muscle memory for the strip set can be a challenge and has sent many anglers into fits on the bow.
Today, I’m going to talk about taking your strip set to the next level with your rod hand. It was my friend Joel Dickey who first introduced me to this idea. We were tarpon fishing in the Keys and I fed a big fish that followed my fly for a good ways before eating it. As tarpon will often do in this scenario, the fish ate the fly and, rather than turning, kept cruising toward the boat. I gave a hardy strip set but, even with my six and a half foot reach, I was never able to put enough pressure on him to bury the hook. The fish jumped and was gone.
“What the hell are you supposed to do with that?” I asked Joel.
“There’s not a lot you can do,” he shrugged and told me, “about your only shot is to clamp down on the line with your right hand and pull.”
Read More »Fly Fishing Dreams
By Jason Tucker
I COULD HEAR THE VOICES OF TOMMY AND PHIL DOWNSTREAM FROM ME, A HUNDRED OR MORE YARDS AWAY IN THE DARKNESS.
They were methodically working over a promising looking pool, skating mice across the surface, discussing the possibilities. I’m kind of impatient so I felt my way through the brush and grass to a spot where I could fish.
The spot I found seemed to be just right- a sluice pouring out of deeper water upstream into the next pool. I stripped out twenty feet of line and put my first cast in the middle of the torrent. The moment my mouse reached the pool the water erupted with the sound of a brick being thrown in the river.
With a rare presence of mind, I actually waited until I felt the weight of the fish before setting the hook. When I did it exploded out of the water, leaping once, twice, three times, before settling into a dogged fight.
“I got him,” I shouted into the darkness, and Tommy replied, “We’re coming Jay! Hold on!” followed by the sound of running in the darkness, and Phil emerged from the brush, leapt without looking into the water and waded across in time to help me land the fish.
It was a male brown trout with a massive hooked jaw. Keeping him in the water, we taped him out at just over 28 inches long. We estimated his weight at 9 or 10 pounds. For me it was the pinnacle of my fly fishing career, and a lifetime fish for almost anyone who fly fishes. I was later told by those who know that it was one of the four or five biggest browns caught in the state that season, on a fly.
A lot of elements came together perfectly that night- the right river, the right time of year, the right weather. I had the right equipment, the right fly. I made a good cast, timed the hookset right and my knots held. I was also with the right fishing buddies- experienced guys who had landed a lot of big fish themselves, who jumped in and helped out in all the right ways. Tommy even knew how to take decent photos in the dark.
What is it that makes us seek big fish?
Of all things in life, why is that such a special moment? There are of course far more important things in life- graduations, jobs, proposals, marriages, buying a home, births,…Deaths. Those things are certainly more important than landing the fish of our dreams, but they don’t seem to excite us and capture the imagination in the same way. At least, not for some of us.
The birth of a child is for most of us one of the most joyful moments in our lives, and certainly one we will always treasure. At the same time, it is the start to an endless cycle of dirty diapers, sleepless nights, first steps, scrapes and bruises, and those are the easy days.
Soon you’re sending them off to school, negotiating the ‘tween years, puberty, rebellion and college applications. All a labor of love, but one that often leaves you wondering, which weighs heavier in the balance, the labor or the love?
I’m not sure everyone has a dream, but
Read More »Reel Balance
HAVE YOU SPENT MUCH TIME THINKING ABOUT THE COUNTERWEIGHT ON YOUR FLY REEL? SOMEONE HAS.
Odds are good you haven’t spent a lot of time thinking about that little button opposite the handle on your fly reel. Some of you may have thought it was just there for decoration. Well, it isn’t. The counterweight is actually a really important piece of your reel’s design and without it you’d be in trouble.
Think of it like the lead counterweights on your car tires. When you buy a new set of tires the guys at the tire shop balance each of them once they’re mounted on the rims. Without those counterweights your car would feel like it was driving a washboarded forest service road all the time. Your reel works the same way.
Without a counterweight every time you hooked into a fish big enough to pull some serious line, your reel would buck and vibrate like that car tire that’s out of balance. That would cause a couple of things and none of them good.
The jerking motion of the rod caused by an out of balance reel would cause you to lose fish, either by breaking them off or dislodging the hook. It would also cause extra wear on the reel shortening its life. It would also be annoying as hell causing you to throw the reel as far as possible.
It’s easy to understand why a reel needs to be balanced. What’s tougher is actually balancing one. It’s a surprisingly tedious process. The slightest change in the length of the handle makes a big change in the counterweight. There are formulas, but reel balance only comes from a process of trial and error.
When I was at the Nautilus factory a few weeks ago my friend Kristen Mustad showed me how they balance Nautilus reels. It’s pretty clever and a great example
Read More »Glass and Grass
THIS IS A SIGHT FLATS GUIDES LOVE. THOSE GLASSY CALM MORNINGS DURING THE HOT SUMMER MONTHS WHEN ISLANDS OF FLOATING GRASS STACK UP ALONG THE EDGES OF CURRENT SEAMS. WHEN YOU SEE IT YOU KNOW SOMETHING GOOD IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. IT’S CALLED A SHRIMP HATCH.
Hatch is a misleading term. The shrimp aren’t actually hatching, they’re dying. Suffocating to be exact. Like a trout stream, the water in the ocean must be replenished with fresh oxygen for aquatic life to survive. The ocean however, does not have riffles turning out oxygen around the clock. Aquatic plants provide some oxygen through photosynthesis but not at night, so the ocean relies heavily on wind to oxygenate the water when the sun is down. This becomes even more crucial as water temperature rises. Since warmer water holds less oxygen it must be replenished more often.
On those still hot nights the shrimp are suffocating and leave the safety of the turtle grass to look for oxygen on the surface. There, they are an easy
Read More »Make Better Roll Cast: Video
It isn’t flashy, but a good roll cast will catch you a lot of fish you might otherwise miss.
Roll casting is an essential skill for any angler, especially those targeting trout. Many of the mountain streams where trout live have little room for a backcast. A good roll cast opens up a lot of water that’s unfishable by any other means. It’s usually one of the first casts an angler learns, and because their understanding of fly casting is limited, anglers often learn the cast poorly. Very few go back and fix the problems they developed early on.
A FEW OF THE SKILLS WHICH ARE KEY TO A GOOD ROLL CAST ARE:
Making a robust D loop.
Keeping the path of the rod tip flat on the casting stroke.
Smooth acceleration of the cast to an abrupt stop.
Once you have the basics of the cast down, you can add a haul and shoot line for more distance. Roll casting this way is very effective on all types of water.
WATCH THIS VIDEO AND LEARN TO MAKE A BETTER ROLL CAST.
Read More »A Michigan Guide Prepares For Winter
By Brian Kozminski
Just got off the phone with a fellow fishing buddy who is a few states south of Michigan. I could immediately tell the genuine giddiness in his voice over recent tracks in the woods and excitement for the fishing season immediately in his focus. At first, I was caught off guard, “What do you mean? We are storing boats, raking, shoveling, blowing out water lines, switching the lawn mower and placing the snow blower in pole position in the garage.”
It is a much different story north of the 45th in Michigan. We can see hard water on many lakes in time for a Christmas bluegill fish fry fresh from the ice. Be careful. Many anglers jump the gun on first ice bite and inevitably find that spring and thin ice with a rather frigid bath to accompany. I will wait until my girls are home for Holiday break before we trek out and drill a few holes looking for some panfish or burbot. There are many other activities keeping my focus at full attention.
Long & Dusty road~
Rod and reel maintenance is foremost. Not that we are totally done with fly fishing, we have a streamer fest scheduled first week in December in hopes of finding a post spawn mega-tron brown in the Trophy waters. It has been a long and, at times, arduous summer; back-to-back trips for weeks and mixing in family time at the beach left some of my equipment neglected. I have set a large towel on my workbench to break down reels, toothbrush in hand and 3-in-1 oil to make sure all levers and cranks are at peak performance for next season. Lines are stripped into a bucket of warm soapy water, wrung through a microfiber cloth and dried, awaiting dressing at the next stage.
Fly boxes can become a task, so try to keep it simple. I have a large Cool Whip container filled with ‘past-prime’ flies that I will either de-hook and use for kids casting events or adorn on a few of my favorite fishing hats. This is also a perfect time to take inventory on what was used and what I need to either tie this winter or prepare a massive order from various favorite fly tyers. The Weather Underground app is a daily ritual; one eye on the coming forecast in hopes of a 45º streamer bite in the middle of a twenty-something daytime high can get any of us excited.
The Vessel~
Keep that float in shape and she will take care of you for more than a couple of seasons.
Read More »Forget About Competition And Focus on Teamwork
Like many anglers, I enjoy a friendly competition on the water with my buddies.
However, if you get too wrapped up in the competition aspect, often it can get out of hand and ruin your day of fishing. These days I try to forget about competition and who’s catching what. It’s just not important to me anymore, and I instead prefer to focus on teamwork. Teamwork usually yields better fishing results anyway, and it also seems to build camaraderie much better than competition. Below are three reasons I choose teamwork over competition in my fishing.
1. Working as team on the water allows you to dial into the current fishing conditions much quicker.
Read More »Bonefish & Wind — 7 Strategies
John Byron
Here are 7 tips to help you catch bonefish in the wind.
Expect it. Chasing bonefish, wind is a feature, not a bug. The flats are … wait for it … flat. Often no lee. Nothing to impede wind across the ocean. When you’re after bonefish, you’ll deal with wind every trip and often every day.
Learn. This blog and its sisters have a ton of great videos on casting in the wind. Chase ‘em down. The Belgian Cast. High with the wind, low into it. Side arm. Let the rod do the work. Don’t overdrive the cast. Keep the normal rhythm. Study the art of casting in the wind.
Practice. Old joke: “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice, my son, practice.” How do you get good at casting in the wind? Same answer: practice practice practice. Five minutes a day, all winds, all directions. Practice your casting.
Heavy up. If your main gun is an 8-weight, go to your 9-weight when the wind is getting gnarly. If you’re normally casting that sweet all-distance flyline, shift over to one of those front-loaded cannons like the Rio Quickshooter or Bruce Chard’s Airflo Tropical Punch. And put on a lead-eye fly, one heavy enough to drop straight to the bottom instead of skating across the surface as your flyline scoots in the wind.
Shorten up. You can’t see the fish very far away when the wind whips up the water surface,. Good news:
Restore an Old Bamboo Fly Rod #2: Video Series
Matt Draft is back for part two of our video series on how to restore an old bamboo fly rod.
Today Matt will cover two approaches to restoring a rod and show you hoe to map out the rod and mark important features so everything goes back together like it should. Whether you choose to do a faithful restoration or a modern update, these important steps will ensure that your project goes smoothly.
Read More »Get Your Strip Set Right Every Time: Video
Remembering to strip set is the hardest thing for anglers new to saltwater fly fishing.
It’s absolutely crucial in saltwater angling to use a strip set. If you lift the tip of your rod at all, known as trout setting, you will not get the hook into the hard mouth of any saltwater fish. It’s hard for beginners though. When the fish eats, muscle memory takes over and the body does what it’s used to doing. If you’re a trout angler, that’s a trout set.
More saltwater fish are lost as a result of weak hook sets than anything else. When I teach my bonefish schools I work with students to be sure they have the pressure right. I hold the line and have them set the hook several times, telling them when they are using the right amount of force. It’s like a firm handshake. Enough to say your serious but not enough to start a fight.
Even with this practice it’s hard to fight the muscle memory and put it all together when the fish eats. I tell my students to say “strip set” out loud every time they strip the fly. It feels silly but I have never seen it fail. If you say “strip set” you will strip set. It’s a great device to keep your head in the game.
Watch this video to see me make a good strip set and get some pointers on getting it right.
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