Restore an Old Bamboo Fly Rod #5: Video Series
Matt Draft is back with part 5 of our bamboo fly rod restoration series.
In this video Matt will show you how to attach the guides, make beautiful silk wraps, including signature wraps, and finish all of the thread work with color preserver and varnish. We’re also including a separate video on installing the grip and reel seat.
RESTORE AN OLD BAMBOO FLY ROD #5
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Read More »Halfback Nymph in High Water
Looking for a great high water nymph pattern that will consistently fool trout?
Try tying on a halfback nymph, it’s an oldie but goodie that has produced big fish for me countless times over the years. The buggy profile of the halfback nymph does a great job of imitating a large variety of aquatic insects, and it’s large size is easy for trout to spot quickly in fast water. This nymph pattern screams “I’m a big juicy morsel, Come eat me”.
I always have at least a half dozen of these guys in my fly box. I often use the halfback nymph as my lead fly in my tandem nymph rig, and tie a 16-24″ piece of tippet off the bend of the hook with a smaller dropper nymph. You can also try substituting the standard peacock herl underbody with a more flashy dubbing material when fishing
Read More »Make The Straight Line Practice Rod: Video
By Louis Cahill
Here’s a video on how to make a simple tool that will take your fly casting to a new level.
A few weeks back I shared a video on how to “Stop Dropping Your Rod Tip Once and For All.” In that video I show you how to use the Straight Line Practice Rod. It’s a brilliant tool, shown to me by my buddy Tim Rajeff. It’s the most effective way I have found to help anglers understand the straight line rod-tip path, the secret to making clean, tight loops. The video was very popular, but there was a problem.
In the video, I mentioned that I though Echo Fly Rods sold this thing on their sight. Echo was flooded with calls and emails asking for it. Apparently I was wrong. Since they don’t sell a version, I decided I had to make a video showing how to make one yourself. It’s incredibly simple and you can do it in your kitchen. If you take the time to make a Straight Line Practice Rod for yourself, I promise you will see a difference in your fly casting.
WATCH THE VIDEO AND LEARN TO MAKE THE STRAIGHT LINE PRACTICE ROD.
Read More »Tom Keck Is My Role Model
In September of 2009 I was fishing the South Platte below Spinney Reservoir, the stretch they call the Dream Stream.
When I noticed this gentleman casting trico patterns to the far bank…from a wheelchair. I watched for a bit as he worked a pod of rising fish with a long reach cast, occasionally fooling one and bringing it to the net that he had fashioned with an extra long handle. He would wheel himself down stream to the next rising fish, careful to travel far enough from the bank that he didn’t spook fish. It was an impressive display. I would find out just how impressive when I walked over and introduced myself.
Tom Keck, of Denver CO, is a likable fellow and a great fisherman. Generous with his knowledge of the S. Platte as well as with his beautifully tied flies. The flies he gave me turned out to be day makers. But don’t let his gentle demeanor fool you. This fellow is carved of wood. I asked him how he wound up in the wheel chair and this is the story I got. Ten or so years earlier, fishing the Platte at Deckers he had taken a bad fall. Alone, his back broken and paralyzed, he struggled in the fast water nearly drowning. Eventually he pulled himself to the shore and then to the road with his hands. There he found help but he never walked again. He also never stopped fishing the river he called his home water.
I’ve taken a few bad falls. Not like Tom’s but bad enough to make me wonder what I’d do if I were really hurt out there on my own. I hope I never have to answer that question but if I do I hope I’m half the man Tom is and can face it with the courage and
Read More »Beginner Series: Fly Lines, Leaders, and Tippet
By Justin Pickett
So you’ve decided to dive into the world of fly fishing and need to outfit your new rod and reel purchase with a fly line, leaders and spools of tippet.
Does it matter what line you get? And what about leaders? What the hell is tippet?! These are all typical questions that the beginning angler will have, so don’t worry. We’re going to work on flattening that learning curve!
Fly Lines
To a beginner, trying to learn about all the little intricacies of fly line tapers is about like trying to rearrange deck chairs on the Titanic. The good news is that you don’t need to get too caught up in tapers and grain weights to catch fish. Learning about the various aspects of fly lines will certainly help you down the road, however we’re going to focus mainly on weight-forward, floating lines. Today’s fly rods are typically faster than those made even ten years ago, almost requiring a more compact, heavier line to properly load the rod. Some “beginner” lines are even manufactured a half weight heavier to help load today’s faster rods. As a beginner, a weight-forward line will better suit your casting needs with the more popular five weights found in fly shops, and a floating line will enable you to cover a large majority of fishing scenarios. All of the fly lines listed below are inexpensive and are great all-purpose fly lines whether you’re slinging parachute adams or foam poppers.
Airflow Super Dri
Orvis Clearwater WF
Scientific Anglers AirCel Trout
Rio Mainstream WF Trout
Leaders and Tippet
Leaders and tippet are other items that you will need in order to get going and hook up with that first fish. You’ll hear of many anglers that tie their own leaders and have their preferred recipes. While you may one day tie up your own leaders created from your own secret formula, for now, keep it simple. I would say
Read More »Pick Up Your Fly Line and Recast Quietly: Video
The ability to pick your fly line up off the water quietly can be the difference between success and failure.
In freshwater or salt making a loud pickup to recast can spook fish you might have otherwise caught. Of course we would all like to catch our fish with just one cast but that’s not often the case, so a quiet pick up is a great skill to have.
Part of the process is simply controlling your excitement but there is some technique to it as well. Luckily we have my buddy Bruce Chard to help with that.
WATCH THIS VIDEO WHERE BRUCE CHARD EXPLAINS HOW TO PICK UP AND RECAST QUIETLY.
Read More »Search out the Small Water in the Big Water
My first few years fishing a fly rod, I spent the majority of my time fly fishing small creeks.
One creek in particular called Little Allatoona Creek, grabbed most of my attention because it ran along the outskirts of my subdivision, and took only a short five-minute bike ride from my house to wet a line. This tiny stream held over a dozen catchable warm water species of fish from the sunfish family. As a kid, the coolest part about fishing this creek was you never knew what you were going to hook up with on the end of your line. Sometimes it would be 12-inch redeye bass, while other times, it would be a crappie or a colorful green sunfish. But what really was amazing about Little Allatoona Creek, was its uncanny ability to regularly hold largemouth bass in excess of four pounds. For a kid in elementary or middle school, that was a true trophy catch in our minds. We caught most of those species early on sinking dough balls on a hook. It wasn’t until my Father introduced the fly rod to us, that we began toting around a fly box of balsa wood poppers and learning the art of fly fishing. If my recollections are correct, it only took a day or two of fishing a fly rod on Little Alatoona Creek, before all of us made a trip up to our local sporting goods store to outfit the rest of our crew. Once purchased we never looked back.
Little Allatoona Creek was a seasonal fishery. When the water temperatures got cold in late fall, almost all the fish would migrate several miles downstream into Lake Allatoona to find the refuge of deeper and warmer water. Come spring though, usually around mid-march, all the fish would begin migrating back up into Little Allatoona Creek, and it was once again game-on, for the next several months. The return of the fish was always a grand celebration, putting us all on cloud 9. It wasn’t easy as kids enduring months of not fishing our favorite little creek. There was no better place for my two best friends, Ryan Evans and Sean O’Donnell and I to bend our fly rods and catch fish. We felt like god’s fishing it. Those small warm-water creeks we spent years exploring, were the first places we learned how to read water and locate fish. Boy, was it a shock to us when we
Read More »Restore an Old Bamboo Fly Rod #4: Video Series
Today Matt teaches us how to remove a set and apply finish to a bamboo fly rod.
This video covers a ton of fly rod restoration skills. Many old bamboo rods have a set. That’s a permanent bend in the blank, and usually develops due to a rod being stored under tension. No worries, Matt Draft is here to show you how to fix it. Once that’s dome he’ll go on to apply a beautiful finish.
Restore an Old Bamboo Fly Rod #4
Read More »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
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