Sunday Classic / Fly Fishing Provides Great Health Benefits
I tell my clients, all the time, that I’m grateful for all the benefits fly fishing provides anglers. It provides us with one of the funnest ways to exercise, and it has the ability to completely wash away the stress of everyday life, from its therapeutic entertainment. We really should be thankful that this passion of ours provides us with so much more than just the reward of catching fish. Each and everyday we fly fish, we should take a minute to sit back and reflect on this fact. What other exercise activity can you think of that allows you to burn tons of calories during the day, and not have the faintest clue your even working out? Most of us aren’t extreme athletes, and even if we were back in the day, many of us have gotten older and are no longer. The great thing about fly fishing is you can tailor it to your own abilities and needs. It’s a great activity for maintaining your long term balance, dexterity and muscle strength, and it does a very good job of keeping your brain sharp.
I really think we could boost the growth of the fly fishing industry if more people were writing about all the great health benefits it provides, both mentally and physically? I’d love to see Yahoo, or one of those other giant headline news websites (that most of us visit daily) post on its home page, a fly fishing picture with the headline, “Lose 15 pounds and have a blast doing it.” We need to start thinking outside the box to promote and attract newcomers to fly fishing, and I think this could be one area most of us have been overlooking.
Saturday Shoutout / Aimless Issue
Ready, aim, SCOF.
Southern Culture on the Fly is back with their 27th issue. I always knew those boys had issues, but 27? This issue is packed with carp, dirt bags and Low Country boil. There’s tarpon, trout, backyard bass, lots of goon insight and tons of wit and wisdom, SCOF style.
Still awesome! Still free!
CHECK OUT SOUTHER CULTURE ON THE FLY
Read More »G&G #keepemwet Photo Contest Winners
By Justin Pickett
The results from the G&G #keepemwet Photo Contest are in!
Thanks to all of you that entered your photos for this year’s Keep ‘Em Wet photo contest! We are always excited to see the photos that our readers submit and, once again, you guys and gals did not disappoint! We received a ton of submissions, and what made it even better is that every single photo that was submitted epitomized what #keepemwet is all about! A huge THANK YOU goes out to all of you for making this contest a huge success!
Selecting a winner wasn’t easy, but after some careful review, and a glass (or two) of bourbon, we have our winners!
Read More »Know Your Backing
By Jesse Lowry
Seeing your backing on your first bonefish trip is a pretty awesome feeling.
You’ve hooked into a fish that can swim nearly 40 mph and your reel is singing a song I would gladly listen to all day. After your reel has been singing for a bit, that awesome feeling can turn into a bit of a panic as the possibility of getting spooled crosses your mind. While getting spooled can happen when you hook into a double-digit bone, getting a little too excited and making some poor decisions can cause you to lose some good fish long before getting spooled is a real issue. Generally, your first instinct is to reach for the drag, or palm the reel to try and put the brakes on the fish. These can both be good ways to break off a fish or straighten your hook, which is heart breaking especially when it’s a double-digit fish. I know this as I’ve been guilty of both of these sins, but there are a few things you can do to keep your calm when you’re getting into your backing and prevent these situations from happening to you on your next trip.
Know your gear:
Have a good idea of how much backing you have on your reel, for bones and permits; 150-200 yards is plenty. I like to put markings on my backing with a sharpie so I know how deep into it I’m getting. A line every 50 yards and then a dotted warning at the 20-yard line. If you don’t want to go through the process of doing this, the clever folks at SA have come up with a solution with their Tri-Colored backing, which alternates color every 50 yards. I switched to this on my new rod this year and found
Read More »8 Common Mistakes Anglers Make Fighting Trout
IF I LOOKED BACK ON MY EARLY FLY FISHING DAYS AND HAD TO GRADE MY FISH FIGHTING SKILLS, IT WOULD YIELD A DISCOURAGING REPORT CARD.
I lost way more fish than I actually landed during those first few years after picking up a fly rod. I’ll never forget how tense and anxious I was every time I’d find myself hooked up with a nice trout. It seemed like every second of the battle I was terrified that I was going to lose my trophy. In turn, I constantly second guessed my fighting instincts, I wouldn’t follow after my fish if it swam upstream or downstream of me, and I knew very little about the correlation between rod position and applying fighting pressure. Furthermore, I was really clumsy when it came to clearing my excess fly line and reeling in the fish. I always had a hard time figuring out when it was a good time to do that. When all said and done, I bet I only landed one or two fish out of every five fish I hooked during my rookie days. That’s not so hot, probably a D average if I was grading myself extremely leniently. We’ve all been there at some point during our fly fishing career, some of us may even find ourselves with that D average right now. Here’s the positive outlook though, most trout that are hooked and lost during the fight can be linked back to a handful of common mistakes. Yet, most of the time, they all can be easily avoided if you pay close attention to what you’re doing when you’re fighting a trout.
Mistake #1 – Not being in the hook set ready position
I know it sounds elementary, but during my early days, I would often find myself fumbling around with my fly line during my drifts. I didn’t always have my fly line secure in my rod hand, and that usually put me with too much slack in my fly line to pull off a solid hook set. I see anglers all the time during their drifts holding their fly line in their stripping hand only. Bites often come when we least expect them. To increase your chances of getting a good hook set and landing the trout, always make sure you’re in the hook set ready position. Get in the habit of
Sunday Classic / The Borg Don’t Fish
I AM A CHILD OF THE SIXTIES.
But my childhood in a small Virginia town in the 1960s was not the long haired, free love, groovey sixties that phrase brings to mind. Mine was the nerdy, plastic rim glasses, popular science sixties. In 1966 when Star Trek warped onto national TV I knew my people had arrived. I spent hours forcing my young hand into a Vulcan salute and cemented my outsider status by showing up at school wearing pointy ears cut from flesh colored peel-and-stick Dr Shoals felt shoe inserts. Yep, that was me.
When Captain Kirk and Mr Spock hung up their phasers I grudgingly followed along with Picard and Richer but it was never the same. Data never went into a homicidal mating rage and Worf was a sad excuse for a Klingon but it was the Star Trek of the day. My grousing stopped however, the day I encountered the Borg. Star Trek T.N.G. Reached into the bag of old school Star Trek tricks and came out with the greatest outer space boogie man of all time.
If you recently escaped from North Korea and the iron hand of communism I’ll excuse you for not knowing about the Borg. You can read about them (HERE).
This terrifying new enemy wipes out entire species, not by destroying them but by assimilating them. Making them into Borg. The Borg exist as cybernetic organisms. Half alive, half machine. Their neural implants connect them all in a hive like consciousness. This makes them a handful in a fight.
The creepy gray skin and tubes are very Gigeresk and the loosing ones individuality is a classic Star Trek threat, but none of that is what makes The Borg frightening. What’s scary is Star Treks amazingly consistent record of predicting the actual future. They’ve gotten enough right (talking computers, smart phones and 3D printers for a few) that I’m afraid they might be right again. We may be the Borg.
Read More »Saturday Shoutout / Guide Life Alaska
The life of an Alaska guide is one of challenge and reward.
I remember seeing my friend Kyle Shay standing in the pouring rain without the first piece of rain gear, looking like a drown rat, his clothes plastered to him. A guest remarked, “you look a little wet.”
“I’m an Alaska Guide,” he replied, “I don’t get wet, I am wet.”
Nothing about life in America’s last wild frontier is easy. Nor is it without amazing reward. have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in the Alaskan bush? To scavenge an existence in that harsh environment. Maybe you’ve done it for a season or two. Maybe for a career. Either way you are sure to enjoy this short film from Filson on the life of an Alaska guide.
ENJOY, “GUIDE LIFE”
Read More »The Belgian Cast
A better fly cast for windy days.
You know that feeling you get when you watch a school of bonefish swim away while you squirm and wrench your arm out of socket trying to get your fly out of your back? Yeah, me too. Casting with a strong wind off your casting shoulder is the toughest shot in fly fishing. Well, our buddy Bruce Chard is back to show you how to take that shot like a hero.
IT’S CALLED THE BELGIAN CAST AND IT CAN SAVE YOUR DAY SO WATCH THE VIDEO AND LEARN.
Read More »Ain’t No Mama Like The One I Caught
By Alice Tesar
MORE TIMES THAN NOT, WHEN I LISTEN TO ANGLERS TALK ABOUT WHY THEY FLY FISH, IT COMES DOWN TO THE INTIMACY THE ANGLER FEELS WITH THE RIVER AND THE CATCH.
Now imagine you’ve taken your relationship with your catch to the next level. She’s chomped down on your fly, you’ve set the hook and she’s taking you on a ride. Except this ride is to the delivery room and the mom-to-be is demanding a gas station cherry and raspberry slushie before you pull into the hospital. If you’re like me, that baby isn’t coming out ‘til that slushie is in my hands and if you judge me for only taking three sips, I will try to break your hand during contractions, so you can never fish again.
Inhale. Exhale.
While my son’s birth story isn’t exactly equal to the 1100 to 1700 eggs that a rainbow trout hen will drop during her spawn, it is indicative of the irritable and seemingly irrational behavior of soon-to-be parents, moms specifically. The redd is a depression or cleared area made by the hen sweeping her tail on the gravel of the river bed. Redd originates from the Middle English phrase to reddy or clear up a space. Mama trout aren’t chasing your empty hook that dances by their nest because they have a mineral deficiency, they are chasing it because they’ve just redd up the place.
These spawning trout feel an immense amount of pressure by the numerous male trout hovering and ready to fertilize. Ichthyologists report that female fish experience
Read More »Fly Fishing Bass Ponds 102
By Kent Klewein
I promised everyone I’d write a Fly Fishing Bass Ponds 102, if people showed enough interest from my 101 post. I was blown away from the emails and comments that flooded in, after the first post went live. I covered quite a few topics in the first post but here’s a few more tidbits of information for all you warm-water fly fishing junkies out there.
UNDERSTANDING DIFFERENT TYPES OF STRUCTURE AND HOW TO FISH THEM
As a little kid, I was a bass fishing maniac. A good friend of my Father’s fished a lot of tournaments for fun and he took it upon himself to take me under his wing, and teach me the skills I’d needed to become a proficient bass fisherman. One of the greatest things he did during his mentorship was take me to several professional bass fishing seminars. On several different occasions, I had a front row seat to listen to Hall of Fame bass fishing legends like Bill Dance, Denny Brauer, Rick Clunn, and Larry Nixon. Notepad and pen in hand, I wrote as fast as I my fingers would move as the pros talked about how they consistently caught bass. It was at these seminars that I learned the behavior of bass and how to catch them. If you want to improve your warm-water fishing, I highly recommend attending a seminar in your area. Most are reasonably inexpensive, and If you don’t walk away with more knowledge afterwards, you either have an ego that needs to be checked, or you weren’t listening. Most of what you’ll find the professionals talking about is catered towards fishing large lakes, but almost all of the information can be converted and used for fishing on bass ponds.
One recurring theme I noticed is that everyone of those bass fishing legends talked in great detail about how important it was to understand and locate structure. Talking about bass structure is no different than me talking to my clients about reading trout water. Both are critical for anglers, because it allows them to quickly locate hotspots, but more importantly, it allows anglers to distinguish productive water from unproductive water. Structure is anything in the water that fish are drawn to that allows them to live comfortably and feeding efficiently. Structure serves two purposes for bass. One, it provides habitat that becomes a magnet for their forage food, and bass always live close to their food sources. Two, it provides highly efficient ambush points for bass to camouflage themselves so they can feed easily. Structure can be above the surface, on the surface or below the surface. Just remember that there’s two main types of structure. The first is cover, such as lily pads, weed beds (ex. hydrilla or millfoi), overhanging foilage along the banks, docks or floating or submerged wood cover. The second form of structure is irregularities of the bottom and composition of the water you’re fishing. Examples of this would be creek channels, flats adjacent to deep water, edges (sand or mud bottom substrate changing to rock or deep weed beds meeting open water). If you’re lucky enough to ever find both types of structure together you’ve hit the jackpot. It should be loaded with a high concentration of bass, and should also hold fish pretty much year round.
Search out, locate and spend your time focusing on
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