Sunday Classic / Fixing A Twisted Fly Line In Seconds
Every fly angler has experienced a wicked twist in their fly line causing it to tangle and knot at their feet.
It may be caused by a flawed casting stroke, a big fly twisting in the wind or it may be God punishing you for masturbating. Regardless of why it occurs, it’s frustrating at the least and heartbreaking at the worst. There’s nothing worse than taking a shot at the fish of a lifetime, only to have your cast cut short by a knot in your guides.
Fortunately, a twisted fly line is easy to fix. You don’t have to lose valuable fishing time, while stripping the entire line off the reel and towing it behind the boat or letting it hang in the current. You can fix that twist in seconds.
In this video, our good friend Zack Dalton from RIO Products shows you how.
Read More »Saturday Shoutout / She Cleaned My Truck
“I OPENED THE DOOR TO MY ‘76 RAM CHARGER AND NOTHING FELL OUT. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. THAT SHOULD’VE BEEN MY FIRST CLUE…”
Is it possible that a person is defined by the mess they leave in their truck? If so, my life is an open book. The description of the Ram Charger fits my Toyota to a T. If you’ve ever stuck a fly in your headliner, and you’ve ever been in love, this story is for you.
A simple and strikingly beautiful piece from Jon Tobey, of “Go Into Te Light.”
SHE LOVES ME, SHE CLEANED MY TRUCK
I also recommend this great companion piece by Mike Sepelak
LAUNDERED
Read More »Three Tips for Casting in the Wind
By Bruce Chard
WHEN YOU’RE FLY FISHING IN SALTWATER THERE IS ALMOST ALWAYS WIND.
Saltwater fly fishing demands your A-game. Your presentations have to be spot on and when the wind is howling, it will test your angling mettle. If you’re new to the game, it’s intimidating but having and practicing the right skills can give you the confidence you need to deliver.
Here are three tips that will help you tame the wind
Make tight loops
Having the ability to form tight loops while casting in the salt will help in many ways.
Tight Loops help:
•Control line in the air for better accuracy
•Increase line speed
•Reduce slack in the line during casting and presentation
•Increase distance
•Fight the wind
•Lay your leader and fly out straight with no slack
Whether you are wading or in the skiff, a tight loop is vital to success in the salt. To form a tight loop you need to do the following:
•Keep your rod tip traveling
Read More »Stocked Brook Trout – Strip it, Skate it, Swing it
Give those stockers something they can’t resist.
I’m very fortunate to have a great trout stream near by that operates a delayed harvest program (catch and release fishing by artificial flies only) that starts in the fall every year, and runs into the early summer. I love visiting this trout stream because the DNR stocks big male and female brook trout, some of which, can push well over twenty inches. To consistently catch these beautiful brookies, I usually have to experiment with different types of flies and presentation methods to find out what’s the best option for the day’s fishing. Sometimes all I need is a simple drag free drift with a dry fly or nymph to catch them. Other times, the brook trout will completely ignore my dead drifted flies and I’m forced to impart extra action and movement on my flies to trigger bites. When I can’t get stocked brook trout to rise to my dry fly or take my nymphs dead drifted, I’ll then try fishing tactics like stripping a streamer, skating a dry fly or swinging a tandem nymph rig. For some reason, the added action and movement, often will trigger reaction strikes from stocked brook trout that have lock jaw. Moving your fly upstream, and causing it to make a wake, be it a dry fly or wet fly is another technique that can work wonders. Everyday can be different, so it’s important that you figure out what kind of presentation and type of fly the brook trout want to help you find success. Now that I’ve gone over how movement can trigger bites with the stocked brook trout, let’s talk about each in a little more detail.
TECHNIQUE #1 – TRY STRIPPING STREAMERS WHERE THE BROOKIES ARE LOCATED
I’ll never forget a day on the water with my good friend Joel Dickey several years ago, where he landed two brook trout well over 22 inches with a streamer. They were the biggest stocked brook trout I had ever laid my eyes on in the Southeast, and the only thing that proved effective for catching them that day, was retrieving a streamer across their noses erratically. Try fishing brightly colored streamers that incorporate
Read More »Umpqua Pro Guide Fly Boxes
By Bob Reece
Between my guiding and personal days I spend an extensive amount of time each year on the water. Throughout these adventures there is nothing that disheartens me more than losing flies or a fly box. Whether tied or purchased my flies are an essential part of my on-the-water success.
During my years on the water I’ve dropped, broken and drowned several boxes. As a result of these experiences I’ve become a little OCD when selecting my portable fly containers. If I turn lose a box to the force of gravity; it needs to remain intact, hold my flies and prevent water from entering. After spending considerable time on the water with them, I’ve found that the new Umpqua Pro Guide fly boxes meet these criteria.
I was happy to have them but reinserting flies dislodged by a drop always irritated me. In a positive move forward, Umpqua has left the foam inserts behind and moved on to a rubberized interior that locks down flies of all sizes and weights. In addition to this, these firmly constructed boxes handled my unintended collisions with ice, pavement and boulders. This left a smile on my face in comparison to the formers sounds of shattering plastic and images of disappearing flies.
While not all of the new UPG boxes are waterproof, the HD portion of the series provide a serious hydrological barrier. When I first went to open one of these, I was
Read More »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