A Conversation With April Vokey
April Vokey is one of the most recognized, and sometimes controversial figures in fly-fishing.
Few anglers have been thrust into the limelight in quite the same way as April Vokey. April is the first to admit that she asked for it, but it hasn’t always been an easy ride. She has enjoyed, and often endured, a weird kind of celebrity which may only exist in fly fishing.
She has been a writer, a teacher, a blogger, a social media sensation, a TV personality, an entrepreneur, a passionate conservationist, an advocate for at-risk kids and, above all, an obsessed angler. She is a walking contradiction in many ways and whatever you think you know about her, there is more to the story.
I met April, by chance, on a gravel bar on the Dean River in British Colombia. She would agree with me that that first meeting was odd, and neither of us would have guessed it was the beginning of a friendship, but it was. I was flattered, and a little nervous, when April asked me to record an episode of her “Anchored” podcast. (If you’re not a listener, you should be.) We agreed then that she would return the favor and sit down with me for an in depth interview for the G&G audience.
While April was in town helping with a fundraiser for our local Chattahoochee river, we recorded this interview. Four and a half months pregnant, she is clearly embracing the moment as a turning point and chose to share a lot of personal experiences which she has not discussed publicly in the past. It was an engaged, frank and enlightening conversation.
I HOPE YOU ENJOY GETTING TO KNOW APRIL VOKEY AS MUCH AS I HAVE.
Read More »Josie’s Big Day
I’ve never had a dog who was a really good fishing partner.
When I brought Josie home, I knew that was going be be a goal. My dog and me out on the river, doing our thing without any particular plan. It sounds good on paper but anyone who fishes with dogs knows it isn’t always ideal. Ive definitely had dogs who weren’t with the program. Who, for all of their sweetness, could screw up anything.
I had a beagle once, named Boo, who I’d take fishing once in a while. If she wasn’t lost, she was trying to dog-paddle a class four rapid or chew the cork off my rod. I took her out one day an a busy tailwater where there were anglers about every fifty feet. I was wading chest deep to get a cast to a rising fish. Boo, wanting to be part of the action but not wanting to be wet, walked out on a tree which leaned about ten feet over the river. She got out about thirty feet and discovered that the tree was too narrow to turn around. I kept yelling, “BOO! No!” Before long everyone on the river was yelling, “No Boo! Don’t do it!” Her exit was hysterical. She lived but she lost some points for style.
A good fishing dog is part companion and part business partner. They have to have the right love of adventure but maintain enough focus to stay with the program. My grandfather trained bird dogs and his dogs were great but they were too much business and not enough fun. I want my dog to sleep in the bed with me, lick my face and eat off of my plate. I knew that to strike the right balance I’d need a plan.
Josie is a great team player and brings some real assets to the table. She also brings some challenges. She is the smartest dog I’ve ever known but was a completely wild animal when I got her. Not a stray dog or a feral dog but just wild. She has been very easy to train, it took only two days to housebreak her, but she is fiercely independent and used to making her own decisions. I learned early on that you couldn’t ‘make’ her do anything but if you could make her understand why it was a good choice you didn’t have to tell her twice.
I don’t consider myself an experienced dog trainer. I’ve trained a handful of dogs. I can work out the basics but I don’t get fancy. Josie presented me with one challenge I’ve never faced. She was uncatchable. It had earned her the name Permit on the island and I knew if she got away from me, I’d have a better shot catching a permit than putting my hands back on the little potcake. My ultimate goal was to have a dog I could turn loose in the woods while I fished, who wouldn’t need a lot of looking after. We were a long way from that when we started.
I began by creating a bond. I hand fed her for the first month. Every bite she had to take from my hand. When I found her, it was hard to get her to eat food I threw to her so that was a big step in itself. Although she has her own bowl now she still gets a bite of everything I eat. It’s part of our bargain. I make her food and she watches me wash and chop her vegetables and cook her turkey. She’s never been
Read More »Taming Marabou Tails
By Bob Reece
As we move toward spring, the presentation of streamers increases for many fly fishers.
For those of us that tie our own, the use of some materials is far more common than others. Marabou tends to be one of those materials, particularly in the tails of many bugger style streamers.
The underwater effectiveness of this material cannot be denied. However, for the time invested behind the vise, marabou can be an unruly material to work with. It has the ability to fly, float and crawl its way throughout any available surface. This attribute can often slow down the tying process and impact the efficiency of the tier.
When sitting down to tie any pattern, I try to make the most of my tying time. When creating patterns with marabou tails, I use a simple trick to mass produce them prior to tying. As I cut off the allotted amount of marabou for one tail, I hold the separated material in my left hand. I then moisten my thumb, index and middle finger of the right hand. Using my right hand, I twist the butt ends of the marabou together and set the tail off to the side. This moistened twist hold the fibers together, even after it dries, until I’m ready to tie them in.
Read More »Fishing the Fall, What You Should Know About Sinking Fly Lines
By Garner Reid
A GOOD PORTION OF MY FLY FISHING INVOLVES THROWING SOME SORT OF A SINKING FLY LINE.
Realistically, half of my time on the water involves streamers and sinking lines at least for some part of the day. If I am not out on the water guiding for streamer-eating fish like stripers, I’m in the fly shop talking about them.
I have come to the realization that there is some mystery for most anglers when it comes to choosing which sinking fly line will suit their needs. The selection of sinking lines on the market today is as vast as the waters where we chase our quarry. Today fly anglers can effectively target fish at any level in the water column, given the right combination of rod, fly line, and fly pattern.
When chasing large predatory fish like bass, stripers and big brown trout in moving water you have to get down deeper than floating lines allow. With all of the options and versatility, it is easy to get confused. I have put together some thoughts to help you choose the right line configuration to effectively get into fish.
Fly Weight vs Sink Rate of line
After several seasons experimenting with different types of sinking lines and various streamers, I have found a number of variables which I can control to have a productive day on the water. A big factor in my success has been dialing in the correct weight for the fly with the sink rate of the line.
For most fishing conditions, my primary concern is
Read More »Fly Fishing: Our Trout Rivers and Streams Need More Wood
Several years back, one of my favorite wild trout streams, only a few miles from my house, got slammed with tornados and high winds (from back to back hurricanes that had moved up from Florida). The aftermath from the strong storms, downed dozens, upon dozens of trees along the stream. I was heartbroken at first when I witnessed all the downed wood. The first thing I thought about, was how much critical shade the stream had lost from the destruction of the large stretches of tree canopy along its banks. And that made me nervous water temperatures would thereby increase significantly during the summer months, posing a real threat to year round survival of the wild trout that lived there. I wasn’t alone in my worries, as I quickly found out when I talked with my local fly fisherman in the area. The large majority were in total agreement. We thought the best thing we could do, was go in and strategically remove as much wood as we could to avoid massive silt build ups, which we thought at the time, was causing the stream flow to slow down, and not only contribute to warming the water, but also choking out the natural aquatic bug life. Looking back now, as a much more educated angler, I know see the massive influx of in-stream wood cover that was gifted to us by the hurricanes, was not an environmental catastrophe, but actually a blessing in disguise for our beloved trout stream.
Read More »Fast Pocket Water & Big Attractor Dry Flies
During the spring, summer and fall I often get the itch to forget about catching numbers and instead see how big of an attractor dry fly I can get away with fishing and still fool trout.
For those of you who don’t know, my closest trout waters are North Georgia and Western North Carolina. We don’t regularly fish giant attractor dry fly patterns, like lots of my western friends do, because most of our water just won’t yield much results. That’s whats so cool about the idea of fishing them, when most anglers would chastise you. It gives me a little extra reward fishing patterns out of place and still catching fish. My favorite trout water for doing this on are medium-sized streams, particular in gorge sections that have a steep stream gradient. This type of water generally is loaded up with pocket water, and that’s perfect trout water for fishing big attractor patterns. Most of the trout found in these stretches of water are forced to be opportunistic feeders. The fast and turbulent water don’t give them a lot of time to examine their food before it’s out of their reach.
I’ll never forget an epic day of fishing in western North Carolina last year, fishing a size 6-8 Royal Wulff. I caught some really nice brown and rainbow trout that day, and I chuckled inside as I got weird looks from other locals on the stream, as they watched me drifting unusually large dry flies. They must have thought I was a
Read More »Give ‘Em A Rest
By Justin Pickett
It’s Summer.
What that means for most of the country is low water and high temps. And while those two factors will vary from year to year, and region to region, one thing should stay the same…
We need to be keeping a close eye on water temps.
Just about every year in the Southeast, you can count on most trout streams rising well above sixty-five degrees. Here in Georgia, when June rolls around, the state-run trophy waters and privately held waters begin either shutting down, or limiting the fishing to the early morning hours when the water temps are at their coolest.
We all know trout are extremely susceptible to succumbing to the rigors of a fight in warm water conditions. It can be impossible to recover a trout once those water temps start creeping closer to seventy degrees. There is just not enough oxygen contained within that warmer water to revive them. And even if that trout does swim off initially, it’s more likely to go “belly up” in the minutes that follow.
That is why I typically switch to warm water species, such as largemouth bass and carp once the hot temps of summer settle in. There are a couple north-facing streams here in Georgia that can offer year ‘round trout fishing, but even then I will cut it off around 11 o’ clock. Past that, I don’t want to be out there anyways. It’s hot and muggy as hell! Fishing in high elevations can be a great alternative option. These headwater streams and alpine lakes offer up cooler temps and don’t warm as quickly during the summer months. And there is some great fishing that can be had if you’re willing to put forth a little effort to get there.
Aside from that, it’s just a good idea to give trout a rest this time of year. I know, it’s hard to get up on a beautiful morning and resist the urge to toss a few bugs, but the trout will thank you and the fishery will be better for it. Be sure to carry
Read More »Fly Fishing in the Winter – Getting in the Routine
I’ll be the first to admit, that the first few cold fronts of the year negatively effect my angling morale. Those initial cold fronts are always a sobering reminder that winter is quickly approaching, and the warm days of the summer and fall are long gone. Yes, this is the time of year that I find it harder to get out of bed in the morning. My snooze button gets quite a bit more love from my index finger, and I’m forced to brew my coffee extra stout. As I loosen up in the shower, with my morning stretches, and warm water hitting my back (as us old folks are plenty familiar with), I think about my next objective of the day, which will be to de-thaw my frozen waders and boots. I left them laying in the back of my truck, and yes, I know, I should have brought them inside. I respectfully ask you all to turn your cheek because it always takes me a few weeks before I wise up to the cold season. That’s why, if you peak into the window of my truck this time of year, you’ll probably find me driving around with my waders and boots on the floorboard of my truck, with my heater set to high, and blasting on my feet.
Read More »Tandem Streamer Rigs Catch More Trout
There’s no doubt that Louis and I are both hardcore streamer junkies.
We never leave home without our streamer boxes packed full. One thing we do a little different from some streamer fishermen on the water is fish a streamer dropper rig. Quite often we’ll tie on a nymph dropper off the back of our big gaudy streamer to increase hookups. Big fish are smart, especially during the busy season when their getting pressured, and they can sometimes get a little gun shy eating big streamers. If you’re on the water and you’re getting a bunch of chases or short strikes on your streamer, try tying on a dropper nymph. It will serve two purposes. First, it will be less intimiating to spooky trout. Secondly, it will often tempt a trout to eat that has turned off your streamer at the last second.
Case in point, last year Louis and I were on the Madison River streamer fishing with very little luck. Instead of giving up on the streamer bite, Louis tied on a size 10 golden stonefly nymph dropper and began putting on a clinic. Every fish ate the golden stone like it was candy and he brought numerous twenty plus inch fish to the boat that day. Experiment with
Read More »Big Trouble in Little Mountain
“I KNOW WHAT YOU’RE THINKING,” STEVE TELLS ME. “I CAME ALL THE WAY TO WYOMING FOR THIS?”
I look down from the deep head cut at the trickle of water below. It’s, maybe, eighteen inches wide and no more than six deep. The red earth stream bed is pounded flat by the desert sun and the flow is about what a bath tub faucet would produce. A good skipping stone would pass for structure. I can’t imagine how it could hold a trout. Steve is right.
“Give it a chance,” he tells me. His eyes sparkle and an eager smile spreads across his face. “At some point today, this little stream is going to surprise you.”
Red creek is one of a handful of tiny streams that drain Wyoming’s Little Mountain district. The area is better known by sportsmen for its remarkable elk hunting than its fishing. You don’t have to spend very long there to see why a Little Mountain elk tag is one of the most coveted in the west. We see several large bachelor groups on the drive in. They are poised, heads held high and moving light on their hooves, the sun on their velvet racks etching bright gold lines against the morning sky. There are mule deer, eagle, antelope and nesting hawks. The landscape is idyllic, vast, striking and uninhabited. Endless red hills covered with sage brush are slashed by lush green valleys dotted with wild flowers. It’s an oasis for the eyes in a state that can be rough as a cob.
Little Mountain is due east from the famous Flaming Gorge of the Green River. Anglers come from around the globe to float the Green below Flaming Gorge reservoir. The tail water is well known to hold huge trout, as does the reservoir. Rainbow, brown and cutthroat trout as well as carp and the invasive burbot. Lake trout, brook and tiger trout, kokanee salmon, small mouth bass, large mouth bass, catfish and white fish all inhabit the 3,789,000 acre-feet of Flaming Gorge Reservoir. It’s a manmade cacophony of nonnative species, never imagined in nature. Few of the anglers who fish it know that only a few miles east, the beautiful and fragile native Colorado River Cutthroat (CRC) is making its last stand.
Red Creek is known to hold one of the few genetically pure CRC populations in Wyoming. Years ago game and fish officials stocked most streams in the west with cutthroat trout. Their good intentions lead to disastrous results. The practice would go on for decades before scientists began to identify the myriad of sub-species that make up the cutthroat family. By the time this complicated diversity was understood, hybridization had muddled the genetics of cutthroat in most watersheds.
The CRC population in Red Creek was saved by an unlikely intervention. An improperly installed
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