Good Clean Living With Flood Tide
It’s impossible not to love these guys and the clothes they make.
Without a doubt, Flood Tide is one of the most authentic brands in fly fishing. They’re just a bunch of fishy dudes who work hard, play hard and fish hard. Their clothing is cool to look at, comfortable to wear and always top quality. It’s a simple idea that just works.
We caught up with the boys of Flood Tide on the last day of IFTD, after a few cocktails. It was pretty much mayhem at the booth but we got a good look at some of the cool new designs in the pipe for 2016. And we sang “Welcome To The Jungle.” These boys take their jobs seriously, not themselves.
CHECK OUT THE VIDEO FOR THE LATEST FROM FLOOD TIDE.
Read More »Be Like Bill
By Louis Cahill
What do you look for in a fishing partner?
I get the opportunity to fish with anglers at all skill levels. Guys who are my mentors and are way better than I’ll ever be, right down to guys who just picked up the rod. That’s perfectly fine with me. I enjoy learning and teaching. I also firmly believe that I can learn something from anyone, even if only because teaching them makes me think about something I’d overlooked.
A lot of folks feel some stress over fishing with a new partner. Whether it’s because they feel like they aren’t good enough and will embarrass themselves, or because they don’t like fishing with someone who is learning. I can understand both points of view, but if you can get past that way of thinking, you have a lot more fun, make more friends and learn a whole lot more about fly fishing.
On my last trip to the Bahamas I had the chance to fish with a fellow named Bill Eiche. It was thoroughly enjoyable. Bill picked up his first fly rod only six months before he landed on a flats boat with me to chase bonefish. He was so green he got on the boat in a trout fishing vest. In spite of being a complete beginner with a fly rod, Bill’s attitude and approach to fishing made him a great fishing partner. I thought his story was so cool I had to share it.
Like most guys who take up fly fishing, Bill has been fishing conventional gear his whole life, so he’s not new to fishing or even saltwater flats fishing. We started talking about places he had fished. It quickly became clear that Bill was into travel. He’s not a guy who’s sitting on piles of cash, just a hard-working dude from Milwaukee who had at some point decided that life was about the experience and set his priorities accordingly. Fishing, it turned out, was a priority.
Bill had been going to Belize for some time. Not fancy lodge trips, just DIY adventures. He’d been figuring out the sleepy spots that weren’t overrun with tourists, and where the fishing was good. He’d go down to the dock and meet some local guides and before you know it he had it figured out and was catching a bunch of fish. Every fish but one.
Read More »Fly Tying Material: DMC Embroidery Floss for Midge Patterns
As we work through the winter months, midges will start making up a higher percentage of a trout’s daily diet.
Midges may lack the high caloric value of their larger aquatic friends, but they more than make up for it with their year-round availability, and high densities on the water. Veteran trout bums understand the important role that midges play, especially as a mainstay food source for late fall and winter trout. Tiny midges don’t pack a lot of weight on trout, but they do supplement trout enough to help slow up winter weight loss, until the smorgasbord of food returns in the spring. If you went around and snuck a peak in as many hardcore winter trout bums fly boxes as you could find, most, if not all, would be stocked with a nice variety of midge patterns that imitate the three life stages of the aquatic midge (larva, pupa and adult).
The past month I’ve been bulking up my inventory of midge patterns. That way, I’ll be ready when the trout start consistently keying in on the tiny stuff. If you know your way around a vise, I suggest you take the time to do so as well. Most midge recipes are quick and easy to tie, and I promise, the time and energy you spend tying them up, will be paid back ten fold on the water. One of my favorite fly tying materials that you can find in your local craft store or Walmart for tying midge patterns is DMC (Six-strand) Embroidery Floss. All I can tell you is I flat out love this stuff.
Read More »Sunday Classic / Rosa Parks Fished Streamers
Stand up with me here streamer guys, you know what I’m talking about!
First of all I am in no way making light of Ms. Parks courageous acts or life of service. She is on my list of personal heroes and that list is pretty damn short. If you don’t know who she is, you should! That said, like Rosa, I’m getting pretty fucking tired of the back of the bus.
Stand up with me here streamer guys, you know what I’m talking about. Every time I get in a drift boat with a streamer rod I get stuck in the back of the boat. (I’m not picking on you here BW, everybody does it.) There’s always one of your buddies who pipes up with, “I sure would like the chance to catch one on a dry before you scare the hell out of ’em with that thing.”
I have a couple of problems with this horse shit. The first being, streamers do not spook fish. If they do, explain to me why fish eat them. Not just big fish, I routinely catch fish barely bigger than my streamer.
The primary reason that streamers do not spook fish is that fish are not afraid of things that are under water. Ask anyone who has snorkeled. If fish don’t spook at the sight of a person under water a fly isn’t going to phase them. I know one guide on the Snake River who, in the fall, prefers to have a streamer fisherman in the bow and a guy throwing hoppers in the back. His theory is that the streamer gets the fish worked up and ready to eat. It works, too.
I’ll say it again, streamers do not spook fish!
Secondly, it’s just a matter of etiquette. I put my time in on the oars like everybody else. When you get off the sticks, you go to the bow. That’s how it works, that’s your reward.
What the dry fly guy in the bow doesn’t get is that I’m making about ten times as many casts as he is. I’m working with a huge amount of line at my feet, getting hung up in the plugs or around the seat, getting grit all over it from the floor that cuts my fingers when I strip. That deck in the front of the boat was made for streamer fisherman. It’s for holding line, not your beer. Don’t even get me started on trying to get the oarsman to position the boat for a streamer guy. That’s never going to happen.
All that aside, here’s what really chaps my ass. Here’s what’s really going on.
Read More »Saturday Shoutout / Bringing Back The Brooks
What do Brook Trout mean to you?
I almost choked the first time I saw Chris Hunt’s site, “Eat More Brook Trout.” That’s not a critique. I totally understand that, in some places, brook trout are an invasive species threatening native fish. Too many anglers don’t appreciate that here in the south the brookie is our only native trout.
The callus tone taken with these beautiful fish rings pretty sharp in the ears of those of us who love them and appreciate their place in our natural legacy. The Southern Appalachian Brook Trout is as rare and important a fish as Colorado’s Green Backs or the Yellowstone Cutthroat, and in need of just as much help.
This short film by Freshwaters Illustrated and the National Park Service is as educational as it is beautiful. Some remarkable footage of spawning Brook trout in some of the most beautiful places in the south. It was shot in Tennessee but every word is just as true for Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia.
Take a minute and get to know a very special fish.
BRINGING BACK THE BROOKS
Read More »A Gink Christmas
A little Christmas Silliness
There’s no more classic Christmas Story than Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” Except when it stars the crew from Gink and Gasoline. Join me, Wicked Justin Pickett and Charlie Murphy for a classic Gink Christmas!
Thank you all for your continued support of Gink and Gasoline. You’re the best family a guy could ask for. God bless you,me very one.
Read More »The Christmas Tree Fly
It’s Christmas Eve. The stockings are hung, the children nestled in their beds, bikes and doll houses are assembled, gifts are wrapped, turkeys are stuffed, credit cards are maxed, and still, you have found a few minutes to look at Gink and Gasoline. God bless you, every one!
Read More »Fly Fishing: 6 Sight-Fishing Tips for Shallow Water Trout
Fly fishing during the fall and winter months can really open the door to some great sight-fishing opportunities for fly anglers targeting trout. Generally, most of our wadable trout streams run low and clear from the lack of rainfall this time of year. If you keep your eyes peeled for trout and wade with extra stealth, there’s always a good chance to sneak up and sight-fish to the biggest trout of your life. With the brown trout moving up many watersheds in preparation for the spawn, and the rainbows or cutthroats aggressively feeding to put on weight for the cold winter ahead, the fall can provide fly fisherman the best trout fishing of the year. My clients and I catch some of our biggest trout during the fall and winter by wading in close to the big trout we’ve spotted and then making precise presentations to our targets. That being said, just because you can see the trout, doesn’t mean they’re always easy to catch. Some days, the trout will make you want to pull your hair out as you painfully watch your flies ignored over and over, as they drift within inches of the trout you’re sight-fishing to. Below are six tips to help fly anglers catch more shallow water trout while sight-fishing during the fall and winter months.
Read More »Sunday Classic / Keep Your Hands on the Cork
Like so many others out there, I’ve broken my fair share of fly rods over the years.
I’ve slammed them in tailgates, stuck them in ceiling fans and I’ve squashed quite a few trying to get in and out of my cataraft to quickly. It took me awhile to figure it out, but I finally realized I was the problem, and I’ve since learned to slow down and not worry about being the first angler on the river all the time. It’s kinda funny how just slowing down a few steps and taking a couple extra minutes to get organized, keeps those negligible acts of snapping fly rods to a minimum.
One overlooked fly rod handling mistake I see all the time by fly anglers, is taking their hands off the cork during the final stages of the fight, and moving one hand high up on the butt section of the rod in the effort to get extra leverage to land the fish. You never want to do this, because when you do, you change the fulcrum point of the fly rod and eliminate the fly rods
Read More »Saturday Shoutout / Rosenbauer On Dating
How about a little dating advice from Tom Rosenbauer?
In this brilliant interview our buddy Dan Frazier asks Orvis’s Tom Rosenbauer what he looks for in a woman. Let’s be clear, this is a joke. Dan, who is an evil genius, took an interview with Tom on the subject of fly tying and remixed it into the funniest thing I’ve ever heard in my life. It was a private joke that Orvis decided to publish. It’s great to see a company with that sense of humor.
ENJOY, DATING ADVICE FROM TOM ROSENBAUER!
Read More »