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 »Simms Warriors & Quiet Waters Waders
Simms is doing their part for those who protect USA.
The Simms G-3 Guide WQW wader is a limited edition wader which honors the men and women who have fought for their country. Of course it’s a badass Simms wader with some new special features and cool camo accents, but it’s more than that. For every pair sold Simms is giving $50 to Warriors & Quiet Waters. WQW is a group who’s mission is reintegrating traumatically combat-wounded veterans into society through fly fishing.
I caught up with Rich Hohne from Simms at IFTD and he walked me through the features of these great waders and the details of how the donation works. Hats off to Simms for this great work.
WATCH THIS VIDEO FOR ALL OF THE DETAIL.
Read More »Fly Fishing: Float N’ Fly Rig for the Fly Rod
This past week I wrote a fly fishing tactics post for targeting bass on reservoirs during the fall. At the tail-end of the post, I touched base on how effective a Float N’ Fly Rig (basically a nymphing rig on my fly rod) can be for catching good numbers of bass during the late fall and winter months. From late fall through winter, when water temperatures begin dipping into the mid-50s and lower, catching bass on deep reservoirs with traditional fly fishing setups can become extremely difficult for two reasons. The first reason is because bass start becoming sluggish as their metabolisms plummet from cooling lake water temperatures. With lower metabolisms, bass feed less frequently and they also move shorter distances to forage on food (in an effort to conserve energy). This is bad news for fly anglers because it drastically shrinks the size of the strike zone (the hot zone around a bass that a fly or lure needs to enter, to consistently trigger bites) and it makes it much harder for fly anglers to find, present, and retrieve fly patterns through these small strike zones. The second reason the bass fishing is tough this time of year is because a good portion of the bass on the lakes will move out of the shallow water feeding grounds of the fall and back out into the main lake deep water areas, where they’ll often suspend in the water column in 10-25′ of water.
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