Lessons from a Season with One Fly
By Tim Harris
LAST SEASON WAS A TOUGH ONE FOR ME.
I spent the year dealing with a chronic illness that would just not clear up and it greatly limited the amount of time I could get out of the house and how much time I could spend on the water. I decided that to make life easier I could only fish local streams that ranged from my backyard, literally, to several others within 10 miles of my house. I also decided that I would only fish tenkara for trout on these streams and to make things even simpler I decided I would stick to one fly throughout the year so I wouldn’t even have to think about that.
Sticking to one fly is part of the philosophy behind tenkara. Tenkara developed out of commercial fishing in Japan and efficiency was important to these fishermen. Anything not necessary was left out of the practice and sticking to one pattern was the best way to simplify selection of pattern and fly tying. It is about the opposite of the Western Match the Hatch philosophy where anglers carry boxes full of patterns designed to imitate a specific species of insect in a specific stage of life. Daniel Galhardo of TenkaraUSA wrote a good piece about the Single Fly Approach for Gink & Gasoline last year and there are several good posts on the TenkaraUSA blog about sticking with one pattern. A few anglers have decided to take this concept beyond tenkara and try to fish an entire season for different fish with one single pattern — Paul Pucket’s experiment using just an Everglades Special comes to mind.
I only fished a handful of kebari in my first year of tenkara. So, I only needed to narrow it down to one of the patterns I had been using. I opted for one I call the Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear Sakasa Kebari since the GRHE was one of my favorite nymph patterns and the thing just looked buggy as all heck. I tied up a box of these from #12-#16, some with beads but most without and was ready for the season to open up. I ended up sticking to this one pattern throughout the year, somehow managed to fit in 78 days on the water using it, and I only got skunked one day. I caught cutthroat, rainbows, brookies, browns and the occasional whitefish on it. I caught fish from 3″ long to a whopping 18″ rainbow one day.
WHAT DID I LEARN FROM THIS EXPERIENCE? SEVERAL THINGS.
Read More »Sunday Classic / The Echo Micro Practice Rod for Teaching Fly Casting
No one is intimidated by a toy.
I’m an evangelist. A true believer, and like any zealot, there is nothing I love more than sharing my faith. I find myself teaching a lot of fly casting.
Whether you picked up a fly rod yesterday or twenty years ago I’m sure you remember how daunting it was at first. The learning curve can be brutal and more often than not the culprit is the fly rod itself.
For starters, it’s intimidating. Most people think of the fly rod as the tool of sorcerers. It is, right? Not the sport of the common fellow at least. This horse shit is part of the fascination that draws people to fly fishing but it’s also one of the big hurdles they have to clear in learning.
The next big hurdle is the preconceived idea of what the cast is. Almost everyone starts out casting a Zebco or some kind of gear rod and when they see a fishing rod, that muscle memory comes rushing back to ruin their fly cast. As soon as they are past the Zebco in comes Brad Pitt and “A River Runs Through It” and they start drawing huge circles in the air with rod and line.
I find that getting the new caster past the preconception of the cast is the most time-consuming part of the process. Some folks lose months or even years to this quagmire, and as anyone who fly fishes knows, learning to cast is just the price of admission. Learning to fish is another thing entirely.
Fortunately there’s a great new tool to help get past all of this. The Echo Micro Practice Rod or MPR from Rajeff Sports. Odds are you’ve seen one at the fly shop and maybe even cast it. You may have noticed the guys at the shop wasting a lot of time playing with it and your first impression was likely the same as mine. With its bright yellow rope “line” and red yarn “leader” it looks like a toy. It took me quite a while to realize that’s what’s so brilliant about it. It’s a toy! No one is intimidated by a toy. No one has preconceived ideas about a toy. They just play with it.
Toy or not, the physics at play are the same as an $800 fly rod. The action is
Read More »Saturday Shoutout / Mike’s Gone Down The Rabbit Hole
Mike Sepelak, alone in the dark and stench spins a tail that reads like Cormac McCarthy. You can pull up a seat, but you’ll only need the edge when you read, “Down The Rabbit Hole.” Simply the most fantastic fishing story I’ve ever read. Fantastic in every sense of the word.
Excerpt
“The huge streamer landed, with a splat, just out of lamp range and a foot to the left of the disturbance. Troy gave it an immediate pop strip and then paused. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing, until some nearby trash bobbed, ever so subtly. Troy twitched his rod tip with an equivalent genteelness.
All hell broke loose.
Trash and dark water exploded. Troy gave a mighty strip-set and his reel started screaming; reverberating eerily in the small concrete space. Fly line flew out like it was tied to a Ferrari. Forty, fifty, sixty feet. Beyond the bounds of our small dark enclosure. The beast, in his madness, had gone down an outflow and kept right on going. ”
Don’t miss
“DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE”
Read More »Packs And Storage From Umpqua
EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE A NEW PRODUCT MAKES YOU ASK, WHY DIDN’T I THINK OF THAT?
Umpqua’s new Tailgater Organizer is one of those brilliant idea that makes us all slap our foreheads. Made to fit an inexpensive Rubbermaid container this organizer and workstation makes getting on the water faster and more efficient. It’s one of the coolest ideas I’ve seen this year.
Umpqua has a few more tricks in its bag this year. A new line of fully waterproof fishing packs that are super tough and packed with features, including a pretty cool rod holder that lets you go hands free or even carry a second rod, rigged and at the ready.
WATCH THE VIDEO FOR ALL THE DETAILS.
Read More »Fix Your Tailing Loops Once and For All
Tailing loops are maybe the most common problem in fly casting and they are remarkably easy to fix.
During our last Bonefish School in the Bahamas we had a great conversation about tailing loops with good friend Michael White. Whitie’s approach to fixing tailing loops is so concise and on point, you could watch our anglers’ casts improve before your eyes. Guys who had been plagued by tailing loops for years seemed cured like the faithful in a revival tent.
Tailing loops are simple, if you don’t get mired down in the physics. There are two things that cause them and most anglers who throw tailing loops do both. The real key to solving the tailing loop quandary is to relax and take a deep breath.
THE TWO CAUSES OF TAILING LOOPS
The Jackrabbit Start
The casting stroke requires a smooth application of power to an abrupt start. We’ve all heard that but for some reason it goes straight out of our heads when we start trying to add distance to our cast or turn over our leader. We revert to the first thing our muscles ever learned about throwing something farther. Throw harder and faster. That works with balls but not with fly lines. We end up trying to fix problems with our technique by adding power and more bad technique. You can see where this is headed, right?
I like Lefty Kreh’s analogy for a good casting stroke. It’s the same action you would use if you were trying to throw wet paint off of a brush. You’d start smooth, no jarring motion to slop the paint back on you, then you’d speed up once the whole thing is in motion. Finally you’d stop hard to send the paint flying. This is nothing new but it’s a brilliant metaphor. Your arm understands it.
Creep
The second cause of tailing loops is creep. Creep is when you start inching your rod forward before your line fully straightens out behind you. Ironically, creep is often caused by anxiety about your jackrabbit start. Creeping leaves you with a shortened stroke once your line does straighten and, in an effort to power the line, most anglers return to the jackrabbit start. This is what make tailing loops such a devilment. It turns into a vicious cycle.
Fixing creep is easy.
Read More »Fly Fishing and Tapping into your Subconscious
OUR SUBCONSCIOUS STAYS TWO STEPS AHEAD OF OUR CONSCIOUS THINKING, PUTTING US IN A ZONE ON THE WATER.
One of the most stimulating and interesting TV shows that I take the time to watch every chance I get is “Through the Wormhole” on the Science Channel. Go ahead and call me a geek, I find the show inspiring and can’t help to think if I’d been forced to watch this show as a kid I’d probably be three times as smart as I am today, and would have made it much further in my advanced education. “Through the Wormhole”, is hosted by the great actor Morgan Freeman, and it runs segments on all facets of life, discussing such topics as advanced science and mathematics, space travel and the human brain. The other day couch surfing and flipping through channels on the TV, I stumbled upon the show and quickly found myself glued to the screen as it talked about the mysteries of our subconscious, and how it’s used every waken moment of our lives.
Neuroscientists have prooved that the human brain constantly uses our subconcious to guide us and sway our decision making. The show talked about how it’s our subconscious that allows musicians to memorize and perform extraordinarily difficult pieces of music perfectly by keeping their mind and muscle control in harmony. I assume it’s very similar to how professional athletes are able to put themselves in a zone during a game by using their subconscious, then making game winning plays. It was explained that our subconscious always stays two steps ahead of our conscious thinking, and that it’s a major driving force that keeps us out of danger and allows us to use our gut feelings to make spontaneous decisions correctly when we lack the information needed. The show went on and on, in great detail about how humans benefit from their sub-conscious, and then backed it all up by doctoral research and testing. In the end, the show concluded that in the future, if humans can learn to regularly tap into their subconscious we’ll be able to be more healthy, become significantly smarter and more creative than we can possibly imagine.
After I finished watching that particular episode of “Through the Wormhole”, I began thinking about what degree our subconscious plays in our fly fishing. For years, I’ve felt like my subconscious has allowed me at times to put myself in a zone on the water. Allowing me to amplify my senses and get extremely focused when the fishing conditions demanded it. I now believe
Read More »Opening Day
Is the end of the beginning the beginning of the end?
For years, maybe decades, my buddy Dan and I have kept a tradition. To be on Dan’s home water together on opening day of trout season. This is a high point on the calendar for me. Special in a lot of ways. The fishing is always epic, as the trout have had the cooler months to rest and forget what flies look like, but there’s much more to it.
For me it’s a chance to get on the water with a dear friend who has done more for me than I can list, and also a chance to remember where I come from. I am so fortunate to make my living in fly fishing. I get to fish some amazing places with some amazing anglers, and that was kind of the plan, but the fly fishing world I live in now is nothing like what I pictured when I started carrying my camera on the river.
I don’t want to sound like I’m complaining. Far from it. I’ve kind of won the lottery. It’s just that a lot of the things that drew me to fly fishing are very hard to come by now that it’s a job. When I fish with Dan there is no agenda, no expectations, no shot list. We just fish. From the looks of it however, this will be our last opening day and there’s a whole lot more at stake than my and Dan’s tradition.
The Georgia trout season is a little complicated. There are streams which are designated as seasonal and some which are year-round. Seasonal streams are open to fishing from the last weekend in March thru the end of October and may only be fished sun-up to sun-down. Year-round streams are always open and may be fished at night.
These are old regulations and good ones. The seasonal streams were clearly chosen as important waters where wild trout reproduction is at its best. The closure protects these streams during the spawning seasons of all three trout species which live here. It’s a good regulation in a state known for bad management. A relic put in place by men who understood the importance of these wild fish. Something our current officials have forgotten.
In two weeks all of that is about to change. The Georgia DNR is poised to change the regulations, doing away with trout season. When this happens all trout streams in Georgia will be under the regulations previously used for year-round streams. It’s a ill conceived plan, which makes no allowances for the increased fishing pressure and will likely have dramatic consequences. A management style we have become too familiar with in recent years.
When asked, by a concerned angler, if Georgia could implement some regulation to protect the Southern Appalachian Brook Trout, our only native trout, a DNR regional supervisor gave this mind numbing answer.
“What’s the point? Those fish only live four or five years.”
What does the future look like for wild trout in Georgia when the supervisor overseeing the region containing all of the state’s trout water doesn’t understand the difference between the lifespan of an individual and the perpetuation of a species?
HERE’S THE PROBLEM WITH THE CHANGE IN THE TROUT SEASON.
Read More »Sunday Classic / Traditional Old-School Nymphs Catch Trout, Don’t Forget It
GREAT ISN’T GREAT ENOUGH, OR IS IT?
Every year, I spend quite a bit of time scouring the interweb and flipping through numerous fly company catalogs, all in the effort to stay up to date with the latest new fly pattern creations. Many are just variations of already existing fly patterns, but quite often it’s a new fly tying material that’s created, manipulated, or that’s managed to stay under the radar and discovered, that’s used to develop these new fly patterns. I usually spend my time reviewing the new flies and their recipes, and hear my inner-voice chattering over and over, “why didn’t you come up with that fly pattern, dumby”. But even after purchasing and tying several dozen of the new fly patterns, many of them ultimately fall short on the water of producing trout numbers like my traditional old-school standby nymphs do. Why is that?
I think the the fly tying world is very similar to the rod manufacturing world, where a company builds a great fly rod that 90% of fly anglers love, and then a couple years down the road they discontinue the rod line, to make room for the introduction of the next innovative fly rod. Quite often, in my opinion though, that new rod design’s performance falls short of its predecessor. I know this process is called product life cycle, and it will continue to happen again and again, but it sure seems like we’re in way too much of a hurry to move on, and should instead be more content with sticking with a great product longer. It’s the notion that great isn’t great enough, and that we should retire the greats, in the hopes we can find something, for lack of a better word, that’s perfect. The problem is, there’s no such thing. No one product will work perfect for the infinite number of situations it will encounter on the water. My point being, in the target zone and scope of fly patterns at least, it may benefit many of us if we stop getting lost in creating and searching for the next best fly pattern, and instead spend more time just fishing the fly patterns that have proven to catch fish for us consistently for the past century.
Read More »Saturday Shoutout / Waisted Youth
ONE OF MY BEST FISHING BUDDIES WRITING ABOUT ONE OF MY FAVORITE GUIDES. HOW CAN I PASS THAT UP?
I was in the Bahamas recently for the G&G Bonefish School. My good buddy Rich Hohne was along representing for the folks at Simms who generously donated some sweet gear for all of our anglers. Rich got the chance to spend a day on the boat with resident badass, Jose Sands. That’s always an experience.
Anyone who guides saltwater, and does it well, has my respect. If they are willing to go out of their way to teach their clients, that respect is doubled. I have learned much of what I know about Bonefishing from Jose and the many hours spent on his boat have developed a deep respect that flows both ways.
On his blog, “A Wasted Youth” Rich looks at his day on the water with Jose through new eyes and he takes away some lessons that each of us can stand to learn. Rich Hone is one of the smartest guys I know and a fine writer to boot. Take a ride on a flats boat with him and Jose.
FISHING WITH AN OUTLAW
Read More »New Rods From Winston
One of the best known names in fly rods makes some interesting moves in 2015.
Winston is known for smooth powerful action and made-in-America quality. Neither of those things has changed but the the new Nexus and Micro Spey rod are both departures of a kind. Both rods show Winston’s commitment to quality while proving they are looking ahead.
The Nexus is Winston’s entry into the mid-priced American-made market. It’s a departure from the norm in two ways. First, it’s a fast action rod. That’s one thing Winston has never been known for and they’ve done a nice job of it. The Nexus steps up the pace without losing the feel Winston rods are known for. Second, it retails for $475. Some troll will make a snarky comment about it but that’s a great price for an American made rod with a lifetime warranty.
The Micro Spey rods are based on a very cool idea. Spey caster want light weight spey rods, not switch rods. While switch rods are basically small Spey rods, their action is usually a compromise. What the gain for single hand casting is taken away from two hand performance. These little beauties are true Spey rod tapers made for two hand casting. Actual Spey rods for trout. Pretty cool.
I’ve always loved Winston rods. If you do too, these are worth checking out. In this video Johnny Spillane talks with Adam Hutchison and Tom Larimer about the new Nexus and Micro Spey fly rods from Winston.
Read More »