2 Ways to Determine the Sex of a Trout
Here are two ways to determine the sex of a trout.
Over the years, I’ve found that the majority of my clients have a hard time determining whether a trout they catch is a male or female. Below are two ways to quickly identify the sex of a trout.
1. LOOK AT THE MOUTH
One of best ways to distinguish the sex of a trout is to examine the mouth. Female trout all have a short rounded nose or upper jaw, while male trout have a more elongated snout. If your trout has a lower jaw with a kype, it’s a male for sure. Although the mouth of a female trout will grow larger as it ages and increases in size, the mouth will never grow a kype (hooked lower jaw). Upon becoming sexually mature, male trout will begin to grow a pronounced kype. At first, it will just be a tell-tale sign, but as a male trout ages, its kype will become more pronounced. It’s important to point out that even for trout that aren’t sexually mature, an angler can look at the mouth of a trout and see either a uniform mouth with a short rounded nose (female), or a elongated snout with a slightly longer lower jaw (male).
2. LOOK AT THE ANAL FIN
Read More »Limay River Video
By Louis Cahill
I don’t know of a more magical river than the Limay in Argentine Patagonia.
It’s a big river, full of big trout, and almost no one there. It’s a rare day when we see a boat that’s not part of our group. Llamas graze the banks and the air is sweet and clear. Gravel shoals pour off into deep drop-offs where twenty pound browns lurk. Some days she’s mild as a lamb, sippers feeding lazily in their lanes. Others she’s surly, big dark forms slashing violently at streamers.
It’s hard to beat sipping whisky around a camp fire and sleeping under the southern stars. Telling stories of the fish who ate, and the ones who did not. There is a place in my heart only Argentina can fill.
HERE’S A SHORT VIDEO TO GIVE YOU A TASTE OF THE LIMAY.
Read More »3 Reasons It’s Time to Change Flies
By Louis Cahill
When I looked at this fly, I saw three things wrong—any one of them deserving a fly change.
I was fishing with a friend at the January Bonefish School and he made a couple of good presentations that were refused by fish. I asked if I could have a look at his fly and immediately knew why the fish were not impressed. Understand, he was there to learn and asked for my help, I don’t just critique people’s flies for fun.
Take a close look at the photo above and see if you spot the three things keeping this fly out of a bonefish’s mouth.
First and foremost, the hook is starting to straighten. Proof that the fly had been working at some point. Although this might not keep a fish from eating the fly, it will keep you from landing it if it does. Bending the hook back causes metal fatigue and it will never be as strong. Your next fish might be the biggest of your life. Better to change it.
2. The wing and eyes have
Bruce Chard’s A.M. Express, A Great Fly For Baby Tarpon
CATCHING BABY TARPON IS ABOUT AS FUN AS THE LAW ALLOWS.
Even a baby tarpon is a hell of a fish. These little guys are all fight and haven’t learned all the tricks of the grown ups. A thirty pound tarpon offers all the excitement of a hundred pounder with a good bit less humility.
On calm mornings you’ll find them cruising the edges of islands or nosing around rafts of floating grass or rolling in the glass calm water. If your going to catch them you’ll need the right fly. Our buddy Captain Bruce Chard is here to help.
Watch the video and learn to tie Bruce’s A.M. Express.
Read More »A Guide To Fly Rod Guides
By Louis Cahill
The guides on your fly rod have a lot to do with how it performs.
I was building bamboo fly rods and making my own guides when I first became aware of the many guide options and their effect on fly rod performance. Up to that point I think I took rod guides for granted, as I think many anglers do. Rod designers spend a good bit of time on guides and their placement and while you can cast a rod and catch fish with just about any guides, they have a real impact on how the rod performs.
Guides serve two basic functions. They transition the fly line from its unorganized state into a controlled state during the cast. The guides also serve to distribute the force applied to the line along the blank, during both the cast and the fighting of fish. All fly rods, with the notable exception of tenkara rods, have three types of guides. Each of these guides is designed for a specific purpose and the parameters of that design effect how the rod performs.
Three types of guides
Stripping guides are the large guides found closest to the reel. They are usually constructed with a large ring, often having some type of insert, soldered into a sturdy base. These guides are designed to handle the energy of the stiff butt section of the fly rod. Saltwater rods usually have two stripping guides to match their powerful blanks and deliver maximum pressure during the fight. The inserts found in stripping guides are designed to reduce friction, as the line is often coming across these guides at an acute angle. They are most often a polished ceramic but materials vary, including agate and colored glass in some high end rods. It’s never a good idea to hook your fly in these inserts and it can cause them to crack, reducing their performance and damaging your fly line.
Snake guides are, most often, the twisted wire guides that are most numerous on your fly rod. These simple but effective guides are designed to distribute force along the rod blank without adding a lot of weight or catching line. They are generally made of stainless steel or titanium. Some rods have single foot guides rather than traditional twisted guides. These guides are lighter weight and produce a faster action in an ultra-light carbon fiber rod. It’s not much weight, but with today’s carbon fiber, there is a difference. The down side to these guides is that they are not as sturdy and can catch loops of line. It’s unlikely that this will happen during casting but can happen in the excitement following a hook up. If you are producing loops inside your guides while casting, you have bigger problems. See a casting instructor.
Tip-tops are the guides fitted to the tip of the rod. It’s easy to take these little guides for granted but they are especially important. They add weight and transfer force at the most delicate part of the rod. This means that if there is a problem with the tip-top, it’s very unforgiving.
Guide size
The most influential aspect of guides, at least on casting performance, is their size. A larger guide will
Read More »Don’t Ride the Brakes During Your Fly Casting
Are you finding that you’re lacking distance and falling short of your target with your fly casting?
Is your power and line speed insufficient? If the answer is yes, I bet you’re also getting a fair amount of tailing loops or dreaded wind knots aren’t you? Come on, be honest. There’s absolutely nothing to be ashamed of if you’re periodically falling into this category with your fly casting. Believe me when I say, you’re not at all alone. I see it regularly on the water guiding, and most of the time anglers struggling with these problems usually are only doing one thing wrong with their fly casting. Nine times out of ten, in this scenario, anglers are decelerating their fly rod during their forward cast, back cast, or even both, in some cases. What you need to be doing to fix this problem is smoothly accelerating your fly rod during your casting stroke, making sure you’re stopping the rod at it’s fastest point. This will allow your fly rod to distribute the energy loaded during your cast efficiently, and you’ll have plenty of power (line speed) to reach your targets.
DECELERATION DURING YOUR CASTING STROKE: SHORT STORY & CASE STUDY
This past fall I was fishing big attractor dry flies with a client of mine. There were plenty of big fish willing to rise to our offerings, but to get them to eat, we had to stay far back and make long casts to them. Otherwise they’d spot us and spook. My client, a capable fly fisherman with strengths in short presentations and roll casts, developed a weakness for distance, when a head wind picked up. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get the distance needed to present his dry fly ahead of the fish. Several minutes we worked a prime piece of water that I knew had some eager fish looking up, but we got no takes. My client turned to me and said, “They must not like this fly pattern”. I replied, “You may be right man”, and I handed him the nymph rig and pointed upstream to our next fishing spot. But what I really wanting to say is, “No, the fly pattern is good, you’re just not getting the fly anywhere close to your target”.
There are times when the best thing you can do
Read More »Switch Vs Spey Rods
Are you curious about what the terms switch and spey mean in fly-fishing? Here are some answers.
I recently shared an older article about choosing a line for your switch rod as a Sunday Classic. The comments section lit up pretty quickly about the terms switch and spey. I thought it might be a good time to try and give a little perspective on the terms, what they mean and where they come from. Whether you are a single-hand or two-hand caster, you’ll find this interesting.
What is a spey rod?
Spey rods were developed in Scotland for fishing Atlantic salmon. They are long rods, 12 feet six inches or longer, with upper and lower grips, intended for casting with two hands. These rods were born of necessity. Salmon anglers needed to make long casts with little or no room for backcasting. They also needed to manage long lines as they swung their flies.
The answer was a long limber rod, which could be loaded and cast without a backcast. Of course, to do this, a style of casting had to be developed to accommodate both the rods and the rivers. This style of casting became known as spey casting, for the Spey River where it was born. These long rods were heavy and awkward to manage, so it was necessary for anglers to use two hands to cast them. It is important to note that spey casting and spey rods are two ideas, separate but associated. You can make any spey casts with a single-hand rod. You can also make overhead casts with a spey rod, although there are some good reasons not to make a habit of it.
To further complicate the matter, anglers in the US and Canada started using a radically different line configuration on their spey rods. Called skagit heads, for the river where they were developed, these aggressive shooting heads and their heavy, interchangeable sinking tips revolutionized steelhead fishing. Along with those lines came a new style of casting created to lift those heavy systems. Although some folks call these skagit casts, they are more often lumped into the family of spey casts. It’s also worth noting that you can, and some anglers do, fish these shooting heads on single-hand rods, even if it means significant physical pain at the end of the day.
What is a switch rod?
Switch rods were born around the 1970s and took a while to catch on. A switch rod is quite simply a two-hand rod, which is shorter than 12 feet six inches. The idea was, and is, that an angler could cast these rods with one hand or two, depending on the situation and their objectives.
Making A Rattan Fly Rod Grip, Part 2: Video
Here’s a second great video on making a rattan grip for your fly rod.
Hopefully your rattan grip project is coming along. In this video Matt Draft, of Proof Fly Fishing, will show you how to put the finishing touches on your rattan grip that really make it sing. This is a great project that anyone can tackle.
If you haven’t seen part 1, find it here.
Get your rattan grip kit here.
WATCH THE VIDEO AND LEARN TO MAKE A RATTAN FLY ROD GRIP.
Read More »Kype for Days
I love it when I luck up and catch a big male trout, steelhead, salmon, or char. There’s something about big gnarly kype jaws that fascinate me.
For starters, males always seem to sport more vibrant colors than hens, especially during the spawning season. In the wild and according to my catch rates, there seems to be a higher ratio of females to males in most watersheds. If you really want to know what gets me fired up when I land a big male, it’s the fact that every male specimen I catch seems to have its own unique face and features, just like all of us. It probably sounds weird, but I always find myself trying to imagine what the fish would look like if it was a person. The big kype always turns into a big smile, and the shape of the snout ends up being the shape and size of the person’s nose. For no rime or reason, it happens like clock work before I release every bruiser. God bless all the kype jaws swimming around out there. They always make my guide day a little extra special and rewarding when they show up.
Am I alone here in how cool I think kype jawed fish are?
Read More »The Fish That Took Three Anglers to Land
I’LL NEVER FORGET THE EPIC BATTLE THAT TOOK PLACE BETWEEN THREE ANGLERS AND A TROPHY SALMONID ONE FREEZING DECEMBER MORNING IN 2010.
I was having the time of my life on a steelhead fishing trip with my great friends Louis Cahill and Murphy Kane. We had made the long drive up from Georgia to chase after Great Lake steelhead for a week. Many of the rivers that feed into the Great Lakes hold huge numbers of salmon, steelhead and brown trout. Unfortunately those large concentrations of fish also attract every fishermen within a 100 plus square mile radius. We all agreed we couldn’t handle putting up with shoulder to shoulder fishing conditions, so we came up with a strategic plan to avoid it at all costs. Our strategy was simple, watch the extended weather forecast, and try to plan our trip around the nastiest weather we could find. This way, angler traffic would be at its lowest and we’d hopefully have plenty of water to ourselves.
A week later I got the call from Murphy that a huge snow storm was rolling in, and we all immediately needed to pack our gear and hit the road. It ended up being one hell of an adventure just making the trip up there. We had to drive in snow and ice conditions from North Carolina all the way up to New York. I’ve never in my life seen so many wrecks and vehicles sliding off the road. I’ll tell you one thing, it wasn’t easy driving on snow covered roads with sheer drop offs on both sides, and having to guess where your lane begins and ends for hours on end. If that’s not bad enough, then add to that having to safely pass eighteen wheelers that are throwing up blankets of snow on your windshield completely whiting you out for a couple seconds at a time. My ass was puckered up so tight during that drive up, I don’t think the jaws of life could have opened them.
God willing we survived the treacherous drive up to New York and our strategic plan ended up paying off big time. Temperatures never climbed above the teens during the trip, and I remember the wind blowing a constant 20mph with gusts 35-40mph. You had to really want to catch fish to hack it in those arctic conditions. The strange smell of butter filled the air from us constantly spraying down our rod guides with Pam in our efforts to fight off ice build up. Apparently none
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