Sunday Classic / Keep your thirst quenched without the baggage
IT’S LATE SPRING AND EVERYDAY WE’RE MOVING ONE STEP CLOSER TO SUMMER.
Air temperatures are climbing into the 70s and 80s on most days and will soon be even higher. These conditions make it extremely important that anglers are staying properly hydrated while they’re on the water fly fishing. I really enjoy hiking into remote locations to fly fish for trout. The only problem with me doing this, is I’m constantly fighting to quench my thirst and stay hydrated. I used to utilize packs with internal bladders for storing my drinking liquids, but there were quite a few disadvantages that came along with using them. First, when filled to full capacity, they become quite heavy and take a tole on your body lugging them around all day. Secondly, if you’re using them during the warm seasons and you’re doing some aggressive hiking and fishing, eventually that cold liquid you filled the bladder with in the morning will eventually warm up and end up tasting like bath water. Thirdly, internal bladder systems require maintenance and cleaning to keep them from building up bacteria and mold. Five years ago, I decided to ditch the internal bladder systems in exchange for a light weight water filtration bottle, and I’ve never looked back. Doing so, I eliminated the three negatives I mentioned above with using internal water bladders, and I no longer
Saturday. Shoutout / Birds and Beasts
THINK YOU UNDERSTAND THE DEBATE OVER CLIMATE CHANGE?
There’s a lot of hot headed opinions flying around about climate change. One thing is becoming very clear. If you hunt or fish, the issue effects you more than most. Fortunately there are some sportsmen and sporting organizations who are getting behind the idea of doing something positive.
My friend Matt Copeland, of Stalking the Seam, is one of them. His award winning essay, “The Birds and The Beasts” puts the issue into a perspective that is unique and heart warming, as well as pertinent to sportsmen.
Even if you care nothing about the issue, this is worth a read. This Wyoming Sportsman’s story of lessons learned the hard way will resonate with everyone.
CHECK OUT “THE BIRDS AND THE BEASTS.”
Read More »Fishing Streamers Is Still All About Presentation
STREAMER JUNKIES, AND I INCLUDE MYSELF, GET A BAD RAP FROM THE DRY FLY CROWD.
In some places they even go so far as to call them lures, rather than streamers. The dyed-in-the-wool purest would portray those of us with the nerve to fish a four- or six-inch fly as neanderthals. The mantra of the dry fly purest is this.
“Imitation and presentation, that’s fly fishing.”
When I hear those words, I think to myself, “Is there a better description of streamer fishing?”
That’s what we’re doing, isn’t it? Imitating a type of forage food and presenting that Imitation in a manner that makes it believable. The fact that the forage food we have chosen is not an insect makes it no less artful. If your streamer is not presented in a way which the fish can appreciate, it’s still not going in the mouth.
I was reminded of this the other day when fishing a great Tailwater river with my friends Dan and Garner. Water conditions were perfect for streamer fishing and we were working the banks, buckets and blow downs hard. Each of us, streamer fishermen but each with his own style.
I worked my big articulated patterns and snaky sculpins on a long leader and intermediate line, while Garner fished a Sex Dungeon in full Galloup style with a short leader and sinking line. Dan tossed his beautiful classic Maine style streamers. All of us caught fish, but none of us caught the fish we wanted.
I’m not complaining
Read More »Sunday Classic / How Louis Got His Groove Back
IT’S HARD TO OVERSTATE THE IMPORTANCE OF CONFIDENCE IN FLY FISHING. IT’S OFTEN THE SPECIAL SAUCE ON SUCCESS.
I squint into the sun. My eyes burn from sweat and sun screen. I take a few deep breaths and puff them back out. I stretch my neck side to side, it pops and cracks. I close my eyes for a second, though I know I shouldn’t, I squeeze the cork in my hand and try to slow my heart rate. I open my eyes and I see an army of tarpon. I am loosing my cool.
There must be fifty or sixty fish in this school and plenty of them are a hundred pounds or better. I’ve seen it before but it’s a sight you never get used to. You can easily spend a whole day on a flats boat staring at the water without seeing a fish. I’ve done that too. Moments like this have to be savored and at first I was doing a pretty good job of it but now things are getting weird.
Read More »Saturday Shoutout / Jazz and Fly Fishing
POPULATION OF NORDIC COUNTRIES 25,651,443
8 MILLION GO FISHING EVERY YEAR
100,000 FLY FISH
About 10,00 of them don’t hate jazz. Of that 10,000 only 8 are both professional jazz musicians and fly fishers. This is the story of 4 of them.
That’s the opening of Jazz and Fly Fishing. These four Nordic fly fishing musicians were the subject of a proposed TV show. When the show got canceled, they didn’t. They bought a video camera and made it themselves. They publish the episodes on the web and if it wasn’t awesome, which it is, it would be worth watching just because of the love, blood and sweat these guys put into it.
Tag along these crazy string pluckers as they slay fish, get skunked, die of mosquito bites and set their camping gear on fire. It’s an epic adventure not to be missed.
See the entire season HERE
Read More »Winston’s B3-LS 2 Weight, A Wolf In Sheep’s Clothing
THIS LITTLE GREEN WISP OF A ROD IS SO MUCH MORE THAN I EXPECTED.
For some time I’ve been asking myself, “Do I really need a 2 weight?” At some point this year the question became mute. I wanted a 2 weight and that was enough. I always considered the 3 weight to be as fine as I’d ever need, but after fishing a two that belongs to my my friend Michael White, last year in Wyoming, I was pretty smitten.
I decided on the Winston B3-LS. My logic was this. A 2 weight is not a utilitarian rod. It’s a luxury, a rod you fish because you want to, because you love it. I wanted a two weight that got me excited. A rod that felt so good in my hand that I made excuses to fish it. A rod to turn good day into great days, and that’s what I got.
When you think about fishing a seven foot, two weight you think of tiny brook trout streams choked with mountain laurel and brightly colored four inch fish. I love those fish and that kind of fishing, and the B3-LS is perfect for it. The truth is
Read More »Hellgrammite, The King Kong of Aquatic Insects
I was on the water trout fishing the other day, when my buddy Erik Ashlin said, “it was just about this time last year, when all the hellgrammites began crawling into the shallows to begin their pupation. Let me flip over a rock and see if I can find one real quick, these guys are wicked looking”. No joke, the first rock Erik turned over, this freaking giant 3″ Hellgrammite was laying there with its jaws of life (mandibles) snapping. It was very clear it was gesturing, “come on, get closer…, let me get a piece of you”!
If you ever get the opportunity to examine a big Hellgrammite up close, there will be no doubt in your mind that the Hellgrammite is the King Kong of all aquatic insects. Be careful handling them because they can pack one hell of a painful pinch capable of breaking the skin. Hellgrammites are like a five course meal in terms of food value to trout. I’d lay a bet they pack every bit as much caloric worth as sculpins and crayfish do. Great times to fish hellgrammite imitations are during high flows after heavy rains. During these conditions, they often get dislodged from under rocks and swept down stream. Hellgrammites are also very vulnerable during behavioral drifts, when the larva are searching out new feeding grounds or better water conditions.
Read More »Tenkara and the Single Fly Approach
ONE OF THE MOST APPEALING ASPECTS OF TENKARA FISHING IS THE CONCEPT OF USING ONLY A SINGLE FLY.
For folks considering tenkara, this concept is likely THE most difficult to embrace- especially if they have a western fly fishing background. However, I like to say it is also the most liberating aspect of tenkara since when you learn how to use different techniques to effectively use one fly, all of a sudden you can go anywhere in the world in search of trout with the same fly box. And, it can be very effective.
Before I go any further, let me get a couple of things out of the way: First, you can use ANY fly with tenkara. It works well with your favorite dry fly (no drag on the line, beautiful drag-free drifts), it works well with nymphs too as you can have a nice tight line and lots of sensitivity. You do not have to use a tenkara fly, and you do not have to stick with one fly pattern. I like sharing this concept because it goes completely counter to the thinking in western fly-fishing, but also because it changed my fly-fishing forever to learn that a whole group of people in Japan didn’t change fly patterns while fishing and were still catching a lot of fish.
I am the type of person that gets frustrated by the amount of choices on a dinner menu. I’d much prefer to see a menu with just three items- all of which will satisfy my hunger and taste great. Adopting a single fly approach can
Read More »Sunday Classic / Better Down Stream Presentations & Drifts
How many times have you been trout fishing and spotted a big trout positioned down and across stream of you feeding? I know I’ve seen it plenty of times on the water, and it always seems like those fish are always positioned just out of reach for me to get a regular cast and drag-free drift over them. Right before my fly reaches the fish, I run out of slack as my fly line comes tight, and I get unwanted drag on my fly. Presenting your flies this way to educated fish can often end up putting them down. If you find yourself in this situation you need to be ready to smoothly and quickly kick out extra fly line out the end of your rod tip during your drift. Executing this properly you’ll be able to maintain enough slack to extend your drag-free drift so your offering can make it to the fish, and have a good chance of being eaten.
I see fly fisherman all the time try to use a shaking motion with their rod tip to kick out extra fly line and extend their drift. Most of the time this doesn’t work very well, because it’s really difficult for you to let out fly line fast enough, and keep your flies from moving all over the place in the process. Watch this video below as I demonstrate how to properly present your fly down and across stream to a feeding trout, and smoothly kick out extra fly line to maintain a drag-free drift. It will take a few minutes for first-timers to get the hang of it, but once you do, you’ll have the technique mastered forever.
Read More »Saturday Shoutout / Wisdom of Midcurrent
MIDCURRENT IS ON IT.
Midcurrent swings so much knowledge, it’s hard to keep up with it all. If you’re not a regular reader, you should be. It’s an almost un paralleled resource for fly anglers. Here are three recent posts that are definitely worth a read.
Night Moves, plan B
Dave Karczynski tells you everything you need to know about throwing big stuff at big fish in the midnight hour.
What’s So Great About Single Hand Spey
Philip Monahan gets into the how and the why of single hand Spey and what it means to the trout angler.
The Future of the Deschutes, in Doubt.
Chris Santella takes a hard look at what’s going wrong with the Deschutes river.