Take It With You When You Go
By Justin Pickett
PLASTIC BOTTLES AND BAGS. FLIP FLOPS. SPENT BEER CANS. A UNIROYAL TIRE THAT WAS OBVIOUSLY NEVER ROTATED. EVEN CREEPY DOLL HEADS. IT’S AN UNFORTUNATE REALITY OF FISHING – TRASH.
Walk the banks of any river or stream that either flows through or borders a metropolitan area and you will find what looks like the contents of a nasty, old, run-down department store that just projectile vomited its inner contents all over the river. However, these problems aren’t limited to those waters surrounded by concrete jungles. Walking along a local stream deep in the North Georgia Mountains last week, I found several pieces of trash left by those who use that wildlife management area to camp, hike, bike, and fish. Unfortunately, it is commonplace in even some of the more remote areas of our national and state lands to find trash as well.
It’s ugly, it’s sad, it sucks, and it’s our fault.
Here in Georgia, the Chattahoochee is the lifeblood of many of the state’s largest cities and metropolitan areas. In the metro-Atlanta area, we rely heavily on its water for everything from drinking water to agricultural, recreational, and industrial use. If we didn’t have this resilient river flowing through the heart of our capital, the many businesses, state parks, jobs, recreational activities, and agricultural resources would be nonexistent. What’s more, our dependence on this river will be a never-ending relationship that is certainly destined to become even more strained than it already is over the next decade and beyond, but here we are…trashing the very thing we depend on the most. It’s a classic case of “give an inch, take a mile”. The Chattahoochee River is giving and giving, and even morphing over time to adapt to our human wants and needs. However, just like you and I, the ‘Hooch has a breaking point when it comes to how much crap we are able to tolerate. Where or when will that breaking point occur? Who knows, but if we continue down the road of poisoning our own blood, we will certainly figure it out. It’s almost become human nature… Take something to its absolute limit, and only when the tipping point is reached, something bad happens and we have that “oh shit, we screwed up” moment will we step in and intervene. We need to do a little better.
The Chattahoochee is far from being alone, though. It doesn’t matter where you live, your state has a river(s) that is battling the same daily barrage of garbage. Some cities and states are
Read More »Bruce Chard Ties The Gnarly Bandit
SIMPLE IS OFTEN BEST.
Our good friend Captain Bruce Chard is back today to prove it. Fishing guides need effective flies that will put their clients on fish but don’t take hours to tie. Bruce calls these kind of flies,”guide flies.” These flies have all of the elements that attract fish in a simple recipe so you can knock out a dozen of them without breaking a sweat. I love guide flies and I fish a lot of them.
The Gnarly Bandit is a classic. I can’t tell you how many bonefish I have caught on this fly. It’s a simple fly but there are a few elements you need to get right. In this video Bruce goes step by step and explains the details that make the difference.
Watch the video and learn to tie The Gnarly Bandit.
Read More »Alice’s Angle: The Flav
By: Alice Tesar
What is it and why you should be fishing it.
Quickly mistaken for a dwarfed Green Drake or Blue Winged Olive this versatile fly, which presents itself as a crawler nymph and crippled dry, are musts this time of year on western rivers. I stumbled upon the effectiveness of using a flav pattern while speaking with long time guide and angler, Doug Garber. Eager to use dry flies on my home waters this spring I asked Doug what his favorite early summer patterns were. After naming the staples for this time of year: Olive Elk Hair Caddis, Parachute Adams, Parachute PMD, and a Schroeder’s Oliver Hopper, he mentioned a flav pattern he ties. The Drunella flavilinea, “flav” has three tails, a brownish-olive body, and dark gray wings. Its most distinguishing feature is that it is smaller than the Western Green Drake. For Doug it is all about matching the size for this Mayfly in all of its stages. “The nymph has huge forelegs – like he is on steroids. Thin but broad,” says Doug. Their muscular forelegs and their eagerness to relieve themselves of their shucks makes them an excellent hatch to match.
Read More »3 Tips for Tarpon Fishing at Dusk
Tarpon fishing at dusk, is probably one of the toughest times of the day for a saltwater fly fisherman to get a hook up.
With the sun low in the horizon, it puts 80% or more of the water in complete glare. The only good viewing area left to spot cruising fish is just a small circle of water surrounding the boat. Anglers need to be ready to make super quick shots at fish if they want to have any chance at all of getting an eat. Check out these three fishing tips I learned from fishing with Capt. Joel Dickey.
Tip #1 – Reel up all that excess fly line on the Reel
This isn’t the time to have all of your fly line stripped off and laying on the bow folks, there’s absolutely no need for it. The only good shots at tarpon you’re going to get are going to be at distances of 40 feet or less. The last thing you want, if you somehow manage a good shot at a tarpon, is end up blowing the opportunity because you’re stepping on excess fly line or get a tangle in your fly line. Making a point to only keep the fly line that is needed on the bow is going to help you manage your fly line better, and increase your shot at making a spot on cast.
Tip #2 – Be Ready to Quickly Place Your Fly Close to the Tarpon
In these high glare situations, tarpon are generally going to be spotted very close to the boat. That leaves the angler very little time to present the fly and convince a tarpon to eat, before they spot the boat and spook. Anglers need to be ready to present their fly quickly at in direction, especially with a back cast, and also be able to quickly change their casting direction in the heat of the moment. Two casts are usually all you’re going to get this time of the day, and generally it’s the first cast that’s going to make or break you. I see guys all the time in preparation for their flats trip, only practicing their long distance casts. That’s great taking the time to do this, but often it’s the short presentations on the bow where anglers
Shooting Trout With An Elephant Gun
IF YOU’VE ADAPTED A SPEY OR SWITCH ROD TO SWING STREAMERS FOR TROUT YOU OBVIOUSLY DON’T CARE ABOUT THE NUMBERS.
You probably enjoy both the casting aspect and fishing for a grab. If you wanted to whack ’em and stack you’d have your indicator rod, or better yet, powerbait. I’m seeing more and more people swinging their spey and switch rods on trout rivers, especially in the fall. Those who’ve turned to the long rods for their anadromous fishing know how much easier it is to move a large streamer with a skagit line rather than a single handed rod.
Unfortunately the size of the trout we find seldom matches that of the steelhead we also target. Let’s face it, there’s not much of a fight with a sub 20” trout on a 5 or 6 weight spey or switch rod.
There are a variety of great truly trout-sized double handed rods on the market from the likes of Echo, Gary Anderson, Winston, and the forthcoming Sage rods. The ultimate conundrum being, when scaling down to trout sized (what I define as sub 300 grains) the lines have yet to catch up.
The skagit style heads and streamer specific lines available around and under 300 grains all have heads that are too long. This results in not having enough mass per foot to turn over a sink tip and desirable sized streamer.
Enter Mike McCune.
Mike is one of the original
Read More »14 Ways To Prevent Fish Mortality
THE YEARS WE SPEND LEARNING TO CAST AND DRIFT A FLY OR THE THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS WE SPEND ON GEAR AND TRAVEL ARE ALL WASTED IF WE DON’T HAVE FISH.
With more anglers entering the sport every day, sport fish are heavily pressured and in grave danger. There are a lot of common mistakes that anglers make which contribute to fish mortality. Most are innocent and many don’t show an immediate risk. With that in mind here are fourteen tips to help keep our little friends happy and healthy.
THE 10 SECOND RULE
A fish’s gills are remarkably efficient at collecting oxygen but the delicate membranes that extract the oxygen molecules rely on their buoyancy to keep the collecting surfaces exposed. Out of the water they collapse and are useless. This is to say the obvious, fish can’t breathe out of water. It’s easy to over estimate how long a fish can hold its breath. The fact is, a fish can’t hold its breath at all because it doesn’t have lungs. He is out of air as soon as you lift him from the water. Add to this that his metabolism is raging because he’s been fighting for his life and you have a pretty desperate situation. While you are trying to get that hero shot, he’s dying. Use the 10 second rule and never keep his head out of the water for more than 10 seconds and give him a good 30 seconds before you lift him again.
HOLD ON LOOSELY
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen guys squeeze a fish until its eyes pop out. Some guys just get so rattled holding a fish you’d think they never saw one. This death grip can cause serious internal injury especially to the heart. The trick is a nice loose grip. The tighter you hold a fish the more he will struggle. To control one, properly grip him just in front of his tail where there’s nothing but muscle and let him just rest on a loose hand under the boney part of his pec fins and gill plates. He will relax and the whole vibe will be nicer.
BARBLESS HOOKS
Once in a while a fish will unbutton due to a barbless hook. That’s just a fact of life but most anglers understand that they will hold hundreds, if not thousands, of fish in their life. Decreasing that number by a few is not a crisis. The fact is that barbless hooks go a long way to reducing fish mortality from hook injuries. If you are fighting fish properly you will not lose many and if you aren’t, fishing barbless hooks will teach you to fight fish smarter and you’ll be a better angler for it.
FIGHT WITH AUTHORITY
The biggest mistake I see anglers make is not fighting fish with authority. Most of us are taught to play fish too long, exhausting them before they are landed. A fish that is fought with authority is landed fresher and released fresher. Keep a good
Read More »Fly Fishing: 3 Great Times to Fish Streamers
I fell in love with streamer fishing the very first time I cast one.
All it took was me bringing one trout to the net on a size 6 white Zonker, and I was hooked. I’ll never forget that beautiful 15″ wild rainbow trout, that I caught and released on a ten foot wide Southern Appalachian blue liner up in North Georgia back in the 90s. I remember the tiny stream being too overgrown and tight for me to make traditional fly casts so I crawled down on a flat boulder, stripped out some fly line and dead drifted the streamer downstream into a pool. Nothing happened at first but I didn’t give up. Instead of retrieving the fly all the way in, like most anglers regularly do, I instead made a few strips in and then let the streamer drift back down into the pool. On my third attempt, that gorgeous wild rainbow trout hammered my streamer and I brought it into my net. I still use that downstream stripping and drift back technique quite a bit when it’s called for. It works equally well with nymphs and dries.
Read More »Steelhead, Karma and the Art of Showing Up
I know of no more mystifying fish than the steelhead.
Everything about anadromous steelhead is a mystery. An esoteric exercise in chaos theory beginning with an inexplicable choice to swim to the ocean and ending with an equally mystifying decision to eat a swung fly. The more we as anglers try to impose reason and method on these fish, the more they defy us. This fuels a sort of brain fever in the steelheader which, unchecked, can manifest itself in self loathing, delusions of grander, obsessive behavior, mysticism and other antisocial behaviors. There is an element of psychology to all fishing but none more than steelheading.
Swinging a fly for steelhead is wonderfully technical. The finesse, the attention to detail and the absolute focus required to do it right are staggering. And while all of the technique is absolutely essential to master and crucial to execute, it often has nothing to do with the catching of a fish. That’s where it gets really mind-bending. I’ve seen it time and again. Talented anglers making perfect casts and swings time after time to no avail, while another angler does everything wrong and is rewarded with a fish. I have personally been on both sides of that equation. It’s a real thing.
In the long run I am convinced that good technique prevails, but in the short run it can often seem random. In the end, there is nothing in steelheading more important than being in the presence of a fish who is ready to eat a fly. End of story. For those of us who believe we control our destinies, that’s a bitter pill to swallow. I firmly believe, however painful it is to hear, that the fish chooses us, not the other way around.
So what is the angler hoping to catch a steelhead on the swing to do?
The best thing I can tell you is, show up, stay positive and do the work. That’s what puts fish in the net. This year on the Deschutes Steelhead Camp I saw a classic example from my friend Mark Haffenreffer.
Read More »Let it ride
By Daniel Galhardo
DON’T RECAST YOUR FLY UNTIL IT’S HAD A CHANCE.
It takes some time to learn how to read water well. But, at least when it comes to fishing mountain streams, the concept is easy to grasp: fish are looking for food and shelter, and don’t want to spend a lot of energy looking for food. Currents bring them food, slow water and breaks in the current gives them shelter. With that in mind we quickly learn that seams where current meets calm water may be the best places to target with our flies.
Once we learn this basic piece of information, we all want our fly to land with 100% accuracy where we suppose fish will be. But, hey, sometimes it won’t!
In recent days I have been taking a lot of people fishing. Most were new to fly-fishing and to tenkara. After giving them some basic instructions on how to open the rod, how to tie the line to the rod tip and tippet to the tenkara line and then tie the fly onto it, I would teach them how to cast.
It’s been said that anyone can learn how to cast with tenkara in a matter of minutes. I have found that on average it takes 7 or 8 casts to learn how to cast with tenkara fairly well, and I’m not exaggerating. But, like anything, it takes time to get the tiny fly to land exactly where they want. If I had to guess, I’d say that in the beginning about 70% of their casts will land in the vicinity of where they wanted. Perhaps 25% will land just off the target zone. And, of course, about 5% will land on the trees in front or behind them, but that’s a different article for a different day.
The 25% slightly off-target casts is what I’m interested in making a point about. Actually, it doesn’t matter if it’s 25%, 50%, or even if you’re
Read More »The Thrill that Comes From the Unknown
If you ask me, I think the surprise factor in fly fishing is underrated.
Most of us choose to spend our time preparing and planning out every single detail of our fly fishing trips, so we can eliminate it. We spend hours tying recommended flies, we go threw our gear with a fine tooth comb checking for imperfections, and we research everything we can about the water and species we’ll be tackling. We do this because we want to feel in control. Furthermore, we do it because we want to catch fish. Problem is, fly fishing isn’t all about trying to squeeze out every bit of success we can muster out of a day on the water. A big part of fly fishing for me is letting go and
Read More »