Sunday’s Classic / Concealing Your Profile to Catch More Fish
Sometimes its not enough wearing earthy tone colored clothing or even camouflage to keep a smart wily trout from spotting you. Most of the time, movement and your profile tips educated trout off. When the opportunity presents itself for you to use the natural terrain to conceal or break up your profile, and it happens to lie right next to a good hole, tuck in behind it and use it to your advantage. Sometimes the extra effort will pay off and you’ll find yourself hooked up with a fish that’s outsmarted most other anglers. Brown trout particularly are notorious for spotting you, well before you come close to making your first cast. Remember this when you’re on water where they’re abundant, and take extra effort to move slow and stealthy to increase your odds. Kent Klewein Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@ginkandgasoline.com Sign Up For Our Weekly Newsletter!
Read More »Saturday’s Shoutout / Chub Hatch Beard Chronicles – Carlson & Crapo
This week’s Saturday shoutout I bring you a sweet fly fishing film that’s part 1 of 8 in an upcoming series by Collin Carlson and Marc Crapo. I may be biased because I call these guys friends, but I can tell you with absolute certainty that I enjoyed every second of this video. Check it out now and I guarantee you’ll be hooked for the entire series. Well done gents, well done. Montana Chub Hatch Beard Chronicles 2012 Sneak Peak Finpusher.com If you’ve already seen this video, watch it again. Keep it Reel, Kent Klewein Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@ginkandgasoline.com Sign Up For Our Weekly Newsletter!
Read More »The Speed Knot
Little things make a difference. When you watch a really good fisherman you notice a lot of those little things, the details that add up to kicking ass on the water. My friend Will Sands is like that. One of those super technical fisherman who has thought through the smallest details. I’ve always liked the way Will ties a clinch knot. The first time I saw him do it, it was so fast it looked like magic. In a day of fishing to picky trout where you change flies a lot I wouldn’t be surprises if it added up to an extra thirty minutes of fishing, and Will can catch a lot of fish in thirty minutes. Will slows it down for you in this video. Thanks to Taylor Creek Fly Shopfor lending Will to me for an afternoon. Louis Cahill Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@ginkandgasoline.com Sign Up For Our Weekly Newsletter!
Read More »Streamers Aren’t Just For Big Water
Fly fishing to picky educated trout that get pounded daily by fly anglers, can get many of us flustered at times. It’s easy to find ourselves following everyone else’s lead on the water when it comes to pattern choice. Blue ribbon trout streams in Colorado come to mind, where the key to success is often sight-fishing with tiny nymphs on fine tippet. But even fishing the right fly patterns, you still are going to have to deal with hard to read intricate currents above and below the surface, of which, will constantly be trying to compromise your drift and fly placement. This is often the key factor in whether you fool or tip off the fish that your offering is not the real deal. I’ll never forget a day on the upper Roaring Fork a couple years back that left me humbled to the core. I had no problem locating numerous trophy class fish. Hell, they were everywhere it seemed like, and often only a couple rod lengths away from me. Unfortunately, the majority of them were holding in all the wrong places, where it was almost impossible to get a good presentation and drift with my flies. I’d make what I thought was a perfect cast, and right when my flies were about to enter the target zone of the fish, I would lose my drift and the fish would slide off to the slide and give me the finger. An 11′ switch rod with a extra long leader was what I needed that day, but unfortunately, I left that rod at home. Those big beautiful fish on the Roaring Fork, gave me a whole new appreciation for PHD educated trout. They all seemed to know exactly where to sit and feed, just out of fly anglers reach. I … Continue reading
Read More »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 … Continue reading
Read More »Photo Caption Contest Winner Announced – Raise Your Drinks
Thank you to everyone that responded to last weeks Photo Caption Contest. It was great opening all those emails and reading the hilarious comments. It was a tough decision with 47 submissions, but I drank a couple cold beverages and decided on the winner. Cheers to all who took the time to participate. And the Winner that will receive a Redington Delta 5/6 Reel is…… Congrats to Rick Crawford for his entry…. “Guys Fishing – It’s bad enough they’ve out fished us, but now they’re out-drinking us!” Thank you all for continuing to follow and support Gink & Gasoline. We look forward to holding more contests this coming year. Rick, please email us your address so we can get your prize in the mail. Keep it Reel, Kent Klewein Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@ginkandgasoline.com Sign Up For Our Weekly Newsletter!
Read More »Poonshine
It’s sunny and sixty-eight degrees. Just a little breeze. It’s mid-April. A perfect day for fishing in Bozeman, Montana. The trouble is, we’re not in Bozeman. It’s actually ten degrees warmer in Bozeman. I know this because my buddy Rich is looking at the weather on his iPhone instead of fishing. And why not? When it’s sixty-eight degrees in the Florida Keys in mid-April you’re about as likely to see Santa Claus as a tarpon. At least that’s how our first day had gone. Beautiful day for a boat ride. That’s how fishing in the Keys is, you book your days and take your chances. I’m used to it. I do a lot of off-season fishing with friends in Florida and I have had some phenomenal days but I’ve taken a lot of boat rides too. For Rich it’s a little tougher. When you fly all the way from Montana to the Keys in, what should be, peak tarpon season it fair to have some expectations but as all fishermen know, expectation is a tricky business. It’s about nine-thirty on our second day. It should be pushing ninety and we should be hip deep in tarpon but the weather has screwed us. Rich is already stressed over some issues at work. A dozen emails on his phone and the bad weather aren’t helping. If we are lucky it’ll make it to seventy today. Lacking tarpon, we have chosen to be hip deep in beer. We were clearly all thinking the same thing this morning because we all brought beer and lots of it, even our guide. That should tell you something. In fact we were so focused on the beer that we forgot to bring lunch so we’re on a liquid diet since early in the morning. We may not … Continue reading
Read More »Sunday Classic / Striped Bass, Making The Best of Global Warming
I’ll be honest. This is not going to make you feel any better about climate change. But you’ve got to get your silver linings where you can find ’em. With temperatures in the south east going from miserable to intolerable, a lot of what used to be trout water is rapidly becoming, well, not so much trout water any longer. The upshot of this is that some of these challenged rivers are finding new life as warm water fisheries. There are striped bass in many of the lakes in the region and as water temp soar, they run up the rivers in search of cold water. Some of these rivers are getting pretty decent runs. Five to ten pound fish are pretty common but there are big boys too. Up to fifty pounds. Stripers are a great species on fly and a big one will keep you busy for a few minutes. Here’s my buddy James with a twenty six pounder. Louis Cahill Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@ginkandgasoline.com Sign Up For Our Weekly Newsletter!
Read More »Saturday Shoutout / Fishbeer
If your looking for answers, straight answers anyway, don’t click this link. If you want to read about how, where, when or even why to fish, don’t click this link. If dark thoughts, drug abuse or the vague threat of violence make you uneasy, seriously, don’t click this link! If your not interested in brilliant writing that, most of the time, has something to do with fly fishing, unique perspectives that transport you to other worlds or quirky tales that hang in your mind like a splinter, Definitely don’t click this link! FISHBEER Get some! Louis Cahill Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@ginkandgasoline.com Sign Up For Our Weekly Newsletter!
Read More »The Tarpon White Tiger
A while back Bruce Chard showed us how to tie his kick ass bone fish fly The White Tiger. That fly is a bonefish killer. Today Bruce shares his latest and greatest tarpon fly The Tarpon White Tiger. Bruce’s fly tying skills have been off the chart ever since he saw Siegfried and Roy in Vegas. FABULOUS! Louis Cahill Gink & Gasoline www.ginkandgasoline.com hookups@ginkandgasoline.com Sign Up For Our Weekly Newsletter!
Read More »