The Snap-T Cast With 2-Hand Rod: Video
The Snap-T cast is an essential for any 2-hand angler.
You really only need to know a couple of casts to be an effective angler with spey or switch rods. One of the casts you just can’t live without is the Snap-T. This easy and powerful cast lets you launch the fly when the current is off your casting shoulder. It generates the power needed to cast heavy sink tips but works equally as well with light dry lines.
WATCH THIS VIDEO TO LEARN THE SNAP-T CAST FOR 2-HAND RODS.
Read More »Fishing The Woolly Bugger
By Louis Cahill
There are a lot of “right ways” to fish a Woolly Bugger.
I know, I know, this is super basic but after we published the article “The Woolly Bugger Isn’t all that, Or is it?,” I got emails asking how to fish the Bugger. I’ve joked about writing this article plenty of times and now I think I was being a jerk. We obviously have readers who want the info, so here is is.
One of the emails I got asked specifically if the Bugger should be fished on a nine foot tapered leader or a five foot level leader. My immediate reaction was, “It depends on how you’re fishing it.”
The reason the Woolly Bugger is possibly the greatest fly pattern ever tied is that there is almost no wrong way to fish it. It’s one of those rare patterns that looks like so many different types of food, it’s hard to make it unappealing. And not just for trout, I firmly believe you can catch anything that swims with a Woolly Bugger. I regularly wear out bonefish on a tan bugger.
For the purpose of this article I’m going to focus on techniques for trout fishing. The Bugger can be fished as a nymph or a streamer and even an emerger. If you figure out how to tie one that will float, I guarantee it will work as a dry under the right conditions.
Let’s look at some techniques for fishing the Woolly Bugger is some of these different roles.
FISHING THE WOOLLY BUGGER AS A NYMPH
It’s hard to beat a dead drifted Bugger for catching trout. Sink it with a split shot or build weight into the fly to get it down to the strike zone. Fish it under an indicator or high sticked on a tight line. Whatever approach you prefer, with the right amount of weight, a dead drifted bugger will produce.
Some of the food items a bugger can pass for, when fished in this way, are stonefly nymphs, helgermites, craneflys, damsel and dragon flies, mayfly nymphs (in appropriate sizes), crawfish, leaches, baitfish, and tadpoles. The dead drift will almost always work but if you think about that list some other techniques become obvious.
Remember I mentioned emergers?
Read More »How To Get New Fly Line For $5, Or Pretty Close
Think you need a new fly Line? Spend $5 First.
I was out fishing with my buddy Scott the other day. He broke off his rig while I was on the oars so I handed him my five weight to fish. Scott took one cast and asked,
“What fly line is this? I’ve got to get one!”
What Scott didn’t know was that I had fished that same line just two days earlier and it had been miserable. The line stuck to the water and the guides. It felt like you could barely pull it through the guides, let alone shoot it. It was filthy.
“It’s a RIO Gold,” I told him. “But what you like about it is that I dressed it last night.”
It’s such a simple thing to clean and dress a line, but so many anglers don’t do it. At least not regularly enough. I’m guilty too but at least I know how to fix the problem. And now, so do you. Before you spend $90 on a new fly line try this out. I’ll bet it solves a lot of your problems.
HOW TO CLEAN AND DRESS A LINE
Start by cleaning the line. Putting line dressing on a dirty line just makes a slurry. It’s best to clean your line often and so I keep it simple. I use finger wipes. The kind you get at BBQ joints. Individually packaged, alcohol towelettes. I bought a case of 1000 of them for $7 years ago. I keep them in my boat bag so I can clean my line any time. It takes seconds.
Mucilin-Silicone-Green-1Once the line is clean
Read More »The Muddler
By Jason Tucker
It was a beautiful, bright day, the river running high and clean.
I was fishing near the mountainous junction of the Carolinas and Georgia on a beautiful trout stream and not having much luck. I caught a couple of small stockers on a nymph rig, but the bright sun and high water seemed to be keeping the bugs at bay, and the fish weren’t very active, either.
Halfway through the morning I missed a hook-set which sent my rig high into the rhododendrons lining the bank. I’m not as good of a climber as I used to be, thanks to evolution, so I snapped it off and considered my options. As I dug out my nymph box to re-tie, I spied a lone muddler minnow lying in the bottom of the pocket. I cut my leader shorter and tied it on rather than going through the rigamarole of tying up another two-fly dropper rig.
I wasn’t in what I would call classic streamer water, but rather, in a fast, broken cascade of the type that regularly punctuates these mountain streams. Never one to waste water, I started fishing the pockets before moving to the big hole above me. On the third cast a shadow moved, and then materialized
Read More »Patagonia’s Endless Summer
It turns out there is a cure for winter.
The sky is blue. The sun is warm. Red stone cliffs rise above deep green water. Rolling hills covered in sage brush, or what looks like sage brush, roll uninterrupted as far as the eye can see. Twenty-inch brown trout rise out every green pocket to eat big bushy dry flies. It’s January and at home pipes are bursting in my basement.
I could swear I was in Montana. It looks so much like Montana. I didn’t expect that. Just like Montana summer, until you spot a group of llamas resting by the river or a snow covered volcano or a condor sailing like a pterodactyl overhead or your guide says something like, “give it to me please, the fly.”
So much about Patagonia is familiar and so much strange. The language, the customs and the wildlife may seem strange, but rivers are rivers and trout, trout. My fly knows what to do here and it does it time and time again.
We float beautiful wild rivers and never see another boat. We fish long days. The sun is up late here, less than five-hundred miles from Antarctica. The water is so clear you can count the pebbles at the bottom of the deepest runs. The air is warm and sweet and even the fish seem to be carried away in the innocence of summer. I drink wine and eat dolce de leche as the crawlspace at home fills with water.
At night we gather around a fire and watch a goat brown on a spit. We drink too much and sleep under the southern cross. I hear Crosby Stills and Nash singing “Southern Cross” in my head all week. The guides tell stories in Spanish long after I have drifted off. They are full of life and love of this land and these waters. It’s easy to imagine that it’s always summer here. That the pipes never freeze.
Patagonia with its red stag and giant birds, its wine and its chocolate,
Read More »Fly Fishing Runoff Can Mean Fish On
by Johnny Spillane
HAVE YOU EVER SHOWED UP AT A RIVER AND FOUND THAT INSTEAD OF THE CRYSTAL CLEAR WATER YOU WERE EXPECTING, YOU’RE STARING AT CHOCOLATE MILK?
Here in the Rocky Mountain this is a relatively common experience. It can happen for a number of reasons, huge rainstorms, someone doing river work above you or just your normal spring runoff. Don’t fret; while it might not be ideal, here are a few tips that can help you find some fish.
If the water is only slightly off color, you can basically use the same flies that you would if it was clear, just make everything a size or two larger. Instead of a size 18, put on a 16 or a 14. If that is not working, try adding a little bit more flash to your rig. We typically use flies with very little flash, but if the water is off color it can make a big difference in the amount of fish you stick just by changing to something that will reflect a little more light. If you were using a pheasant tail, try tying on a flash back pheasant tail and sometimes that is the only thing you will need to change.
If the water looks like chocolate milk, go big and go flashy. Those size 22 zebra midges that you planned on tying to 6x, that aint gonna work. I like to tie on a large white zonker and dead drift it with some sort of big buggy stonefly like a Pats Rubber leg. In off color water, fish will lose some of their inhibitions and hit anything that they can see. You just have to make sure that they see it. This is also a great time to experiment with different streamers that make noise, anything that will help draw a fish towards you fly.
Fishing runoff can also be one of the best times to hit a river. If it is fully blown, it might be better to explore other options but if a river is on the downside of its peak flows and it is starting to clear up, fishing can be phenomenal. Fish that are spread out all over the river during normal flows will congregate in areas of softer water during runoff and usually if you find one fish, you find 20. When the river is really high
Read More »Fishing Mud Lines For Big Fish
By: Garner Reid
MUD LINES ARE EXCELLENT PLACES FOR FISH TO HIDE.
I split my guiding year in half, targeting trout from fall to spring and the rest of the year pursuing summer run striped bass in my local river systems. River run stripers offer their own unique set of challenges for the angler, and definitely for the guide.
When someone gets in my boat for a day of striper fishing, one of the first things I try to explain is where these fish like to hold. I tell them to start out like they are streamer fishing for a big brown trout. When someone is pursuing a new species of fish, like stripers in a river, finding that common thread is the key to angling success.
Just the other week I had the pleasure of guiding a new client who was quite an accomplished angler. Having caught many fish in all the exotic locations that are on my personal bucket list. As we floated down the river it quickly became evident this guy knew how to fish. He was ripping big streamers accurately into all the nasty stuff that a big fish ought to hold in.
This was producing a few nice schoolie sized stripes but nothing huge. Halfway through our float we approached a small feeder creek quartering in at a 45 degree angle to the left of the boat. Heavy rains the night before had the creek dumping chocolate milk into the river. Typically not what a fly fisherman likes to see.
The muddy creek water was thick like oil, being pushed up against the clean water by the current, which carried a defined wall of muddy water down the left side of the river for hundreds of yards.
I rowed the boat into position perpendicular to the creek mouth and dropped anchor, told the guy to make a big cast across the creek mouth and let his fly sink, followed with an aggressive retrieve. A few strips later
Small Stream Recon Part II
By Jason Tucker
More tips on finding small streams that pay off big!
For the sake of space we split the subject of small-stream recon into two parts. In the previous installment we discussed using state websites, online maps, printed maps and atlases, and guidebooks to find small-stream fishing. Click here to read it if you missed it.
Electronics
Online maps and and phone apps are getting better and better, and service providers are continually expanding service even into the backcountry. Google maps is a great tool to use at home with a guidebook and DeLorme atlas. You can mark spots on the map, then open the app on your phone and follow the directions all the way to your stream. It even has GPS connectivity that allows it to work in areas without coverage.
Another useful app available for a subscription is OnX Maps. It is not a navigation app. Instead it identifies public lands and private land ownership and shows where you are on the landscape. You can positively identify unmarked public lands you can use for access, and identifies landowners in case you feel like asking for permission. It was developed for hunters, but now even real estate agents use it to accurately identify property boundaries. I think it will open up a lot of water to anglers who never realized there was public access to certain streams.
Fly Shops and Friends
I’m lumping these two resources together for a reason. Both can be great sources of intel, but you need to be careful not to abuse their largesse. Fly shops are in the business of promoting their fishery, and will have local maps, information on water conditions, hatches and flies, and sell guidebooks and other useful tools.
However, they are often promoting larger systems with well-known access points. Think that big trout stream that runs next to the paved highway or county road, gets stocked on a regular basis and is almost solid with canoes and tubers on holiday weekends. They are often a bit more reticent to talk about small streams for good reason. If you can somehow demonstrate respect for the resource and the ability to keep your mouth closed they may be more forthcoming.
Friends can be an even more touchy area. A lot of angling friendships have ended by someone burning a spot they were told in confidence.
Read More »The Incredible Exploding Line Holder
Is a fly reel more than a line holder?
I’m sure you’ve heard the old adage, “A fly tell is just a line holder.” I have certainly heard it plenty, and I have a visceral reaction, similar to nails on a chalk board, every time. It is a great way to tell everyone that you’ve never caught a fish over twelve inches. Even in trout fishing the fly reel is an important piece of equipment and choosing one is an important choice.
For any fish big enough that you can’t lift it by the tippet, a reel with a good drag is key for wearing fish down effectively and landing them quickly, which is better for the fish and increases your chance of landing it. It is important to understand that a “good drag” is not simply one which is powerful. It is usually more important that the drag is smooth with little startup inertia. This protects your tippet and keeps a consistent, safe pressure on the fish.
Of course, the more powerful the fish, the more important the reel is. When you start fishing in saltwater, the reel becomes crucial. Not only are the fish much stronger, but the conditions are brutal on gear, making failure much more likely. I tell anglers all the time that it’s better to come to the salt with a cheap rod and expensive reel than the other way round.
No matter how many times I say this there will still be folks who don’t believe me.
One of them came on my Bonefish School in January. A great guy who I have known for several years. He had bought a large trout reel on sale at Cabela’s and asked me what I thought about using it for bonefish.
“It’ll explode,” I told him.
Read More »Some Days It’s All About the Twitch
Some days trout need more than just a well placed fly in their field of vision and a drag-free drift to persuade them to eat.
When you’re working water that you’re certain holds trout, and a standard drag-free drift isn’t getting the job done, try imparting subtle movement on your fly/flies to trigger bites. The best way to execute this is by using well timed rod tip twitches, during the drift, when your fly is moving through high percentage trout holding water. Done properly, it will give your fly that extra “alive and life-like appeal” and that often will give trout the green light that your fly is a natural and not an impostor.
Last week, I had the honor of fly fishing with Rob Parkins (WY & ID veteran guide) and Zack Dalton (Farbanks Sales Manager) on the South Fork of the Snake River during an epic salmonfly hatch.
Read More »