Farm Waters
By Ethan Smith
If we want clean water we need to pay farmers to clean it up.
What? Yes, let’s pay farmers a premium over the current farm subsidy program to help keep our rivers clean! That sounds crazy right? Well it isn’t, let me explain.
The farm bill and its subsidies are currently clean water’s worst enemy. The farm subsidies began with their heart in the right place. They help save American farmers by guaranteeing their crops with insurance. So if something bad happens on the farm like a flood, the farmer still gets paid. I can support that as a concept, however every piece of legislation has some unintended consequences especially when there is finance involved.
In this case the unintended consequences of the farm bill and it’s crop guarantees is rivers with excessive silt contamination and high nutrient loading, leading to toxic algae blooms, poor fish habitat and crappy fishing.
So how does the farm bill lead to these poor fishing conditions?
Let’s say a farmer has some land in a floodplain that floods one out of three years. It wouldn’t make sense for him to plant that land under normal free market conditions because the profits from the two years of successful growth would be wiped out by his losses every third year when it floods. So in theory, he would most likely leave them as wetlands. But in our warped incentive world he doesn’t care because every third year when that part of his land floods he collects insurance money from the government and gets paid anyway. So he doesn’t have to worry about flooding. Either way he makes money.
So that farmer plows under anything and everything he can plant. More land equals more money for him because there is no risk to him planting a wetland with crops even if it floods. It’s a win win situation. Drive over any bridge and there is a good chance that there is farm land adjacent planted with crops that is clearly in the flood plain, the farm subsidy at work.
So how can we change this?
Read More »You Can Mouse Just About Anywhere
Eight years ago, I got fed up with reading articles about people all around the country and abroad fly fishing with mouse patterns and landing truly giant trout.
It seemed every medium I read or watched, there were people showcasing how productive mouse fishing could be. The only problem was, where I lived in North Georgia, as well as the majority of my neighboring states, I heard very little about anyone fishing mouse patterns. You’d find a few patterns here and there in the fly bins at the local fly shops, but in actuality, I think most of those were being fished on farm ponds for bass not for trout. I couldn’t take it any longer, so I decided to go on a mousing binge, strictly fishing mouse patterns on my days off. I really wanted to figure out if mouse patterns would work just as well on my home waters as they did on blue ribbon caliber trout streams.
My first big brown trout fishing a mouse pattern.
It didn’t take long to find success. My second trip out I landed a 26 1/2″ wild brown trout on my home tailwater. It was one of the biggest documented fly caught brown trout on the surface that anyone could remember for quite some time. I then moved on to some of my favorite small mountain streams where I’d never heard of anyone tying on and fishing a mouse pattern. Again, my mouse experiment yielded incredible success, and I quickly turned into a mouse fishing enthusiast. I didn’t know if I was having luck because no other anglers were fishing these big mouse patterns, or if it was simply that very few anglers in my area were willing to accept mice were regularly being preyed upon by our local trout. I didn’t know for sure, but in all honesty, I didn’t really care. Success was success, and I was going to milk it before everyone caught on.
Here’s What I learned about Fishing Mouse Patterns that first year.
Read More »Muscle Tension in the fly Cast: Video
You can’t make a good fly cast if you are tense, but muscle tension is necessary, at the right time.
Do you squeeze the grip of the fly rod when you cast? At some point, you should be. I’ve seen a lot of casters who use a white knuckle grip when they cast. You can’t make a good cast that way. It’s important to be loose and relaxed when you’re casting, but if your grip doesn’t tighten at the end of the stroke, you’re leaving casting power on the table.
A good fly caster’s grip pulses with the cast, becoming firm at the end of both the forward and back strokes. Not just the grip but the muscles of the arm and core should come tight for an effective stop. It’s all about timing and when you get it right, the line just goes.
WATCH THE VIDEO FOR SOME TIPS ON MUSCLE TENSION IN THE FLY CAST.
Read More »Bonefish Beginner
By Bob Reece
After twenty five years of fly fishing for freshwater species, I recently threw my first casts into salt water.
As is always the case, hindsight is 20/20. While I had plenty of success, there are several things that I wish I would have done prior to my first saltwater trip.
I’ve always been a huge proponent of practicing your casting. Throughout my time guiding freshwater trips, it is consistently one of the most common elements that holds anglers back from having greater success. While I did practice a handful of times prior to my trip, I should have practiced more. I’m a confident caster with lighter weight rods, but never having cast an eight or nine weight left me lacking the muscle memory of working with a heavier rod. As part of this practice, it cannot be overstated how important it is to have the ability to effectively present the fly with a backhand cast.
In addition to the casting itself, I wish I would have practiced my footwork. In the vast majority of freshwater situations, we as anglers target slowly cruising or posted up feeding fish. The rapid directional change by the bonefish was a drastic difference from any other fly fishing experience that I’ve had. The need to change the path of my line and body position mid cast challenged me. Extra practice time with this factor would have helped take advantage of opportunities that I missed.
As a newby to salt water flies, I had no idea what I was doing in this category. I phoned a friend.
Read More »Dehumidifiers Keep My Fly Fishing Gear Fresh & Dry
It used to be an ongoing battle all season long to keep my fly fishing gear dry and odor free.
There’s nothing worse than having to slide into a pair of stinky, sweaty waders that are still damp from the day before, struggle to slide your feet into a frozen solid pair of wading boots during the winter, or head out fishing on a rainy day with a rain jacket that’s already soaked to the bone. A couple years ago, I finally got smart and bought a dehumidifier, and now all I have to do is drop my gear on the floor next to the dehumidifier in the evening, and it’s waiting for me the next morning 100% dry and odor free. I’m telling you, it’s like heaven on earth, and I guarantee, you’ll find a whole new appreciation and respect for dehumidifiers when you take the leap of faith and put one to work.
Dehumidifiers are also great for
Read More »The Eat
Fly fishing is all about the eat.
I remember a day floating the Snake River, about two decades ago. There was a freshly fallen tree jutting out at ninety degrees to the bank. Deep in the safe confines of its branches was a nice cutthroat, rising steadily.
“It’s an impossible fish,” my guide told me but I can’t resist a rising fish.
It took a couple of tries but I made a beautiful curve cast that fed the fly in through the branches and the big cuttie ate. Of course, the guide was right, it was an impossible fish. At least it was impossible to land but I got him to eat and that’s all I cared about.
I still feel that way. I never cry over a fish I don’t land and I don’t count the ones I do. I just like to make them eat. For me that’s a win. I know it, the fish knows it. Everything else is secondary. As rewarding as the eat is, not all eats are equal. I like feeding tough fish and I like a savage eat.
At the point where those two things intersect, you will find my favorite freshwater fish. The Golden Dorado.
I was hooked before I ever got started with dorado. I’ll never forget the first dorado that ate my fly. It scared the pants off me. I’d never seen anything like it. Not even a barracuda eat compared. Pure, unchecked aggression. It was fabulous. Factor in that the dorado is a truly difficult fish to fool, and by far the most physically demanding I’ve fished for, and you have an eat of epic proportions. I never thought I’d best that first dorado eat, until last week.
I was fishing the Upper Parana river
Read More »Being There
I’VE BEEN ASKED A HUNDRED TIMES HOW I TOOK THIS PHOTO. THE ANSWER IS REALLY SIMPLE.
I took several years. I had this idea in my head for a long time. I wanted to show the pure mayhem of a jumping tarpon. I wanted tell the whole story. The power, the speed, the violence of it, but also the story of a great guide and angler working together. There’s only one way to show all of that. You have to observe the scene from a nearly impossible angle.
It was obvious that I would need two boats. That’s not the tricky part. I also needed two guides. Two guides who know each other very well. Who can predict each other’s actions. Guides who could consistently put me on big tarpon. Most importantly, I needed guides who could put their egos aside. Not get worked up about who was in the photo or who got the fish, and most of all, two guides who didn’t mind taking each other to their precious tarpon banks.
Those two guides are Bruce Chard, who you see in the photo, and Joel Dickey who is masterfully putting me where I need to be to get the shot. If there are heroes in this story, it’s them. I was simply in the right place at the right time. It was their hard work that put me there.
Of course I can’t forget Kent Klewein and the absolutely perfect performance he showed on the bow. Fighting a tarpon like this one, nearly 150 pounds, is no walk in the park. The authority Kent showed in managing that fish and soliciting jumps from her was super human. Getting the right people on your team always makes you look good.
So there we are. I’m laying on the bow with the camera. Bruce is yelling, “She’s going right, now left. She’s coming up. Get ready!” Joel is goosing the boat forward then back, turning hard to one side then the other. I’m glad I was laying down. When the big fish came up, 1/4000 sec shutter speed and an index finger were all I needed.
It sounds like we just ran out there and took the shot but it wasn’t that simple. It took a couple of years of driving to the keys, arranging two boat trips and putting down the rod to pick up the camera when the fishing got hot. There were some epic failures.
Like the time when I made a cast just as the angler on the other boat hooked up. I stuck the rod between my legs and picked up the camera, which was around my neck. I got one frame off before, you guessed it, a tarpon ate my fly, still floating in the water. I almost lost my eleven weight.
The story of what happened to the photo next still amazes me.
Read More »Listen to the Fish
Sometimes all fly fisherman need to do to find success when their not having luck is slow down, and take the time to listen to the fish.
Trout can’t speak to us in words, but they do often provide us with subtle clues from their behavior that can help us catch them. That is, if we’re paying close enough attention to pick up on them. Not long ago, I was on the water guiding one of my favorite clients during an unusually cold early fall overcast day. A cold front had rolled in the night before and it had completely shut down all bug activity on the surface. There wasn’t so much as a single midge in the air, so we opted for drifting nymphs below the surface and began catching trout. As we broke for lunch, I noticed the clouds beginning to break up and the sun starting to find its way down to the ground in spots. Refueled, we headed up to a productive bend in the river to resume our fishing. As we crept down to the waters edge, I saw a large slurp from a big fish on the surface. It came at the tail-end of the bend, from a bath tub sized spot where the sun was shining down on the water. Both of us froze in total shock and amazement. It was the first surface activity we had seen all day and we waited with anticipation to see if the big fish would rise again. A few minutes went by with nothing. I scanned the water to see if I could see what the big fish had taken on the surface, but I saw no signs of food drifting in the current.
Convinced, the big fish rise was an omen, I snipped off the nymphs, added a couple feet of tippet and tied on a big black foam beetle. I handed the rod to my client and instructed him to quietly get into position and present the beetle slightly upstream of where the big fish rose. He obliged with a perfect cast and we watched the beetle intently as it began slowly drifting through the big fish’s kitchen. Nothing happened at first, but just when both of us were about to give up on the drift, we saw a large wake heading downstream towards the beetle. Next, a huge head broke the surface with jaws wide open and the beetle was devoured. God save the queen, the hook was set and we battled the fish up and down the river for several minutes before bringing that vibrant red-striped 24″ rainbow trout to the net. That fish was absolutely beautiful but the take was even more. I’ll never forget being abel to stare down the mouth of the fish just before it chomped down on the beetle. It was a front row seat to an amazing rise that you don’t see very often.
Here’s the funny part. We worked our way upstream fishing that beetle in several more spots just like the one that produced the big rainbow, but it produced no take, not even a single follow. We eventually snipped off the dry and were forced to fish subsurface again to resume catching fish. Next time you see a random rise on the river and you’re rigged up with nymphs, I don’t care how horrible the dry fly conditions are, listen to what the fish is trying to tell you and tie on a dry fly. Doing so, you may experience the same success we did. It doesn’t work all the time, but more times than not.
Examples of fish language
Read More »Bonefishing: No Dancing Allowed!
By Louis Cahill
This is the number one mistake I see that keeps anglers from catching bonefish.
I know it’s simple but it absolutely couldn’t be more important. I see it happen time after time. Anglers loose their shot at a bonefish and usually don’t even know why. It gets passed off with, “Man their spooky today!” or “Something ran that fish off,” when the truth is, it was you.
The sound of a careless step on the bow is enough to spook a wary bonefish. The rocking of the boat by an angler casting with locked knees will spook a fish who isn’t smart enough to find his own tail. I see it all the time.
WATCH THIS VIDEO AND I’LL SHOW YOU HOW TO KEEP IT QUIET AND CATCH MORE BONEFISH.
Read More »The Double Figure 8 Loop knot
Loop knots give your fly superior action in the water.
There are several good options for creating a loop knot but tied in heavy salt water tippet, like you use for tarpon, most get quite bulky. In the first of three videos on better salt water knots, Capt. Joel Dickey shows us how to tie the Double Figure 8 Loop Knot. An excellent choice for strength, size and action.
WATCH THE VIDEO AND LEARN TO TIE THE DOUBLE FIGURE 8 LOOP KNOT!
Read More »