Bonefish Body Language
By Owen Plair
Being able to read the body language of any fish is by far one of the best ways to anticipate the bite, especially when it comes to feeding a bonefish.
Recently I had the opportunity to experience bonefishing on South Andros, Bahamas, and learned a lot during the week about how the body language of a bonefish can visually tell you what’s happening when you can’t see the bite.
From skating flies for Atlantic Salmon in Russia to targeting migrating Tarpon in Islamorada, and countless species in between, watching a fish open their mouth, and eat the fly was something I had always been accustomed to when sight fishing. I had never thought about sight fishing Bonefish and the fact that you can never really see that little white mouth open up and swallow the fly. There was only one fish during the entire week I could see open her mouth and swallow the fly because by chance it was 10ft off the bow on a cloudy day.
The first 4 or 5 fish of the trip I hooked simply by listening for the guide telling me, “Set mon, set!” It’s amazing how fast your brain and muscles work together when pulling the fly line tight to a bonefish’s bottom lip. Hooking those first few fish of the trip was amazing but the feeling I had, as an angler, not being able to anticipate the bite drove me absolutely nuts! I simply just couldn’t figure out what the guide was seeing that I wasn’t and I soon started to ask questions after every fish, learning through experience on the water with my guide.
One of the most important things I learned about reading a bonefish bite was looking for the sudden stop.
Most times in fishing when the fish stops behind your fly they’re stopping for a reason. Either they’re eating your fly or changing their mind and turning off. I found that with bonefish, it was that the best way to anticipate the bite. Every time a fish would stop I was ready for the long strip set. The bite was still invisible to me but I learned the “stop” which helped me anticipate the fish eating and prepare myself for the set. It also took some time to get used to stopping the fly for the fish to eat. Most other species I’ve targeted always like a constant moving fly.
Another key body language
Read More »Sealing The Deal, Landing Bonefish
It’s time to seal the deal on that trophy bonefish.
Now that we’ve covered a few of the fundamentals of bone fishing it’s time to seal the deal. Landing saltwater fish is a little different from landing a trout. For one thing saltwater guides don’t carry nets. Try to net a tarpon some time and you’ll see why. When bonefishing the angler is usually expected to land the fish himself. The guide will be busy looking for the next fish.
It’s not difficult to land a bonefish but doing it wrong often ends in a broken rod. Even a small bone is a powerful fish and he’s going to freak out when you try to land him. If you put too much pressure on the rod tip it’ll snap. It’s called high sticking and unlike the high sticking trout anglers do when nymphing, it’s a bad idea.
The trick is to keep enough line out of the rod tip that you can reach your leader without forcing the tip to bend hard. In this video our buddy Bruce Chard shows you how to do it right.
WATCH THE VIDEO!
Read More »What’s in a net?
By Justin Pickett
My indicator drops below the turbulent surface and my rod bends over as I come tight to a nice rainbow trout.
Her initial reaction took her further into the head of the deep run, shaking her head violently in an attempt to escape the grasp of my hook. As this trout began to hunker down in the current, I applied some low, downstream side pressure, which she didn’t like at all. Suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, she darted downstream, leaving me in the rear-view with zero intentions of returning.
I was fishing with my buddy, Blake, who is new to fly fishing. This was the first fish that he had seen on a hot, downstream run. As this rainbow steadily peeled line from my reel, I looked over at Blake and instructed him to grab the net and get after it, but just as Blake began making his move downstream this trout shot through a small chute with several branches that hung just above the current on the opposite bank. As I reeled down to keep up, I waded my way towards the obstacle that I was sure was going to end this fight. I had my buddy come to the downstream side of the chute so I could pass my rod under and through the branches. After successfully making it through all the foliage without breaking off, I let Blake take over the fight.
I grabbed the net and hit the bank running so I could gain some ground on this crazy trout. About thirty yards later, I finally made it well downstream of her and stepped further into the water. I knew if I could get in front of her, then I would likely turn her back upstream and stop this crazy train. With her head now turned back upstream, and, seemingly, calmer, we were able to play this fish into the net quite easily. No doubt, this fish was likely as worn out as we were after all that!
Fast forward a couple of days and I found myself having a conversation with Louis about anglers who feel that if they themselves don’t net their own fish, then they consider that catch “incomplete”. It’s as if they feel the need to put an asterisk by that memory because they either asked for, or received, assistance to land a fish.
While I can certainly respect these anglers’ stance on the matter, for me, it doesn’t take away from my experience. Am I always going to have someone net a fish for me? Well no, but it will also always depend on the situation at hand. I’m not going to have someone net a native brook trout for me, but, in my opinion, there are times when having a good net man is beneficial to both angler and fish. In reference to the scenario above, if I
Read More »Why ask why? Try dry flies
By Jeff Hickman
CATCHING A STEELHEAD BY SKATING A DRY FLY IS THE COOLEST WAY TO CATCH THEM.
I always have said that one fish on the dry is worth ten on wet flies…but why? It’s not like it’s impossible to catch them on dries. It can actually be quite productive at times but people are often just too afraid to try. If you only have one day to fish there’s a lot of pressure to catch fish, so why opt for the most challenging method? Well, there is, in fact, only one way to catch a steelhead on a dry fly and it start with tying it on your line!
Is a steelhead eating a fly off of the surface that much more unbelievable than a fish eating a fly swung just under the surface, or for that matter, a fly swung deep with a sink tip? It’s not. In fact, I think that there are times when a dry fly can work better. The disturbance and wake it cuts through the water’s surface can excite fish and elicit savage grabs.
The visual display you get when watching the fly skate across the surface is super fun and you can learn a lot by seeing where your fly actually is. Watching a fish come airborne for it, slap it, thrash at it, boil on it or just gently suck the fly down is one of, if not the single, most exciting experiences there is in fishing. Seeing them come for the fly is super exciting even if you don’t hook them. It is that extra element of playing with the fish that is the coolest for me!
photo2But what is even better
Read More »How Fly Rods, And Hearts, Break
Broken fly rods are a fact of life, but there are things you can do to stop it from happening to you.
It happens to all of us. We all know the sinking feeling of holding that treasured favorite fly rod, shattered in our hands. Most of us can’t help but form emotional attachments to our gear. Favorite rods and reels become old friends, with whom we share memories of great days, special fish and life lessons learned. Warrantees are great, but it’s hard to replace an old friend.
I hear a lot of anglers complain about specific rods or rod brands, saying things like, “ I’ll never but another ‘Brand X’ after breaking two in a month.” It’s a delicate topic to address without hurting someone’s feelings, but the truth is, fly rods don’t break for no reason. While a high performance carbon fiber rod is certainly more fragile than its soulful fiberglass counterpart and a full spectrum between, the truth is that anglers break rods.
With extremely rare exception I have never seen a rod break for no apparent reason, even the ones I’ve broken my self.
If you are stewing over that statement, I ask you to bear with me for a bit and entertain the possibility that I’m right. Building and fishing bamboo rods for decades has taught me a thing or two about breaking rods and shedding tears. I’ve seen a lot of rods break and I even saw one catch fire and burn. (Long story.) In the interest of keeping those great fly rods fishing, I’ll share with you the most common reasons fly rods break and how to avoid them.
6 Reasons fly rods break
Physical Trauma
This covers some very obvious issues as well as some very tricky ones. With no scientific evidence I’ll say that the three most common causes for broken fly rods are ceiling fans, car doors and spurned spouses. If you’ve run afoul of any of these, you know it instantly. The remedy is simple. Be more careful handling your rod and you spouse.
PTs can be pretty sneaky though. A rod can be damaged without you even noticing and may not break for some time. Then one day you hook an unremarkable fish and it shatters dramatically. That was the case with the rod pictured in the header. This beloved Scott S4s was most likely damaged when it slipped out of the rod holder on a rough boat ride.
Some of the ways rods are most commonly physically damaged include being hit by flies during casting, being transported in cars or boots, being dropped and being left in hot rooftop rod lockers or rod tubes left in the sun. The latter is particularly tricky because a rod can begin to delaminate without showing any sign.
Of course, physical traumas can occur in manufacturing and shipping. I have found rods on my doorstep, still in the box, in more pieces than normal but while accidents happen, they are rare and manufacturing flaws are even rarer. I have visited the rod shops of many major brands and I can tell you the folks there take care and pride in their work.
Breaks at the ferrules
It’s pretty common for fly rods to break at the ferrules. The female ferrule can split and often the shaft will snap on the male end, either inside or near the ferrule. Frequently it will be the butt section of the rod that breaks, leaving the angler puzzled how the thickest part of the rod could just snap.
These breaks are not mysterious at all. The ferrule junctions
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 »Fly Fishing Tactics for Bass in the Fall
Fly Fishing for bass in the fall is one of my favorite times of the year to hit the lake. The main reason I love chasing bass on the fly during the fall, is because a lot of the forage food (ex. threadfin shad, gizzard shad and blueback herring) that the bass fatten up on in preparation for the cold winter ahead, start migrating into shallower water in search of cooler waters. If you bass fish, you probably already know that where ever the food goes, the bass generally follow in hot pursuit. In the Southern Appalachian Mountains, where I live, we have lots of deep water mountain lakes, and when the bass go deep in the summer, it can be extremely difficult to catch them with a fly rod. And even with full sinking fly lines, deep water still poses a real challenge for fly anglers, because it’s so hard to control your presentation and fly depth throughout your retrieve.
In the fall, however, fly anglers should pay less attention to deep water on the main lake and start focusing their time fly fishing up in the creeks and backwater coves, found in the fingers of the lake. The migration of the forage food into the shallow water areas of the lake is great news, because it’s much easier to target the following bass with fly fishing gear. When the days begin to get shorter and we start getting successive nights with temperatures dropping below 50 degrees, fly anglers should start looking for the fall bass bite to heat up. Below are some 8 tactics I use to help me catch bass with fly fishing gear during the fall months.
Read More »Check Your Fly Rig!
By Justin Pickett
The sun is only a faint glow below the horizon as it prepares to make its ascent into the sky.
I launch my chunky, articulated offering into the twilight.
Slicing through the fog, it lands mere inches from the bank.
Soon, will come the moment of truth.
That split second when man and fish will come to learn their fate.
Strip, strip, strip.
A menacing silhouette emerges from the darkness.
Strip, strip. Flash! Strip, strip. Bam! Big hit!
The hook set is on point. The rod bends abruptly.
The surly Brown shakes his head angrily at the unpleasant sensation of resistance.
It is the moment that I have anticipated all morning. All week.
It is this moment that will haunt me for some time, for my net is empty and my fly is lost.
It happens. Trout, among the many other species of fish, will get the best of us sometimes. No matter what we do right, there are always those fish that just seem to be living right and never make it to our nets. The scenario described above, however, may not have ended the way that it did had I just checked my rig thoroughly before hitting the water.
It was still dark as I gathered all of my gear and transferred it into the Adipose. I didn’t rig my rod before leaving the house like I had planned so, when I got to the parking lot, I rushed through my normal routine of checking through my gear. Instead, I just threw everything together so I could get on the water ASAP. However, of course, hurrying through things tends to bite you in the ass later on, as it did on this particular morning. The bite in the ass being the humiliating loss of a very large brown trout.
That big brown slab shook his head hard after a short sprint downstream. Suddenly, just as he began a second drag-stealing run, my line went slack
Read More »Blow Up Bobbers
By Justin Pickett
Not too long ago I received a phone call from a good friend of mine asking if I could help with a guide trip for a handful of folks who were on the books. It was a group of five anglers, and the second guide that he had booked fell ill and had to back out. I didn’t have anything on my plate the next day so I gladly agreed to pick up another day on the water.
It had rained overnight, which in my eyes is a good thing so long as it isn’t one of those earth-carving downpours that blows rivers out to the point “ain’t no way in hell I’m going near that water.” The right amount of rain will stain the water and raise the flows just enough to get trout feeling frisky, causing them to lose their inhibitions and feed with abandon. For me, the conditions I just described make my stripping hand itch. I reach for the heftier sticks, sinking lines, beefy tippet, and beefier flies. Sex Dungeons and Boogie Men come to mind when I think of days like these. However, when you find yourself on the water with a client, things have to change. You have to play to their strengths, and, on this day, the best plan was to nymph. With the day’s conditions, we would be afforded the ability to have our clients throw larger indicators that would float big, gaudy flies without spooking an entire run.
Prepared for a successful day, my fellow guide, Noland, and I discussed the plans for the day and basically split the water in half so we didn’t beat all of the water to death. Fishing was good and soon came lunch. On our way back to the trucks we encountered Noland with his group of anglers and stopped to take a gander and engage in some small talk. As I’m talking with Noland, I noticed something funky about his client’s rig. Something just seemed off about it as he picked it up off the water and began his next cast. As this gentleman’s flies and indicator hit the water it became a little more obvious as to why I had this impression.
“What the heck kind of indicator is that?, I asked as I turned back towards Noland.
With a smirk on his face, Noland replied with, “it’s a balloon.”
Read More »Winter Carp
Let’s start here. Like every other preconception about the common carp, the notion that this is a warm water fish is patently false.
I’ve caught them every month of the year. In South Dakota. I’ve caught them, in numbers, while it snowed. I’ve caught them in wild places, uninfluenced by warm water discharges, bottom release dams or power plants. I’ve watched them feed under ice shelves, tail next to snow banks and crawl with their backs exposed in the only open water for a mile. As McTage Tanner once wrote and often preaches: Next to trout, there is no better flyrod target in the winter than carp.
Carp are known for their ability to tolerate extreme water temperatures. For some reason, we’ve equated that with a high survival rate in extraordinarily hot water. But the opposite is also true. Carp not only tolerate, but thrive in cold water environments. That is to say, they can and do actively feed in cold water just like they do in hot. Research suggests that they begin feeding actively in water as cool at 40 degrees and continue to pick up metabolic steam as the temperature increases. That puts their active feeding range, at the low end, closer to that of the Northern Pike than the Largemouth Bass. An active feeding range that low means carp are a viable flyrod target throughout the winter for most of the country. For those not willing to hang up the rod for 7 months and tie flies until spring, here are a few tips for stalking large tailing fish in shallow water during cold weather.
Look for moving water. River or stream fishing for carp is an extremely exciting proposition any time of year. Large fish in small water makes for challenging fights and wonderful sight fishing. Never is this more true than in the winter. Moving water allows an angler opportunities to find more addressable carp more often for a few reasons. First, moving water tends to stay open longer than still water. While the lakes are frozen, a swift small stream may be open; obviously a requirement for flyfishing. More importantly, carp that live in a small river or stream are confined to that relatively shallow water year round. When warmer, deep water is available, the carp will head there during low water temps. But in confined spaces, the carp will thrive wherever they live. To be clear, they will still congregate in the deepest pools on the stream just like any fish, but they will head for the shallows earlier and more often in small spaces.
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