The Farquhar Bird Fly
What happens when the world’s most aggressive fish meets the world’s craziest steelhead guide?
This is why I love hanging out with Jeff Hickman! On a recent trip to Farquhar Atoll, in the Seychelles, Hickman wasn’t content just catching Giant Trevally on the fly, he had to do it in the most messed up way possible.
It’s rumored that GTs will eat adult sea birds, but will they eat a bird fly? Better yet, will they eat a flip-flop? There are only two ways to find out. You can fly around the world and try it yourself…
OR YOU CAN WATCH THIS VIDEO!
Read More »2 Lessons I Learned from My Bahamian Guide
Most of you know that Louis and I recently spent a week in paradise fly fishing for bonefish in the Bahamas.
It was an amazing trip, providing me by far the best bonefishing of my life. I gained a wealth of knowledge during my stay, mostly saltwater angling skills, but what I really ended up cherishing when it was all said and done was the two guide lessons my veteran bahamian guide Freddie taught me.
Read More »RS2 – One of My Favorite Picky Trout Fly Patterns
There’s days when trout fishing is so slow, it seems like conditions couldn’t possibly get any worse.
You may find yourself questioning if any trout in the stream are willing to feed at all. At other times, you’ll have no problem locating pods of steady risers, but everything you throw at them is rejected. My buddy Brad in this situation usually volunteers to row the boat, opting for cold beer within arms distance and gazing at picturesque landscapes. The dude always has a Plan B ready to be put into action, ensuring he always has a good time on the water whether he catches fish or just a buzz, and I respect that.
The RS2 fly pattern time and time again never fails to produce for me during tough fishing situations. And it really has the ability to catch fish just about any way you fish it. Fish it solo on fine tippet to wary sippers and you’ll fool a couple guaranteed. Drop it off the back of a larger and more visible dry fly if you’re having problems seeing it, and it will ride in the film, usually fooling fish on even the most technical trout water. I even have great luck fishing an RS2 as my dropper fly in a
Read More »Tie Connor’s Jerk Minnow
THIS DECEPTIVELY SIMPLE FLY IS ALL ABOUT THE ACTION.
Connor Jones, from Cohutta Fishing Company, ties this versatile baitfish pattern for bass and trout here in the southeast. It’s a simple fly with a clean profile and it’s easy to tie in a variety of colors.
The secret to the jerk minnow is it’s action. Connor builds a hard, hollow head, from Senyo’s Laser dub and Clear Cure Hydro, which captures air and gives the jerk minnow an erratic darting action, when stripped hard. Big predatory fish can’t resist it
It’s a fly that will produce fish on lakes and rivers. Tie it in the colors and size to match the forage species on your local waters. Strip hard and hang on tight!
Watch the video and learn to tie Connor’s Jerk Minnow
Read More »Sooooo-ee!!! Calling All Pellet Pigs: What You Should Know About Feeding Trout
THE OTHER DAY ONE OF OUR READERS WAS OFFENDED WHEN I USED THE TERM “PELLET PIG”. I ENJOY OFFENDING PEOPLE, SO I DECIDED TO WRITE AN ENTIRE POST ON THE SUBJECT.
I honestly didn’t know we weren’t supposed to talk about this. Pellet pigs are a fact of life. They exist and people catch them. They are not offended that we call them pigs, because they don’t speak English. They can be a TON of fun. (get it) They can turn a marginal stream into a hog farm and they can seriously fuck things up.
Feeding fish on private water is a very common practice. I am not going to tell you that it’s ‘bullshit’ or it ‘doesn’t count’ or that it makes you a ‘pud whacker.’ I did it myself for a season and I have good friends who still do. I’ve had some great times catching pellet pigs and sharing the experience with friends. Through personal experience, I’ve learned the positives and the negatives.
Feeding fish, on private water, is a great way to insure that they hang around. Feeding will also attract wild fish from other parts of the stream to hold in your water. It’s a sure fire way to insure that you will always have good fishing, regardless of the quality of your water. It makes fish grow fast and generally means big fish will be present in unnaturally high numbers. This all sounds pretty good, right? Well, nothing in life is without cost and pellet pigs are no exception.
I’m not saying it’s always a bad idea to feed fish. You can do it right and you can do it wrong. What I am saying is,
IF YOU DECIDED TO FEED FISH, HERE ARE SOME THINGS YOU OUGHT TO KNOW.
1)Your trout is so fat it showed up at the Macy’s parade wearing ropes!
2) Feeding fish takes natural selection off the table. This can negatively impact the entire ecosystem of a stream. It discourages predation and supplements trout which would otherwise end up food themselves. If the trout in question is capable of reproduction, they pass on inferior genetics. Feeding also encourages fish to to crowd into holding water in unnatural numbers, increasing the spread of disease. These hordes of fish put unnatural pressure on forage food and can virtually wipe out localized forage species like insects and crawfish, leaving the fish increasingly dependent on feeding.
3) Your trout is so fat it can’t hold in a run, it has to hold in a waddle!
4) Pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered. Feeding fish in one section of a stream can negatively impact the overall population. Causing fish to congregate puts them at risk on many levels. In addition to spreading disease, large pods of fish attract predators like otters, herons and bait fishermen. When a large pod is wiped out, the fish which are lost might have populated several miles of stream. Spread out, they would have survived.
5) Your trout is so fat
Read More »Social Media, The Best Thing To Ever Happen To Fly Fishing
THOUSANDS OF GALLONS OF INK HAVE BEEN SPILLED AND BILLIONS OF PIXELS HAVE FLASHED ABOUT THE EVILS THAT SOCIAL MEDIA, AND THE INTERNET IN GENERAL, ARE PERPETUATING ON THE SPORT OF FLYFISHING.
I can’t tell you how many rants, posts, articles, captions and blurbs I’ve read that contend, in some way, that some part of the Internet is ruining the sport we all love so much. “It just encourages Grip and Grins.” they shriek. “It’s making flyfishing into a competition!” they scream. “It’s just a bunch of people trying to get Internet famous!” they howl. And they are right. All of those things do happen on the Internet. They also happen in the flyshop, around the campfire and over beers. There isn’t any way to deny that some people use social media and the Internet to try to make themselves look like master anglers. Hell some of them ARE master anglers promoting themselves (and the sport).
The fact is, in a real and fundamentally important way, the Internet is the greatest thing that’s ever happened to flyfishing. The ramifications of the changes it is creating are still waiting to be wholly felt, but have already influenced everything from public policy to international politics to fish care and handling. More importantly, the scale and scope of the reach of flyfishing continues to grow. The exposure of the sport is no longer limited to Brad Pitt or grandpa. It’s now an organic and fluid mechanism defined by the collective image set forth by all of us. We’ve been given the power to reach into places that would have never known flyfishing and to do it in ways that don’t involve stuffy meetings or AARP-sponsored events. And we’ve done a helluva job; taking flyfishing from the purview of only rich old white men into something not only accessible, but promoted to everyone. Are we perfect? Hell no. But we are damn good.
Many years ago I was standing on the bank of a small muddy river in South Eastern South Dakota. I had a Cabella’s 6 weight rod and reel combo that my father had given me. Don’t ask what line or leader I was using. I wasn’t that advanced yet. On my hip was an ammo belt that I’d stuffed with my 2 tippet spools, fingernail clippers (because that guide in Colorado used nippers so I knew using my teeth like I had all my life wasn’t classy enough for flyfishing) and a flybox with 12 random flies in it. I’d tied on a yellow foam beetle and was attempting to cast it between ice sheets on a cold March day. See, I knew you could catch bluegill on flies. The guide had told me so. He’d also said he preferred a yellow beetle to get them. So there I was trying to get a drift with my leader dragging on the ice and not understanding why the fish weren’t biting that day.
For years I struggled to learn how to flyfish in warm water.
Most was pure trial and error. I’d try stuff; it wouldn’t work… so I’d try other stuff. I was the only person in the world, as far as I was concerned, fishing warm water with flies and I did it incessantly. You know that quote attributed to Einstein about insanity being a person doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. Well, I was certifiable at that point.
Hungry, Hungry Bonefish
One of the things that makes bonefish so much fun is their generous nature.
When bonefish are feeding they are some motivated little dudes. If you can get a fly in front of them the odds are good that it will get eaten without a lot of scrutiny. This is not to say that’s always easy. Often the conditions make it nearly impossible. Making a sixty foot backhand cast, into thirty mile per hour wind, to a fish that’s booking across a flat, and changing direction unpredictably is plenty challenging. All I’m saying is that once you pull it off, the bonefish will likely reward you for your trouble.
I was at the World Wide Sportsman in Islamorada the other day to pick up a few essentials. They have a big saltwater aquarium with all of the popular Keys sport fish represented. I arrived about five minutes before feeding time and the natives were getting restless. This little bonefish had himself whipped into a frenzy. Watch this video and you’ll see what I mean. Remember there is no food yet, he just knows it’s time and he’s losing his cool. All the other species of fish are chill but Mr. Bone is literally trying to get out of the tank and chase down some grub.
http://youtu.be/PfFX337lU_M
Ok, that’s fun but it also tells you a lot about this fish and his eating habits. He’s ready to stick his face anywhere there’s food and he wants to be there first. A good lesson here, for example, is how to fish to a school of bonefish. The lead fish in a school will always be the biggest. He’s the one you want to catch, right? When you drop a fly in front of that school, this is the attitude your going to see when they come after it. If you want to catch that lead fish you had better
Read More »Information VS Knowledge
By Louis Cahill
A wise friend of mine always says, “Information plus experience, equals knowledge.”
It’s a concept as simple as it is brilliant. A teacher can give you information, but until you have the experience and the context to have real understanding, you don’t have the knowledge. True knowledge will always trump information. That’s just common sense.
I see a lot of anglers who get stalled in the gap between information and knowledge. Anglers who catch a lot of fish with the information they have but could catch a lot more if they really understood what they are doing. These folks are stuck at an intermediate level in the sport, and some spend their whole lives there. I’m going to give you some examples of specific ways this happens, but understand, it applies to every aspect of fly fishing…and everything else in life, truth be told. This is a little on the esoteric side for a fly fishing tip, I admit.
MY GOAL IS TO TRY AND HELP THOSE INTERMEDIATE ANGLERS LEARN A NEW WAY OF THINKING ABOUT FLY FISHING, WHICH WILL HELP THEM REACH THE NEXT LEVEL.
A classic example of this is the subject of leaders. I know lots of anglers who obsess about leader formulas. I think anyone who is advanced in the sport knows that the leader is incredibly important. Arguably the most important piece of tackle in the system. I’d personally rather fish the wrong fly on the right leader than the other way around. That said, I do not believe in leader formulas.
Sure, if you have a leader that works in a familiar fishing situation, you may never need to stray from that formula. As long as you always fish the same way, with the same type of flies, and the conditions never change, and the fish never get any smarter. If, however, you understand how a leader functions and how to
Read More »Tenkara Presentation, Really “Fishing” The Fly
By Tim Harris
One fly, but many ways to fish it.
In a play of words, it is said that “tenkara” means “ten colors” since the kanji is the same – テンカ ラ. This means ten tenkara fishers have ten different styles of fishing. This could be that they use ten different flies or that they fish ten different techniques. Either way, tenkara is more about presentation and confidence in the fly than it is about the actual fly used, sort of like steelhead fishing.
Last season, and this season so far, I have used one fly only but have employed different techniques to catch fish in different conditions. I believe these techniques are not only applicable to tenkara but also to standard western fly fishing in small streams where you can probably present any fly with the right technique and get fish to eat.
HERE ARE SOME OF THE BASIC TECHNIQUES THAT I’VE INCORPORATED OVER THE THE LAST YEARS TO CATCH TROUT CONSISTENTLY WITH TENKARA.
1) Dead Drift – This one is easy enough and is the standard nymphing or dry fly technique common in western fly fishing and is usually how I start any given stretch of water. Tenkara has the advantage over a standard fly rod in that you can get a true drag-free dead drift since often no line is on the water, which must be mended, only the fly and tippet are in the current. Cast upstream or quartering upstream of a trout or potential trout holding location, keeping the line off the water as much as possible. As the fly drifts downstream, slowly lift the rod to keep contact with the fly and keep the fly drifting naturally. This can be done with the fly in the water or on the surface, depending on the type of pattern you are using. If you stick with one fly, like I do, you can dry out and dress or put on a fresh kebari to keep it on the surface if there is a rising trout you are going after.
2) Pulsing the Fly – This is one of my favorite techniques and goes against all convention of western fly fishing where the dead drift rules. Yet how often is a bug just tumbling with the current. Often they may be struggling to swim or move within that current, and this is where pulsing comes into play. Cast quartering upstream again, but this time
Read More »Bonefishing: Getting Ready To Fish
It’s time to catch a bonefish! Here are some easy steps you can follow to set you up for success.
Effective saltwater fly fishing, for bonefish or any other species, is all about making clean presentations. The more you can control the variables, the more fish you will catch. It’s as simple as that. An angler who is methodical and pays attention to the details always has the odds in their favor.
In this video I share with you the steps I take to insure a clean presentation every time I take the bow. It’s a deeper dive into how I prepare for success and why. I hope it helps you catch more bonefish.
BONEFISHING: GETTING READY TO FISH
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