Get the Most Out Of Your Fly Reel
Odds are, you paid good money for that fly reel, don’t let it go to waste.
One of the most common fish-fighting mistakes anglers make is not making good use of the reel. I see this most commonly in anglers who are making the transition from freshwater to salt, but it exists in all types of fly fishing. Well, maybe not tenkara.
Most modern fly reels have drag systems, which are both powerful and precise. In the old days, fly reel drag did little more than help prevent backlash, but today’s reels are effective fish-fighting machines designed to land fish efficiently. Once you have a feel for using a fly reel, you’ll find that you land more fish and land them quicker.
There are basically two things you need to know about fighting fish with a fly reel: how tight to set the drag and how to fight a fish with the given drag setting. Before I dive into the technical stuff, I will touch on a few basics for those who are completely new to the sport. If you are an advanced angler, skim over the next three paragraphs.
Unlike spinning reels, fly reels are direct drive reels. This means that in order for the spool to spin under drag, your winding hand must let go of the reel. I know, that’s dead obvious, but getting the winding hand off the reel quickly when a fish starts to run is a skill new anglers struggle with.
Your fly reel should have two types of line. Your fly line, the weight of which is matched to your rod. This is the line you cast to deliver the fly. The reel should also have backing. Usually Dacron, the backing is attached to the spool and then to the back end of the fly line. This line is there for fighting big fish which make long runs. It is not as strong as your fly line, so be careful not to put too much pressure on a fish when the backing is out or you may lose your fly line. This is important with large species like tarpon. Backing will also cut like a knife when under tension, so don’t touch it during the fight.
Once the reel is mounted to the rod, the line should come off the front of the reel and make a straight line to the first guide, without touching the frame. When you strip line off the reel in preparation for casting, always pull the line out along the rod. Never strip it off the reel with the line in contact with the frame of the reel. This will damage your line and cause it to twist and tangle.
Setting the drag
There are a couple of important things to consider when setting your drag. The most important is
Read More »PUTMBAK!
I wonder what the Great Lakes Steelhead would think if he knew what a controversial fish he is.
No, he’s not a native fish. Yes, it’s a completely man made fishery. No, it’s not a wild and scenic experience. Is he a real steelhead? Who cares. I love fishing the tributaries of the great lakes for the biggest toughest trout this side of the Mississippi and so does everyone else who’s tried it. I have to wander though, as I stand in the river with my fly rod watching the horde of bait fisherman stack their catch on the bank, if these fish got the respect enjoyed by their west coast cousins, couldn’t this be a whole lot better? I’m not dogging the fishery, it’s awesome, but it just seems like common sense. It’s true that great lakes steelhead do not successfully reproduce but left in the river they will continue to come back year after year, providing a better
Read More »How Louis Got His Groove Back
IT’S HARD TO OVERSTATE THE IMPORTANCE OF CONFIDENCE IN FLY FISHING. IT’S OFTEN THE SPECIAL SAUCE ON SUCCESS.
I squint into the sun. My eyes burn from sweat and sun screen. I take a few deep breaths and puff them back out. I stretch my neck side to side, it pops and cracks. I close my eyes for a second, though I know I shouldn’t, I squeeze the cork in my hand and try to slow my heart rate. I open my eyes and I see an army of tarpon. I am loosing my cool.
There must be fifty or sixty fish in this school and plenty of them are a hundred pounds or better. I’ve seen it before but it’s a sight you never get used to. You can easily spend a whole day on a flats boat staring at the water without seeing a fish. I’ve done that too. Moments like this have to be savored and at first I was doing a pretty good job of it but now things are getting weird.
Normally in salt water fly fishing the presentation is what matters. That’s not to say that you don’t need the right fly but it’s not generally like fishing to a educated brown trout who’s only eating the females among the emerging mayflies. Not generally, but this afternoon is different. These fish are being really picky. Normally, you get a shot at a fish and it’s either interested, or it’s not and you are left to wonder why or just assume that fish isn’t eating and move on looking for the next fish. You don’t get the luxury of sitting there and sorting it out. This afternoon we are sitting in the midst of a huge school of tarpon, who are clearly eating all around us, and I have made a dozen good presentations, each to be met with a follow and a refusal. It feels oddly like trout fishing. My buddy Joel Dickey is working thru every fly in his box trying to put me on a fish while we watch tarpon busting the surface all around us. These fish are keyed in on something and we are trying to match the hatch.
It’s hard to overstate the importance of confidence in fly fishing. It’s often the special sauce on success. The thing that gives one angler the hot rod while his buddy fishes the same fly and goes fish-less. I felt real confident when we rolled up on these fish. How could you not? A school of fifty feeding fish, surely you’re going to get one, right? But with each nerve-racking follow and heart breaking refusal my confidence is eroding. My presentations are getting rushed, my casts becoming less and less accurate, my
Read More »3 Tips for tying better fishing knots
Nothing else you do on the water matters if your knot doesn’t hold.
You want to land that fish, right? Then you’d better pay attention to your knot tying. I don’t know of anything that feels worse than losing a nice fish over a weak knot. There’s no one to blame that on but yourself. Below are three tips that will help you tie better knots.
3 Tips for tying better fishing knots
Leave a tag.
I’ll start here because it’s controversial. Anglers have traditionally clipped the tag ends of their knots flush to their knots. It has long been considered good angling craft to do it this way but it makes no sense. If the fish is not bothered by the nine feet of leader coming from your knot, he’s not going to care about the tag end either. I always leave about 1/16th of an inch tag on my knots as an insurance policy. If I have made a mistake, which gets easier as my eyes age, and my knot slips, the tag will catch it.
This goes for my blood knots in my leader as well. Anglers are often resistant to this idea because they think the tags on the blood knots will catch their leader as it turns over. If that’s happening to you, it’s a casting problem, not a knot problem. Forget about your blood knots and read this article on tailing loops.
2. Hold your knot in your mouth as you tighten it.
We all know to moisten our knots before tightening them, and most of us do it by popping the knot into our mouths before we tighten it. Leave it there as you pull the knot tight. The purpose of moistening the knot is to reduce friction as it is tightened. That friction builds up heat and it’s the heat which weakens the line. Spit doesn’t really help that much. Most knots which are damaged
Read More »Keep It Clean, With A Clearing Cast
I’ve heard salt water fly fishing described as long periods of boredom punctuated by brief periods of panic.
I don’t know that I find staring at miles of gorgeous flats boring but I’ve felt that panic a time or two. It’s a stalking game and when the fish show up, shit happens fast. You often only get one shot and the last thing you need is a line maintenance issue. That’s why you need to make a clearing cast.
Start by striping as much line as you can cast off of your reel on to the deck. Because the line you are pulling off of the reel stacks on top of the line coming form the guides, when you try to cast you will be shooting line from the bottom of the pile and it will tangle every time. Like in the photo above. Not what you want when your casting to a fish and certainly not once you’ve fed one. So before you
Read More »Catching Big Trout Sometimes Takes Multiple Attempts
Several times this past year guiding, my clients would miss a big fish opportunity during our fishing trip.
Sometimes it would be because of a poor hook set, other times, it was completely out of their control by last second refusals or turn offs from the big fish. We’d always make several more casts and try using different flies, but most of the time the big fish would have already caught on and would ignore our offerings despite perfect presentations. Without giving up on the cause I would tell my clients, “no worries, let’s come back later in the day and give that big fish another go”. Not always but quite often, we’d come back and catch that big fish the second time around. When we were fortunate enough for it happened it was the most thrilling guiding for me, and my clients couldn’t have been more pleased and proud of themselves.
If you find yourself wading a river or stream and spot a big fish but don’t catch it, don’t accept defeat, let the fish cool off and come back an hour or two later for a second shot. If you do everything right, most of the time you stand a very good chance at catching the trophy. This simple fly fishing tip, is overlooked by a lot of anglers and it’s paid off for me time and time again throughout my years guiding. Don’t be
Read More »The Tao of Permit
By Louis Cahill
What does it take to be a good permit angler?
At the park it was a beautiful day. Three days in a row I had taken my nine weight Helios 3, my snow saucer and my dog down the hill to the long promenade lined with oak trees and carefully stepped off my casting distance. Starting off at forty feet, I’d drop the bright pink yarn into the saucer again and again, then step off ten more feet. I’d cast at fifty, sixty, seventy feet, each step hitting the saucer a little less frequently. At eighty and ninety feet I’d be happy just hitting it a few times. I would have liked to had a few more days to practice before heading to the Keys, but my casting tuned up quickly and I was feeling pretty confident. I focused all of my energy on accuracy. I’d be spending three days with my buddy Bruce Chard looking for permit, and in permit fishing, accuracy is everything.
At the park it had been a beautiful day. Hurricane Michael had blown through just a few days before and we were enjoying the sunny, crisp, bluebird days on the back side of the storm. On the bow of the skiff, in the Keys, things were slightly different. The wind howled thirty miles per hour. It was a challenge just standing on the skiff, must less casting, and poling was a nightmare. Controlling the boat and making a well planed and executed shot was impossible. Every time a fish showed itself felt like a frenzied hail Mary. I’d never take off on a trip without practicing my casting, but those days in the park had nothing to do with this.
I don’t get to do a lot of permit fishing. I enjoy it, I think. It’s a love-hate relationship for sure, but for a handful of reasons it’s just very hard for me to devote the time and money it requires. Like no other type of fishing I know, permit fishing requires time. Permit just don’t eat the fly very often. Even if the angler does absolutely everything right, the vast majority of shots will end in refusal, or more often the fish fleeing in terror.
Although permit anglers will spend incredible amounts of energy analyzing and debating the meaning of every twitch, dart, and fin flick of every permit they have ever cast to, most experienced anglers will admit they have way more questions about permit than they have answers. It may be those answers we are looking for when we pursue them, or maybe we just love abuse, but if you are going to chase permit, and keep your sanity, you have to accept that you are simply not in control.
Standing on the bow with a thirty mile per hour wind driving into my casting shoulder, I certainly have no illusion of control. I make some good shots, I make some epically bad shots, I stick the fly in my ass. My line blows off the boat and is swept under the hull, once it wraps around the plug. About half the time I manage a decent presentation and am actually in the game, but it’s a struggle every second, and the seconds go quickly. The wind pushes the boat across the flat at a clip and the fish are coming at us in a hurry. We spot a fish, turn the boat, make the shot, maybe the fish follows and then refuses. The whole process is over in five seconds.
Read More »Is 5-Minute Epoxy a Thing of the Past?
I CAN’T REMEMBER THE LAST TIME I HAD TO BREAK OUT MY SMELLY TWO-PART EPOXY BOTTLES AT THE TYING BENCH.
For several years, 5-minute epoxy was a mainstay in my fly tying. It worked great for molding my streamer heads, coating my popping flies and equally well for putting my finishing touches on the backs of my nymph patterns. Fast forward to present day, however, and epoxy has quickly become a thing of the past. In the eyes of most legitimate fly tiers, epoxy is nothing more than an old school tying material and technique that has become outdated. Innovative fly tying companies like Clear Cure Goo have taken the idea of epoxy and reinvented the wheel by introducing a full line of UV curing products. They serve the same purpose as epoxy but are less messy, more efficient and easier to work with at the vise. After using them, I now look at my life long stash of epoxy bottles on the bench and wonder if I shouldn’t just toss them all in the trash. I could use a little extra room on my tying bench anyway and I’m tired of looking at dried up epoxy patches with wooden stirring sticks adhered on scrap all over my work area.
If you haven’t yet tried or bought into the hype of Clear Cure Goo products, I suggest you test them out. Clear Cure Goo calls their UV curing products “the cure to epoxy”, because you’ll no longer waste time prepping your two-part epoxy for each fly you’re tying, you won’t feel rushed and you’ll have zero waste. Go ahead and keep that 18 rpm epoxy fly and jig turner around if you want just in case, but I’m putting mine on ebay for a few extra bucks towards purchasing more
Read More »Are You An Extreme Net Man?
Have any of you seen those Rapala lure commercials with the fisherman in the store pondering over which “Extreme Net Man” to hire for the day. If you haven’t, take the next thirty seconds and watch this short video.
I love those commercials because they point out how important a role your net man can play in helping you land fish. A lot of the time props are only given to the angler battling the fish, but many times the experienced net man by your side deserves a good portion of those props. There’s no doubt that when fish and angler are evenly matched in a fierce battle, having an experienced net man can often end up putting the odds in the anglers favor. Many of my big fish have only been landed because I’ve been lucky enough to have a badass with a net backing me up. As a guide, I’ve had lots of time and practice to hone my netting skills over the years. And I’ve picked up on some key characteristics you need to carry with you at all times if you want to become worthy of holding the “Extreme Net Man” status.
And for the respect of both female and male anglers out there let’s consider the phrase “Extreme Net Man” to be uni-sex please.
1. An Extreme Net Man has an equally Strong Offense and Defense
You not only have to have an offense that’s deadly accurate at scooping up fish, but you also need to have a strong defense as well. A good defense means
Just When You Think Your Dialed In
IT’S A NINETEEN HOUR DRIVE AND A THIRTY MINUTE WALK TO THE SPOT WHERE THE SYCAMORE TREE IS DOWN ACROSS THE RIVER, MAKING THAT SWEET SEAM.
Flies are tied in the truck on the drive up. The color and size that worked last year but with upgraded hooks. Rods and reels have been selected. New lines have been spooled up. Waders patched, hats, gloves, down vests all packed. We’re on the river less than an hour when the first big male brown goes in the net, followed by a nice steelhead. High fives and smiles all around, followed by a toast. We are dialed in, or so it seems.
The next morning we are reminded of a lesson we have learned time and time again. Fish are fickle, conditions change, you always work for your fish. We had gotten to feeling pretty good about ourselves that first day on the river, and why not, it had been awesome. We had come a long way from our home waters, to a very different river and we had fished like champs. The next day we got back to the business of being humble and figuring it out. By the end of the second day we had a few more fish in the net, but they didn’t come easy.
That’s the game isn’t it? Figuring it out. How long would we
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