Use Long Leaders for Flat Water
In the picture above, take a moment to view the disturbances the fly line and leader create on the water during a presentation.
The saying a picture tells a thousand words is true, particularly in this case, as a tool for me explaining how important it is to use a long leader when fly fishing on flat water.
Notice how little noise and footprint the leader makes when compared to the fly line. I was casting a Scott G2 5 weight rod with a 9′ leader and foam hopper, and I presented the fly as softly as possible. Anglers often don’t realize how much noise they’re creating during their presentations, and why so regularly they’re spooking the fish their casting to on flat water.
The fly line itself, creates the most noise during your presentation and is by far the biggest contributor to spooking fish. Try using a 10-12′ leader or even a specialty George Harvey dry fly leader, that’s designed to dissipate energy and lay out dry flies with slack. This will increase the distance between your fly and the start of your noisy fly line hitting the water, resulting in more hook ups and less spooks.
Read More »The UV Chocolate
HAVING AN EFFECTIVE SELECTION OF MIDGE PATTERNS CAN MAKE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A GREAT DAY OF TROUT FISHING AND A DAY OF SELF LOATHING.
Often days when the midge bite is at its best nothing much else seems to be happening hatch wise. That’s an important reason to know your midges. They can make the difference between catching a lot of fish or no fish.
It’s not uncommon to see great midge hatches on cold overcast days when other bugs stay home. The great thing about the UV Chocolate is that these are the conditions where it shines. No really, it shines. The the UV ice dub wing, which already reacts to UV light is also treated with Spectrum Responce for extra highlighting.
Trout’s eyes are highly sensitive to UV light and they use that sensitivity to find food on dark days or when water clarity is low. This flys highly reflective UV profile makes it a great tool on overcast days when midges are present.
Watch the video and learn to tie the UV Chocolate.
Read More »The Bite Of The Venomous Brown Trout Or, Stopping Fishfinger
WE THINK OF TROUT AS PURE.
Perfect creatures born of virgin waters. Incapable of anything unclean. So, I wasn’t especially concerned the other day when a nice twenty-one inch male brown, from the Delaware, bit the ever living shit out of me.
I knew I was likely to get a piece of those gnarly teeth when I stuck my thumb in his mouth, but the fish was bleeding a little from the hook and I needed to pour a little Coke down him to stop it. (Yes, it works. Read more HERE) This fish surprised me though. He clamped down with a vengeance. I applied alcohol generously, internally of course, and forgot about it.
The truth is that fish, even pure wild trout, carry lots of things that are not so nice. Bacteria, parasites, man made pollutants. Many of them can cause the malady known as fishfinger. Known well by Alaska guides, fishfinger is the infection that sets in after an open wound is exposed to fish bacteria. It’s often a result of mishandling a knife while cleaning fish. It’s nasty stuff. Very unpleasant.
So, I wasn’t exactly surprised when I woke up in the middle of the night with my thumb bright red and throbbing. When I pressed it against my forefinger, blood spurted from the wound. I knew I had to do something fast or the next days fishing would be torture.
Fortunately, ever since my life-threatening brush with
Read More »Careful Where You Point That Thing
TOOTHY AND GENERALLY ILL TEMPERED, BARRACUDA ARE A BLAST TO CATCH ON THE FLY.
Their vicious attack is almost unbelievable to watch. My buddy Andrew Bennett holds a nice one here for a sub-surface hero shot.
The Bahamians eat them. Barracuda are generally not edible because they eat poisonous reef fish and store the toxins. Eating one in the Florida Keys will kill you. The cuda that live on the flats can be safe, but it’s a risk. The Bahamians have a test.
Read More »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 »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