Spooky-ass fish
DOES TALKING ON THE BOAT SPOOK FISH?
I enjoy conversation on the boat. I like spending time with my friends, shooting the shit and engaging in a little light-hearted ribbing. But does it affect the fishing? Banging down the cooler lid, shifting stuff around in the boat and walking in shoes are all things fish can hear. Their lateral lines are amazingly sensitive to any vibration in the water. Any sound that involves the hull of the boat is telegraphed directly into the water. Think of the hull as a loud speaker. But what about sounds in the air with no direct connection to the water? Do fish hear us talking?
I’ve heard a lot of opinions on this and many people believe that they do not. Personally I am sure they do. For one thing, when shooting underwater video my microphones pick up talking above the surface. I feel certain that a fish’s lateral line is more effective than a microphone inside an waterproof housing. This makes me sure fish can hear sounds in the air.
If that’s not enough to convince you,
Read More »5 Tips For Better Dry Fly Fishing From Ronnie Hall
There are few things more rewarding than a wary trout rising to a dry fly.
Seriously, who doesn’t love fooling fish on a dry fly? Rising fish are like puzzles waiting to be solved and when they are, the angler is rewarded with one of the greatest visual displays in fly fishing. The rise.
Unfortunately, there is also the agony of defeat. All too often your offerings may be refused or worse, just plain ignored. Hold on, don’t go for the cherry bombs just yet. Our buddy Ronnie Hall (Yoda in residence at the Fish Hawk in Atlanta,) has 5 tips to help you unlock the puzzle of rising trout.
#1 Presentation is always the most important aspect of fly fishing, especially when it comes to dry fly fishing. As the British say, “It’s not the fly, it’s the driver.” Practice making the proper casts to achieve a totally drag-free drift. Practice your reach cast. Take the time to get into position. Accuracy is a part of presentation too. Getting your fly to float directly in the fish’s feeding lane is a must. Large trout will not waste energy moving any distance to eat a small fly. Trout are very efficient in their eating habits. They don’t waste energy!
#2 Color, know when it matters. On bright days trout see color more accurately. During some hatches, like tricos, trout may use color to target egg-laden females. Color is not always the most important consideration in choosing a fly. Often silhouette is more critical, especially when fishing opaque imitations, such as beetles or hoppers.
#3 Size matters. When unsure of dry fly size, always go smaller. Selective fish will always more readily accept an imitation which is too small over one which is too large. Often mistakes in size are angler error. It is a human shortcoming to imagine things larger than they are. If you can, catch an insect and compare.
#4 Watch out for masking hatches.
Read More »So You Want To Be An Alaska Guide?
By Whitney Gould
The plane, which brought me to Western Alaska is gone.
I’m standing on a remote, empty tarmac. The sky is a herring-gull gray, the air crisp and clean. I am surrounded by tundra. The only visible object is a square box painted white, the airport. People come, pick up passengers and supplies, and disappear as suddenly as they arrived. This is my dream job. I’m an Alaskan guide and I am losing any shred of confidence.
Weeks prior, I had emailed Ed the head guide, asking him what skills I would need to get through the season.
“It’s long hours day after day,” he wrote. “It can become grueling, I won’t lie about that, but it also offers many opportunities for the ‘best of times’… The main thing we look for up there is dependability, a stable personality, and the ability to get along with others while working in a confined social environment for a long period of time.”
Standing there, I thought, maybe I have two of these qualities, but if no one comes to get me, I now have paper to start a fire. Eventually I am picked up.
Nothing in Alaska is wasted. Trips to the airport or town are condensed, combined with supply runs and trips, to the post office and dump. This day is no different. Tyler, the camp hand, drives us eight miles up river to deliver me and supplies to camp. My arrival is no different than that of the guide I am replacing, or the guides who will replace me in five years.
Rick, the camp manager, greets me. After introducing himself, he gives me a tour and tells me to be ready after lunch to gravel the walkways.
Graveling is no easy task. It’s tedious and exhausting. Early season brings high water, so the trick is to find an exposed gravel bar. You take the boat to a bar
Read More »So Much More Than Brook Trout
By Jason Tucker
TWILIGHT. THE SUN, SETTING UNDER CLEAR SKIES HAS TURNED EVERYTHING INTO BLUE MERCURY.
We have parked the boat on a gravel bar where ripping current meets still water. Fish are rising on the soft side of the seam that trails off the tip of the bar. We are so far north that dusk will last for hours. We are fishing in Labrador with Riverkeep Lodge on the Atikonak River.
Dave is after one large fish that keeps working the seam, rising repeatedly about sixty feet out. It’s too far to cast, but they’re taking skated caddis anyway, and so he has dumped a bunch of line, hoping to reach the fish, or get it to hit his Goddard caddis as he retrieves it back up the seam, a tactic that has worked numerous times.
Suddenly the fish rises forty feet away on the right side of the boat. Realizing that Dave doesn’t have time to pick up all that line and cast across the boat in time, I fire a quick cast to the rise form. The fish turns on a dime, and comes up on the surface as I throw a mend to twitch the fly. The fish rises with head, back, dorsal and tail fins all breaking the surface and it closes on my fly, mouth open, like a submarine on the surface. It takes an eternity for my fly to disappear and the mouth to close, but when I finally set the hook, the fish rolls and sounds, swims straight at us, and as I frantically strip line it jumps clear out of the water a few feet away at chest height. I find myself staring it in the eye, like some Warner Brothers cartoon character come to chastise me. Then it takes off on a blazing run that takes most of my fly line with it. It weighed over five pounds
And that was just one evening at Riverkeep Lodge. Don’t worry about Dave, he caught plenty of fish.
As long as I can remember I have been reading about Labrador and its legendary brook trout. As brook trout became an increasing obsession of mine, it became a lifelong dream to go. So when I got an invitation to go to Riverkeep Lodge with Dave Karczynski, it was impossible for me to say no.
We decided to make a road trip out of it, and when the time came I left my home in Northeast Georgia, drove to Ann Arbor, Michigan to pick up Dave, then we turned it east for the long trek across Ontario and Quebec. The drive itself was quite memorable, especially the long bush road from Baie Comeau to Labrador City, about 375 miles of gravel, pavement, and road construction with one gas station in the middle and not much else in the way of civilization. That story will have to wait for later.
The next day we took a float plane 120 miles into the Labrador bush to fish with Riverkeep Lodge on the Atikonak River. It is run by the Murray family, and their guides Keir and Eric were waiting for us, ready to show off what they have up there. Here’s what we found.
Read More »Caring for Bamboo Fly Rods
I’ve had several folks request some content on making simple repairs to bamboo fly rods.
I fully intend to to that for you, but it means that I have to find the time to get in the shop. That seems unreasonably difficult these days. Before I get into doing repairs, I thought it would be prudent to write about caring for that bamboo rod and maybe avoid some repairs all together.
Bamboo is not as finicky as most people think. In fact it’s remarkably tough but there are some basic rules for handling and storing rods that will add to their longevity significantly. Unfortunately, too many guys end up with a nice bamboo rod before they know how to care for it and learn the hard way.
Most guys start out with graphite rods and assume that you treat a bamboo rod the same way. It’s a fly rod, right? Yes, but the materials are very different and some very common practices that are fine with a graphite rod will do serious harm to the boo.
General Care
I’ll start with the simplest and most common thing boo nubes do to their rods.
Familiar Waters, New Predators
“The last thing I expected to see was this big male brown trout becoming food.”
By this time, in any normal year, I am done with trout fishing. Not that I don’t enjoy it but water temperatures here in the South reach near-lethal levels in the summer and it doesn’t feel responsible to target trout under those conditions. Fortunately, a couple of my local rivers offer me a stellar alternative.
As local lakes heat up, striped bass move into the rivers for cooler water and, I suppose, to satisfy their anadromous instincts. These fish are big, strong fighters, and difficult to target with a fly. Pretty much everything I like in a fish. Once June rolls around, I spend most of my local fishing time focusing on them.
The problem is, this has been anything but a normal year. My local river, the Chattahoochee, has been a raging torrent of mud since early spring. Heavy rains, nearly every day, have kept the river un-fishable for almost the entire season. By last week, I desperately needed some time in my drift boat so I planned a quick trip to a favorite Tennessee tailwater. My buddies Geoff Murphy and S.C.O.F. editor Dave Grossman joined me for a two-day float.
Repair work on the downstream dam have the river on a low flow and rain has colored the water. Conditions are far from perfect but I’m excited to target some of the big brown trout that inhabit these waters. I showed up with a pretty anemic selection of dry flies and nymphs and two boxes full of big streamers. I’m ready for a challenge.
Geoff and Dave have been picking up some fish on beetle patterns and suffers but I haven’t had so much as a look at my streamer. Geoff gets a rainbow in the head of a big deep pool and quickly releases it. As soon as the fish hits the water a commotion starts.
A large dark form comes up out of the deep hole and runs the little rainbow down.
Read More »Organizing Your Bonefish Fly Box Makes For A Better Day Of Fishing
OPTION PARALYSIS EATS UP VALUABLE FISHING TIME.
I’ve found myself, more than once, staring into my fly box as if I’d wandered to the refrigerator in the middle of the night, with no idea why I was there. That’s fine, unless you’re surrounded by feeding bonefish and your guide is wailing in tongues. Even if your not under pressure to make a quick fly choice, having your flies organized in a logical fashion will help you choose the right fly for the conditions and that means catching more fish. Here are some tips on how I organize my bonefish box and how I use that organization to make better fly choices.
Keep It Simple
Bonefishing is not generally a match-the-hatch situation. Bonefish are highly opportunistic and presentation usually trumps pattern. I know guys that carry a thousand flies on the flats boat. They might fish three of them in a day. I keep it to one box. I probably cram a hundred flies into it but that one box has everything I need.
Making Smart Choices
When paring down your fly selection it’s important to understand
Make Better Roll Cast: Video
It isn’t flashy, but a good roll cast will catch you a lot of fish you might otherwise miss.
Roll casting is an essential skill for any angler, especially those targeting trout. Many of the mountain streams where trout live have little room for a backcast. A good roll cast opens up a lot of water that’s unfishable by any other means. It’s usually one of the first casts an angler learns, and because their understanding of fly casting is limited, anglers often learn the cast poorly. Very few go back and fix the problems they developed early on.
A FEW OF THE SKILLS WHICH ARE KEY TO A GOOD ROLL CAST ARE:
Making a robust D loop.
Keeping the path of the rod tip flat on the casting stroke.
Smooth acceleration of the cast to an abrupt stop.
Once you have the basics of the cast down, you can add a haul and shoot line for more distance. Roll casting this way is very effective on all types of water.
WATCH THIS VIDEO AND LEARN TO MAKE A BETTER ROLL CAST.
Read More »The Patagonia Trout McNugget
By Louis Cahill
Think trout flies should be small? Think again!
Ok this is admittedly a bunch of silliness, but where else are you going to see a trout eat a chicken nugget? Yep, an actual chicken nugget. I don’t know if this compromises our journalistic integrity or angling ethics but it’s funny as hell.
Justin and I were down in Argentina and there were some pet trout in the spring creek by the place we were staying. No one fished for these bruisers, it was just fun to watch 30 inch trout hanging out by the deck. When we found out they stayed by the deck because the staff fed then table scraps, well, we couldn’t help ourselves.
The fishing in Argentine Patagonia is truly amazing. Why not join me there this February and see for yourself. Click here for details.
Read More »Bends Are Like Best Friends
Bends in rivers and streams are like my best friends.
They possess all the qualities that I value and they always provide me consistent support in my endeavors. I don’t know about you, but when I find myself staring at a section of river or stream and I see a nice bend, I quite often head straight for it. I do this because I know it will usually produce a quality fish or two on the end of my line, and it’s generally very obvious to me where I should present my flies.
Just about every bend you encounter on the water will hold these three qualities.
1. One Well Defined Current
There usually will be one well defined current, collecting and moving food through the bend. This clearly indicates to anglers where the most food is drifting and where the fish should be positioned to intercept it.
2. Clear Channel or Trough
That well defined current usually has cut out a deep channel or trough in the bend. This reinforces further why fish will be located here. The deeper that fish can get below the surface and current, the less energy they’ll have to exert to maintain position and feed. The deeper water also provides