Bonefish Flats Revealed
IT’S IMPORTANT TO KNOW YOUR OPPONENT, AND TO THAT END IT’S GOOD TO KNOW HIS NEIGHBORHOOD.
When we look at a bonefish flat we tend to perceive it as two- dimensional. It’s right there in the name, flat. The truth is, it’s far from flat. The bonefish’s world is as three-dimensional as ours. It’s a landscape full of hills and valleys, mounds and burrows. The crabs, shrimp and such that bonefish feed on use these features to hide or escape from the hungry predator. Knowing this can give us an advantage.
Alice’s Angle: December
By: Alice Tesar
December, the mountain slopes are open to skiers and the rivers are practically void of anglers.
Not only is hitting the river an excuse to escape holiday guests but it can also be quite productive if you’re willing to endure the cold factor. If you know me, you know I’m a nymphing fool. Streamers and dries are exciting but mastering a nymph rig that catches trout with each presentation feels invincible. Most mountain town rivers are running low and uberclear right now. Furthermore, blue skies and snowy banks make your shadow and own presence on the water louder than ever. To avoid spooking more fish I recommend wearing muted colors and limiting your false casts, I even let my drifts go longer in an effort to slow down my above water activity.
Regardless of spooking easily, the trout is at its laziest in cold water. They are lethargic and prefer to place themselves where currents are easy, and the conveyor belt of tiny bites is steady. Midges are my constant this time of year- black beauties, mercury midges, and a biot midge if you find the trout feeding closer to the surface. Darker colors over bright and flashy. Pair the midge with a black or dark brown stonefly. A small stonefly, 16 or 14, seems to work better than something larger.
My final tip, that I repeat often is
Read More »Take The Right Fish
AS I’VE SAID PLENTY OF TIMES I’M A DEDICATED CATCH AND RELEASE ANGLER. THAT SAID, I RECOGNIZE THAT IT’S A PERSONAL CHOICE THAT I HAVE COME TO IN MY OWN TIME.
There are a lot of good ethical anglers out there who keep a fish once in a while and although it’s not for me, there isn’t necessarily anything wrong with it. The reason I say necessarily is this: fish are not all created equal and while killing a fish can be ok, killing the wrong fish is a tragedy.
Where trout are concerned, in most places a great many of the fish we catch are hatchery raised stockers. There are a couple of things about these fish that are worth mentioning. The breeding of fish for stocking is a pragmatic endeavor. It is done with a clear cut goal in mind. To raise fish in the fastest, cheapest, easiest way possible and get them in the river. There is very little, if any, thought given to the quality of these fish.
Well, what does that mean, quality? Several things. For one, the fish are raised on a diet of high protean fish food that promotes fast growth. This yields fish that have little of the natural color found in wild fish. There are other factors that contribute to this but food plays a role. It also yields fish with unnatural proportions. Small mouths and fins but big bellies. A trout that’s shaped like a football is a poor example of it’s kind.
Hatchery fish are generally raised in concrete runs. They rub against the rough concrete and wear down their fins to nubs. Not very attractive. The runs also contribute to the lack of color. Trout, like most fish, have natural camouflage. They take on the color of their surroundings. What color is concrete? Makes sense right?
Read More »Tear Up Your Fly Fishing Resume
By Louis Cahill
Far too often it’s an angler’s self image that gets between them and the fish.
In a recent article, I wrote about how I believe that, as a group, the fly fishing community doesn’t always do a good job as ambassadors of the sport. In brief, I think we make new anglers self conscious and afraid to ask questions or seek advice. The other side of that dilemma is that way too many anglers let their pride get in the way of their progress. To often we take a defensive posture with other anglers, who could teach us something.
Nobody likes the expert. We’ve all spent time around the guy who wants to be the big shot and impress everyone with his fly fishing prowess, which is usually not impressive. I’m not defending that behavior. In fact, I find that the anglers who are the most skilled are also the most humble. I don’t think that is a coincidence. I think those anglers learned long ago that they could learn something from anyone, if they listened.
I was having a conversation about flats fishing with another angler who voiced some opinions I know to be pretty far off base. This was a conversation about fishing over a beer and since he brought it up, I felt invited to offer my opinion. I also knew for a fact that his assertion had a lot to do with his getting skunked that day, so I politely responded.
“I think these fish…” I was quickly met with, “I’ve fished down here for twenty years!”
I shut up and let him enjoy his ignorance. The fact is that he has fished three days a year for twenty years so I’ll concede that he has two months of experience. He knew nothing about me as an angler. Not how many days a year I fish, or for how many years, or even that I had a pretty great day while he was getting skunked.
I’ve heard that line a hundred times and I’ve never heard it from an angler who was
Read More »8 Common Fly Line Mending Mistakes
I spend the majority of my time teaching fly casting when guiding my clients, but the art of mending fly line is a close second.
A perfect cast can quickly become obsolete if you don’t understand the concept of mending fly line. When mending is timed correctly and executed properly it allows fly anglers to maintain a drag-free presentation, keep their fly in the target zone, and prolong the length of their drift. Developing good mending technique my friends, translates into more fish being hooked and landed. If you’re lucky enough to already have the basics of fly casting down, I highly encourage you to next focus your time on understanding and mastering the mechanics of mending fly line.
Throughout this post I’m going to try to touch base on the most popular mending mistakes I see on the river, but before I do so, here’s an intriguing question for everyone. Why is it, that fly anglers seem to always get their left and right mixed up when mending fly line? It happens to me guiding all the time. I’ll instruct my client to mend to the left and they’ll do the opposite, by mending to the right. One of the most common four word phrases out of my mouth is, “no, your other left”. This will probably hit home with more guides than anglers but I had to bring it up, since we all do it. I’ve tried using upstream and downstream for instructing mending direction, but that seems to be even more confusing. That being said, here are the most common mending mistakes I see on the river.
1. Anglers Wait Too Long to Mend
Everyone deserves props when a perfect cast is made, but don’t make the mistake of admiring it, and forget to follow it up with a good mend. Most often, but not always, a fly angler should make their first mend within a second or two of the fly landing on the water. Why you ask? Because it’s the most critical mend of your drift. It sets up your entire drift, and will eliminate the need for extra mending.
2. Anglers rod tip does not travel high enough in the air during the mend
The majority of the time when mending you’re trying to mend as much of your fly line and leader without moving your flies. The longer the cast or more fly line you have on the water, the higher you’ll need to move your rod tip in an oval shape path. “Give me a superman mend”, I say to my clients, when their mending a bunch of fly line. What I’m meaning by this is giving me the biggest mend you can.
3. Anglers mend their line by moving their fly rod in a sideways motion instead of upside down u-shape or n-shape
When your mending, your trying to pick up fly line and leader off the water and reposition it (placing it back down upstream or downstream of your fly). I see a lot of anglers moving their rod sideways in a straight line when mending. All this does is require you to mend again seconds later.
4. Some drifts require multiple mends
Even a perfect first mend isn’t always enough to get you through the entire drift drag-free. Sometimes fly anglers will
Long Line Pickup: Video
One of the toughest challenges in fly casting is picking up a long line to recast.
It’s a skill that’s essential for saltwater anglers. Things change quickly when you’re fishing the flats and you have to be able to reposition your fly quickly and quietly. Last week our buddy Bruce Chard helped us out with lifting our line quietly. This week Bruce will show us how to lift a long line and make a successful second presentation.
Practice these skills and you’ll find yourself catching more fish on the flats!
WATCH THIS VIDEO AND LEARN TO PICK UP A LONG FLY LINE QUICKLY AND QUIETLY.
Read More »The River Is Full Of Want
By Louis Cahill
“I DON’T DESERVE THAT FISH. I DON’T DESERVE THIS DAY ON THIS BEAUTIFUL RIVER. I DON’T DESERVE TO FISH WITH THESE GOOD MEN.”
I wade out into the rushing water of the Dean, farther than I should. The cold of the water grabs me around the waist. The current tugs at my footing. I feel the pebbles washing out from under my feet as they slide softly downstream against my will, looking for a home. I gather my running line and tuck it under my index finger, then I lift my thirteen-foot rod high into the air, anchoring my fly in the swift current in front of me. The wind blows and a cold mist creeps around my glasses and down my neck. I sweep the rod round, making a big D loop, watching the rod, keeping it loaded, then draw the butt back hard to my chest. I roll the grip clockwise so that the guides face upstream and watch the bright green running line draw shapes in the air against a backdrop of dark clouds, like a kid writing his name with a sparkler on a summer night.
The line disappears through the guides and nearly a hundred feet away I see the splash as my weighted fly meets the river. I mend the line and tell myself that my feet will find something solid as I step with the rush of water, once, twice, three times. On the horizon, just over the big log jam, I can see the silver band of salt, the Pacific. Below the next run and the next, maybe four-hundred yards. The river hasn’t far to go and it’s impatient, running like children to the tree on Christmas morning. They call this run Instant Backing and I know that if my fly finds its mark, I’ll see why. I carry my rod tip upstream until I feel the weight of the river on my line. Slowly I swing the fly, I feel the strength of the water, I wait for the pull, I stare into the river and I want.
***
The Atlantis Restaurant, in Cherry Grove, South Carolina, between Myrtle Beach and Cape Fear, is a stark little beach town pancake house. It is completely unremarkable. Shabby, in fact, but it has always been special to me. Every year, on my family’s Labor Day beach trip, my father and I would slip out to the Atlantis while everyone else was asleep for breakfast. He would have eggs, over easy and bacon and I would have pancakes. Since I was little I loved having breakfast out with my father. Just the two of us in the quiet of the morning. Our complicated relationship worked well, within the simple framework of breakfast.
My father has been gone a long time now but I still find walking into that pancake house comforting. For that reason and to share my memories, I took my wife there a few years back. I got more than pancakes.
The Atlantis is an odd place at best. It doesn’t suffer from any sort of interior decoration, let alone design. The walls are glossy white with blue trim. There are a few photos from some foreign country, maybe Greece, and an aquarium next to the register containing nothing but water and a few turtles. There are some hand drawn signs with a vaguely religious theme. My favorite is a dolphin with a voice bubble that says, “I love Jesus!”
The employees seem to be from somewhere far away too, but I don’t think it’s Greece. There is a young girl, sixteen maybe, who seems particularly distant. Thin and strawberry blond with freckles she has, what combat veterans call, a thousand yard stare. Not vapid exactly but not entirely present. She waits on my wife and me that morning. After my wife orders the girl turns to me. “I want pancakes,” I say smiling. “Really?” she replies as if truly puzzled. After a long pause in which she stares at me as if I were a painting in a museum, she asks,
“What’s it like to want?”
I was completely unprepared for such an existential question before I’d even had my coffee. Not that coffee would help me find the answer, but it does make me a nicer person. I consider the question briefly, on several levels ranging from, “is this the meaning of life” to “are you out of your fucking mind” before deciding on my answer.
“You know, it’s like when you want a tip.”
The pancakes are tasty, in spite of having surely been spit on and I want to think that I’ve put that question to bed, but I haven’t. Far from it. That annoying little teenager had done something to me. I couldn’t get it out of my mind. “What’s it like to want?” For the next few years I carry that question around in my head as a litmus test. I conjure up every blown decision in my life, every misstep that lead to unhappiness and asked myself, “why did I do that?” The answer is always the same. Want.
I look around me and suddenly I see it everywhere. Want. It’s like the air we breath. We are all consumed by want. It’s like the strings on a marionette, once you see them you can’t blot them out. They’re all you see. That little red-headed waif in the apron had looked right through me and knowing only that I like pancakes had said, more or less,
“Here’s your problem, stupid.”
***
The Dean River is moody, the kind of river that kills fisherman, at least one that I know of. It’s fickle and has a temper, not like the elder rivers where I’m from, that found their channels long ago. The Dean is young and impulsive. This week it has leapt from its banks, coming up six feet the day my group arrived. It has decided
Read More »Developing Your Target Picture Means Catching More Fish
What does skeet shooting have to do with fly fishing?
MORE THAN A DAY OF CAST AND BLAST, FOR SURE.
Target picture is a term skeet shooters use to describe the visual cue a shooter uses to tell him when to fire. Since the shooter is leading the clay, rather than firing directly at it, it’s important to visualize the lead for a given shot and fire when you see that “picture.” It’s a skill that separates a real shooter from a novice.
The same principal works in fly fishing. Being able to visualize the presentation before making it pays off big. It’s a simple idea when you are casting a fly to a rising trout. The actual target is well up stream of the rise form, since the fish will actually be holding upstream of where you see him rise. The current carries him downstream as he comes for the fly so, depending on the current speed and how deep the fish is holding, it can be quite a difference. Of course, your goal is to land the fly just outside of the fish’s field of sight, so you may need to lead him upstream a good ways.
What is simple on a trout stream usually becomes devilishly complex in the salt and leading a fish is no exception.
When casting to saltwater species there are a lot of variables to take into account. The fish’s speed and behavior, of course, but also the movement of both tide and boat. The angle and intensity of the light and wind come into play too. All that is to say that you never cast directly to the fish. Like a skeet shooter, you need a picture in your head of the right lead for a given situation.
DSCF3588-2bI’m not going to dig into the minutia of figuring every variable. The truth is it’s mostly gut feeling when the time comes to make the shot. Doing it right consistently only comes with
Read More »Build Your Own Fly Rod: DIY Video 6
Our DIY fly rod is getting close to finished.
Perfectly fitted reel seat hardware is an absolute must for a quality build. In this weeks video Matt Draft, of Proof Fly Fishing, shows us how the pros fit and secure a reel seat with precision. Follow these simple steps and you’re rod will look and fish perfectly.
There’s only one more video in this series so, if you’re thinking about building your own fly rod, now would be a good time to take advantage of Matt’s special offer of free shipping for G&G readers. Once the series is over, so is the offer, so check our the kits at Proof Fly Fishing.
Read More »Improve Your Stance for Casting Accuracy
A good fly cast starts with your feet.
Why is that golfers talk so much about stance? All of the energy you apply with your hands starts with your feet planted firmly on the ground. It makes perfect sense that your stance would effect your cast.
Personally, I use a different stance for different kinds of casts. When I am casting for distance I put my left foot forward. Being a right handed caster this lets me use the rotational force of my body. It gives my cast a ton of power but if I don’t do everything exactly right, my accuracy suffers. But when I’m making a hundred foot Hail-Mary cast to cruising bonefish, I’ll take my chances.
When I’m making a short accurate cast, I put my left foot forward. This closed stance restrains the rotation and keeps my rod moving in a straight line. It makes a remarkable difference.
Watch this video for more on casting accuracy.
Read More »