Redneck Driftboating
Yes, someone actually took the time to build this pathetic hybrid driftboat/soap box derby car.
Louis and I found it snagged on a shallow riffle and abandoned on my home tailwater the other day. It was comprised of two ten gallon sealed water canisters at the bow and stern. The hull was built with a two-by-four frame and plywood deck, and bicycle tires were fastened at the corners. I’m guessing the redneck engineering idea was that the design would be much easier to roll over shallow shoals while drifting the extreme low water flows. Here’s the scary part, whoever captained this boat/car, actually made it two miles down stream before it fell apart. I only wish I would have been there to witness it’s maiden voyage, and then force them to burn it into a pile of ashes along the riverbank.
I really can’t blame whoever built this thing though. My driftboat doesn’t do much better with the pathetic 120-150cfs of water the TVA blesses me with annually. Right now, 50% of the United States is in severe drought for 2012 and many trout seasons on watersheds across the country will be cut short significantly this year. I feel sorry for all the fly fishing guides and fly shops that will suffer this year because of the drought. For all you out there that fall into this category, here’s something positive to be grateful for. Just be happy you’re not me.
Read More »Windy Days and Playing Fish
By Bob Reece
On my home waters in Wyoming, wind is a nearly constant factor.
This weather altering force can also act as a source of frustration for many anglers. However, this seemingly negative nemesis can be used as a casting ally.
While I spend most of my free time fishing moving water, my days of guiding are now spent entirely on still waters. Several of these lakes and ponds lie in open areas that are subject to frequently changing winds. In an effort to help my clients maximize their time on the water, I must be able to provide them with the instruction needed to persevere in these conditions.
Long casts are not always needed on our waters but sometimes they are. In these situations it’s easiest to position the fly caster so that the wind is blowing from their left to right for right handed casters. The opposite is true for left handed fly fishers. By positioning their hips and line movement perpendicular to the wind, its force helps elevate the line while simultaneously keeping it safely away from the angler. Using this stance and range of motion, the final cast can be delivered on either the forward or backward stroke. This process allows the angler to dictate their casting location as opposed to the wind dictating that for them.
With or without the element of wind, constant
Read More »Confessions of a Fish Counter
I’m really excited to share a chapter from from Tosh Brown’s new book “Top of the Flood, halfway through a fly fishing life”! I received and advance copy and I can’t say enough about how much I like it. Here’s my quote from the book jacket.
“From the Conch Republic to the northern tundra, via bushplane, kayak, and Mexican ambulance, Tosh Brown takes us on a vicarious thrillride from home waters to storied waters. The subtitle of this book is a modest tag; this could easily be a life and a half.”
Sit back and enjoy, “Confessions of a Fish Counter” by Tosh Brown
THE AFFLICTION STARTED AS A BENIGN QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE.
NO, REALLY, IT DID.
____
In the fall of 1990, I caught my first redfish near Port Mansfield, Texas. There was a small knot of gulls hovering over a pod of tailers. Shrimp were jumping and tails were flopping and gulls were squawking, and when my line came tight I thought: this is really fun and I need to do this more often.
For the next few years I booked guides up and down the Texas Coast and caught more redfish. Though pricey, that program was working pretty well until my friend Will Myers said, “Hey, I’ve been fishing a few flats near Port Aransas by kayak. They’re covered with redfish, come check it out.” The word “kayak” immediately spawned images of seal skins and harpoons. I had no clue what Will was proposing but I was game to give it a try.
A few weeks later, in June of 1994, I met Will before daylight on the causeway near Port Aransas. Strapped to the roof of his Suburban were two long, skinny 14-foot plastic boats. They were a fairly new breed of roto-molded craft called “sit-on-tops.” No spray skirts required. We slid them off his truck, strung up our rods, and paddled across the Shrimp Boat Channel to a system of shallow flats behind the Lydia Ann Lighthouse. About 20 yards into the first lake, Will slowed to a stop, motioned me forward, and pointed with his paddle.
“There.”
“What?”
“Redfish.”
“Where?”
“There.”
“Oh…dang.”
Thirty feet off his bow was a pile of waggling redfish in a foot of water. Twenty feet beyond that was another group. As I looked out across the flat I could see more pods tailing up. It was almost as if someone had flipped a switch marked “DIG.”
The lake we were fishing had a soft mud bottom laced with oyster reefs. It was too mucky for wading, so the kayaks provided a simple and stealthy means of approach.
For the next six hours Will and I paddled from one tailing pod to the next. When I got back to Austin I stopped at the local paddling shop and bought a sit-on-top kayak and a paddle and a roof rack for my truck. A week later I went back to the same flat and again found it crawling with redfish.
Traditional Old-School Nymphs Catch Trout, Don’t Forget It
Every year, I spend quite a bit of time scouring the interweb and flipping through numerous fly company catalogs, all in the effort to stay up to date with the latest new fly pattern creations.
Many are just variations of already existing fly patterns, but quite often it’s a new fly tying material that’s created, manipulated, or that’s managed to stay under the radar and discovered, that’s used to develop these new fly patterns. I usually spend my time reviewing the new flies and their recipes, and hear my inner-voice chattering over and over, “why didn’t you come up with that fly pattern, dumby”. But even after purchasing and tying several dozen of the new fly patterns, many of them ultimately fall short on the water of producing trout numbers like my traditional old-school standby nymphs do. Why is that?
I think the the fly tying world is very similar to the rod manufacturing world, where a company builds a great fly rod that 90% of fly anglers love, and then a couple years down the road they discontinue the rod line, to make room for the introduction of the next innovative fly rod. Quite often, in my opinion though, that new rod design’s performance falls short of its predecessor. I know this process is called product life cycle, and it will continue to happen again and again, but it sure seems like we’re in way too much of a hurry to move on, and should instead be more content with sticking with a great product longer. It’s the notion that great isn’t great enough, and that we should retire the greats, in the hopes we can find something, for lack of a better word, that’s perfect. The problem is, there’s no such thing. No one product will work perfect for the infinite number of situations it will encounter on the water. My point being, in the target zone and scope of fly patterns at least, it may benefit many of us if we stop getting lost in creating and searching for the next best fly pattern, and instead spend more time just fishing the fly patterns that have proven to catch fish for us consistently for the past century.
Not long ago, I spent a day floating a very popular tailwater in the Southeast. It has an extraordinary trout population, supporting something like 6,000+ trout per mile. Fly fisherman travel from all over the country to fish it, and many of them go-in thinking presentation aside, that success is going to be determined by fishing the latest hot fly patterns that the fish haven’t seen. They run to
Read More »There’s No Such Thing As A Bad Perm
YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY. THERE ARE NO SMALL PERMS.
Just perms, and big perms. Happy perms and happy clouds. If you can’t catch perms, you can always drink.
Here’s Bob Ross to teach you how!
http://vimeo.com/32582348
The Bob Ross Drinking Game
Read More »Checking Your Attitude
IF YOU READ THE COMMENTS ON OUR POSTS YOU’LL OCCASIONALLY SEE THE NAME TOM CAHILL. THAT’S MY BIG BROTHER.
Tom lives in Virginia. Too far away for us to fish together often but too close to have a good excuse.
He is an avid fisherman and a talented photographer. He and I have much in common. Our conversations may start off on motorcycles or politics but they usually end on fishing. I have often said that we are brothers, separated by a common hobby. Like brothers who marry sisters, Tom fell in love with bass and I with trout. I walked off up some mountain stream and he sped off at seventy mph across the lake.
The other day Tom left this comment to a post on G&G. It left me wondering why I’m the one with the fishing blog.
***
“Of all the cash we spend to catch a fish the biggest element is free. Years ago on one of those frustrating days my friend Rodney put it quite simply. Just as I was about to cast he asked ‘Are you going to catch one this cast?’ I responded with ‘Probably not!’ Rodney: ‘Then why don’t you just stand there until you are.”
“Now if you see me on the deck of my bass boat you may see me checking my line, checking my knot or checking my drag, but if I look like I’m just standing there staring a hole in the water, I’m checking my attitude.”
***
That’s Tom all over. Contemplative in the face of adversity. A talented golfer and all around athlete, I remember watching him stand silently at the tee box. In a world of his own, visualizing his swing, reasoning through every detail. When the swing came it was perfection. The ball flying and fading exactly as it was told. I’ve not known
Read More »Chug a Coke, Save a Bleeding Fish.
There’s nothing worse than watching a big beautiful wild fish bleed out from a damaged gill.
I found myself in just that situation with a big brown trout one day. Watching helplessly as the water turned red. Thank God Kent was with me. Thinking fast he said, “hey, did you finish that Coke?” I had not and he showed me a great trick. He opened the fish’s mouth and poured the Coke down her throat. As soon as it hit the injured gill the bleeding stopped. It was like magic. I’m not sure if it’s the carbonation or the acid but something in the Coke cauterized the wound. It saved that fish’s life. I know it for a fact because I saw her in that same pool several weeks later, although she was wise to me by then. I’m certain it was
Read More »Dehumidifiers Keep My Fly Fishing Gear Fresh & Dry
It used to be an ongoing battle all season long to keep my fly fishing gear dry and odor free.
There’s nothing worse than having to slide into a pair of stinky, sweaty waders that are still damp from the day before, struggle to slide your feet into a frozen solid pair of wading boots during the winter, or head out fishing on a rainy day with a rain jacket that’s already soaked to the bone. A couple years ago, I finally got smart and bought a dehumidifier, and now all I have to do is drop my gear on the floor next to the dehumidifier in the evening, and it’s waiting for me the next morning 100% dry and odor free. I’m telling you, it’s like heaven on earth, and I guarantee, you’ll find a whole new appreciation and respect for dehumidifiers when you take the leap of faith and put one to work.
Dehumidifiers are also great for
Read More »The Virtues of the Single Spey
The Single Spey is one of the most efficient, and most overlooked, casts for the two-hand fly rod.
Like a lot of anglers who picked up the spey rod to target steelhead, much of my early fishing focused on Skagit techniques. I spent my time perfecting the Snap T and Double Spey in the standard and off shoulder forms and pretty much got by with that. Later I added a Snake Roll for when things are tight but for years the only time I used the Single Spey was when working out my head. As I spent more time fishing Scandi style lines and traditional flies, I realized I was missing out by not using the Single Spey. I also realized I had never really mastered it.
THERE ARE SEVERAL GOOD REASONS TO USE THE SINGLE SPEY OVER A CAST WITH A WATERBORNE ANCHOR.
First, it’s just more efficient. There are fewer steps and less wasted motion than in Skagit casting. Skagit casting is great when you need to lift a heavy sink tip, but when you are fishing a floating line you don’t need all of that power. A Single Spey is requires less effort and saves you energy, so it’s less fatiguing.
It’s also much quicker. Not that we are out swinging flies because we are in a hurry, but it does get you through the run faster, which can be a good thing. If for instance you are trying to squeeze in one last run before dark, you’ll spend half the time casting with the Single Spey.
The Single Spey can also be a big help when the wind picks up. With a waterborne cast like a Double Spey, it’s hard to generate line speed without blowing your anchor. The slower pace of the cast allows the wind to carry your line, often making it hard to form a good D-loop and killing your cast before it’s even launched.
Since the Single Spey is a touch-and-go cast, it’s easy to step up the tempo while still making a good D-loop. It also allows you more line speed on the forward cast, which helps you land the line and leader straight. Even in the wind.
The more I use the Single Spey, the more applications I find for it. It may be one of the oldest two-hand casts but it has not outlived it’s usefulness. It’s worth taking the time to learn to do it well.
The real key to this cast is
Read More »Adjusting your rig
By Dan Fraiser
I’M STANDING ON THE BANK WATCHING THE BOTTOM FALL OUT OF THE STREAM AND A DARK ABYSS FORM WHERE THERE ONCE WAS STREAM BOTTOM.
The currents are right and the undercut bank is textbook. I know there are fish in there like I know putting my head under water would make breathing hard. It’s just obvious. I know that I don’t have enough weight on, that my dropper needs a tandem fly, that my hopper needs to go and be replaced with a strike indicator and that I need to dig the shot out of my pack. I know it, but that seems like so much work and the fish are right there. So I spend 10 minutes working the run without a strike. Casting and mending and trying to work the margins where I might be deep enough. Eventually, I give up and tear down my rig, put on all the right stuff and immediately start catching.
This unwillingness to change set-ups is a real problem for me. I’ll try to make do with what’s on, only to eventually cave and do it right. It feels like re-rigging would take up so much of my fishing time. Forget that mistake. I timed it tonight. To go from a bare tippet to a two fly rig, complete with shot and an indicator took me 2 minutes and 22 seconds… and I’m slow. I waste more time fishing a rig that isn’t right, just because it’s on, than it would cost me to just get it right and start catching. And who knows how many fish I spooked or made shy before I made the change.
Ignoring the time wasted fishing wrong, let’s just think about this. If you
Read More »