Treat your sunglasses as though your vision depends upon them
YOUR ROD, REEL AND LINE MAY BE THE ONLY PIECES OF GEAR MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR SUNGLASSES.
On most days I’d rather have the wrong fly than the wrong glasses. They are not only crucial for sight fishing and reading water but make wading safer and the whole fishing experience more pleasant.
A good pair of polarized sunglasses are not only essential but expensive, too. Their effectiveness can be seriously compromised by scratches, delamination, and unnecessary wear or damage. It makes sense to take good care of them.
Still, not everything about caring for your sunglasses is intuitive. I’ve worn glasses my whole life and recently found that I was damaging my sunglasses by washing them with soap and water, a practice I assumed was the best way to clean them. Reached out to my buddy Peter Crow at Smith Optics for some advice, and he provided me with some good common sense information to share with you.
Read More »Putting Your Rod Tip In The Water Can Be A Game Changer
EVERYONE WANTS TO CATCH BIG FISH BUT LEARNING TO OUTSMART THEM TAKES SOME DOING.
Big fish often hold a PhD in fly selection and presentation, but any experienced angler can tell you that getting them to eat your fly is only half the battle. Getting them to the net is another thing. Most anglers do not land the first really big fish they hook. Often they don’t land the first several. Much is written about feeding big fish and far too little about what comes next. Generally speaking anglers learn to land big, strong fish the way I did, by losing a few.
Fighting a tough fish is not just a show of force. It’s a game of strategy, but also of tactics. It’s problem solving. The fish creates problems and you have to solve them. There are two such fish problems that can be solved by the simple tactic of putting your rod tip in the water.
The big downstream run
When a strong fish runs hard downstream too quickly for you to follow, you find yourself at a disadvantage. With the fish directly downstream, the angle of the hook in the fish’s mouth is perilous. Any thrashing or head shaking on the part of the fish can easily result in a long distance release. If you are unable to get downstream and establish a better angle to the fish you are left with only one choice, bring the fish to you. But how?
Leader 911
When leader emergencies happen, will you be ready?
I know a lot of anglers who only carry enough tippet to change out flies. That’s a great way to get caught with your pants down. I saw it happen just the other day. I was bonefishing with my friend Bob and a nice bonefish took him around some corral. Not only did Bob lose his whole leader but the end of his fly line along with the welded loop.
That’s a great way to ruin a day of fishing, even if you have extra leaders. But not if you’re prepared. I use hand tied leaders and I make a habit of having everything I need to rebuild my leader completely. I usually have a couple of fresh leaders as well but the obsessive-compulsive side of me insists on carrying the spools.
HERE’S HOW YOU HANDLE THIS KIND OF TOTAL FAILURE
To start you need a good solid connection to your fly line. I prefer to whip a loop in the end of my fly line. You can get the details on how to do that HERE. That a little tricky on the boat or stream so I’ll usually go with a temporary solution and whip a loop that evening.
You can tie in a short butt section of heavy leader material and tie a loop for attaching your leader or for a quick fix you tie the leader directly to the fly line. If you are trout fishing on light tackle, you can use a nail knot for this. Personally I don’t like a nail knot connection. I prefer an Albright knot. Here’s a video.
If you don’t have a fresh leader
Read More »Fingers Crossed
By Steven Brutger
FOR MONTHS WE HAD OUR FINGERS CROSSED.
Eying snow reports and talking to the few who had been in the mountains, we were cautiously optimistic. Despite a big snow year we had a shot at hitting it right.
A few days too early and ice would cover the high alpine lakes we hoped to fish. Or worse snow levels might make travel too arduous to reach them in the first place. Just right and we might be lucky enough to fish as the ice moved out, being the first to show our flies to hungry golden trout.
Now, miles into the Wilderness, we would soon have our answer.
Huddled under a tarp, a few hundred feet below tree line, we put our backs toward horizontally falling rain and snow. Spindrift was visibly blowing over the ridge tops. Conditions were deteriorating. After a restless night in our bags the only option was to continue up and test our luck.
The lake was half covered in ice. Peering through graupel a hundred feet above the water we spotted a
Read More »Review: Orvis Helios 8’5” 7wt
By Justin Pickett Designed to make fast, accurate shots into tight quarters, and pull beasties from their hidden lairs. The new generation Orvis Helios has been out in the wild for a while now and we’ve had our hands on a few of them over the past several months. Looking back, the Helios 3 was, and still is, a great rod with a focus on quantifying accuracy, and was considered by many as a benchmark in the industry for six years, which is a longer tenure than most generations of rods are on the market. With this ground-up redesign, the team at the Orvis Rod Shop aimed to improve upon the performance and durability of the H3 with the new Helios, bringing new materials and new manufacturing processes to the table. The Helios sports increased recovery (vertical deflection), improved tracking (lateral deflection), and significantly increased hoop strength of the blank. We’ve been fortunate to see and feel what these new Helios rods bring to the water and we like it! Right out of the box, the new-generation Helios is sheltered in an aluminum rod tube that’s been given a coat of light gray paint to match the updated branding on the rod blank, and is topped off by a black, knurled cap where the rod model is laser etched for quick identification. The rod sock offers up a simple and pleasant new design. There are no strings to tie. A simple clasp sewn into a small strap wraps around the sock and snaps to keep it neatly rolled. There are no loose strings and this snap-strap just simplifies storing your rod. The branding of the new Helios is similar to the previous H3. A little less Nascar this go-round, but the white label remains with a touch of grey and … Continue reading
Read More »The Two-Rod Bonefish Solution
By Louis Cahill
Saltwater fly-fishing is condition dependent, and conditions often change without warning. That’s why I carry two fly rods.
Your strategy for presenting a fly to bonefish can change radically depending on conditions. Bonefishing is always challenging, but not always for the same reasons. That’s what keeps it fun. Having the right setup for the conditions really helps you overcome the challenges, so let’s look at those challenges and how to be prepared for whatever mother nature throws at you.
The most decisive factor in any flats fishing is wind. Most anglers dread fishing on a windy day, but they miss that wind when it’s gone. Making a good cast and turning your leader over in wind can be a real challenge, but the wind gives you an advantage, too. Wind disturbs the surface of the water, making it less likely that your presentation will spook the fish. This allows you to drive a powerful cast into the wind, if you have a fly rod and line that are up to the task.
On days when there is no wind, bonefish can be unbelievably spooky, leaving anglers frustrated as fish run for cover at their false casting. On days like that, your ultra-fast fly rod and front loaded line are a liability, not an asset. So what is the bonefish angler to do? Well, my answer is carry two rods.
My common quiver consists of two 8-weights. One for windy conditions and one for calm. Each of these rods is paired with a fly line which will perform in these given conditions. That way, no mater what happens, I’m ready. These two rods look very similar under casual observation but they perform very differently.
Windy day setups
Your windy day rod needs to be firm and fast. It’s totally ok for this rod to be a little heavier. We aren’t looking for the kind of recovery rate that comes
Read More »Two Streamers Alaskan Guides Always Carry
No Alaska angler should be without these two fly patterns.
If you ever plan on visiting one of those famous Alaskan fishing operations like Alaska West or if you’re more the angler who rather prefers to do it yourself, I highly recommend tying up several of these two articulated streamer patterns before your trip. These guys never failed me on the Bristol Bay watersheds of Alaska, and you’ll be set no matter what time of the season you fish. We called the black and chartreuse head streamer the “The Green Headed Monster” and it would knock them dead early to mid-season. When you found the fish it would produce every cast with a steady swing downstream and across. What a big fish magnet this guy was.
The second fly is a Flesh/Attractor streamer we dead drifted most of the time under a indicator but also we would swing it at the end of our drifts. It would produce big fish damn near anywhere mid-season on. There are lots of variations of this fly out there, this pattern was shown to me by retired alaskan guide, Sam Cornelius of Mission Creek Lodge. I nicknamed it the “Cornelius Special” out of respect. Sam was an exceptional guide and fly fisherman.
Both of these flies are very easy to tie as long as you
Read More »Keep a Backup Nymph Rig Ready
Changing out flies on the water takes time but is often necessary to catch trout consistently all day.
Keeping a pre-rigged tandem nymph rig ready to go, will allow you to quickly change out your flies from one hole to the next and save you critical time when your fishing time is limited. They’re great to have when you find your hot fly has turned cold, when you break your rig off on a snag or find yourself with a nasty tangled mess. Let’s face it, we often find ourselves in question on the water, particularly in the first hour after we’ve wet our line. It can take some time to figure out what the trout want for the day, and by having a couple different pre-rigged tandem nymph rigs on hand, you’ll find it much more efficient to try multiple fly patterns and rigs out, and that should help you dial-in quicker and start catching trout.
Sometimes the tandem nymph rig you just caught trout with in the hole downstream, may fail to get the attention of the trout in the next hole you fish. This isn’t always the case, but sometimes for sure. In fact, this happened to me just the other day. My client had landed a fish out of the first three holes we fished in the morning with a woolly bugger lead fly and a micro san juan worm dropper. As my client worked the fourth hole of the day, the bites abruptly stopped, despite him making several great presentations and drifts. Knowing there were fish in the hole, I snipped off the rig and tied on one of my different pre-rigged nymph rigs. First cast, my client landed a trout, and he went on to catch another fish after that. If I would have stuck with the first rig, thinking the flies were fine because they worked in the previous holes, we probably wouldn’t have landed those two fish. There is no doubt there are times when trout will key in on a specific aquatic insect and become selective feeders. However, some days,
Read More »Black and White Bahamas
The Bahamas are beautiful, even without the stunning colors.
One of the things I love the most about fly fishing in the Bahamas are the stunning colors of the flats. I never grow tired of scanning that beautiful horizon. Still, over the years I have taken a lot of black and white photos, many of them infrared, that I love. I thought I’d share a few here. I hope you enjoy them as well.
Read More »Fly Tying Tip: Use Contrast Colors For Your Tying Desk
It doesn’t matter if you have been tying flies for one week or thirty years.
Chances are, right now, your tying desk is a chaotic mess of thread, feathers, furs, hooks, and beads. It’s just a fact of the tying life. Despite all of the drawers, containers, and custom pieces that are made to organize all of your tying materials, there will just about always be the scattered remnants of last night’s bourbon-fueled tying session still fluttering around the table top. And, inevitably, that one thing you always need when that new “it fly” idea hits is always missing amongst the piles of marabou trimmings and bucktail clippings. Do I have the end all solution to always keeping your desk spic and span? Nope! That’s all on you. However, I do have a great little tip to help you find the things that you need when cleaning up that tangled mess just doesn’t jive with your mood.
I own a cool roll top desk that is no doubt circa 1983. I purposely purchased a roll top desk because A) they have a ton of drawers to keep stuff in and B) I can close it up and hide the mass destruction that even a taxidermist might gawk at. However, one of the things about my roll top, as well as many others I’ve seen, are that they are often stained with dark tones to accentuate the wood. This makes for a pretty desk, but when it comes to finding a #20 hook amongst the clutter, it’s a damn nightmare.
An easy fix for this is to grab a
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