Leader Materials Revisited
By Louis Cahill
So which is actually stiffer, monofilament or fluorocarbon?
A while back I wrote an article on understanding leaders. While talking about the different materials used in fly leaders I mentioned that mono is stiffer than fluorocarbon and I got called out in the comments by a couple of readers. Rightfully so. One of my pet peeves is when people talk about fly fishing from a narrow perspective, forgetting that there are many different kinds of fly fishing, and damned if I didn’t do it myself.
So what’s the answer? Which is stiffer, mono or fluorocarbon?
The answer is, it depends.
When I wrote that mono is stiffer, I was thinking about casting and I was thinking as a saltwater angler. I totally ignored how most anglers use the material. One of the fundamental differences between the two materials is that mono
Read More »Small Stream Structure- Holes, Bends, Runs Etc.
By Jason Tucker
In the public mind there is probably no feature that comes more readily to mind than the Ole Fishin’ Hole.
A lot of non-fishers think that is what fishing is about- going to a big, well-known hole, soaking bait, waiting for the fish to bite. I certainly spent a lot of my childhood believing this was the way to fish.
Especially once you get into fly fishing, you realize those big holes don’t hold all the fish, and probably are some of the least interesting places for the fly angler. After all, fish on the bottom of that big hole aren’t likely to rise eight feet through the water to hit your fly. Learning to identify fish holding water and cover on a small stream is just as important as your casting and fly selection. It is especially important because you need to identify these spots from a distance, pick out the likely fish holding lies, so that you can stealthily approach the spot and present your fly. I can’t tell you the number of times I have (and still do) failed to properly identify fish holding structure and blundered into a spot that was a great opportunity just waiting for my fly.
Holes. After demeaning them at the outset, it is time to redeem them. Holes hold fish, lots of fish, but it’s not enough to approach one and start flogging.
The problem with holes is that a true hole will be too deep to fish a dry fly unless you see fish lingering near the surface feeding. This does happen, and if you run into that situation, by all means move into position and start casting. More often you will find yourself happening on a hole with no perceptible action and will need a game plan. There are four areas to concentrate on when you get to a hole: the tailout, the margins, the head, and the hole itself.
If you’re fishing from downstream, the tailout is what you want to concentrate on first. I spent many a summer day observing big holes in rivers as a child. There was a bridge on a hole that we always fished. The bridge was in the middle of nowhere, not even on a road. I believe that landowner had the bridge repaired at some point, as it was in good shape. It was originally a stagecoach bridge in Michigan’s logging days. It served an old hotel that used to be there. Nostalgia aside, I learned a lot sitting on that bridge soaking worms.
When we would walk out on the bridge it was common to watch thirty or more fish scoot for cover in the deepest part of the hole. The thing to do then was to sit still and wait for the fish to relax and return to their feeding lies. After ten minutes small fish would start to move back out into feeding positions. After twenty minutes they would start to feed again. After thirty minutes even the larger fish would become visible if they were going to feed. A lot of the prime lies were near the bank on the deep side, and also at the head of the hole, but a lot of fish would drift back to the tailout and wait to feed. So when you are approaching a hole this is where you want your first cast to go. You’ll want your fly to land where the color changes from dark to lighter. The fish here may be sensitive to being cast over, so you don’t want to cast too far into the center of the hole and line the fish. Make a few casts to the tailout and work the whole area from shallow to deep before moving onto your next target.
The next target is the margins of the hole. Typically at least one side of the hole has a gradual slope to the bank. Fish that want to feed will
Read More »We be Grubbin’
By Chris Dore
Things are hotting up in Southern NZ and to many Southern locals, this means Willow Grubbing time!
Willow grubs are the larvae of the Saw Fly (Pontania Proxima) , and pupate within those angry red blisters found on the leaves of willow trees. As they emerge from these leafy cocoons, many fall into the rivers and streams these trees line. To the trout, this is a terrestrial smorgasboard and they feed in frenzy like fashion on, in and below the surface. To the angler, this can mean a frustrating time as casts after cast goes unrewarded, and fly after fly is lost forever to low hanging branches. However this doesn’t have to be so.
The key to successful grubbing is to imitate the minute movement of the natural, but how can you imitate the tiny pulses of an often size 20 or smaller morsel in the film without overdoing it?
By letting the fish see the drop of your fly. It’s often that simple.
Now another problem is in seeing such a tiny, sparse imitation at 20 to 30 feet. My solution is to simply attach your grub pattern on a short dropper behind a hi-viz parachute, blowfly or beetle pattern. If the cast goes astray, the fish may even hone in on your indicator fly. Its a win-win really. You can also use a tiny yarn indicator, or a smear of strike putty on your tippet knot.
The final dilemma is how to get those flies beneath or behind low hanging willow branches. Places that grubbing fish like to feed. The answer to this is
Read More »Keep On Stripping!
By Justin Pickett
One of the things that I’ve learned over the years, and something that I stress to my clients, is to always, Always, ALWAYS finish your retrieve when stripping streamers.
I can’t begin to count the amount of times I’ve had a trout slam a streamer at the last second, right before the fly was pulled from the water. On the flip-side, I’ve also lost count of the times that I’ve had the water erupt at the fins of a trout trying to smash the streamer that I was pulling off the water. You just never know when you’ve caught some beasty’s curiosity… just not enough of it to entice an immediate eat.
Take musky for instance; these snaggletoothed dinosaurs are known for following flies all the way to the fly shop stickers, only to turn their discerning nose and head back to their underwater dwelling. To help those noncommittal musky, anglers developed the figure-eight technique in order to increase their odds of hooking up. They do it religiously, and out of habit, cast after cast. The reason they do this is simply because they never know when that musky they’ve been after the past 9,999 casts is following closely behind, just waiting for the fly to pause, wiggle, or jackknife just right. Now, I’m not saying that you need to start figure-eighting your trout streamers, but I’ll often strip my streamer until my leader is just shy of the tip of the rod and then pull the rod either in front of, or behind, the boat in a jerking motion. This gives you a little more water to work with, and might entice a strike from a trout that you may not have known was following your fly. Take advantage of all that water and work as much of it as possible!
If you’re fishing from a drift boat, make sure to keep that thing swimming well inside the oars.
Don’t stop, and keep your eyes peeled! I’ll never forget the day Louis and I went fishing with our buddy Jason Tucker. Jason, who writes the blog Fontinalis Rising, was twerking a black sex dungeon on
Read More »The Saltwater 6 Weight, Why I Love It!
For years now, the saltwater 6 weight has been my secret weapon. The 6 weight sits right on the edge of what’s considered suitable for saltwater. Not every rod manufacturer makes one, and not every saltwater line is available in 6 weight but for those of us who love them, they are irreplaceable. When I fish my 6 weight for bonefish, I feel like I catch more fish and bigger fish. I also feel like the fish I cast too eat the fly more aggressively. It’s not often you come across a piece of gear capable of changing a fish’s attitude but that’s exactly what the 6 weight does. I’ve also found that the common perception that you can’t land big fish, or cast a 6 in the wind, is just not true. Granted, there is some technique involved in both but I fish my 6 wt on the flats in wind up to twenty MPH regularly and have landed plenty of bonefish in the ten pound range with it. I’ve landed redfish even larger and one juvenile tarpon. The extra effort you may put into landing a fish is well worth the results. Skeptical? Watch the video and I’ll explain why the saltwater 6 weight is my favorite fly rod.
Read More »Reece’s Glo Worm
By Bob Reece
Whether you like it or not, fish eat worms.
This wiggly addition to fly boxes is adored by some and scorned by others. If you happen to be a fly fisher that embraces the application of annelids, this pattern is worth its weight.
When tying the Glo Worm, I use either the Tiemco C500BL or the 2499BL. Both hooks sport the slightly upturned hook point and strength required to hook and hold large fish. The addition of two tungsten beads rockets this pattern to the bottom, where it belongs. This quick descent puts and keeps the fly in the strike zone for longer periods of time. The combination of MFC Sexi-Floss and UV coat creates a natural translucency.
Worms work and some work better than others. Even among great simplicity, diversity and improvement exist. If you’re looking to step up your annelid game, light up your box with some Glo Worms.
Read More »The Bobber Conundrum
THE OTHER DAY I RECEIVED THIS EMAIL FROM A READER.
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“Just wanted to bring up an issue that has been eating at my soul for years! I just can’t wrap my arms around the thought of using a bobber. That being said, I know that when nymphing on some streams that the use of an indicator is almost mandatory for your success and without one you have doomed yourself to failure but I can’t bring myself to apply this method.
Why?
I would love to here your thoughts on this issue from both sides. I have always said it’s not about the catching of fish it’s about just being there. I mainly swing flies for steelhead with my two handers and would never ever think of using an indicator for those majestic creatures but I do at times go trout fishing and find myself absolutely bored out of my mind plugging water and getting very few strikes.”
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This has come up frequently and I thought it would be a good topic for a post. I’ll give you my thoughts and maybe you can share yours.
How does the lowly strike indicator generate so much controversy? Be it yarn, foam, a plastic bubble or a dry fly, an indicator is a tool. Like a hook or a line it is meant to help an angler catch a fish. Where is the controversy in that? How does a fellow, like our friend here, find that “eating at his soul?”
The tools you use say a lot about how you see your craft. Hopefully you’re not the guy who reaches for the hammer on every job. The old saying goes, “If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.” Not exactly the definition of craftsmanship, on the other hand, once in a while a nail needs driving.
There is a time to drift a dry fly on 6X, a time to swing a tube fly, a time to rip a streamer and even a time to use a bobber. That’s what makes fly fishing the rich and wonderful pursuit that it is. There are always new techniques to learn and master, new puzzles to solve, new waters or fish to figure out. It is a lifelong pursuit.
The art of angling is in coming to the fish, not in having the fish come to you. It is getting into the slimy little fellow’s head. Figuring out what he expects to see and showing it to him. Whether it’s a nymph, a dry, a streamer or whatever, the art is in presenting the fly to the fish in a way that he can appreciate. It is a chess game between you and the fish and when he makes a conscious decision to eat your fly, that’s checkmate.
Well, check at least, there’s still the business of landing him, if that matters to you. It does, doesn’t it? We have all had the experience of hooking a tough fish only to see him unbutton and I’m willing to bet we’ve all said the same thing, “At least I got him to eat, that’s all that matters.” But is it? Be honest, you wanted to land that fish, right? Or was it just about being out there?
Being out there is great but if that’s what it was about we’d be hikers. Hiking is about being out there. Fishing is about catching fish. We are there with a purpose. We are anglers, we want to catch fish and there is no shame in that. If an indicator facilitates that, where’s the problem? Perhaps not with the bobber.
What we are really talking about is not technique. It’s not the catching of fish or the being out there. It’s cloaked in aesthetic and bolstered by rationalization and perceived as identity but what it is
Read More »You Can Mouse Just About Anywhere
Eight years ago, I got fed up with reading articles about people all around the country and abroad fly fishing with mouse patterns and landing truly giant trout.
It seemed every medium I read or watched, there were people showcasing how productive mouse fishing could be. The only problem was, where I lived in North Georgia, as well as the majority of my neighboring states, I heard very little about anyone fishing mouse patterns. You’d find a few patterns here and there in the fly bins at the local fly shops, but in actuality, I think most of those were being fished on farm ponds for bass not for trout. I couldn’t take it any longer, so I decided to go on a mousing binge, strictly fishing mouse patterns on my days off. I really wanted to figure out if mouse patterns would work just as well on my home waters as they did on blue ribbon caliber trout streams.
My first big brown trout fishing a mouse pattern.
It didn’t take long to find success. My second trip out I landed a 26 1/2″ wild brown trout on my home tailwater. It was one of the biggest documented fly caught brown trout on the surface that anyone could remember for quite some time. I then moved on to some of my favorite small mountain streams where I’d never heard of anyone tying on and fishing a mouse pattern. Again, my mouse experiment yielded incredible success, and I quickly turned into a mouse fishing enthusiast. I didn’t know if I was having luck because no other anglers were fishing these big mouse patterns, or if it was simply that very few anglers in my area were willing to accept mice were regularly being preyed upon by our local trout. I didn’t know for sure, but in all honesty, I didn’t really care. Success was success, and I was going to milk it before everyone caught on.
Here’s What I learned about Fishing Mouse Patterns that first year.
Read More »10 Tips For Catching Big Bonefish
Catching a bonefish is always a challenge, but to catch a big bonefish, you have to do everything right. Bonefishing is a little like playing the guitar. It doesn’t take long to be good enough to have a lot of fun but it takes a lifetime to master. I’ve been doing it for a long time and I still regularly have revelations about it. I suppose that’s why I love it so much. Over the years, I’ve learned a lot about what it takes to catch a big bonefish. Most of it the hard way. I’m going to share some of that hard won knowledge with you in the hope it will shorten the learning curve. Watch the video for my top 10 tip for catching big bonefish
Read More »The Albright Knot
The Albright Knot is a great knot for attaching a metal bite tippet to your leader.
It can also be used to attach the leader to the fly line or any time you are attaching materials of very different size or stiffness. Here’s Capt. Joel Dickey, in the last of his three part series on better salt water knots, to teach you the Albright Knot.
WATCH THE VIDEO AND LEARN TO TIE THE ALBRIGHT KNOT!
Read More »