Snap Your Wrist For Line Speed
Today Bruce is going to get a little closer to that fly rod and talk about the roll your wrist plays in fly casting.
Watch closely. Bruce has great mussel memory from thousands of hours of casting. Watch the subtlety of his wrist movement. The snap and push that happens. Don’t forget that, as in all fly casting, this requires a smooth application of power to be successful. This will take some practice to master and in the next two videos Bruce will build on this technique so get out in the yard and give it a try.
heck out the video!
Read More »The Video Doesn’t Lie
By Bob Reece
Over the numerous years that I played football, I watched countless hours of practice and game film. One truth always reigned. Your performance was never as good or as bad as you believed it would be.
After a recent back packing trip I sat down at my computer to review some of my footage. One of the clips was a side shot of me casting. While the rear portion of my casting range was sound, the forward portion of that particular cast was flat out sloppy. My forward plane of motion traveled down instead of parallel to the water. In addition to this, my stopping point prevented my rod from effectively loading into my back cast. Having seen video of myself casting on numerous occasions, I was a little surprised and disappointed. However, it was helpful to be reminded that when I lose focus on the water, my cast is not always what I assume it to be.
You may not carry camera gear with you on your fishing journeys. Chances are though, that you have a cell phone with you at home and on the road. Taking a moment to record a few minutes of your casting motion can provide valuable feedback. While it’s no substitute for
Read More »Fly Fishing: Searching for That Needle in a Haystack
I really enjoy catching big wild trout on a fly rod. Even more though, I enjoy the challenges that come with having to hunt them down in places where they are few and far between. I’m talking about trout streams where there’s not supposed to be any truly big trout living there. The places where catching a 12-incher normally gets you tickled to death, and where most fly anglers, if asked, would tell you point blank, “I guarantee you there’s nothing swimming in that trout stream large enough for a grip and grin.” These are the places I like to visit on my days off from guiding. I get deep satisfaction searching for that extra special fish. The fish that’s 99% confident no fly angler thinks he or she even exists.
Read More »Tarpon of Cuba: 3 Tips For Success
By Dan Frasier
I think what surprised me most was that they still looked like fish.
The dark shapes sliding below the surface were intimately familiar despite their legendary status, but the vastness of the flats and channels of Jardines de la Reina off the coast of Cuba seemed to put their size into perspective. The sabalo, Spanish for tarpon, looked natural. Why this surprised me, I don’t know. Perhaps it was the hours of videos I’d watched with monster fish exploding from the water. Or the gallons of ink I’d poured over about the silver king. The grandness of these fish left me anticipating something otherworldly. Where I’d expected to find a tiger in my living room, I’d instead found it in the jungle, where it fits.
From the bow I see the shape quartering toward the boat from 2 o’clock and all of the advice I’d sought in the previous weeks just sloughed away. Eighty feet and moving lazily toward us was simply another cruising fish. One false cast and I shot line to intersect it’s path at 70 feet. A few strips and the fly is in position and very slowly sinking. As the tarpon approached I give it two slow pulls. The calm and lazy shape tenses and snaps its head to the side and all of a sudden I’m holding a live wire and thinking, “Hit him as hard as you can.”
The entire process was strangely familiar to me. Despite having never chased tarpon before, the situations were much like I’d experienced in other saltwater situations and in my carp fishing. See the fish (something that takes training), cast quickly because you may only get one shot, intersect the fish, and don’t make it work too hard or do anything unnatural to eat your fly. Simple, but not easy.
Now don’t get me wrong, I’m still nothing more than a Middle School level tarpon fly fisherman. In the long calls I’d had with real tarpon Phd’s, I’d been given all kinds of tips, information, and strategies on how to address these fish in all of the more difficult situations. This was the kind of information that allows the experts to hook them when you can’t, or hook a higher percentage of his shots than anyone else on the water. Great stuff and extremely helpful when you are trying to take you tarpon game to the next level. But as a rank amateur, I was trying to take my tarpon fishing to ANY level and remembering and implementing these PhD level techniques in the heat of the moment was more than my tiny brain and lack of muscle memory could handle. And yet, I still managed to catch a number of fish, by leaning on what was familiar to me. Here are a few things I learned.
1. They are still fish and it’s still flats fishing.
I had built the idea of chasing tarpon up so much in my head that it felt like I was attempting to do the impossible. Go catch one of the baddest ass fish in the world on a fly rod with no prior experience and in a limited number of days. I’d put so much pressure on myself to convert on this opportunity that I’d nearly psyched myself out. I called everyone I knew with insight into tarpon fishing, talked to people about fishing Cuba (like it was fishing on Mars or in zero gravity), and read and studied like a madman.
All of this preparation was good. It helped in a lot of ways, but
Read More »The Original Eyewear For The Flats
Bonefish are just cool. They never cease to amaze me.
Like all fish, they are perfectly adapted to their environment and in their environment you need a competitive edge. Right in the middle of the food chain, the bonefish has to get in, get fed, and get out in a hurry, before he becomes somebody else’s lunch. To do that, he needs keen eyesight, a hard nose, a turbo charged tail stroke and some high-tech eye wear. I handled hundreds of bones before I ever noticed the eye glass, and a few more before I captured a good photo of it. It’s so clear and flawless that the light and the angle you look at the fish need to be just right to see it. It is a slick outer lens that covers a good portion of the bonefishes face and encapsulates it’s eye. If you study it’s profile you will see that it turns the bonefish’s already sleek profile into a perfectly hydrodynamic projectile. The equivalent of cycle racers shaving their legs.
No doubt, this aids in the bone’s remarkable speed, but that’s just part of the story. The eyeglass serves a much larger purpose. The bonefish has a fairly unique style of feeding. When he spots a crab or a shrimp and makes his charge his prey seeks cover in the coral, or deep in the mud or sand bottom. The bonefish gives chase by
Read More »The Mental Game of Permit and Steelhead Fishing
By Tucker Ladd
I will be the first to admit it — I have a permit fishing problem.
While that is a hard enough itch to scratch, living in the urban wilderness of Denver, CO, I have also developed a bit of a steelhead fishing problem in recent years. While more often the idea of standing on the bow of a flats boat supersedes the thought of standing waist-deep in 40 degree water, the satisfaction of hooking either fish is something that seems to haunt me daily.
What I have always loved and appreciated about fishing for both permit and steelhead is how these fish challenge, reward, and break you as an angler. But it’s not just what these fish do to the psyche of an angler that makes pursuing them similar. There are also similarities in the practice of trying to catch one of these elusive fish on a fly.
IT’S ALL A MIND F*&#
Let’s face it, there’s a lot of “down time” when fishing for either of these species. By “down time” I mean the duration of time spent in between catching either fish. Now sure, there are those epic days when one may hook, and even land multiple fish in a day, but these days are certainly few and far between.
Any normal day of fishing for either species requires a mental toughness, to not only get through the down time, but stay focused, alert and always ready for when the fish eats (steelhead) or presents itself (permit). Any angler who has regularly pursued either fish has their own technique or methodology for working through this mental challenge. And let’s be clear, it is a tremendous challenge.
Day 1 is always easy. You’re fresh on the water, the possibilities are endless, and you’ve got that feeling of “this is the day!”
Day 2 you’re feeling challenged, but the previous day’s fish sightings or bumps are keeping your energy up and your attitude in check. Even if you didn’t see or feel any fish, the “newness” of the experience is keeping you going.
Day 3 can go a couple of different ways. Scenario 1 is
Read More »Trust The Boo
I’ve fished bamboo rods my whole life and I’ve made my own for the last twelve years or so.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked if I was afraid to fight big fish on a bamboo rod. The answer is no. I’ve broken my share of rods but only once did I break one fighting a fish and that was totally my fault. I’ve landed more fish over twenty inches on bamboo than I can count, a few pushing thirty. The two fish pictured were both landed on a seven foot four weight. The tip on that rod measures only thirty thousandths of an inch in diameter but it handled those monsters just fine.
A 27″ Hen and a 28″ Male Both Landed on the 4 Weight
Bamboo is a remarkable material. When properly heat treated it has amazing strength. Traditional Japanese carpenters use bamboo nails cooked in a wok and high rise construction all over Asia is done on bamboo scaffolding. Do bamboo rods break? Of course they do but a well made rod is much stronger than you would guess and if properly handled and cared for it will take whatever a fish can dish out. I’ve heard it said that fisherman break rods, not fish, and I think that’s true. With that in mind, here are some tips on how to keep that cane rod fishing for many years.
• Treat it right. Bamboo doesn’t take a lot of maintenance but there are some things you should think about. Rot is a death sentence for a cane rod. Rod makers spend a lot of time on their finish and it can last a lifetime but it’s not bulletproof. Never put a rod away wet. This is the most common mistake guys make with their rods. When you put a rod in a tube with an o ring seal any moisture on that rod or it’s sock is in there until you open the tube again. That gives moisture plenty of time to work through the finish and into the wood. I set mine out on the mantle in the sock overnight before storing them. The second big finish mistake is leaving the rod in a hot car. If you leave that rod tube in the sun in a hot car the finish will bubble and no longer protect the cane. If you have to leave a rod in the car keep it in the shade and take the cap off for ventilation.
• Ovoid physical traumas. A bamboo rod will bend like grass in the wind. What will break it is sudden physical trauma. For example, trying to rip a fly out of tree leaves with a brisk casting stroke, as I watched a good friend do with my rod once, works every time. Running the tip headlong into a tree while hiking in doesn’t help. Hitting the rod with
Read More »The Double Haul
A good double haul is curtail wherever you’re fishing.
Never more than in salt water. A lot of anglers, however, find it mystifying. Here’s Capt Joel Dickyto explain how you can have a great double haul.
WATCH THE VIDEO!
Read More »Build Your Own Fly Rod: DIY Video Series
EVER THOUGHT ABOUT BUILDING YOUR ON FLY ROD? WITH THIS DIY VIDEO SERIES YOU CAN!
We are really excited to be working with Matt Draft, of Proof Fly Fishing, to bring you this great step-by-step tutorial on building a graphite fly rod.
Building a rod doesn’t have to be expensive or difficult. There are kits available that make it well within reach of most anglers and you probably have many of the tools you need around the house. With the right guidance and a little patience, you can do it.
There’s nothing quite as rewarding as fishing a fly rod you made yourself. Over the next seven weeks Matt will take you through the process step by step and help you up the learning curve to successful rod building. These videos will live on the G&G YouTube channel for your reference any time you need help.
As a special thank you to G&G readers, Matt will be offering free shipping on all of his kits for the next seven weeks. Just use the code G&Gfreeship on his web site.
Today we start with video #1, Rod Building Tools and Equipment. Matt will show you everything you need to build a fly rod at home and you’ll be surprised how much of it you already have.
Read More »Omar
By Louis Cahill
“HE LEARNED, BECAME OLDER, WISER AND, YES, BIGGER. HE BECAME A BETTER FISH AND TO CATCH HIM I WOULD HAVE TO BECOME A BETTER MAN.”
Omar was a tough guy. Mean, if you got right down to it. A loner. Seldom seen, and when he was, there’d be a fight. Still, there were a great many things about Omar that you couldn’t help but find beautiful. The most remarkable being his smile. A mischievous maw, impish and wicked. A jaw like a big chrome bumper, gleaming with perfect white teeth. A rip saw for a mouth.
His physicality was striking. Taut as a bow string, his muscles refined and specialized like an Olympic athlete. He seemed misplaced in time. An evolutionary leap forward, or maybe back. His body like a blade carried by some ancient Samurai. Hardened, honed, perfect in every detail, unsheathed and set free of its master, to do as it will.
Like Ali in his youth, cocky and brash. The kind of confidence that you just knew would get him into trouble. Like Hemingway in old age, dark and brooding but still dangerous. The old man that might still issue you an ass beating if he didn’t like your looks. Omar asked for nothing. He took what he pleased and he demanded respect. He reminded me of my father, and maybe that’s why I loved him.
Omar was twenty-two when I first met him. It was in the fall and the trees were red and gold. The days were getting cold and the sun huddled close to the horizon. There had been a heavy rain and Fightingtown Creek was high with just a bit of olive color. The fishing had been slow and I was cold and tired.
The sun never really finds its way into that creek for long. Peering up through a gap in the rhododendron, bright slashes of amber in the tree tops told me the day was winding down. I cast a small streamer into a bend upstream and waited as the current swept it under a Buick size boulder at the head of a deep run. I stripped and my line came tight.
The name Fightingtown is a bit of a mystery. I’ve been told that there was an Native American village on the headwaters in a place now called the Big Frog Wilderness. The old people say that the Indians kept bull frogs and made them fight for sport. The white men called the village “Big Frog Fighting Town.”
I don’t know if any of that is true but it could be. The place is near the sight of Fort Gilmer where, in 1838, General Winfield Scott and his men, under the terms of the New Echota treaty, rounded up the last of the Cherokee Indians in Georgia and began the westward march we know as the Trail of Tears. It’s easy to believe that some of that native blood was spilled into the water of Fightingtown. At any rate, the name suits it.
Everything about Fightingtown creek is inhospitable. It’s a thicket, a briar patch, the home of Brer Rabbit. In the days, when I met Omar, it ran high and hard over slick rocks with sharp edges. I seldom left there without water in my waders, and often I was bleeding. My face scratched from pushing through mountain laurel, spider webs clinging to my ears.
It winds like a labyrinth through hills as craggy and scarred as the faces that glare over shotgun barrels in its headwaters, places like Hells Holler and Devils Den. It flows past forgotten cemeteries and auto graveyards, past crumbling abandoned home places and hemlocks as old as the sky. It turns back on itself so often you start to think it runs up hill. It is the lost soul of Appalachia. It is my home water.
“Those Fightingtown fish are bullies,” my buddy Dan always said. I’d struggle and suffer down there, bent double at the waist with a branch poking in my ear, trying to cast. Plenty of days I’d go home dirty and sore without a tug on the line to show for it. When I hooked a fish landing it in that thicket was like boxing a bear in a closet. They are a riddle, those fish. They break every rule and in learning to catch them you become as unconventional as the place itself. When you do learn how they think and your are willing to fight them like they must be fought, even if it means a broken rod or a bleeding shin, then you will discover Fightingtown’s secret: Leviathan.
Landing Omar the first time was mostly
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