Spotting Big Trout in all the Wrong Places
ONE OF MY HOME WATERS THAT I SPEND 500 PLUS HOURS A YEAR GUIDING ON IS NOTORIOUS FOR BIG FISH HOLDING IN WATER THAT MOST PEOPLE WOULD CONSIDER HORRIBLE TROUT WATER.
I’m talking about water that is less than a foot deep that even veteran anglers would regularly walk by without fishing. The other day guiding I spotted a huge hooked jaw male rainbow pushing 30 inches. It was sitting in plain view on a gravel bar in six inches of water hugged up against the edge of a rhododendron. My partner and I watched the fish feeding regularly for about five minutes, while we planned out our spot and stock. I had seen big fish laying in this shallow gravel bar in the past many times, but nothing this size. Here’s the ironic part, right before we had approached the spot I had just explained how important it was to scan the water, even ridiculous looking shallow water before making a cast in the chances we might spot a big fish.
Heavily pressured fish are smart and often sneaky. I truly believe big trout will often search out under pressured water that anglers tend to overlook to stay off the radar. Doing this keeps them from getting harassed by 90% of fly fishermen. Next time your fishing heavily pressured trout water that holds big fish and the water is clear enough to sight-fish, don’t make the mistake of
Read More »2 Scenarios For Greasing Your Leader
Sometimes a little grease goes a long way.
1. Fishing with Tiny Dry Flies
Many anglers out there shy away from fishing tiny dry flies because they find it difficult to see them and keep them floating during their drifts. Greasing the length of your leader with fly floatant can help your tiny dries float longer and make them easier to see on the water. A good scenario for this would be if you’re fishing a CDC pattern where you don’t apply floatant directly to the fly pattern. By greasing your leader you’ll increase the floatation of your pattern and it will stay afloat longer in more turbulent water.
2. Drifting Nymphs & Emergers in the Film
If you find the standard dry fly dropper rig is failing to get the attention of feeding fish during a hatch, try instead tying on a single emerger or nymph pattern that imitates the aquatic insects hatching. Then grease your leader from the butt section to within 6″ of your fly. This will allow your fly to drift in or slightly below the surface film where
Don’t Throw The Hail Mary
FISH, FISH EVERYWHERE AND NOT A FISH TO CATCH.
I was trout fishing with a friend in North Carolina the other day. We were fortunate to find a nice piece of water which held a good size pod of fish. Maybe a dozen total spread across the tail out. A couple of them were really nice fish. I called my buddy over and pointed them out to him, insisting he take a shot at them.
He’s fairly new to fly fishing and was a little intimidated by the sight of all those fish. He didn’t know exactly how to approach the situation. Option paralysis took over and he made a choice that I suspect a lot of anglers make in that situation. He dropped his fly upstream of the pod and hoped for the best.
Casting to the geometric center of a pod of fish is sometimes successful but never optimal. Often you spook the whole pod and walk away empty-handed. If you catch a fish it will likely be the small enthusiastic fellow darting around taking what he can get. The big guy is not going to move to your fly. He’s going to play it cool.
Any bird hunter will tell you, when you flush a covey of birds, you don’t fire into the group. You will only end up shooting
Read More »7 Reasons I use the Double Figure 8 Loop Knot In Freshwater And Salt
By Louis Cahill
This easy fishing knot will help you catch more fish.
I learned the Double Figure 8 Loop Knot when I started getting serious about tarpon fishing. It quickly became the go-to knot for all of my saltwater and streamer fishing. I even use it to attach nymphs from time to time. It has become indispensable to me and I am absolutely sure that I catch more fish by using it. No matter what species you target, the Double Figure 8 will help you fish better.
HERE ARE 7 REASONS I USE THE DOUBLE FIGURE 8 LOOP KNOT.
Better Action
The key to enticing fish to eat a fly is lifelike action. Since a loop knot doesn’t lock the tippet down against the eye of the hook, your fly is free to move at any angle in the water. Any fly attached with a loop knot will move in a more lifelike manner and is more likely to be eaten.
Flies sink faster
With a traditional fishing knot, like a clinch knot where the tippet is locked to the eye of the hook, a weighted fly has to pull the tippet down across its width. This causes resistance. Think of it as putting your rod tip in the water and moving it quickly sideways. Can you feel the resistance? With a loop knot, the fly can pivot in the loop and dive, drawing the tippet down along its length. Think of that as plunging your rod tip into the water tip first. Much less resistance, right? That’s why loop knots are the standard for saltwater fly fishing.
Small profile
The Double Figure 8 does not rely on multiple wraps of line for its holding power. The simplicity of the jam knot creates a strong knot that’s much smaller than other fishing knots. A smaller knot is less visible to the fish. This is huge when using heavy bite guards for species like tarpon or musky. This does, however, lead to the one exception in my use of this knot. I do not use it to attach the hook when fishing tube flies. Because I rely on the larger knot to stop the tube, I use a surgeon’s loop.
100% line strength
The Double Figure 8 is a jam knot. That means it’s two simple knots which slide together and lock into place. There are no weak points in the knot. No places where tippet can cut itself and tags don’t pull through when the tippet stretches. Your knot strength is the full tippet strength.
Low friction tightening
The strength of you knots is only as good as
Choosing Carp Flies: What Are They Eating?
by Dan Frasier
“IF YOU THINK YOU KNOW WHERE TO START WITHOUT INTIMATELY KNOWING THE WATER AND FISH YOU ARE ABOUT TO CHASE, CARP WILL WHIP YOUR ASS.”
John Gierach, in his book Death, Taxes and Leaky Waders, writes about expertizing. That is, acting the part of an expert. He explains, “Our answers are laced with complicated qualifications. They ramble, they’re never simple. Often they’re so obscure they end up being meaningless. But then, if you have to ask the question in the first place you probably won’t understand the answer, right?”
This, I must admit, is not a phenomenon to which I’m immune. It’s not that I hope to make anyone feel ignorant or inadequate, nor is it to make myself look like I know more than anyone else. It’s a product of how the information came to me. I didn’t learn how to catch carp by being presented a tidy thesis from which to work. I picked up information in bits and pieces over the years and apparently that is how my brain stored it.
When I later attempt to access that information in order to answer questions for other people, it tends to come out jumbled, full of caveats and obscure to the point of being useless. It’s frustrating to myself and to the person who just wanted to catch a damn carp or two.
Many extremely good carp anglers have written and presented eloquently on how to catch these fish. Often, top 10 lists of must-do’s are used. Sometimes, detailed descriptions of how to address particular situations are discussed. Oftentimes the expert is reduced to simply giving some generic thoughts and suggesting some experimentation. The problem is, I know too many guys are way too good at catching these fish.
That’s a problem because one expert is often saying things that are diametrically opposed to another. Two flyfishers, equally adept at catching carp on the fly, and two totally different set of rules. It has to be extremely confusing to the beginner.
The effect of all of this conflicting advice is that we have made carp out to be a practically uncatchable species, which feeds in a way so unique that you apparently have to be born an expert to even expect to hook up. There are so many rules, and points and counterpoints that the fish seem impossibly complicated. Of course, that’s crap.
The real problem is that each expert is an expert on their fish. I hear advice and descriptions that I know would fail miserably elsewhere. I’ve SEEN it fail miserably elsewhere. Hell, I’ve been the failer!
I’m nothing if not stubborn, and so, despite it’s difficulty, I will be doing a series of posts aimed at helping the carp novice enjoy success earlier and more often than I did. I’ll be discussing generalities that will apply on any water you fish. There won’t be specific advice, or fly suggestions. That’s a fool’s errand. The fact is, if you think you know where to start without intimately knowing the water and fish you are about to chase, carp will whip your ass. So lets discuss the questions that only you can answer that will produce a successful carp outing.
WHAT ARE THEY EATING?
Read More »Small Stream, Big Reward
By Jason Tucker
Spring has sprung, and if you listen closely you can hear the rumble of fly anglers prepping their gear for trout fishing.
Trout seasons will be opening very soon if not already. We’re all looking forward to warmer temps, fly hatches, and trout looking up. While a lot of anglers will be hitting the main streams, I personally can’t wait to do some small-stream fishing. You should do some too.
There’s a lot of good reasons to skip the mainstream and fish the headwaters or tributaries. For instance, Michigan has somewhere between 14,000 and 20,000 miles of trout stream depending on what day of the week it is. While there are certainly several hundred miles of mainstream, the vast majority of trout holding water is typically in the headwaters and tributary streams. This translates to several advantages for you the angler.
Elbow Room. I’m quite fond of fishing Michigan’s Au Sable River. It’s one of the finest trout streams in the world. But never have I fished that river without seeing at least one other party, and if the hatches are on you’re probably fishing within sight of other anglers. It is a great river, with copious fly hatches and large numbers of trout that can support the pressure. But constantly bumping into others and being bumped into gets tiresome. If you simply go fish one of its many tributaries you can eliminate this problem entirely. As a matter of fact, I can say that most of the days I’ve spent on Michigan’s small streams, I’ve never seen another person.
An even greater surprise was when I moved to Georgia. I figured being this close to major population centers it would be even harder to find empty water. Nope. There’s some streams that receive a lot of pressure, but head up almost any ravine with a stream in it and you will have it to yourself, and quite frequently the fishing will be spectacular.
Wild Fish. While many a mainstem gets stocked on a regular basis, quite frequently the headwaters and tributaries are not stocked at all, either due to a lack of angler effort or lack of access for stocking trucks. This translates into
Read More »Poonfroggin
It’s already plenty warm by 6:00 AM.
The hot pink band hugging the horizon and lighting up the water foreshadows the brain-baking heat that will be here any minute. It’s going to be another brutally calm day in the Florida Keys. We’re poling quietly down the flat, the little Dolphin skiff slicing the mirror as we go.
My buddy Scott is on the bow while I apply thick white sun screen like cake frosting. My good friend Joel Dickey is on the platform and he seems a little fidgety. We found fish here the previous morning within just a few minutes, but it’s pretty quiet here now. Joel keeps looking over his left shoulder, like he’s being followed. After several glances he stops, fixed on the horizon.
“Naw, that’s…there’s somethin’ goin’ on over there,” he mutters. “Reel up Scott, we’re going over there.”
My eyes aren’t what they used to be. We’re halfway there before I see the birds. They’re working hard on the back side of a little bay. I can just make out the edge of a huge raft of floating weed. The little bay is choked with it. We come off plane, well away from the raft. Joel mounts the platform and takes up in quiet.
“You here that?” Joel asks. I don’t of course because I’m deaf as a post but Scott hears it and you can tell he’s excited about it, whatever it is.
“They’re crushing back there.”
The raft is about the size of a football field. I guess, I never played football. I played soccer and it’s about the same thing. Every so often the grass is interrupted by hot tub sized patches of open water. And in every one of those hot tubs there’s a tarpon working. Rolling and crushing shrimp.
Once in a while you’ll see this happen, when the weather is hot and still. It’s hard to believe that the ocean can run out of oxygen, but it does. In spots any way, when the conditions are just right. The warm water holds less oxygen than cooler water. When it’s calm at night and the turtle grass isn’t producing oxygen and there’s no wind to stir the surface, the shrimp start to suffocate. They come to the surface to find air and they seek the cover of the grass. Too bad for them that the tarpon know all about it.
These fish are little guys. Ten to thirty pounds but they are tarpon to the bone. So here’s the challenge. To make a pin-point cast, of sixty to seventy-five feet, into the far side of one of those openings, where you can get a couple of strips off before your fly is in the grass. Time the cast so the fish rolling in the open water is on his way back up to the surface and seal the deal ASAP.
Feeding them will be the easy part. Once you stick them they go ballistic. They jump and run and jump and run, sewing all of that grass together with your fly line. It’s just like fishing frogs for bass, except that’s a twenty pound tarpon you’re horsing out of the grass, not a three pound bass.
The casting, it turns out
Read More »Dealing With Stuck Ferrules, the Smart Way
Years of fishing bamboo rods taught me one thing for sure. Stuck ferrules are as unavoidable as the occasional skunk and that holds true for graphite. Sometimes it’s avoidable but often it’s not. What is totally avoidable is damaging your rod in the process of unseating them.
Often it’s as simple as getting a good grip on the rod. When a rod is wet it’s easy for your hands to slip and strip off or bend snake guides as they go. When you get a good grip on the rod you find the ferrules were not as tight as you thought. I carry a pair of latex gloves in my pack for that purpose. The latex gets good traction even when the rod is wet, making unseating the ferrules much easier.
When ferrules are stuck and more force is needed there are a couple of options. Most folks know the trick of holding your hands high and pulling them down behind your head. This lets gravity and the natural rotation of your shoulders work together to pull the ferrules. You can also put the rod behind your knees and push out on your forearms with your legs. Both of these methods work, sometimes.
When ferrules are really tight
Read More »The Beginner’s Advice on Casting for Bonefish
John Byron, The Bonefish Beginner
Just finished three week in the Bahamas chasing big bonefish with Louis Cahill, proprietor of this blog.
Great trip, hampered only by my inability to cast well to good shots. I got slightly better, learned a few things, but frustrated myself far too often to enjoy the shots I missed. I also paid close attention to my boat mates, most of them also beginners or at least casual bonefishers.
The problem we all seemed to share? Buck fever. Stage fright. Cranial-anal inversion on the bow of the flats boat. We knew what to do. We steadfastly refused do it.
I’ve no cure. But there’s an approach that helps me and so I pass it along to anyone else who’s blown a close shot downwind at a tailing bonefish waving a sign that says ‘feed me’ and you can’t get the fly into the same zip code.
In the Notes app on my iPhone I have a list of do-this-dummy guidelines I read every morning before I go out. And then try to remember and use on the water. As follows…
“Fish coming, twelve o’clock, sixty feet going left”
Take your time
Don’t rush it
Curb your enthusiasm
Relax a bit and take charge of the situation
Control the cast
Slow! Smooth! Deliberate!
Let the fish get closer before you cast
Load the rod
Snap your wrist
Use the wind
Double haul
Line speed Line speed Line speed
One less false cast
Important! Keep your rhythm — do not over-drive the final cast to the fish
Control the fly
Rod tip in the water pointing down the line
No slack! No slack in the line!
Thank You God for the Terrestrial Season
bout this time every year, when I’m starting to get run down from guiding, the terrestrial season arrives, and I’m blessed with a second wind. I’m always astonished at how the presence of terrestrials can make my familiar trout waters seem so fresh and new to me. Even after I’ve already spent hundreds of hours during the season drifting flies through the same riffles, runs and pools. Every day, I find myself more excited about fishing than the last, despite it being one of my busiest times of the year guiding. Thank God for the terrestrial season. I tip my hat to the creator, for he sure did a fine job of planning out the life cycle and timing of the terrestrial season. Yep, life is grand for the fly fisherman when the terrestrials are out. The water and air temperatures (at least where I live) are usually warm enough to leave those stinky waders at home, and the longer days allow us the luxury of staying on the water for a few extra hours.
Is it just me, or do trout seem to have the same look in their eyes as we do during the terrestrial season, pure addiction. I love the fact that it’s not the end of the world if we forget our strike indicators or split shot when the terrestrials are out. The trout often rise
Read More »