Choosing a line for your switch rod Part 3 the RIO Switch and Skagit Short reviewed.
On a couple of steelhead trips last year I wound up fishing with borrowed rods. They were switch rods, a Winston and a Ross, and I had the chance to fish them for both summer and winter steelhead. I really liked the feel of these short Spey rods and decided that I needed one. I have no use for my long Spey rods when fishing at home in the southeast and I liked the idea of a two hander I could use for trout here at home.
I chose the Scott L2h 1106/4, an 11 foot 6 wt. It’s a great rod and I’ve been very happy with it. It’s light and well balanced with plenty of power and a nice feel. The rod really talks to you when you cast it, so you know when it’s loaded.
I chose to set it up with 2 reels. A Nautilus FW7 which I loaded with the Rio Switch line in a 5/6 wt and a Bauer CFX-5 Spey that I set up with Rio slick shooter and a 425 grain Skagit Short head, also from Rio. This set up gives me the flexibility of
Read More »You Are Not Ready for Bonefish
By Jason Tucker
“Jason, give me a cast, tight to the mangroves, forty feet.”
This from my guide, Harlon, who is working his ass off poling the skiff in a howling wind and stiff current while I stand on the bow staring holes into the water.
“Three o’clock, you’re behind him, cast again.” This is said with an odd mixture of Bahamian urgency and diffidence. What this means for me is a forty foot cast almost directly into a hard wind with the mangroves only providing moderate relief. Harlon shakes his head and returns to scanning the water and poling while I strip my line in and get back in the ready position. It has been a frustrating week and day for me.
Bonefish are easy to catch if you can get a fly in front of them without spooking them. And there’s the rub. You have a window as big as maybe six feet to get it in front of them, but if you hit too close they’ll spook. If you cast over them or they see your line they’ll spook. If you can’t make your cast in the wind they won’t see it. And they almost universally spook at anything that hits the water behind them. Also, in the gray and rainy conditions we had, they are extra spooky.
I have never tried to portray myself as an expert in any aspect of fly fishing. I am an enthusiast who fishes a lot and catches some fish as a result. But after awhile you like to think that you have some journeyman skills. I have spent long days casting a twelve-weight rod for muskies, entire summers spent fishing at night for brown trout, and cast my heart out on the Lake Michigan flats in the Straits of Mackinac for carp in thirty mile an hour winds. None of these are as challenging as my experience bonefishing.
Let me say right now, that if you have already gone after bonefish, you know what I’m talking about. If you haven’t, I’m writing this to help you prepare, but you must prepare.
Read More »Double Streamer Rigs Catch Trout
By Justin Pickett
WE ALL HAVE TO DEAL WITH REJECTION, BUT NOT FROM A FISH.
Undoubtedly, there have been numerous occasions where you’ve been stripping streamers and had that big brown trout emerge from the bank, only to give your streamer a curious look and then give you the fin. This scenario is exciting, but in the end all you have is an empty net. So what can you do about it? Throw a little extra meat into the equation!
Now, I’m not talking about tying on two huge articulated streamers. That would be insane and something that I would never do!…. OK maybe I did it once…
Next time you’re out throwing big, meaty streamers and you’re getting refusals, try tying a smaller streamer, or even a nymph, off of the back of your rig. It’s like a little snack. That big streamer might have been enough to move that pig from his lie, but sometimes it’s the trailing fly that makes him eat. Try a woolly bugger, a muddler minnow, or a stonefly nymph. Heck, you might even try
Read More »A Day At Horse Creek Ranch
I DIDN’T KNOW EXACTLY WHAT TO EXPECT.
I’ve pulled out of Denver plenty of mornings before sunup. Sipped my coffee as the band of shining blue fog rose in the east and the front range blushed pink to the west. I’ve found my boots in plenty of Wyoming water on days like that but Cheyenne never been more than a pitstop. A windswept dusty place I’d stop for gas or to refill my cup, but never to fish.
I know there’s plenty of good fishing to be had in the area. I have a list of invitations as long as my arm and I’d love to answer every one of them, but when Bob Reece called and invited me for a day at Horse Creek Ranch, I couldn’t say no. Even if it was Frontier Days and there wasn’t a bed to be found.
I’ll be honest, my expectations were tempered. To the eye of a southerner, the Cheyenne landscape can leave you aching for a tree. I know I’ll hurt someone’s feelings but I’ve never thought of it as a scenic place. It’s also been quite some time since I got excited about private water. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with it and I’ve had good experiences and bad, but the shine wore off a while ago. However, Bob is as fishy a guy as you’ll ever find and if he says its worth a look, I’m in.
It didn’t take but about ten minutes’ ride from Bob’s house to see how foolish I’d been to judge the place. The landscape was beautiful and when we got to the ranch I found my tree. The largest living cottonwood in Wyoming, in fact. I’d have made the drive just to see that. I shook the hand of a fellow named Lawrence, who’s mustache hung a full six inches below his chin and watched a herd of two-hundred wild horses move along a ridge. Wyoming never disappoints me.
Horse Creak Ranch has a handful of streams but the real attraction is its seventeen lakes. With only three anglers per day allowed on the 60,000 acre property, you feel like you’re fishing virgin water. Not a sign that anyone has been there before you. That’s a good start on a great day. Bob rowed the drift boat over patches of aquatic grass, rich with insect life, and it wasn’t long before the action started.
Read More »You’re tying your boots wrong
By Dan Fraiser
I’ve waded hundreds of miles with dozens of different anglers over the years. One problem that has troubled nearly every one of them at one time or another is wet boot laces coming untied. I’ve watched them retie wet laces, cinching them down with all their might. I’ve seen them tie the double knot, only to spend many minutes in fading light trying to figure out exactly which lace to try to pry loose, sometimes with tools, in order to get the boots off. This problem is so ubiquitous that the industry actually invented a technological solution. That being the Boa System. Now full disclosure, I use the Boa on the boots I wear with my waders and I love it. We can debate the merits of that somewhere else. But on my wet wading flats boots I have regular old stone-age laces like everyone else. However, I NEVER suffer from laces coming untied. Why? Because we were all taught to tie our shoes wrong. With one flip of the wrist, we learned to tie the weak form of the shoe knot rather than the strong form. The weak form is not self-tightening, lays your loops the wrong way across your boot and significantly increases untying events especially in large round laces like those found in wading boots. Here is a very short TED Talk video that will demo the right way to
Read More »Getting A Grip On Fly Casting: Video
No one grip is right for every casting situation.
In general, there isn’t enough said about grip in fly casting. I spent the first half of my life with a poor casting grip. I finally ran into a gentleman who helped me find a grip that worked for me but for years after that I never thought any more about it. When I started fishing in saltwater that trusty old grip failed me once again.
I got help again and straightened out my cast but it wasn’t until I met Tim Rajeff, and he explained to me how different grips work with different casting strokes, that I fully understood the mechanics of the casting grip. I now have technique and the knowledge about how and when to use it.
It’s made a huge difference in my casting, especially my accuracy. I also have much less trouble with casters elbow. It turned out I was causing myself a lot of pain by combining the wrong grip and casting stroke. It’s been so great for me, I asked Tim to share this quick tip in a video. It helped me become a better caster and I know it will help you.
Watch the video and get a grip on your fly casting!
Read More »Elevate Yourself to Increase the Distance You Can High-Stick
Most of the time when your fly fishing for trout, the last thing you want to do is elevate yourself. In most scenarios, that will usually do more harm than good, by increasing the chances of trout spotting you and spooking. Notice I said “most scenarios”, every once in a while, an angler is forced to go against traditional principles to find success. The other day, I found myself trying to fish an eddy and slow water seam on the far bank. Making the cast wasn’t the problem, it was getting a long enough drag-free drift to get my fly to the fish. Even with my best high-sticking efforts, every cast the super fast water between me and my target water would grab my fly line and suck my flies out prematurely. After a couple minutes of struggling with my drifts and failing to get any bites, I decided to climb up on a boulder next to me. This elevated me three feet, and allowed me to keep 100% of my fly line off the water and get that long drag-free drift. I caught three trout after
Read More »Dickey’s Tarpon Muddler
IS THERE ANYTHING MORE SATISFYING THAN CATCHING A FISH ON A FLY THAT YOU TIED YOURSELF? WHAT ABOUT WHEN THAT FISH IS A BIG, LAID UP TARPON?
Where going to spend a little time helping you do just that. A couple of my good friends are going to share some of their favorite saltwater patterns with you. Joel Dickey is going to kick it off with this great pattern of his. Dickey’s Tarpon Muddler.
This is a fly that Joel uses with great results for laid up tarpon and for rolling tarpon in the early morning. It’s a simple tie that uses some sexy materials and some traditional techniques. It has a great profile and an enticing action.
Watch the video and learn to tie Dickey’s Tarpon Muddler. It might just put you on the fish of a lifetime.
Read More »Fly Fishing Bass: 5 Tips for Fishing Frog Patterns Around Grass
SOME OF MY MOST MEMORABLE DAYS CHASING BASS ON THE FLY HAVE COME FROM ME SPENDING THE DAY POPPING AND WAKING FROG PATTERNS ALONG THE SURFACE.
I grew up fishing for bass, and although trout fishing has stolen the majority of my fly fishing attention over the years, I’ve always held a special place in my heart for catching bass on the fly. I’ve got friends that don’t see the coolness in fly fishing for bass, but that’s because most of them haven’t put in enough time on the water to experience perfect fishing conditions, and witness the thrill of bass smashing their fly cast after cast. Bass are amazingly acrobatic fish, and they provide more than enough pull and rod bend to justify fly fishing for them. If you haven’t explored this area of fly fishing, I highly recommend it.
The other day, Louis and I left our houses at 2:45 in the morning to drive across the Georgia State line, and fly fish for bass on Lake Guntersville. Louis was doing a shoot for a new bass lure company, and I was lucky enough to get invited to tag along. Normally, it would be a real challenge to drag me out of bed at this hour, but Lake Guntersville is considered one of the top bass fishing lakes in the entire country. More importantly, the lake is famous for its unbelievable frog fishing that generally starts in June, and runs through the summer months. Lake Guntersville hosts several professional bass tournaments throughout the year, and in 2014, it will host the most famous of all tournaments, The Bassmaster Classic.
During the tournaments on Lake Guntersville, it’s not uncommon for bass anglers to weigh-in five fish sacs, well over 35 pounds.
That’s right, we’re talking about an average fish weight of over seven pounds. If that doesn’t get you excited about visiting Lake Guntersville, I suggest you get someone to make sure you have a pulse. The reason this lake can grow and sustain such large
The Flats, Light Bottom vs. Dark Bottom
Water temperatures and seasons play an important role for fly fishermen fishing the saltwater flats.
Saltwater fish prefer to utilize different types of flats throughout the year to maximize their comfort and food intake. When I was new to the saltwater side of the sport, I never gave it much thought on why my guide was choosing to take me fishing on a light colored sandy flat, versus a grassy or dark bottom flat. It wasn’t my expertise, so I just went along with everything. Quite a few years have past since my rookie fishing days in saltwater. I’ve logged many more trips on the saltwater flats, and I’ve taken the time to pick the brains of the saltwater guides, so I could better understand why they choose one type of flat over the other during the year. Below is a quick recap of information on what I’ve gathered from numerous saltwater guides on this subject.
Fly fishing on saltwater flats is very similar to bass fishing on large reservoirs, in the fact that water temperature is critical in both for consistently locating fish and productive water. Both freshwater and saltwater fish strive to maintain stable underwater enviornments. When water conditions change, so does the habits and behavior of the game fish we’re targeting, as well as, the food sources they prey upon. Fly fisherman that understand this, are quick to match their fishing tactics with the present conditions on the water, because they know it’s critical for staying on top of the fish and in the action.
Light bottomed flats reflect a large portion of the sunlight. When water temperatures are at the extreme end of the comfort zone of saltwater fish, generally during the months of July, August and September, fish will often prefer to frequent light bottomed or sandy coral flats because the water temperatures will be a little cooler. When fly anglers have the option, it can be best to scout and fish these light bottom flats first, over other dark and grassy bottom flats.
On the other hand, when a strong cold front comes through, drastically dropping water temperatures or during the winter months of the year, when water temperatures are consistently colder, saltwater anglers should begin turning their attention more towards scouting and fishing the dark bottomed flats. These dark bottomed, grassy flats,
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