One Of My Favorite Fly-Fishing Photos
By Louis Cahill
Some photos remain special over the years.
There is some truth to the idea that doing anything for a living makes you a little numb to the result. I have a good friend who is an incredible guitar player but he would never play for money. He said he loved it too much. I get that.
Over the years I have taken more photos than I can count. Literally millions of exposures, many of them on film, lost forever to time. There are probably a couple of hundred which are special to me. Some because they are great photos, others because they have memories attached to them and a few that are special for both those reasons and because of what they represent.
This is one of those images and it has remained special to me for many years. In part because it reminds me of a great day. In part because i like the image, but mostly because of what it represents.
The image is of John Gierach, landing a brown trout with a bamboo rod, on the Saint Vrain. If there is a more classic image of fly fishing, I don’t know what it is. It’s also the image that marked
Read More »A Goodbye To Winter
By Johnny Spillane
GOD DAMN ITS COLD.
I have been standing in 38 degree water for almost 4 hours, the temperature is 15 degrees and the wind-chill is brutal. My fingers stopped working a while ago; the upper legs on my waders are frozen solid and I’m struggling hard to tie on a size 26 midge. Why the hell am I still out here? I’m here because fish are rising. Everywhere.
Here in Steamboat Springs CO, we fish year round, rain or shine and some of the best fishing can be during the winter, especially in March and April. While countless people are buckling into their skis, the few hardy folks that brave the elements are having the time of their lives with a fly rod. Fishing during the winter is a different experience then what we are generally used to. During the summers, we get away with 3x and big stoneflies, but the winter is a whole different ball game. Midges and fine tippet are on the menu, with the tippet size sometimes being more important than the actual fly.
During the winter, we get folks that call in looking for a guided trip based on the weather. I often get asked to check the weather report and look for the warmest, sunniest day of that week. High sun+winter conditions=tough fishing. As soon as the sun comes out, the fishing gets tough. We want those overcast days when it’s slightly snowing because the fish are much less spooky and more prone to rise. If it is sunny, the fish might move onto the sandy spots and you can sight fish for them fairly easily, but you generally will be
Read More »Ted Williams: Hall of Fame Fly Fisherman
By Jim Weathersby
You may know Ted Williams as the Hall of Fame (inducted in 1966) left fielder who played for the Boston Red Sox from 1939-1942 and 1946-1960.
If so, you probably know Williams was a 17-time All-Star, two-time winner of the American League (AL) Most Valuable Player Award, six-time AL batting champion, two-time Triple Crown Winner (batting average, home runs and runs batted in), and the last man to bat over .400 for a season–.406 in 1941. You probably also know that he served in the United States Navy and the United States Marine Corps during World War II and flew as a Marine pilot during the Korean War. Finally, you may know that Williams managed the Washington Senators/Texas Rangers franchise from 1969-1972.
Williams passed away in 2002, but if he were alive today, he would certainly tell you that baseball was only his second favorite pastime. Fly fishing was the sport he truly loved. “The Kid,” or “The Splendid Splinter,” as Williams was known during his baseball years, became an avid and expert fly fisherman and deep-sea angler during his baseball career.
John Underwood co-authored a book with Williams entitled Ted Williams Fishing “The Big Three,” (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1982). Underwood wrote that Williams would fish anywhere, any time. He caught black marlin in New Zealand and tiger fish in the Zambezi River in Mozambique, and he caught these and other fish with different kinds of tackle, in and on all types of water. Underwood described very nicely what it was like to fly fish with Williams.
“To fish with Williams and emerge with your sensitivities intact is to undertake the voyage between Scylla and Charybdis.
It is delicate work, but it can be done, and it can be enjoyable. It most certainly will be educational. An open boat with The Kid just does not happen to be the place for one with the heart of a fawn or the ear of a rabbit. Even his friends called him the Captain Queeg of fishing. There are four things to remember: one, he is a perfectionist; two, he is better at it than you are; three, he is a consummate needler; and four, he is in charge. He brings to fishing the same hard-eyed intensity, the same brooding capacity for scientific inquiry, he brought to hitting a baseball” (Underwood, p. 19).
According to Underwood, Williams believed there were three fish worthy of any true sportsman
Read More »In Defense of Trout, Where I Belong
YOU HEAR IT IN THE WAY THE FLATS GUYS SAY “TROUT SET,”
and in the way steelheaders say, “I don’t fish for trout.” I’ve heard carp guys call them “trash fish.” Bass guys just call them, “bait.” In some circles it borders on contempt.
Where did this come from?
How did it happen?
When did trout stop being cool?
I’ll throw a fly at just about anything that swims. “Hey Homie, we got poons,” is all I have to hear to put my ass in the drivers seat of the Subaru for sixteen hours any day of the year. Stripers, bones, musky, snook, bass, cuda, carp, shark. I’ll fish for catfish if you give me enough to drink but if you told me tomorrow that I could only do one kind of fishing for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t even have to stop and think. Trout! I bare no shame for it.
Yet, among the hip fly fishing crowd, that’s less and less the case. Some how, in the never ending quest to be cooler than the next guy the trout has lost favor. Even though it is the trout who
Read More »Fly Fishing: Don’t Turn Your Cheek, Pay it Forward
The other day I had the opportunity to guide a client who previously had put down his fly rod for many years.
As he put on his waders and boots, and I began rigging the rods, he told me that many of his good friends were avid fly fisherman. Problem was, they had made it clear to him that they preferred he didn’t tag along with them, because they didn’t want to waste their precious fly fishing time teaching a beginner. I felt bad for the guy. He had been painted an outcast by his own buddies, and every year that went by, it made it harder and harder for him to pick up his fly rod. With a comforting grin on my face, I replied, “Man, I really wish you would have called me sooner. We could have nipped this in the butt a long time ago.”
During our hike in to the river, I decided my mission for the day was
Read More »6 Proven Winter Dry Fly Patterns
Nothing allows me to forget about the cold temperatures of winter quicker, than spotting the surface rings from trout feeding on Midges or Blue Winged Olives. It’s not an everyday occurrence by any means, but when it happens, it feels like someone turns the heat up a few notches, and I’m instantly warmed head to toe. When we think about hitting trout water during the winter months, most of us don’t typically think about fishing dry flies. It’s true that day in and day out, most anglers will find their nymphs and streamers to be much more productive, but every once in a while, when luck is on our side, we can find ourselves smack dab in the middle of a winter hatch, with trout rising all around us. It’s during these special two hour windows of trout fishing, that the winter can provide us some of the most rewarding catches of the year. That is, of course, if we decided to bet against the odds, and pack our dry fly box.
I’ll gladly give up catching numbers of fish during the winter, in exchange for taking a handful of fish on the surface with tiny dry flies. The trout don’t even have to be all that big either. They just need to give me a pretty rise and tug my line a few good times. I guess a lot of it has to do with the fact that I believe hatches in the dead of winter, are like rare gifts handed down from above. Gifts that should always be full appreciated by the fly angler, otherwise they may decide to not show up again until spring. Late morning through the afternoon is the time of the day when I find midge and blue winged olive hatches to appear the most, and it’s often the bitter cold days with drizzling rain or snow flurries when the hatch decides to show up. Below are six proven winter dry flies and emergers that have served me well over the years. All you need to do is downsize your tippet and rig them up, with a standard dry fly/dropper rig.
Read More »Does Fly Line Color Make A Difference?
By Louis Cahill Why do you need a bright colored fly line and does it spook fish? A reader asked for an opinion on this and that’s what you’re going to get. My opinion. This is one of those hotly contested arguments that anglers can’t seem to agree on and my saying one thing or another isn’t going to settle it. I do have strong opinions on the subject, so since you asked, here they are. The color of your fly line doesn’t matter, until it does. For most fly fishing, if you’re doing things well the color of your line doesn’t matter any more than the color of your eyes. There are, however, times when it can make a difference and the difference may not always be what you think. When I make a purposeful choice on line color, it’s usually not to keep the fish from seeing it. What doesn’t matter Assuming for the moment that we are talking about trout fishing, if you are thinking that you are being stealthy by using a dull colored line, you’re coming at things from the wrong angle. If you are putting your line over the fish, it doesn’t matter what color it is. Fish are very attune to shadow and movement. If your fly line passes over them while casting, they will see the shadow of the line, even if it’s clear. The same goes for motion. Color doesn’t matter. If you are floating the line over them, on the surface of the water, things are worse. They now see the depression of the water’s surface as well as shadow and motion. Sure, they can see that a bright orange line is orange and a green line is green but they will find neither acceptable. The bottom line is, if … Continue reading
Read More »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
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