Matching the Hatch With Streamers
By Louis Cahill
Imitation and presentation, even with streamers.
It was a bluebird day and we were launching the boat about 9 AM. No need to get moving any earlier with the chilly morning and the generation schedule. We’d run shuttle and be on the water at quarter to ten and ride the falling water for most of the day. The high pressure was certainly less than ideal but flows were on our side and everyone was just happy to get on the water for a day we might actually end up in shirt sleeves.
I took the first shift on the oars, while Jason Tucker went to work figuring out what would get eaten. We were not getting a lot of encouragement from the fish. Jason tried dries, nymphs and streamers, picking up a couple of fish but not finding anything working consistently. When it was my turn to fish I went to work with a gray and white Double Cougar. I got a few chases right away but no takers.
“What color do you like?” Jason asked, digging through his box.
“I always fish white here on high water,” I replied
I an, of course, aware that my whole approach to the day runs contrary to conventional wisdom. Throwing a big white streamer in bright sun on the front end of a high pressure system is not usually a recipe for success, but
Read More »Light Where You Need It
The sun has dipped below the horizon and the evening chill is in the air.
You’ve got maybe thirty more minutes to fish if you push it. The hatch is on and you can hear fish rising all around you as you struggle in the waning light to change your fly. The fish keep rising and so does your blood pressure but the eye of the hook continues to evade you.
That sounds familiar doesn’t it? I know my eyes aren’t what they used to be. I’ve used a clip on head lamp for years but it frustrates me. When I lift my head to look through my bifocals the light is shining over my hands and I always feel like I’m spooking fish with that lighthouse on my hat. Then I saw my niece and nephew playing with their Christmas stockings. They had the answer to my problem. Finger lights! They slip right on to your finger with an adjustable elastic band and put ample light right where you need it to tie on flies. Best of all
Read More »Fly Fishing Karma
The feeling of losing a big trout can be heart breaking, especially when it’s a fish of a life time, but it happens to all of us, some just more than others. Most of the time fish are lost because of angler error during the fight, but every once in a while, there’s really no clear identifiable explanation, and all we can do to move forward with a positive attitude, is believe some fish just aren’t meant to be caught. Recently, I had a day on the water where the fly fishing was absolutely epic but no matter how hard my client and I tried, we kept unbuttoning our best fish right before I could get a net on them. At the end of the day, when all the cards had been laid out, I had an epiphany. Below is a break down of the day and my new theory on why certain fish are lost and others are landed.
Read More »Little Things Matter: On The Water Tippet
By Bob Reece
Successful anglers are built out of sounds habits.
Those habits focus not only on the large aspects of fly fishing but also on the small. Within the realm of those petite practices is being aware of the status of your tippet when you’re on the water.
Your tippet is often the weakest link between a fly that hooks fish and the line that runs through your rod. Due to this fact, it is critical to check the state of that material as you move through a day of fly fishing. A lack of due diligence often results in frustration and sometimes heart breaking experiences.
On a summer adventure with friends, we had been working through an isolated drainage known for its larger than average brown trout. While fairly open, the typical stream side vegetation of willow and alder were very much present. During the morning I watched my friend pop his tippet and fly loose from several different alder bushes. As we arrived at a large run below a waterfall, I asked him if he wanted to tie on a new section of tippet. My offer was declined.
After one round of rock, paper, scissors; he won the first cast into the run. On his second drift a large brown, over two feet long, happily ate his foam offering. My friend paused and set the hook perfectly. Sadness and open mouths followed seconds later when his tippet snapped a few feet up from the fly. With a little inspection, it was easy to see the abrasion to the material that had built up over the course of the morning.
Read More »Fish Streamers in Fast Water and Seal the Deal
Have you ever had a day of streamer fishing when the fish just wouldn’t commit?
I had the mother of those days recently. I was fishing streamers from the boat and was literally getting follows every other cast. That’s great, but the fish just wouldn’t eat the fly. They would charge, swirl, nip and blow up all over it but never eat it. It was frustrating to say the least.
I changed patterns and got the same result. After the twentieth nice brown took a pass, I added a Wooly Bugger as a dropper. No dice. The fish would swim right past the Bugger to ogle the streamer. I switched up my retrieve, all the stuff you should try, and nothing worked. Until I changed the water I was fishing.
I started targeting the fastest water I thought could hold fish and, sure enough, things turned around. I did not slow down my retrieve and, because
Read More »Fly Fishing Is A Journey
I’ll never forget my first trout on the fly.
It was tiny. A rainbow. Probably wild, but I wouldn’t have known the difference or even cared at the time. It was memorable primarily because it was a long time coming. I’ll always remember my first steelhead, my first tarpon and many others, but none of them were as hard won as that little rainbow.
Although I started fly fishing when I was very young, I spent years fishing warm water for panfish and bass. There was no trout water accessible to me. It was all a good drive away and there was no one interested in driving me. My grandfather took me trout fishing once when I was eight years old. He dumped me on a small overgrown stream and went about his business. I’m not sure my fly even hit the water that day but the trees got plenty of attention. If I did wet a fly, I had no idea what to do with it. The idea of fishing moving water was as foreign as sculpting a fish from stone. I decided that trout fishing was too hard for me and I didn’t go back to it for many years.
Once the code was cracked and that little rainbow landed, trout became a singular obsession. I found myself on a trout stream well over a hundred days a year and many firsts followed. My first brown trout, my first brooke, my first trout over twenty inches, then over thirty. I tied my first fly, built my first bamboo rod, rowed my first drift boat, cast my first spey rod. Each new step requiring me to learn new skills and take new risks. With each new challenge, renewed excitement and focus.
On a family beach trip many years ago, I carried an old seven-weight fiberglass fly rod. I had no idea what to do with it but I’d heard people talk about fly fishing in saltwater so I took it, and a few Clouser Minnows. I wasted a day casting blindly and wondering how the hell I was supposed to find a fish until I saw bait busting the surface. I cast my fly into the disturbance
Read More »3 Options For Attaching A Leader To Your Fly Line
There are a couple of easy ways to attach a leader to a fly line, but which is best?
I know the method I like, but there are pluses and minuses to each. In the end, the best method is the one that works best for you and the way you fish. I’ll go over the three most common ways to attach a leader to a fly line and you can decide which one is for you.
The Nail Knot
The venerable Nail Knot has been attaching fly lines to leaders for as long as there have been fly lines and leaders to attach. If you have been fly fishing for a long time, it’s probably how you learned to doit. It is, for the record, my least favorite and I have not used it for years. Still, it does have its advantages.
The Nail Knot uses friction to hold the leader to the fly line. It’s fairly simple to tie, though some kind of tool helps. You can use a nail or small tube, a Nail Knot tool of course, and I have always used hemostats.
The upside of this knot is that it is the easiest to bring through your guides, especially if you coat it with a little UV resin. That I suppose, is helpful if you are a euro-nympher. I personally have not felt the need to bring my leader into my guides since sometime in the 1980s. It’s just a good way to break off fish, in my opinion. If you like to do it, the Nail Knot may be a good choice.
The downside of the Nail Knot is that it’s the weakest connection you can use. That’s a pretty big drawback, for me. It’s not that there is anything wrong with the knot, but
Read More »Do fish dream?
AH, THERE’S THE RUB, FOR WHAT DREAMS MAY COME IN THAT SLEEP OF FISH?
Have you ever been sight fishing to a nice fish and not gotten so much as a look at your fly? The fish just sat quietly finning as your fly drifted inches from its nose, like it was asleep. It may have been.
Do fish sleep? Undoubtedly. That’s a scientific fact that is well documented. They don’t sleep like we do and, in fact, different species of fish have very different ways of sleeping. Some sleep at night, some during the day and some are nappers. Some swim while asleep and some sleep so soundly that you can hold them in your hand without waking them.
Tuna, for example, rest motionless at night, suspended in the water. Bass and perch will sleep under or on top of logs. Reef fish seek refuge in crevices. Parrotfish build a cocoon of mucus in which to sleep. That sounds nasty, but maybe that’s the point. I wouldn’t eat something wrapped in mucus. Would you?
Although different fishes have different sleep habits they have a lot in common. Fish don’t have eye lids so they don’t exactly get shut eye. Their muscles relax, their breathing and heart rate slow, they become to some degree immobile and less sensitive to external stimuli. They also, to some extent, lose consciousness.
Fish do not live in as safe a world as we do and sleeping can be a risky proposition. For that reason most fish are never completely unconscious. Their brains sleep in shifts, resting different systems at different times. Shutting down nonessential bodily functions for periods of time. I imagine it’s much like day dreaming. Like when your brain is back on the beach in the Bahamas while your body seems to be looking over spread sheets at your desk. You’re not fully aware of your surroundings but alert enough to figure out that the sound you hear is your boss clearing his throat.
But what about those dreams? I’m not aware of any scientific studies about fish dreams. I do, however, have a case for their likely existence. Bear with me, this requires a huge and very unscientific leap. Let’s assume, for the minute, that a fish’s brain has some similar wiring to our own.
What is going on when we dream?
Dreaming is our brain’s way of filing information. Let’s use the clumsy but common metaphor of the computer. Our short term memory is like the
Read More »Use Your Map!
By Justin Pickett
WHILE IN PATAGONIA THIS PAST WINTER, I HAD HEARD OF A SMALL LAKE FROM THREE SEPARATE INDIVIDUALS DURING MY STAY AT THE LODGE.
I had only been there two days and I’ve had these men explain to me what good fishing it is, and how they’ve all caught some really nice trout, specifically browns, from it. Now this lake is far from the reasons why I came to Patagonia, but by the first night I had already decided that I was going to find this lake.
The days are long during the summers in Patagonia. Really long. The sun is up well before I have risen (usually around 7am) and the sun just finds its way below the horizon around 10pm. The great thing about it is that this provides plenty of time for fishing and exploring. On the fourth day of our trip, we decided to end our fishing by 2pm. The extra time would be for some good R&R, as well as giving the guides extra time to prepare for our three-day float trip that began the next day. Most of the fellas in our group decided to take a siesta. I, on the other hand, had to find this damn lake!
I strung up my rod, grabbed my chest pack, and headed out.
With the resident lodge dog trotting alongside, I marched down a horse trail that followed a small stream that ran through the middle of the property. Surely all I had to do was follow this stream back to its origin and I would certainly find this lake.
About twenty minutes later I did indeed stumble upon a “lake”, or maybe more like a small koi pond. As I stared at this piece of water, I could see several fishing rising to small mayflies dancing on the water’s surface. Thinking that I must have arrived at my destination, I threw out a few casts and managed to get a refusal out of a five or six inch rainbow trout. I sat for a minute, taking the extra effort to pay attention to what kind of fish I was seeing. After a handful of minutes it was clear that this little pond was the home to nothing but baby rainbows, and this was obviously not the lake that I had heard so much about.
I found that this small stream continued on above the small pond, so naturally I kept following it. Along the way I found an old bridge, some pretty horses, and then I found myself trespassing into someone else’s backyard. Now, this no espanol-speaking gringo certainly doesn’t need to get into any kind of trouble while I’m out by myself. Especially not
Read More »Making the Best of Bad Conditions
by Johnny Spillane
Saltwater fly fishing is totally dependent on conditions.
Recently I flew down to Orlando for the IFTD/ICAST show and I decided to fly in a day early and spend some time in the saltwater with my good friend Scott Harkins, who works for Simms, and our new friend Captain Scott MacCalla who guides out of Titusville and fishes the Indian River and Mosquito Lagoon. Conditions were not ideal and the following is some advice on how to make the best of a saltwater trip when everything is not going as planned.
DON’T SET YOUR EXPECTATIONS TOO HIGH
Everyone wants to go catch a 100lb tarpon and we all want to do it the first day. I’m going to tell it to you straight, don’t get your hopes up because it can take days or weeks to land one. The wind might be blowing in the wrong direction, clouds might impair your visibility, a decrease or rise in pressure might ruin the bite. Everything can go wrong in the salt. Get used to it.
LISTEN TO YOUR GUIDE
Even though you might have your heart set on some specific fish you want to target, if you’re there for a day, ask your guide what the options are. The guides know the conditions and know what to expect. Listen to the options and decide what interests you the most. They may tell you there is a small chance to get what you’re after, but keep that in mind when it does not work out, they warned you so you can’t hold it against them.
KEEP AN OPEN MIND.
Everyone wants to catch a permit or a tarpon or a bonefish
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