Time To Un-Match The Hatch
By Johnny Spillane
Now that is a hatch!
Every year around mid April we start to see Blue Wing Olives on the Green River below Flaming Gorge. Most years the hatch is amazing, some years it is truly epic. This was one of those years. The best part about it, there is no chance to “match the hatch.”
When there are too many bugs on the water, yours gets lost in the numbers. Try throwing something 3-4 sizes bigger than what the naturals are and 9 times out of ten it will be more productive than a perfect imitation.
Read More »Getting a Grip on Spey Casting
I love casting mono running line on my Spey rods.
At present, I’m using Rio Slick Shooter. It lives up to the name. I saw a big improvement in my distance when I made the switch. It casts like a dream and fishes well but the down side of any mono running line is that it gets slick and hard to hold when you’re casting.
There’s nothing more disappointing than losing your handle on a cast. That’s when the running line slips from between your fingers and the cork just as you make your forward casting stroke. The rod unloads and your cast piles up in a useless heap. Fortunately my buddy Andrew Bennett showed me a cool trick to solve this problem.
Simply wrap the end of your grip with
Read More »Getting the Hero Shot When You’re fishing Solo
“HOW DO PHOTOGRAPH MY FISH WHEN I’M BY MYSELF?”
I get this question all the time and I wince every time because I know there are many guys doing great harm to fish in an effort to capture the moment. I know because I was once one of them. Before I took photos of fish for a living, I took them for the same reason everyone else does. To have a memento of the experience. There’s not a thing wrong with that, but there was plenty wrong with the way I went about it.
With that in mind, and from a place of total humility and a little bit of shame, I’ve decided to try and help by laying out some strategies for getting a good solo photo of a fish without doing it any harm. It may require a little more work or some compromise but in the end you and the fish will both feel better.
Let’s start with what not to do. The mortal sin is to beach the fish. Never, ever take a fish out of the water and lay it on the bank for a photo. This kills fish three ways. It removes their protective slime and exposes them to harmful bacteria. It deprives them of oxygen for too long when they are already stressed and it puts them at risk for head trauma if they panic and start to flop around. What’s worse is to lay the fish on the snow in the winter. The risk are the same with the added chance that the cold will damage the delicate gill tissue. (Read more on that here) don’t try to juggle the fish and the camera for a reach-out-shot. You’ll most likely drop both.
Now let’s look at some options that can make for a good photo with out anyone getting hurt.
Read More »The Borg Don’t Fish
I AM A CHILD OF THE SIXTIES.
But my childhood in a small Virginia town in the 1960s was not the long haired, free love, groovey sixties that phrase brings to mind. Mine was the nerdy, plastic rim glasses, popular science sixties. In 1966 when Star Trek warped onto national TV I knew my people had arrived. I spent hours forcing my young hand into a Vulcan salute and cemented my outsider status by showing up at school wearing pointy ears cut from flesh colored peel-and-stick Dr Shoals felt shoe inserts. Yep, that was me.
When Captain Kirk and Mr Spock hung up their phasers I grudgingly followed along with Picard and Richer but it was never the same. Data never went into a homicidal mating rage and Worf was a sad excuse for a Klingon but it was the Star Trek of the day. My grousing stopped however, the day I encountered the Borg. Star Trek T.N.G. Reached into the bag of old school Star Trek tricks and came out with the greatest outer space boogie man of all time.
If you recently escaped from North Korea and the iron hand of communism I’ll excuse you for not knowing about the Borg. You can read about them (HERE).
This terrifying new enemy wipes out entire species, not by destroying them but by assimilating them. Making them into Borg. The Borg exist as cybernetic organisms. Half alive, half machine. Their neural implants connect them all in a hive like consciousness. This makes them a handful in a fight.
The creepy gray skin and tubes are very Gigeresk and the loosing ones individuality is a classic Star Trek threat, but none of that is what makes The Borg frightening. What’s scary is Star Treks amazingly consistent record of predicting the actual future. They’ve gotten enough right (talking computers, smart phones and 3D printers for a few) that I’m afraid they might be right again. We may be the Borg.
Read More »Swinging Streamers on Big Water
Most streamer fisherman out there would agree that pounding the river banks with a streamer will catch trout just about anywhere.
If you’re willing to put in the time and hard work eventually you’ll be rewarded with a big fish. During high water flows on rivers where habitat is insufficient out in the main river, many trout will relocate to the banks where they can use the irregular banks and it’s abundant cover to shelter themselves out of the excessive current. There next move, once they’ve gotten to the banks, is to find prime ambush spots where they can easily pick off prey moving by. This is why casting to the bank and ripping streamers back to the boat is so effective. You’re repeatedly putting your streamer right in the kitchen where good numbers of fish will be feeding.
The majority of the time this scenario works great, but what do you do when you find yourself in areas where the water is super deep and the fish are sitting on the bottom? These places make it extremely difficult for anglers using the pounding the bank technique to keep their streamers down deep in the strike zone during a steady retrieve. Even with a full sinking fly line the cards are stacked against you. Don’t get me wrong, it can still work, especially if you cast upstream of your target water, and give your streamer time to sink before you begin your retrieve. Unfortunately, you won’t always have the time nor the room to pull this off, and that should have you searching for an alternative method that’s better suited for fishing your streamers in these deep water locations.
Swing Streamers through deep water hot spots
The best method I’ve found to consistently get hookups
We All Have Our Vises, Mine’s a Regal
I made my first tying vise.
I know what you’re thinking, but this vise was not a pair of hemostats duct taped to the back of a chair. I grew up in a machine shop and own two metal lathes and a host of other tools you won’t find at the Home Depot. My vise was sweet. Perfect center axis rotation with a lever at the rear, brass jaws, curly maple base, the works so when I decided to buy a vise my expectations were pretty high.
I decided on the Regal Medallion and I love it. The one thing I sacrificed was the rotary lever at the rear of the vise. Regal offers this in their Revolution series but I opted to save the extra cash and I have not been disappointed. The Regal Medallion is an elegant design with a couple of powerful features that make it an outstanding vise.
The key to the Regal design is
Read More »Gink and Gasoline’s Summer Slam Giveaway Winner!!!
By Justin Pickett
I want to give a huge shout out to all of you that entered our giveaway this week!
Thousands of you entered and made this giveaway a huge success and we thank each and every one of you for participating! We had entries from all over the world! Places where we had no idea people even knew Gink and Gasoline existed!
Huge thanks go out to the brands who donated gear and participated in making this giveaway so awesome! A special “Thank You!” also goes out to Adam Hutchison of Winston Rods for helping to get this thing off the ground and running, as well as Jason, Justin, and Lincoln from Yakoda Supply Co. for helping with the imaging and some serious logistical advice!
ALRIGHT, SO WHO’S THE LUCKY WINNER OF OVER $3800 IN GEAR?!
Read More »Gink and Gasoline’s Summer Slam Giveaway
By Justin Pickett
ENTER BEFORE MIDNIGHT TONIGHT!
We are stoked to announce that we have team up with several amazing brands across the fly fishing industry to put together Gink and Gasoline’s Summer Slam Giveaway!
Loaded down with over $3800 in gear, this crazy awesome prize package is sure to set one lucky angler up to end their Summer with a bang! You don’t want to be caught sleeping on this one! Just check out the list of gear that’s up for grabs!
PRIZES
Winston – Air 4wt Fly Rod – $875
Bauer – SST4 Fly Reel – $425
Simms – Flyweight Wading Shoe, Superlight shorts, Bugstopper Hoody, Sungaiter – $350
Scientific Anglers – Amplitude Infinity WF4F Fly Line, Leaders x4, Hat – $190
Rocktreads – 2 sets of winner’s choice – $120
Rising – Travel Lunker Net – $240
Crazy Creek Camp Chairs – Hex 2.0 x2 chairs – $117
Whiskey Leather Works – Clark Fork Flask and 1 pair of Fish Flops – $210
Cody’s Fish – 3ft Western Trout Custom License Plate Art- $300
RiverSmith – 4-Banger River Quiver – $600
Yakoda Supply – Drifter 2.0 – $179
Gerber – Magnipliers, Defender Large Tether, Defender Compact Tether, Freehander Nippers, Linedriver Multi-Tool, Neat Freak shears – $225
ENTERING IS EASY!
To enter, simply click on the link below. We have made entry into this giveaway as simple as possible, eliminating many of the “hoops” that a lot of giveaways require.
CONTEST GOES LIVE TODAY!
CLICK HERE TO ENTER!
Gink and Gasoline’s Summer Slam Giveaway goes live TODAY (8/10) at 8:00 PST and will conclude on Monday (8/17) at 11:59pm PST! The winner will be randomly selected on the morning of
Read More »2 Guys, 1 Trout
I always enjoy fly-fishing more when it’s a team sport.
I think that’s why I enjoy saltwater fly fishing so much. The interaction between guide and angler creates something special. A shared accomplishment and a shared reward. Not unlike some of my best days of trout fishing, when a buddy and I might have figured out a tough fish and worked together to catch him.
When fishing small water, it’s customary for me and my friends to take turns fishing. It’s more effective than having a foot race to the honey hole and a lot more fun. Some days it’s more about the conversation than the fish, and thats fine. Fishing is almost like therapy and fishing friends are often therapist or priests hearing confession.
Some days, and for some fish, it’s about combining your wits to out fox an educated fish. Those are the fish I enjoy the most, whether the rod is in my hands or my buddy’s. I think it ties into the reason I enjoy fishing in the first place. The connection it gives me to my human nature. Practicing the skills that put food on the table for millennia and made our species what it is. I firmly believe that team work is chief among those skills.
Justin and I did this not too long ago. I was the one taking up position in the bushes where I could spy on our target, a big educated brown in shallow water. Justin would have to make a long, pin-point cast upstream to avoid spooking the fish. The fish was shifting position constantly and from his position Justin couldn’t see him. It was up to me to guide his cast.
It was a tough setup. Even putting the fly near the fish without landing it in a tree was a challenge. Several times I had Justin
Read More »Not Just Anybody’s Saint Vrain
By Louis Cahill
“IF YOU CLIMB INTO THE CAB OF THAT PICKUP WITH JOHN YOU’LL FIND THAT WHERE YOU WIND UP CAN, ONLY IN THE MOST EXISTENTIAL TERMS, BE CALLED A FISHING TRIP.”
It’s about seven-thirty on a Saturday morning. It’s mid-September and the chilly Colorado air has coaxed a fair number of lookie-lous, headed up from Denver and Boulder to catch some fall color, into the Stone Cup Cafe on highway thirty-six in Lyons for a cup of hot coffee. A dozen or so of these plains dwellers are queued up like good little office workers waiting their turns when a lanky man in his seventies comes through the door. He is not, at once, remarkable. He’s wearing blue jeans, faded with a hole or two, cinched up with a belt to fit his slim frame. A fleece vest and sun-bleached hat frame an angular face that’s lined like a gazetteer. There is a little white feather tucked into his hat band, like Peter Pan. His white beard seems to pretty much have the run of his face. It’s had just enough grooming to suggest that there’s a woman involved somehow, but she’s learned to pick her battles. His bright blue eyes seem too young for the rest of him. He doesn’t dally. He has the stride of an experienced hiker who sets a pace and covers his allotted miles without complaint, his eye fixed on a distant peak. That peak, at this moment, being the coffee pot.
This fellow may not have raised much attention from the morning crowd when he came through the door, but that quickly changes as he walks promptly past the line, around behind the counter and to the coffee machine where, seemingly unnoticed by the staff, he sets about pouring two cups of coffee. He tucks a couple of bucks in a basket that hangs on the wall by the coffee pot, picks up his two cups and with the same determined stride walks back by the line of dumbstruck tourists. He doesn’t acknowledge them, their galled stares or open mouths. He is completely stoic until he is past the line and makes it to the door. He reaches out his hand and offers me a cup and an impish smile creeps across his face as he says, “I love doing that.” And in that instant, there he is, the man I have come to know through his words long before I laid eyes on him. This is John Gierach.
I met John a year earlier at a fly fishing trade show in Denver. I was at the Whiting Farms booth pouring through a selection of high quality rooster capes when he took up a place next to me and within a few moments began telling me how to kill a chicken with a stick. This would, no doubt, have seemed odd to me had I not known exactly who I was talking to. How could I not recognize this man? I’ve read more of his books than any three authors combined. Of course I knew him and I knew that he had tried his hand at raising chickens at the little house across the street from the Saint Vrain River and that it had been a total disaster and that he had to move when the well became contaminated from the gas station next door and a hundred other personal details that had forced their way into his stories. Had I known all there was to know about raising chickens and been the fellow who had first thought of killing one with a stick and gone on to raise that killing to an art form and had the very act of killing a chicken named after me, I would have still hung on every word. We chatted for a bit and exchanged cards and I expected that to be the end of it.
I discovered John’s writing at the point of one of those great cosmic detours that life takes. I had lost my father to cancer and both of my grandfathers shortly after. I still had a lot to learn from those men when their voices fell silent. I had set a lot of goals as a young man that, once attained, had not provided me with much in the way of happiness. My career as an advertising photographer seemed to be feeding on my sanity. The harder I worked and the more money I made the unhappier I became. My anger rose like a fire alarm ringing in my head and after giving some serious thought to shooting one of my clients, and I don’t mean with a camera, I decided to take some time off to
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