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Season Six of the Troutbitten podcast begins. This is an eight-part Skill Series about fly fishing in the winter months, and episode one is an overview of the series, along with details about where to find trout and in what water type we should expect them to eat. This episode is about our approach, with advice on time of day, fly strategy, covering water to suite the river and reading what the trout want for the moment.
I’m joined this season by my co-host, Austin Dando.
This Skills Series format is designed with less conversation and more detail. Here are the Winter Skills Series episode titles:
- The System / The Plan
- Your Hands
- Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes
- Nymphing in the Winter
- Streamer Fishing in the Winter
- Dry Flies, Midges, Emergers and More
- Winter Problems, Winter Solutions
- Roundtable Review
In This Episode, We Cover the Following
- What does winter mean
- Air temperatures and water temperatures
- Enjoying the struggle
- Cracking the winter code
- Winter predictability
- Where to expect trout
- River types and water types
- Finding feeding fish
- Move and fish
- Nymphing, streamers dry flies
- Why don’t more anglers fish in the winter?
- The experience
Resources
READ: Troutbitten | Category | Fly Fishing in the Winter
PODCAST: Troutbitten | S1 Ep 14 — Winter Fly Fishing
READ: Troutbitten | Winter — Something Is Always Going to Hurt
READ: Troutbitten | Fly Fishing in the Winter — The System
READ: Troutbitten | Winter Welcome Home
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Next Time
Season Six of the Troubitten Podcast continues next week with episode 2. So look for that one in your Troutbitten Podcast feed.
Fish hard, friends.
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Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com
Listening now on the way to fish in the cold, sleet and snow. Will see if I can implement any tips I hear on the ride out. Podcast is great guys, appreciate all the effort.
Go get ’em.
Winter rivers out west can be very dangerous. Bank ice and flow ice can be real challenges. Try to get a tuck cast through thick slush.Matt can probably speak to this.
Right on. Gotta pick the ice free rivers. That’s what we said in this episode. Cheers.
Dom,
This episode is timely. Before Troutbitten, I never conceived of fishing in the winter. Thanks to the articles on the site I have been fishing at least 1 day per week for the last year and have been out a lot this winter. I have been struggling and can’t wait to listen to all the episodes in this series. Thanks to you and the entire crew for doing this amazing service for us troutbitten folks
Looking forward to this series Dom. Your winter fishing articles have really helped me here in winter in Wisconsin. Your tip about using handwarmers on your wrists with wristbands was a game changer for me when it is really cold. I caught my first namer last week here and I probably wouldn’t even have been fishing without your tip. Thanks for all the great content.
Winter is closed season for us in Australia, sadly… We get a brief window of winter-like fishing in May and sometimes in early October.
Something that is fascinating though is almost like a time-shift between where I live (Canberra) and the nearby mountains (Kosciuszko ranges). It’s only a couple of hours drive, but there’s about a 2 week difference in terms of the flies, techniques and preferred water types. It took me a couple of seasons to work out, but now I hone my winter technique early in the mountains (before the crowds arrive to target pre-spawn lake runners) and apply them in my home waters (where a lot less people fish) until the season closes.
I wish we were allowed to fish through the winter. I concur with your observation that you tend to catch bigger fish (even in rivers with no lake runners). My hypothesis is that there’s just not the volume of food around and the big ones extend their bite windows.
Good stuff. But man that is sad, no winter fishing.
Well, we’re allowed to fish in lakes while the rivers are closed, but I agree. It’s sad, and it creates a huge rush of anglers in the last two weeks of the season and the first two weeks after reopening. The crowds make it unpleasant to fish as etiquette goes out the window. There are a lot of fish caught and released on the way to and from spawning grounds, and some rivers have additional rules around size and bag limits in the lead up to the closure that encourage catch and release.
It’s questionable whether catch and release has much of an effect on recruitment and survivability, but it’s arguable that spreading fishing effort out over winter would be more ‘sustainable’ and enjoyable for fishers (noting trout are not native to Australia, but they are an important part of the tourism economy to a lot of regional areas).
Wednesday we are to get 5″-8″ of snow and I cannot think of a better day to go fishing. I got to say winter is my favorite time to be on the water and I find that 15 degrees with no snow on the ground is a lot colder than 15 degrees with 2 feet of snow. When there is snow in the trees or even when it is snowing big fluffy flakes, the man made sounds of the world are silenced and I can feel totally alone in nature. I love it. Really looking forward to this series. Thanks again Dom