The setup cast keeps you in control on the river. It allows for repositioning and redirecting the line, leader and fly to the next target. The setup cast gives you a chance to regroup and rethink, too. It keeps you in rhythm by keeping you out of trouble and lending new options to an active angler.

Continue reading The Setup Cast — Fly Fishing Strategies at Troutbitten.

Junk flies are never a sure thing. They are simply another option to help solve the daily puzzle on the river.

You can’t just put any kind of bright, flashy materials on a hook and fool trout. There’s a reason why trout eat these flies. And there’s a reason why these patterns shine for so long and then fall off at the end of a season. There’s also a huge difference between the way stocked trout respond to some junk flies vs the way wild trout respond . . .

Continue reading Podcast: What’s the Deal With Junk Flies? — S3-Ep12 at Troutbitten.

As you wade the river, or when you’re on a float trip that covers miles of great water, you’re looking for moments — you’re looking for places — to make that next adjustment.

I call these the changeout spots . . .

Continue reading Fly Fishing Strategies — Look for the Changeout Spots at Troutbitten.

Fly selection is important, but it's one of the last questions to ask. There’s no denying that catching a few trout helps lead us to the promise of catching a few more. One trout is an accident. It’s just as likely that you found a maverick as it is that a single fish can teach you the habits of the rest. Two fish is a coincidence, but three starts to show a trend. And at a half dozen fish, there’s enough data about who, what, where, when and why to build the pieces of a puzzle.

To the die-hard angler, adaptation and adjustment to what we discover is one of the great joys of fly fishing for trout . . .

Continue reading Asking the Best Questions to Catch More Trout at Troutbitten.

Trout learn to see some colors, some materials, some shapes and movements as fake. And when they see the same fake fly often enough, they stop eating it. That’s what we mean by angler pressure. So, part of the game becomes a guess about what flies the trout have learned to reject and how we can turn the fish on again.

That’s the unnatural thing about trout seeing too many fishermen and too many flies . . .

Continue reading Strategies for Pressured Trout — Something Different or Something Natural? at Troutbitten.

The first time out, a new fly needs a good showing. It should run strong out of the gate. If any die-hard angler is to lend his fragile confidence to a new fly pattern, it takes more than the adoring recommendations of a friend or some well strung sentences of persuasion in a magazine article. No, a new fly has to show up at the first dance. It must make a good impression. It has to put fish in the net . . .

Continue reading The first time out, a fly needs a good showing at Troutbitten.

My buddy, Smith, is stubborn. Whether traveling across the country or fishing our local rivers, he fishes the same handful of flies, year round. Smith can literally hold his selection of nymphs, wets, dries and streamers in one hand without them spilling over. With patterns that are fine-tuned from experience and a selection ruthlessly stripped down to the bare bones, his handful of hooks is the very definition of confidence flies.

Smith’s trust in those patterns is so spot on, you might assume that he rarely changes flies. But you’d be wrong. Ask Smith, and he’ll tell you he changes flies whenever it’s necessary.

Now, what does that mean? . . .

Continue reading When should you change the fly? at Troutbitten.

Competition hooks are most often designed with penetration as the primary goal. When you’re scoring fish, one nine-inch trout can put you at the top of the leader board, (I think that’s what they call it). So super-sharp hooks with wide gaps and long points are the norm. While the standard nymph hook for many years has been 1X or 2X strong wire, competition style hooks are most often designed with medium or even light wire, under the belief that thinner wire penetrates easier. Of course it does. But oh my, the difference is slight. And the trade off is not worth it (for me).

That lighter wire is where the cheaper companies get into problems . . .

Continue reading These Hooks Bend Out at Troutbitten.

The old man and I spent a few more silent minutes together. We watched the growing cloud of energetic midges again, and he pointed out a few rises on the surface that I never saw. But I believed him. Somehow I knew he could see things that I hadn’t -- that he understood things that I didn’t.

Continue reading Eggs for Breakfast, Eggs for Lunch, Eggs for Dinner at Troutbitten.

“It’s Mop Fly mania, I guess.” That’s how a fishing buddy described it in a text, along with a link he sent to another Mop Fly article. When the Wall Street Journal writes about a fly pattern, you know the fly has made it to the big show. Now, smart fly shops are even making […]

Continue reading Mop Fly Thoughts, and a Tutorial at Troutbitten.