** NOTE ** Video for Mono Rig Mods Appears Below. I first wrote about the Mono Rig nearly a decade ago. And in the years since, the understanding and acceptance of tight line tactics has gained enormous momentum. Much of the education across articles, books and videos...
While guiding on a favorite stretch of water last week, Chris and I hit another good bite, where trout in perfect pocket water were eating reliably. Every fish came from the merger seams or the inside pockets — slower stuff beside the fast water. With tight targets,...
** NOTE ** Video for The Dorsey Yarn Indictor appears below For over a decade, my Troutbitten friends and I have fished a small yarn indicator that weighs nothing, is extremely sensitive, versatile, cheap, doesn't affect the cast, and flat out catches more trout than...
Don’t buy a fly rod based on the idea that it will protect fine tippets, because every decent rod will do that. Guarding against broken tippets while setting the hook is up to you. Protecting light tippets while fighting a large trout is also up to you, along with the...
The Troutbitten Spring Sale ’24 is here, with all leaders, hats and stickers back in the Troutbitten Shop. With this round, we have a few special items to offer, from the Troutbitten and New Trail Brewing company collaboration. There’s a Fish Hard / Drink Beer hat, sticker and t-shirt. The Troutbitten Shop is fully stocked. Hats, leaders, stickers, shirts, hoodies and more are ready to go.
We spend so much time refining presentations and trying to achieve perfectly natural dead drifts that moving the nymph a bit, animating the fly, is liberating. It’s fun.
One rod length over and two rod lengths up. That’s the Golden Ratio. That’s the baseline, and it’s where trust in our drift begins. There are surely moments and situations that call for something different. But a good tight line style starts here, within the Golden Ratio of nymphing . . .
This episode is about tension and slack. It’s about how we manage fly lines and leaders on the water while nymphing. My friend, Austin Dando, joins me to walk through the tight line advantage of keeping line off the water and what happens when we give that up. Fishing greater distances often requires laying line on the water, and how we manage that line, how we plan for it, makes all the difference between a great drift and a poor one . . .
The performance between Hi-Vis monofilaments varies widely. Here are the properties I want most, and here are my favorite lines.
There are many options for hi-vis mono, but my preferences are specific. And for so long, I couldn’t find anything that checked all the boxes . . . until now.
Once you leave the water’s surface, weight is necessary for the presentation. Here’s what weights to choose, for nymphing, why and when. You can’t avoid it. Weight is the fundamental factor. Meaning, it’s probably more important than the fly itself. More weight or less is more consequential than what dubbing, feather or ribbing is wound around the hook shank.
We use all types of weight, and there are good reasons for all of these: tungsten beads, split shot and drop shot . . .