Articles in the Category Videos

Nothing compares to actively fishing streamers and watching trout attack the fly. In early November, I found good streamer action in some favorite water. The takes were spotty enough that I had to work for them, but frequent enough that I could learn the preferences of the trout and dial in a presentation . . .

Moving the fly with the rod tip and not just the line hand is a fundamental skill that opens up many presentations that bring trout to a streamer.

The jerk strip is critical for any serious streamer angler. It’s a must-have skill for animating the fly — for selling the streamer to a fish. And it’s the baseline for what I think of as a jig strip, a twitch strip, a glide strip, a head flip and twitch, a lane change, and much more. At its core, the jerk strip is a hand off from left to right — it’s about moving the fly with the rod tip and then recovering with the line hand. In this way, the jerk strip sets the table for everything else . . .

Deep into the fall season, I revisited one of the most important small streams in my life. I fished dry flies and dry dropper. Fishing was technical at times, and the weather swayed from sunny skies to strong winds that created a canvas of colored leaves, until eventually concluding with a cold, calm rain near the end of the day.

But as great as the fishing was, all of it was secondary to the memories, both old and new, among the minor waterfalls of a steep canyon valley.

How do we fish around midstream rocks? How do we use them to our advantage? Because trout surely use them to their advantage . . .