The speed lead is a great look for hungry trout. It keeps the streamer low and in the strike zone, right where trout live, and it shows them an available meal . . .
Search Month: October 2022
Fly Cast With Speed — Yes, Always
All fly types — all rigs — need speed to reach their potential. Cast with acceleration and good crisp loops. Do it with dry flies, nymphs, indicator rigs and streamers. And don’t let anyone tell you differently . . .
Podcast: Weight In Fly Fishing: Beads, Shot, Sinking Lines and More — S5, Ep4
Weight is weight. It’s the original sin of fly fishing, and there is nothing inherently better about any of these styles. Use all of them.
The Walkout
These changes of light and season happen both suddenly and gradually, depending on your own perspective and movement in time. Sit still for a while and watch the daylight fade into blackness, and it takes hours. But walk among the trees at dusk, across a soft bed of spruce needles, after a long day on the river, and time speeds up. The pace of the trees, the perspective of the forest takes hold within you, and a good long look into the future looks a lot like the past, with the days and nights rolling into each other, turning in concentric circles, day to night, season to season, through a window of time both small and wide all at once — and all of it happening both here and somewhere else concurrently, though you can’t be sure . . .
Troutbitten Fly Box — The Blue Collar Worker (with VIDEO)
Show up on time, do your job and have a little fun while you’re at it. Then go home and do it all over again tomorrow. That’s a blue collar worker. It’s a Pheasant Tail with a CDC collar. It has a little disco for the rib and a hot spot collar. It’s simple, reliable and effective . . .
Podcast: The Spooky Trout — What Scares Fish and How to Avoid Spooking Them — S5, Ep3
Success on the water starts with finding fish and not spooking them. No one ever caught a scared trout. All the tactics, the flies and the habits of river trout that we focus on mean nothing if the fish are on high alert and out of the mood to eat.
Don’t spook the fish. Achieving that is different from season to season. It’s different in various water types. And acceptable distances from the trout change even with the angles by which you approach them . . .
The Inefficiency of Inexperience
The way you move on the water, the way you carry gear and how you adapt, has a big impact on your experience out there. Yes, we all enjoy the scenery and solitude. We love the sites and sounds of a river. But when that novelty dulls a bit, the process of solving problems and seeing the results of our solutions is what keeps us in the game for a lifetime . . .
Tight Line and Euro Nymphing: Let It Drop and Then Help It Drift
We’ve let the fly drop on a free fall, now we help it drift by leading it. Stop its progress downward (don’t let it drop anymore), and guide it downstream. Help it drift.
Remember two things that a nymph should do when it hits the water, and separate them into two actions with your fly rod. Let it drop and then help it drift. That’s great fishing . . .
Podcast: Fly Tying and the Complete Angler — S5, Ep2
This episode of the Troutbitten Podcast is about tying flies. It’s about how that aspect of fly fishing changes everything for us. Most of us wish to be a complete angler — one who is well rounded, ready for anything and versatile.
By tying flies, we get closer to that goal, because tying flies engages us in a deeper way. We’re more connected, more invested in what we tie to the end of the line. With a few turns of monofilament through the hook eye, we are attached to our own creations and our own solutions . . .
Fly Fishing Tips: The Order of Everything
A lot goes into a good fishing trip. It’s a flexible framework of pieces and parts mixed in with a little fortuitous intuition. That first trout to the net is rarely luck. And when you start to lose count of how many fish have come to hand, you can be sure that luck has had very little to do with it.
We like to dig into the details of fly fishing. How fast should we lead a pair of nymphs on a tight line? What streamer-head-angle produces best for a medium retrieve in flat water? But the overarching principles of how to catch a trout — the headers of the outline — are these . . .
Seven Ways To Get Your Fly Deeper (with VIDEO)
In time, all things in a river sink to the bottom. How much time do you have? Getting our flies down is the ever-present objective. It’s what good fly anglers think about. But is it as simple as adding split shot or swapping out to a heavier tungsten beaded fly? No, it’s not.
There are seven ways to get the fly deeper. Understanding all of them, and seeing how each interacts with or affects the others, is a major key to gaining a complete picture of your underwater fishing system.