We know that different patterns work for trout at different times, but it’s helpful to acknowledge that some flies move trout a lot further than others.
So what kinds of flies motivate trout to move a little further?
Articles in the Category Remix
Fifty Fly Fishing Tips: #18 — Imagine a Target — Fish to the Fish
You can roam the river, mending, drifting and stripping, casting into every corner pocket and straight channel. You have the skills to present the fly, the consummate awareness of currents and flows and the stamina to wade rough water for hours on end. But can you imagine a target? Can you picture a trout feeding in the hydraulic swirl behind an unseen chunk of bedrock on the river bottom? Can you believe the trout is there? . . .
The capacity to imagine a trout in the river is a next-level skill that’s only earned by thoughtful time on the water . . .
The Hop Mend (with VIDEO)
We mend to prevent tension on the dry fly or the indicator. All flies could drift drag free in the current if not for tension from the attached leader. So it’s our job to eliminate or at least limit that tension on the tippet and to the fly.
This Hop Mend is an arch. It’s a steep and quick half-oval. It’s a fast motion up, over and down with the fly rod. It’s powerful and swift, but not overdone . . .
Riverside — We Wade
We wade for contemplation, for strength and exhaustion, for the challenge and the risk. We wade for opportunity . . .
Wavering Confidence
I was resigned to the plan but having a hard time watching it fail.
Why was my confidence so easily shaken? Because a river that was once the most predictable of any that I fish has now become the opposite. It’s a confounding mystery that I keep coming back to, wishing to solve. And I know that with enough time, with an open mind and by running the right experiments, I’ll find the answers . . .
Strategies for Pressured Trout — Something Different or Something Natural?
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 . . .
Everything Has a Flip Side
What do you believe in? What can you fish hard enough and long enough to effectively convince a sluggish trout that it’s hungry? That’s the fisherman’s confidence. And it beats out the hatch chart, the guide’s advice and last week’s river stories every time . . .
Who Knows Better Than You?
Anglers cling to the stories and accounts others. We believe in the experts. We want masters of this craft to exist and to tell us the answers.
Sure, you might have a group of wild trout dialed in for the better part of a season. Maybe it’s a midge hatch every summer morning, or a streamer bite on fall evenings, for one hour on either side of dusk.
But it will end. That’s what’s so special about chasing trout. Like the wings of a mayfly spinner, predictability is a fading ghost . . .
Fifty Fly Fishing Tips: #33 — Fish the Edges
When a particularly large pair of dark phantoms abandoned the bank and skirted the perimeter of my position, I’d had enough. I turned my back to the main flow where I was catching trout.
The Ladder and the Sky
The sky seemed as though it may fall to the ground with the weight of so many stars. With no city lights on the horizon, no clouds, and no trees or mountains blocking the beauty, I saw the big sky undressed for the first time in my life.
. . . I sat on the roof for a while, then laid back, lying flat with my arms stretched out to the sides, using my body as an extra receiver to take in what my insufficient eyes might miss . . .
I’ll Meet You Upstream . . .
I was in that stage of learning where I’d read more than I could put to use, while Rich had already fished more than he could ever find the words to tell.
. . . Stunned by the beauty of it all, I fell silent and let time creep along, until the slow motion whitewater of the falls mixed with the endless emerald shades reflecting in the softwater glides. An impenetrable canopy above stood guard against the angle of the sun and disguised the true time of day. This timeless valley was either day or night — with the details of everything in between insignificant . . .