The Troutbitten Podcast is available everywhere that you listen to your podcasts. ** Note ** The Podcast Player, along with links to your favorite players is below. Here's a full podcast dedicated to staying warm, from head to toe. Because sometimes, staying warm...
The Troutbitten Podcast is available everywhere that you listen to your podcasts. ** Note ** The Podcast Player, along with links to your favorite players is below. Cold. That is what defines winter fishing. We acknowledged in the last podcast that the cold — or...
The Troutbitten Podcast is available everywhere that you listen to your podcasts. ** Note ** The Podcast Player, along with links to your favorite players is below. Season Six of the Troutbitten podcast begins. This is an eight-part Skill Series about fly fishing in...
** NOTE ** This story was originally published to Hatch Magazine in 2017. It is republished here, and it's one of my favorites It's Monday. It’s 35 degrees. And it's spitting rain. That combination of undesirables should be enough to give you plenty of space on the...
Orvis built a pair of waders that have lasted one-hundred hard days on the water (and counting) — with no leaks or seam failures. That is impressive. I’ve owned waders from all the major brands, and I’ve never come close to this kind of durability in waders before.
Here’s what’s good and bad about the Orvis Pro waders . . .
Smith and I found ourselves on another late December, post-Christmas fishing trip. But Smith was fishing and coming up empty, while I was catching trout . . .
. . . “Alright, Dom. What the hell are you doing?” he demanded boldly. Smith takes pride in finding his own path and solving his own puzzles. But like every good angler I know, he’s humble enough to ask the right questions at the right times . . .
The predictability of the winter egg bite can be excellent — if you’re nymphing skills are tuned up. It also takes some extra refinement . . .
. . . So here’s what I told Smith . . .
I wasn’t quite sure why I’d asked the kid if he fished in the first place. But there was something about him that compelled me to share. And here I was, about to give up a guarded secret.
“Do you have a piece of paper back there?” I asked. “I’ll show you something . . .”
Weather be damned. We’ve come a long way from your grandfather’s yellow rain slicker. The Simms Bulkley insulated wading jacket is the perfect cold-weather fishing coat. And after spending about a hundred days in it over the last year, I can tell you why . . .
Every winter our rivers go through changes, and the trout follow suit. Regardless of how much water flows between the banks, I encounter a predictable slowdown in trout response at some point. Call it a lack of trout enthusiasm. Or call it hunkering down and waiting for warmer water. However you look at it, the trout just don’t move as far to eat a fly.
For some, the solution is a streamer — to go bigger. Get the trout’s attention and add some motivation to peel itself from the river bed and move to a fly. It works — sometimes. (everything works sometimes.) But just as often you’re left with an empty net and more questions than answers. I do love fishing streamers in the winter though. I use it as a chance to build body heat, to warm up by walking and covering more water. But my standard approach is a highly targeted pair of nymphs, right in the trout’s window. Served up just right, you can almost force-feed a trout that didn’t even know he was hungry.
Nothing about having a winter system or using a specific nymphing rig makes any difference if the guides of your rod are frozen. And every fly fisher who has stepped into a winter river with the air temps below, let’s say, twenty-five degrees has dealt with some kind of trouble. Every angler has his own advice about eliminating guide ice too. And here I guess it’s time to give you mine . . .