The Troutbitten Podcast, Season Two, is available everywhere you listen to your podcasts.
** Note ** The Podcast Player, along with links to your favorite players is below.
Here we are at the finish line. In this ninth installment of this Troutbitten Skills Series, my friend, Austin Dando, and I walk through some of the best tips for putting it all together. Because this set of skills, performed in order and flowing from one to the next, results in a great drift that starts and finishes in a convincing, trout-catching presentation.
Here are those nine skills:
- Angle and Approach
- Turnover and Tuck Cast
- Sticking the Landing
- Recovering Slack
- Finding Contact
- Locating the Strike Zone
- Guiding the Flies
- The Strike
- Putting it all Together
Each of them now has its own podcast and its own article that lays out the tactics in detail.
Tight line tactics are infinitely refinable. There is no end to how much better you can make the next drift. And if you get it perfect, then the next seam challenges you all over again. Contact and true control over the flies is a responsibility, and I’ve seen it overwhelm people at times. So, putting a number on the most basic skills and putting them in order makes things manageable. That is the purpose of this system — this series — of nine essential skills.
** NOTE ** Season Two concludes with a Bonus Round. Episode 10 is packed with Q&A, and it features a full panel of my friends.
We Cover the Following
- Practice by imagining
- Don’t be intimidated
- Trusting the transitions
- Finding the failures
- Focusing on just one
- Seeing success
- How fast the middle steps happen
- Watching the entrance and the exit of the flies
- Judging success
Remember, each of these podcasts is supported by a companion article of the same topic. And you can find the full overview of the Nine Essential Skills for Tight line and Euro Nymphing here:
READ: Troutbitten | The Nine Essential Skills for Tight Line and Euro Nymphing
READ: Troutbitten | #9 Putting It Together — Nine Essential Skill for Tight Line and Euro Nymphing
Listen with the player above, or . . .
Find the Troutbitten podcast on any of these services:
— Apple Podcasts
— Spotify
— Google Podcasts
— Amazon Music
. . . and everywhere else where you listen to podcasts.
Resources
READ: Troutbitten | The Nine Essential Skills for Tight Line and Euro Nymphing
READ: Troutbitten | Category | The Mono Rig
READ: Troutbitten | Get a Good Drift, Then Move On
READ: Troutbitten | What To Trust
READ: Troutbitten | Trout Like to Do What Their Friends Are Doing
READ: Troutbitten |Asking the Best Questions to Catch More Trout
You can find the dedicated Troutbitten Podcast page at . . .
Episode Ten (the bonus round of season two) is coming soon. Thanks again for your support.
Fish hard, friends.
** Donate ** If you enjoy this podcast, please consider a donation. Your support is what keeps this Troutbitten project funded. Scroll below to find the Donate Button. And thank you.
Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com
A fitting conclusion to a wonderful series of podcasts. There is so much useful information in these nine podcasts! Thank you for producing and disseminating them.
Thanks, Alex!
Dom
Great podcast series to follow up a great series of articles. Perhaps you can do some followup articles/podcasts around follow up questions. Here are 2 thoughts-
1. Angle and approach are critical, but let’s face it, we can’t always get to a spot that is 2 rod lengths down and 1 rod length over from the holding water. As I get older, I can’t wade as aggressively, plus, wading isn’t all that good for the stream bottom. So how do you decide what to do next? When does an indie make sense? When do you switch to a thinner leader to at least reduce some of the sag associated with a heavier butt section?
2. Tuck casting is great, and I need to improve mine. However, on the streams I fish, I probably can do a real tuck less than half the time, since a tuck requires a vertical rod position so the flies don’t curve to the left (for a right handed caster). Between limbs over my head or overhanging the target, I very often don’t have the room to keep the rod vertical, stop the rod tip high, and let the flies drop in ahead of the leader. 10 foot rods make this even harder. So what do you do in that situation? As I said, I use sidearm casts more often than I don’t.
3. Here is a puzzle to ask one of your cohosts at the show opening when you go back to that formula-Everyone seems to agree that split shot ought to be at least 5-6 inches above the fly to avoid disturbing the fish. Yes, it also allows the fly more movement from the fixed point of the shot. Then why don’t fish reject every bead head we throw at them? Why is a hunk of shiny metal right at the front of the fly ok, but a nearly identical shiny piece of metal a no-no when it is 3 inches up the leader? This has never made sense to me.
Hi Leigh. Thanks for the kinds words and support.
I appreciate the questions. We will work some of these into the bonus round (Ep 10 ) for next week. But here are my very brief answers:
1. — There is a ton of info here on Troutbitten concerning what to do with a Mono Rig when you have to cast further away. Many articles about adding and indy and more. A whole podcast in Season 1 on the versatility of the Mono Rig too. Many of the links provided throughout the articles in this series will lead you to those articles with other links. Keep digging! The answer you seek are here. Let me know if you don’t find them.
2. I promise that a tuck cast does not need a bunch of overhead room. It’s not that way AT ALL. We have a lot of overhead cover around here. You just need tight loops. Almost no one gets this about the tuck cast. And it’s so often demonstrated and described the wrong way. You can tuck cast under a branch just five feet off the water. That’s the truth.
3. First, trout eat beaded flies because they are attracted to the bead. If you but a shiny split shot up to the eye of the fly, it might be shiny, but you’ve changed the form, or the profile, of the fly. When it’s not built in, that makes a difference. Likewise, a shot placed too close to the nymph just limits it’s mobility. That’s the reason I like 5-6 inches.
Hope those answer help out for now. We’ll answer at least one of them in the next podcast.
Cheers.
Dom