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You can’t really learn a river until you’ve learned to fish. You need some confidence in your skills to cover a section of new water, to fish it well and then walk away with some opinions about what that river holds rather than asking questions about your techniques and decisions.
Learning a river comes by dedicating your time. You must give a part of your life to a river to learn it from top to bottom. And yes, it takes seasons on the water just to crack the surface. (And it probably takes a decade or more to crack the code.)
But for many of us, for those who live a fly fishing life, who dedicate our free time to pursuing trout and learning the game, the questions that a watershed asks are seductive. Why do you find fewer large trout in the lower island section in the fall? What river conditions are required for trout to move to the shallows and comfortably feed after dark? When should you expect the Sulfur hatch, and are there two sizes or just one?
These questions have answers. And the more we fish one waterway, the more details we discover, the more data we enter into a catalog of knowledge about a favorite trout stream.
Rivers are an ever-changing, complex ecosystem of life, water and land. They are influenced by weather, surrounding community development and sometimes the anglers themselves. Nothing is static. Nothing is truly predictable. But there’s also no denying the habit of trout. And once you spend time wading with these fish, observing their habits and watching how the changes affect their behaviors, then time itself finally stacks in your favor. The observant angler becomes part of that ecosystem. And we begin to predict the paths of trout by instinct.
Achieving that level of knowledge is a rare reward. But it is attainable. And the journey toward that knowledge is a respectable pursuit.
I’m joined again by the Troutbitten crew, Trevor Smith, Matt Grobe, Bill Dell, and Austin Dando. I can tell you that each of these fishermen know their local waters exhaustively, from to deep to shallow, from bank to bank, winter, spring, summer and fall. They know the rhythms of their waters.
We Cover the Following
- Listener question about dry flies on the Mono Rig
- Research via maps, books, etc.
- Trout population and species
- Learning the flows
- Exploring from the mouth to the headwaters
- Season changes and migratory habits
- . . . and more
Listen with the player above, or . . .
Find the Troutbitten podcast on any of these services:
— Apple Podcasts
— Spotify
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. . . and everywhere else where you listen to podcasts.
Resources
READ: Troutbitten | Dry Flies on the Mono Rig
READ: Troutbitten | The Last Good Island
READ: Troutbitten | Save the Discovery
You can find the dedicated Troutbitten Podcast page at . . .
Season Three of the Troutbitten podcast continues with Episode 11: . So look for that one in your Troutbitten podcast feed.
Fish hard, friends.
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Enjoy the day.
Domenick Swentosky
T R O U T B I T T E N
domenick@troutbitten.com
Dom,
I just finished listening to the Learning a River podcast for a second time. I have to say that I feel it is one of the
best podcasts for a beginner fly Fisher.
I stopped fly fishing about 30 years ago when my fishing buddy moved away for work purposes. Then this past
October I decided to take up the sport again. Boy have things changed in the fly fishing world since then. Equipment, tactics,
tying materials and on and on. But the one thing that hasn’t changed is exactly what you guys were talking about in the Learning a River podcast.
All the changes I mentioned can be quite overwhelming but I went back to basics, casting and reading the water and presentation.
I’d become quite rusty at all three of those things but as time passed and I spent time on the water, enjoyable time, things began to click.
Currently I’ve been fishing the same stream for months. Finding the fish even if I don’t catch them but always learning the stream.
I’m now pretty confident I can take fish on every outing. I’m learning the stream and catching fish even when the cast or presentation isn’t perfect.
While doing this I watch other fisherman, not all fly fishing, casting to dead water. Staying in one place for half an hour or more.
Anyway the message was a great one. Hope you and the guys keep up the good work.
Thanks,
Kenn Buffalo NY
Cheers.
Love your podcast and blog. I agree that some rivers just fish differently and you have to learn them. I grew up out West and fished mostly dry. Down where I live in GA it’s the opposite. In fact, one very technical wild stream that I have been trying to learn for years didn’t yield many trout until I fished dries. So, you just never know. Of course, the time of year plays a huge factor but when I nymph this particular stream I routinely get skunked. So, I agree that 90% of the time nymphing is the way to learn what it’s in there but on this particular stream you won’t find fish that way.
Right on.