Search Month: June 2022

Some of the fly fishing industry trends, these habits, these practices, just seem wrong. And the gear, the ads, videos and articles, — a lot of it steers people in the wrong direction.

So we thought we’d have a little fun with this and call out as many issues as we can fit into one podcast. But it’s all in good fun. And quite honestly, most of the things we bring up could certainly benefit from a fair dose of constructive criticism.

For a moment, let’s consider where the line goes when the hookset doesn’t stick a trout . . .

You strike on the rise and miss a fish. Or, while nymphing, you set when the fly bumps a rock for the forty-fifth time. And the fly goes where?

In wide open meadows and valleys, who cares? With no trees to eat your fly, sloppy hooksets go unpunished. But the rivers I frequent harbor broken tree limbs as earnest gatekeepers. I like dark, shady corners because the trout do. And working around these obstacles forces me to be mindful — to know where every hookset finishes . . .

A dead drift is the most common presentation in fly fishing for trout, because it imitates their most common food forms. We want a dead drift on both a dry fly and a nymph. But what is it?

It’s a one-seam drift that travels at the speed of the current without tension from the attached tippet. That’s hard to achieve, but it is possible by first understanding what a dead drift looks like, both on the surface with a dry fly and below the surface with a nymph . . .

Junk flies are never a sure thing. They are simply another option to help solve the daily puzzle on the river.

You can’t just put any kind of bright, flashy materials on a hook and fool trout. There’s a reason why trout eat these flies. And there’s a reason why these patterns shine for so long and then fall off at the end of a season. There’s also a huge difference between the way stocked trout respond to some junk flies vs the way wild trout respond . . .