Our good buddy and Troutbitten friend, Bill Dell, was recently a guest on the Wade Out There podcast, with Jason Shemchuk. It’s a great one-on-one interview with Delly, where he talks about his strategies for covering water and finding trout in a day of fishing.
Keep it simple, and don’t make too many assumptions about what’s available down below. The bug most visible and available in the air might not be what takes the trout’s attention underneath.
We use a visible streamer for the tight line dance. We watch the streamer dip and swoon around rocks, tree parts and the river bank. Wherever there’s good structure, that’s the next target. The concept of the tight line dance allows us to hold the streamer around structure for longer, animating the streamer in every way imaginable to convince the trout.
Part of what distinguishes fly fishing from other styles of fishing is retrieving line by hand. But then we need to get the line back out there. When should we shoot the line back through the rod guides? No one ever seems to talk about these options. But there are four of them.
We can shoot line on the pickup, on the backcast, on the forward cast and on the forward cast following the power stroke . . .
Sticking the landing is about putting the sighter in the perfect position for a great drift. The fly hits, tippet enters, and the sighter sets up in the air at an angle. Sticking the landing puts us in immediate control and it enhances strike detection.
Tight line drifts are short, so the entry of the fly must be efficient. Line on the water takes away our control, so everything drags. But sticking the landing maximizes our control from the beginning and sets up an efficient and effective drift of the nymph.
The Crossover is a group of animations brought into a system, a mindset, or a framework for fishing your streamer.
The Crossover technique is all about getting the streamer low — in the strike zone — and then animating it within a narrow range, being careful not to move the fly out of the strike zone or move it too far.
Speed leads happen mostly in one lane, and they go faster than their parent current. Lane changes are exactly what they sound like — the fly is traveling in one lane, and then we deliberately bring the fly over to a nearby lane and travel down that one.
The speed lead is a term coined by our friend, Josh Stewart. Way back in 2017, I published a few articles about low-riding streamer presentations, with streamers tied on lead ball jigs. I’d gotten the idea from Rich Strolis, and it was a bit of an underground thing at the time. I remember that Stewey got in touch after reading my article, and we started sharing ideas and presentation styles with some of these flies. When I described leading low but faster than the current, Josh said he called it a speed lead, and it was one of his best tactics for stirring up big trout . . .
I love the parallels of process that Alex brings up, comparing painting with fishing. And it reminded me that my years as a musician brought to light the same challenges and rewards that we all love when we’re on the water . . .
The tuck cast is at the heart of a good tight line nymphing presentation. It’s the result of good turnover in the air. It’s a simple fly-first entry. The tucks cast is not a specialized cast; it’s a one-hundred percent cast. Every time, all the time, this is how we cast a Mono Rig. No lobbing. Real casting, with control and accuracy that sets up a great drift.
We’re here to talk about one of the most basic movements performed on any fly, lure or bait — jigging.
Moving the fly up and then letting it drop is a simple motion with complex options. And in this podcast, we break down the differences between slack jigging, contact jigging and pendulum jigging.