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. We’re here to talk about approaching the river — approaching the trout — to put our boots in the best...
Reading water is a base level skill for every river angler. While mystifying at first, finding the features of moving water becomes second nature in short order. Then, the river opens up and reveals itself, signaling where trout hold, where to cast and how to achieve the necessary presentations.
Levels, lanes and seams are not the structure of a river itself. Instead, the structures of a river — a wide gravel bar, a small island or a midstream boulder create the lanes and seams — the features of your favorite water.
This is how we read a river . . .
Fly tying is more popular than ever. With the prevalence of high quality materials and excellent videos showing how to build flies, more fly anglers choose to tie their own patterns than ever before.
All of us at Troutbitten have been tying our own flies from the beginning, so we each have preferences for the tools we use. That’s what this podcast episode is all about. We discuss the essentials, like vise, scissors and a bobbin, along with some other tools and gear that each of us considers invaluable for tying materials to a hook.
The tools come first. And the quality of those tools can either help or hinder the process . . .
No forgiveness. No freebies. Just wild trout that require your best effort and then some. From our best trout rivers, we’re dealt a fair game. We know what trout want. They look for something safe to eat. Something familiar. Something easy with a positive calorie reward for their effort. Something natural, with maybe just a little spark.
Small nymphs, light split shot and a yarn indy won the day. Some dedicated streamer work got little attention. Trout were mostly shallow.
We’re here to clear the air about common myths in fly fishing. These misunderstandings change the way people fish, often without reason.
Most of what we bring up is well engrained into the fly fishing field of knowledge. Basically, most of you out there listening will have heard nearly everything we bring up. Maybe too, you’ll have a different take on things, and some of these won’t be myths to you at all. That’s good. Because you really should trust yourself and your own time on the water more than anyone else.
The Full Pint is one of the only permanent additions to my streamer box in the last few years. I test a lot of patterns against my confidence lineup, and very few flies make the cut. My box of long flies covers all the bases, really. And because I’m (mostly) a minimalist, I don’t add anything that is similar to other flies that I already carry.
But the Full Pint dazzled trout at the first dance. It had a big night the first time out. Then, day after day when I set the hook on a swirl or felt the jolting stop of a large trout slam the fly in mid-strip, I marveled at the Pint’s effectiveness . . .
Nymphing may have technically caught just as many trout, but the process was tedious. Streamers were a better choice, but only because I could cover water and be extremely accurate with the presentations. I placed the fly very close to the structure, over and over, as I worked upstream. Without that accuracy, I think the streamer fishing would have failed.
. . . I’m tired of the low water fishing, but I continue to learn things every day. And that’s good fishing.