You’re in too Far Now

That large tail waved goodbye, and a sturdy wild brown trout slid back into the flow. It was a good fish for this river, and I texted a couple pictures to Burke — just to remind him that I was fishing and he wasn’t. This is what we do to each other.

I must've been a little too gleeful and gloating — chuckled with a little too much gusto when I hit send, maybe — because on the next cast, instant karma sent my leader and flies into the sycamores. And so began the twenty minutes of foolishness that followed . . .

Fly Fishing with Streamers on the Mono Rig — More Control and more Contact

So why would we use a Mono Rig over fly line? What's the advantage?

Just like a tight line nymph rig, we gain more control over the presentation of the flies, and we have better contact throughout the cast and the drift. With fly line in the game, we cast and manage the fly line itself. With the Mono Rig, we cast and manage the streamers more directly.

With the Mono Rig, we can stay tight to the streamer after the cast, we can dead drift it with precision for the first five feet, keeping all the leader off the water. Then we might activate the streamer with some jigs and pops for the next ten feet of the drift. And for the last twenty feet, as the streamer finishes out below and across from us, we may employ long strips. All these options are open.

The Secret

I poked through the dense brush, shed my pack and dropped it in the clearing. In a yellow patch of sunlight, I knelt to catch my breath and watched the wind detach leaves from their parent branches, pushing them into a wild collage across the morning sky and traveling faster downwind to find a place of rest for the coming winter.   

This place is rough. It’s the kind of spot that doesn’t get much traffic from anyone — home only to the squirrels and birds. The best method of navigating through the thick stuff is to find a deer trail. I did that, but when I crested the hillside and started my descent, the path closed in with newly fallen trees, and I was forced to make my way through a maze of dead branches and briers which had quickly sprouted, taking advantage of the sun after the tree fell. I moved forward slowly, but the branches grabbed at my coat to hold me back, as if protecting the river below.

There are two kinds of secret places, I suppose: one that’s truly tucked away somewhere unknown, and one that lies right underneath the fishermen's noses. This place harbors a little of both . . .

Let’s talk about tippet — Three questions about the end of the line in a fly fishing rig

I’ve had old timers tell me that leader and tippet technology is the biggest advancement in fly fishing over the last half-century. Within my own twenty-five years of fly fishing, I’ve seen fly shop wall space grow to include tippet spools of nylon and fluorocarbon in all X sizes (sometimes in half sizes too), with most manufacturers offering multiple options for stiffness and breaking strength in each diameter.

It’s all gotten a little complicated, I suppose, and my friends at TCO tell me that fielding confused questions about tippet is a daily chore. So let’s answer three important questions about tippet. What type? (Nylon vs Fluorocarbon.) What size? (How thick of a diameter is best?) And how long should your tippet section be?

Note: this article is not intended to be a comprehensive write-up for all things tippet. Google search will supply you with that. Instead, I’ll give you a real world, stream-level account of what works for me and the Troutbitten guys.

Full Days

Sunup to sundown.

There’s nothing as simple and yet so full of variation as a full day on the water. The diversity of situations challenges the will of a fisherman: Exhaustion from the forces of water --  its speed, its numbing cold, the pressure of its depth. Weariness from the weather -- the endless wind, the heavy rain, and the consuming heat of the sun. We soak in all the stages and moments that one single day brings, and we are alive through each one.

The Big Score — Meet the Bad Hombre

Halfway down the flat, on the fifty yard line and right where the players meet for a coin toss, a small unremarkable nymph tripped over a stone and then recovered. It danced deep into the belly of a bucket, home to the largest and baddest brown in the river, and it paused . . .

One swift tail kick and an angled fin propelled the trout a few inches to the side. The hooked jaw open, captured and closed . . .