Buggy flies, guide flies, confidence flies: Fur nymphs are all of that. A fur nymph looks alive, and it’s not overdone. It’s just fur on a hook. These flies aren’t very exciting to look at. The material list is slim. And there’s not much to know about tying them. Anglers may be bored with the spartan form, but trout respond to the simplicity. And there’s a lot of inherent attraction in a fur nymph, with very little to turn a trout off.
A lot goes into a good fishing trip. It’s a flexible framework of pieces and parts mixed in with a little fortuitous intuition. That first trout to the net is rarely luck. And when you start to lose count of how many fish have come to hand, you can be sure that luck has had very little to do with it.
The overarching principles of how to catch a trout — the headers of the outline — are these: Find Trout, Don’t spook them, have a solid presentation, choose a reasonable pattern, and fight fish fast . . .
Fishing is a story . . . On a warm winter day, I fished the buckets, because that’s where the trout were. Stick and move. That’s the game of shooting fish in a barrel.
My friend once described a truly slidable dry dropper system as the Holy Grail of fly fishing. For sure, the ability to slide the dry fly to adjust for depth opens up all the possibilities of a dry dropper system. But it has to slide quickly. It has to be easy. And the slidable system cannot take away the finesse of the dry fly.
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.
I fished hard. I fished enough that I was almost satisfied . . . until the next morning. I walked and waded nearly a hundred river miles in those six weeks. I caught about eight-hundred trout, fished just one pattern, went through two dozen cicadas and never tied on another fly . . . until today.
Because it really is over.
I’ll miss the simplicity of shirt pocket fishing. I’ll miss facing off with some of the best and wisest trout in these rivers, day after day. I’ll miss the confidence in fly selection, knowing exactly what fly to use, all day long. And I’ll miss watching our selective, cautious wild brown trout turn into sharks for a two-inch top water fly.
And I’ll do it again . . . in seventeen years.
With five young kids, Josh and his wife Kelsey have their hands full. But they have the space, too. Living on a family farm with horses and chores can install some work ethic. And that’s the focus of this video.
Some very common ways of doing things out there are just wrong, in the sense that doing it that way hurts the angler’s effectiveness. There are a few of these bad habits that stand out to me every day.
Hanging your arms out there is the worst of them.
When casting, drifting, stripping, hook setting and fighting fish, the arms should be in, with the elbows in a natural position. Think of it as your fighting stance. It’s an athletic position, your baseline posture, and you’re read for anything. Arms extended is a bad way to spend any day. It limits your range of motion, changes your reaction time and put’s you in a tough spot to land a fish.
I’ve known Josh as a fisherman and a friend. Now I’m excited to watch him tell his own stories. Honestly, through his videos on the Wilds Media channel, I’m looking forward to learning more about him as a father of five and a husband, to see more of his life on the family farm and about his deep commitment to hunting and other outdoor pursuits.
Because Josh, quite simply, is a natural.
Fishing is a story . . . It was early summer, in a high water year, where rain for two days pushed the already-full creeks over the banks. But I had time to fish, so I needed a spot and an approach . . .
Think about how a trout eats a real nymph. Then think about how you are drifting your flies. What will a take really look like? Then set fast, not far . . .