When the dead drift took over as a popular approach to fly fishing, the path of navigation through trout streams began to change. While early fly rod tactics focused on swinging wet flies, modern fly fishing styles present dry flies, nymphs and often streamers from...
Knots come with opinions. They come with failures and with baggage. And they usually come recommended by someone else. You try the knot, and it works or it fails you. So you keep it or move on. But because the world’s collected information (and opinion) is now at...
** NOTE ** A video for the Pulley Retrieve appears below. Recover more line, and recover it smoother. Why not, right? Sounds good. Last week my friend, Mark, stood calf-deep and fifteen feet off the bank, at the back end of the tailout. Early winter flows were running...
There are no flying fish in Montana, not in Pennsylvania, and not anywhere. Norman Maclean’s line in A River Runs Through It sums this up: One reason Paul caught more fish than anyone else was that he had his flies in the water more than anyone else. "Brother," he...
The river is full of challenges and the trout dictate the terms. A versatile angler is ready for anything. But it helps to be thoughtful about every transition, every time you alter your rig or tactics on the water. Is the change a good bet? And if so, what adjustments need be made?
I’m not suggesting that 6X and lighter tippets are always a crutch. But they certainly can be. Extra-thin tippets are an easy way to solve a tough problem — getting a good dead drift. But sometimes, choosing a harder path makes all the difference — because you might learn more.
. . . How and why in the article . . .
For better casting, for more options after the power stroke, for more available adjustments regarding where the line will end up, shoot most or all of the necessary line on the backcast. And if you’re really good, do it with no extra false casting . . .
Here’s how and why . . .
There’s a sweet spot to every drift. For each swing of a wet fly, strip of a streamer or drift of a dry, there’s a range — a distance — where the fly looks its best. This is the moment where the fur and feathers tied to a hook are most convincing or most natural. It’s when the fly is really fishing and not just dragging through the water. Good anglers recognize this sweet spot of the drift. They maximize its length. They position themselves in the river to control it with their rod tip or with slack line. And they set it all up to happen over the best trout in the river . . .
We’re looking for the best part of what happens after a cast. We’re searching for the sweet ride. And we’re trying to make it last as long as possible . . .
In my early twenties I drove a delivery van for a printing company while finishing the last few semesters of my English degree. Life was pretty easy back then, and I spent much of my leisure time playing guitar and fishing small backcountry streams for wild trout. It was a tight-quarters casting game. And making the transition from the five-foot spinning rod of my youth to a much longer fly rod gave me some trouble. Until, that is, I received one of the simplest and most transformative pieces of fly fishing advice . . .
The biggest misconception in nymphing is that our flies should bump along the bottom. Get it down where the trout are, they say. Bounce the nymph along the riverbed, because that’s the only way to catch trout. We’re told to feel the nymph tick, tick, tick across the rocks, and then set the hook when a trout eats. With apologies to all who have uttered these sentiments and given them useless ink, that is pure bullshit.
Here’s how and why to avoid the bottom, fish more effectively and catch more trout with a top down approach . . .