Learning to cast is the first act of the beginner fly fisher. For natural athletes, casting is almost an extension of their arm. And soon the fly fisher is casting 80 to 100 feet with grace and beauty. For the rest of us, however, the long cast is a long obedience in the same direction. For example, the double haul cast may take years to perfect. In this episode, we celebrate the shorter cast – the one you’ll use to catch more fish.
Episode 292: Learn to Cast Shorter to Catch More Fish
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
If you are just starting out, this book is for you. There’s a lot to learn to begin catching fish consistently.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Referrals are how we grow. A referral is one fly fisher telling another fly fisher about what he or she likes!
Would you refer our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop? Thanks in advance!
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Become a real fly fisher – that sounds a bit noble, but it’s a worthy goal. You can read about fly fishing. Watch videos. And listen to podcasts (ours, hopefully!).
To become even moderately competent, though, you need to “do” fly fishing.
There are no shortcuts. You need many days on the river when you don’t catch a thing. In this episode, we identify five big buckets or categories that you need to master (or at least become moderately proficient at) to catch fish and enjoy the sport. It’s something everyone can learn. It’s just not something you can learn in anticipation of a trip to the American West or for a vacation.
Episode 291: The 5 Main Things to Know to Become a Real Fly Fisher
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
If you are just starting out, this book is for you. There’s a lot to learn to begin catching fish consistently.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Referrals are how we grow. A referral is one fly fisher telling another fly fisher about what he or she likes!
Would you refer our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop? Thanks in advance!
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Catching brook trout is still one of our favorite things to do, even after fly fishing for many years.
Can you remember the first brook trout you caught? They’re not the biggest fish in the river (except, perhaps, the ones you catch in Labrador), but the beauty and ease of catching a brook trout creates joy for even the most experienced fly fisher. This episode is not so much a how-to show as it is an “ode to brook trout fishing” episode. We’re celebrating the wonder of brook trout and catching them on the fly.
Episode 290: What Makes Catching Brook Trout Such a Rush
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
If you are just starting out, this book is for you. There’s a lot to learn to begin catching fish consistently.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow. It’s one fly fisher telling another fly fisher about what he or she likes!
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Sophisticated fly fishers don’t false cast, right? How many times have you heard someone say, “You won’t catch fish with your fly in the air. So, stop all the false casting”? So, why would you want to do more false casting?
False casting,however, is not just for beginners. It’s for veterans as well. Recently, Hatch Magazine published an excellent article by Todd Tanner titled “The Truth about False Casting,” which identifies six good reasons for false casting. In this episode, we discuss each reason and apply it to specific situations while out on the river.
Episode 289: Maybe You Should Do More False Casting – 6 Reasons
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow. It’s one fly fisher telling another fly fisher about what he or she likes!
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Trout stream health is essential to a growing fish population. In this episode, we interview Driftless fisheries biologist Kirk Olson, who is lucky enough to work in four of the top trout fishing counties in southwestern Wisconsin: Monroe, Vernon, La Crosse, and Crawford counties, with more than 1,300 classified miles of trout streams. We cover topics like the problem of brown trout eclipsing brook trout in many streams, perpetual leases, and what percentage of the fish population the river kills each year.
Episode 288: Driftless Fisheries Biologist Kirk Olson on Trout Stream Health
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow. It’s one fly fisher telling another fly fisher about what he or she likes!
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fall fly fishing in the Yellowstone ecosystem – it can be amazing. And incredibly frustrating. Depends on a several variables.
But definitely, later in the fall beats earlier. That is one of best nuggets of insight when considering a time to fish the rivers in the Yellowstone ecosystem in the fall. Less crowds. More solitude. The possibility of runners. And even a few late mornings with a BWO hatch. In this episode, we discuss our fall fly fishing wisdom from almost fifteen years of fishing in Montana.
Episode 287: Fall Fly Fishing in the Yellowstone Ecosystem
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fly fishing at dusk – most of us leave too soon. At least we do. Often we’re off the river by 4 PM, depending on the time of year. It’s not just the early bird who gets the worm. Sometimes, so does the late bird.
But later in the day can produce some great moments on the river. And bigger fish. In this episode, we discuss the opportunities of fishing at dusk.
Episode 286: Don’t Give Up Too Soon – Fly Fishing at Dusk
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
“Observe before you fly fish” should be the opening sentence of the first paragraph of every book for beginner fly fishers. Casting your fly is only a small piece of learning to catch fish. Yes, of course, you need to learn how to cast. But fly fishing is much more subtle and nuanced than wading and slinging. Learning to slow down takes discipline. Before you step into that run, take a few moments to look, look, look.
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Simple fly casting tips seem too good to be true. Learning to fly cast is the first act of the newbie fly fisher. Fly casting well is fundamental to catching fish. It’s a skill that is developed over time. But we’ve discovered that you never arrive. That is, we’ve noticed that our fly casting can get worse over time, if we don’t keep honing the skill. In this episode, we offer 9 simple fly casting tips to improve your catching. In the end, it’s all about the fish you catch, right?
Episode 284: 9 Simple Fly Casting Tips for More Catching
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fly fishing the American West may seem more intimidating to the new fly fisher. The rivers are swift, and simply figuring out how to identify a run in a bigger river can be daunting.
We both got our early fly fishing chops from slinging flies into the bigger rivers in the inter-mountain West – the Madison, Gallatin, the Yellowstone, the Missouri, the Boulder, and others. In mid-life, we both moved to the Chicagoland area and had a rude awakening when fishing the spring creeks of the Driftless region. We caught fewer fish, and the rivers were not really rivers but small creeks.
In this episode, we discuss the differences between the two regions to help fly fishers prepare for fishing either one.
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Dry fly fishing stories are the best. Mostly because when push comes to shove, to use the cliche, we’d rather cast a dry fly than almost anything else.
There’s no greater thrill than catching a trout on a dry fly. We love to fish streamers and nymphs, but when push comes to shove, we’d rather tie on a dry. In this episode of dry fly fishing stories, we recall a bunch of terrific days (or, in some cases, minutes) catching rainbows, cutthroat, or browns on a dry fly. We also layer in some key takeaways from each story to provide some practical help.
Episode 282: Dry Fly Fishing Stories and Their Key Takeaways
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
In this conversation with Michael Burns, a Wisconsin Driftless conservation warden, we discuss the most common fishing violations and his role in working with our sport. While our listeners come from all places in North America and even Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, we thought Mike’s perspective as a Driftless conservation warden applies to everyone everywhere.
It takes a village to raise up a fly fisher. An unheralded person of the village is the conservation warden. He or she is in many ways quietly responsible to maintain order and even safety while we enjoy the outdoors.
Episode 281: A Fly Fishing Conversation with a Driftless Conservation Warden
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
You’ve set the hook. Now what? In this episode, we offered up some of the best practices for netting and releasing your fish. One of the most important reminders is to monitor the interval between the time you hook a trout and when you release it – the shorter (obviously) the better.
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fly fishing platitudes are platitudes for a reason. There’s some truth to every platitude, and here’s a common one: “Trout do 80% of their feeding underwater.” We’ve repeated this platitude often over the years. In a recent issue of TROUT magazine, a publication of Trout Unlimited, Tom Rosenbauer labels that platitude a “trout myth.” In this episode, we discuss seven points that Rosenbauer makes in the article and apply them to our fly fishing experience.
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fly fishing resolutions are typically set forth in January. It’s mid-March. But we thought that you’d like to hear our fly fishing resolutions for the next three seasons, when we do most of our fishing.
One of Steve’s resolutions centers around his recent proclivity to break his fly rods. He has broken three in the last couple years. One of Dave’s is to, once and for all, learn the double haul cast – or at least perfect it. We fish most of our days on the spring creeks in the Driftless region, where the double haul is hardly used for distance. The streams are mostly spring creeks, and the fly fisher’s biggest problem tends not to be distance.
Fly Fishing Resolutions to Make the Next Three Seasons Great
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Winter fly fishing tips can help you take a no-fish day to perhaps a one-fish day. Our tips will likely not help you rip out ten fish on a cold winter day. Winter fly fishing is not easy.
We hit the river a couple weeks ago and discovered once again that winter fly fishing is not like fishing in the other three seasons. A recent fly fishing newsletter helped put winter fishing into perspective with a few tips. We thought you might benefit from these as much as we did. Spring, though, is coming quickly!
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fly fishing basics may seem patently obvious to the more experienced fly fisher, but the fundamentals of our sport must be learned and relearned.
A fly fisher should return again and again to the basics of fly fishing. In this episode, we identify several key elements of fly fishing that we’ve had to relearn or remember. Just like writing or playing a sport, the veterans return to the essential skills again and again.
LISTEN NOW TO “RETURNING TO THE FLY FISHING BASICS”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Steve went on an Alaskan fly fishing trip without Dave this summer. Perhaps that is an overstatement: Steve went on a family trip to Alaska with some fly fishing tacked on as a bonus.
Steve broke his fly rod, caught a few rainbows, and netted a silver. Listen in as Dave interviews Steve about his Alaskan fly fishing experience while on a trip to visit family. Some things about fishing are always true, no matter where you fish:
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Crazy fly fishing moments occur almost every time we fish together. Steve always blames Dave, because Dave is often responsible for a lot of the stupid behavior. But on a recent trip, Steve needed to take some responsibility for his response to almost stepping on a rattle snake.
Okay, maybe Dave is still mostly responsible for some of these crazy fly fishing moments. As a result, though we had a lot of laughs and memories.
LISTEN NOW TO “CRAZY FLY FISHING MOMENTS: RATTLESNAKES, BUYING BEAR SPRAY, and DAVE in FULL FORM”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. For example, learning how to read water is another of the most elemental aspects of fly fishing.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
We would love a referral from you, because referrals are how we grow.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
When your fly fishing trip is just okay, you may need to raise your expectations. It’s not just about how many fish you can, though more is always better than less.
LISTEN NOW TO “WHEN YOUR FLY FISHING TRIP IS JUST OKAY”
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Make your fly fishing more simple. And thus more enjoyable. When first starting out, most of us feel overwhelmed with the many types of fly rods, sizes of flies, tippet weights, leader lengths, casting techniques, how long the tippet should be, and where to put the split shot when fishing nymphs. There’s a lot to learn! But over time, it’s important to simplify the sport as much as possible. In this episode, we discuss the art of fly fishing simplicity.
We offer some ideas for flies, rods, and other key aspects of fly fishing.
LISTEN NOW TO “MAKE YOUR FLY FISHING MORE SIMPLE – AND MORE ENJOYABLE”
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fly fishing high mountain lakes requires a modicum of thought and preparation. In some ways, a “hike and fish” means packing lots of water, the right rod and flies, a rain jacket, and the right mindset. We don’t fish a lot of high mountain lakes … but when we do, we try to keep a few basics in mind.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Summer dry fly fishing patterns can be confusing. At least the names can be confusing.
It’s the dog days of summer, and hopefully you are slinging some grasshopper patterns or other terrestrials to catch fish on the surface. In this episode, we’ve identified four buckets of dry fly patterns for summer fly fishing. We also offer up our three must-have dry fly patterns for this wonderful season.
When it comes down do it, fly selection in the summer can be pretty simple.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fly fishing with the summer crowds likely means catching less fish and feeling less satisfied with your day. Crowds are inevitable in the summer. With summer vacations and warmer days, more fly fishers head to the river.
In this episode, we offer several strategies to avoid the summer crowds, find a bit of solitude, and, hopefully, catch a few fish. It may be easier than you think.
LISTEN NOW TO “FLY FISHING WITH THE SUMMER CROWDS”
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
“Quit your favorite stream” doesn’t sound like sage fly fishing advice. Quitters never win. And winners never quit.
That’s fully true. And it’s also fully not true.
Sometimes, the best thing you can do is to quit your favorite stream, creek, or stretch of river. In this episode, we wax not so eloquently on when it’s time to walk away from what has been your favorite fishing spot. It may not be forever. But doing so may push you to find new water to fish.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fishing with streamers tends to result in catching bigger fish.
There’s no scientific evidence to support this, of course, other than our anecdotal evidence. But we’ve had some terrific days on the river casting bigger flies that we fish on an active retrieve. In this episode, we provide an overview of our streamer fishing experience and provide some basic tips to getting started.
LISTEN NOW TO “THE BASICS OF FLY FISHING WITH STREAMERS
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fly Fishing the edges of the seasons begins with frustration. Most fly fishers despise driving up to where they expect to fish for the day and see three trucks alongside the creek. In this episode, we discuss our basic approach to fishing the four seasons. We try as much as possible to fish the edges of winter, spring, summer, and fall.
There are fewer fly fishers, the hotel rates are cheaper, and the fishing can be spectacular. The downside to fly fishing the edges of the season is the weather, of course. Most likely you’ll feel colder. And you’ll need to figure out how to get out during the middle of the week.
LISTEN NOW TO “FLY FISHING THE EDGES OF THE SEASON” NOW!
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fly fishing spring creeks with more success often demands more finesse than fishing freestone rivers. The water temperature is more consistent in spring creeks, and the food more ubiquitous. If you want to catch fish in a spring creek, your tackle must be lighter, and you need to be more stealthy.
But there are some other keys when fly fishing spring creeks with more success: They include moving from run to run more quickly and switching up your rig when you’re not catching fish. There’s no honor in staying with the same rig all day and never netting a fish. And then, ultimately, when fly fishing springs creeks ends up a bust, there’s always dinner at your local supper club or pub.
LISTEN NOW TO “FLY FISHING SPRING CREEKS WITH MORE SUCCESS
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
The other perks of fly fishing may seem a distant second to catching fish, but they make up a significant part of why we enjoy fly fishing so much.
Catching fish is the reward of fly fishing. And we both love and expect to catch fish every time we head out to the river. But there are some other perks of fly fishing. And in this episode, we list several, including the chance to experience the “nonsecular” parts of life, eating at small-town cafes, and the conversations about the great themes of life.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fly fishing tips are everywhere, but there are some that stick. And make a real difference in the number of fish that you catch. It takes a village to raise a fly fisher. In this episode, we admit once again to our persistent mediocrity as fly fishers.
We give credit, however, to whatever skills we have to friends, guides, and others we’ve observed through the years. They have provided us with fly fishing tips that have improved our chops and allowed us to catch more fish.
This episode offers up a handful of these fly fishing tips, including how to use the tip of your rod while streamer fishing and monitoring how deep your nymph is by observing the speed of your strike indicator. Other tips include lifting your line off the water and how to cast (or not cast) against the wind.
LISTEN NOW TO “Fly Fishing Tips We’ve Picked Up from Other Fishers”
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fly fishing the Yellowstone River late in the fall is a risk. If the weather suddenly turns right before your fly fishing trip, the roads in the Park may close. Or perhaps if the weather has been too balmy, the trout may not be rising. And since the main hatches and the hoppers have been gone for over a month, you’re resigned to streamers and nymphs.
But last fall, we timed the trip perfectly, no thanks to our planning. And even though the weather was bright and sunny, fly fishing the Yellowstone River inside the Park gave us three magical days of fishing. It was three days of 15- to 19-inch cutthroat trout, fat like middle-aged men.
LISTEN NOW: Three Magical Days Fly Fishing the Yellowstone River
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Pickle Ball is not in our future. We continue to fly fish for a variety of reasons, including the sheer delight of spending a few hours on the river trying to convince trout that what we’re presenting is real.
This is our first episode in a while, and we’re excited to back in the publishing saddle. Our current plan is to release at least four (and maybe more) new episodes each season. We’re considering this, still, winter season, even though we’ve already crossed into March.
We thought we’d start up our podcast again with the heart of why we fly fish. We begin with what we’ve been up to the past few months and then discuss several reasons for our continued passion for the sport.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
The Yellowstone Flood of 2022 is not yet over, and already it is the most catastrophic flooding event of the Yellowstone River in recorded history. Major flooding on the Yellowstone River and its tributaries wiped out stretches of highway in Yellowstone National Park and in Paradise Valley to the north. Three inches of rain which took with it melting snow poured into these rivers.
We couldn’t think of a better person to talk with us about this than our friend Dave Kumlien, outfitter and guide, former fly shop owner in Bozeman, Montana, a former employee of the Whirling Disease Foundation and Trout Unlimited, and a member of the 2022 class of inductees into the Fresh Water Fishing Hall of Fame.
In this episode, we interview Dave on the Yellowstone flooding and its effect on fishing.
Dave helps us understand the historic nature of the flooding and gives us some insights on what happens to the fish during a flood. For example, he says that flooding often pushes the trout to the extremities of the river. In general, flooding doesn’t seem to have too big of a impact on fish populations, though young trout tend to be more at risk.
Fish are resilient, Dave says, and fishing will likely return quickly.
LISTEN NOW TO “Montana Outfitter Dave Kumlien on the Yellowstone Flooding and Its Effect on Fishing”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners Is on Hiatus
We’d love to hear from you again. Please post your comments below or send us an email at Steve and Dave. We hope you are making plans to get out on the river soon!
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fly fishing with lighter rods makes sense only if the conditions are right. In recent years, each of us has purchased a lighter rod for smaller creeks. In this episode, we relay pluses and minuses of fly fishing with lighter rods.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
Fall fly fishing trips to Montana have been a staple of ours, and this past fall was one of the best on record. The previous year was a bust. In fact, we wondered if we should even return to Montana in the fall, whether our honey holes and favorite rivers were only memories.
In “Lessons from Our Fall Fly Fishing Trip to Montana,” we offer up what we learned and relearned from our lessons from a week in Big Sky Country. This year, we fished the third week of October, and because there had been a significant snowfall about a week earlier, the runners had started to move upriver.
LISTEN NOW TO “LESSONS FROM OUR FALL FLY FISHING TRIP TO MONTANA”
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
John Maclean’s Home Waters is a memoir of his father, Norman Maclean, the author of “A River Runs Through It.” In this memoir, John reflects on his growing up as the grandson and son of two characters in the novella and movie.
In “Reflections on John Maclean’s Home Waters,” we discuss what resonated with us about John’s unique perspective on the life of his father. Steve connected with the scholarly life of Norman combined with his passion for fly fishing. Dave thought that the fact that Norman did not publish “A River Runs Through It” until after he retired from the University of Chicago gives hope for those who are older to continue to be productive.
LISTEN NOW TO “REFLECTIONS ON JOHN MACLEAN’S HOME WATERS”
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, start to plan your next day on the water!
The East Gallatin River flows in a northwesterly direction through the Gallatin valley in Montana, north of Bozeman. From the perspective of a drone a couple thousand feet up, the river, which is more like a large creek, might look like ribbon candy. It winds in large S curves on the Montana flatland, with almost 360-degree views of mountains, including the Bridgers, the Spanish Peaks, and the Tobacco Roots.
Last fall, we fished the East Gallatin River on some private property, thanks to a friend. In this episode, the first in a while, we tell the story of one fine day on the East Gallatin River.
We hope you are surviving the winter blahs and dreaming of some fine days of spring fly fishing.
LISTEN NOW TO “ONE FINE DAY ON THE EAST GALLATIN RIVER”
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, get out to the river!
It’s September, and often during this month we find a way for our annual Montana fly fishing trip. It was fitting that in a year like 2020, there were some strange moments.
In this episode, we discuss a series of “rapid fire” topics from our Montana fly fishing trip in a not-so-rapid-fire manner. One odd part of the trip was the dramatic temperature drop from a hundred degrees a day or so before we arrived to 48 degrees on Labor Day, the day we arrived. The fly fishing was good (not great), but the trip itself was a great memory.
LISTEN NOW TO “REFLECTIONS ON A MONTANA FLY FISHING TRIP”
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, get out to the river!
Fishing the transition of the season successfully must start with a different set of expectations. The prolific summer hatches are mostly over. And the fall runners have yet to make their way up the river.
In this episode, we discuss the space between summer and fall, which is September and early October. The two other transitional months are March (between winter and spring) and June (between spring and summer).
And ways to make your days on the river more productive.
LISTEN NOW TO “FISHING THE TRANSITION OF THE SEASON”
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, get out to the river!
Your next fly fishing trip is, hopefully, sooner rather than later. It has been a year of kicking the proverbial can of what we love to do down the road. The pandemic has delayed or postponed indefinitely a lot of plans. This next week, however, we plan to hit our favorite rivers in Montana.
In this episode, we identify some not-so-obvious questions to ask before your next trip.
LISTEN NOW TO “NOT-SO-OBVIOUS QUESTIONS FOR YOUR NEXT FLY FISHING TRIP”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners.
What other questions should we have included for this episode? What did we miss?
We’d love to hear about your future plans.
Post your comments below, and we’ll stitch them in at the end of one of our episodes.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, get out to the river!
The fly fishing etiquette mindset is a way of thinking that should permeate the actions of every fly fisher. In this episode, we read a thread from Trout Unlimited’s online forum about a fly fisher who was, in our opinion, quasi-bullied out of fishing on the Madison by four fishers.
With the influx of new fly fishers into the sport, given Covid’s eliminating other activities, the great traditions of our sport must be passed on. People must learn that fly fishing isn’t a competitive sport. At least not like the team sports. If you want to be competitive, compete with your self. Compete with your lousy fly casting technique. Focus on you. Not on bullying other fly fishers.
LISTEN NOW TO “THE FLY FISHING ETIQUETTE MINDSET”
Post your comments below, and we’ll stitch them in at the end of one of our episodes.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, get out to the river!
Fly fishing success is not just about your amazing chops: precision casting, reading the river, and overall fly fishing genius. There are factors out of your control that affect whether you catch fish.
In this episode, we identify seven factors that may affect your day on the river. One factor is barometric pressure. Another is phases of the moon.
LISTEN NOW TO “7 KEY FACTORS IN YOUR FLY FISHING SUCCESS”
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, get out to the river!
Fishing the film begins with a different mindset. We often think first about fishing on top of the surface or at the bottom of the river.
In this episode, we discuss the “film” mindset” and offer four strategies for greater fly fishing success. One strategy is simply to let your soggy dry fly drift submerged at the end of the drift.
“The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists” is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, get out to the river!
Fish pics are ubiquitous. Instagram has every angle of fish pic you can imagine. But there’s more to shoot when you’re on the river than just pictures of your big brown trout. In this episode, we offer up twelve tips to photograph your entire fly fishing experience.
We begin the episode with what is perhaps the most important (and obvious) tip: Make sure your fish pics don’t kill the fish! By photographing your entire fly fishing experience, you may even spend less time on specific fish!
LISTEN NOW TO “PHOTOGRAPHING YOUR ENTIRE FLY FISHING EXPERIENCE”
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links.
Thank you for your trust. And now, get out to the river!
If you’ve never felt the violent strike of a brown trout on a streamer, you haven’t really lived. In this guide to fly fishing with streamers, we interview Dave Kumlien, Montana outfitter and former fly shop owner, on a wide ranging topics related to fishing streamers. This truly is the complete guide to fly fishing streamers because Dave addresses how to retrieve your stream, shot line casts, fly rod weight – and many other topics.
We also discussed the “twitch method” of stripping your streamer. Dave Kumlien mentioned an article by Tom Morgan, who owned the Winston Rod Company as well as Tom Morgan Rodsmiths. Here is the article: Fishing with the Morgan Twitch.
LISTEN NOW TO “THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO FLY FISHING WITH STREAMERS WITH DAVE KUMLIEN”
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Salmo trutta tend to dominate wherever they live. Also known as brown trout, salmo trutta often push out brook trout – or at least push them upstream. Brown trout tend to thrive in warmer waters.
In this episode we regale each other with stories of catching large brown trout (our love relationship) and also discuss the downsides (our hate relationship) of this invasive species, introduced to America from Germany in 1883. Most of the fish we catch in the Driftless region are brown trout.
LISTEN NOW TO “OUR LOVE-HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH SALMO TRUTTA”
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Underexplained aspects of fly fishing tend to contribute to our struggles on the water until we figured out the truth. “Duh! How did I not know this after all these years?” There are so many underexpalined aspects of fly fishing that simply escaped us during the first few years of fly fishing. Frankly, we’re still learning new hacks or tips that seem obvious in retrospect.
In this episode, we offer up the first seven hacks or even simple casts of fly fishing that seem “under explained” to us. We may have learned the hack or tip from a guide. Or a gracious friend. We think this will be Part 1 of several future episodes, once we learn from you which you had to learn from a friend or mentor or guide. Or even had to learn it the hard way – on your own.
LISTEN NOW TO “7 UNDEREXPLAINED ASPECTS OF FLY FISHING”
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Fly fishing comfort in summer simply requires a few basic items of clothing. Certainly dry-fit clothing is at the top of the list.
So is a water-resistant cap or hat.
In this episode, we offer up our short list of basic summer wear. And we also reveal our deep disappointment that we may never be Simms models. Steve may have to fire Dave as his podcast partner before Simms takes Steve’s modeling aspirations seriously.
LISTEN NOW TO “SUMMER WEARABLES FOR FLY FISHING COMFORT”
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Small creeks in Montana are plentiful and full of trout. While the big rivers get all the press, it’s in the smaller freestone creeks, arguably, where some of the best fishing is.
We love to fly fish the small creeks of Montana. In this episode, we recount how we first fell in love with small creek fly fishing and even name some of our favorite places in Montana.
LISTEN NOW TO “FLY FISHING THE SMALL CREEKS OF MONTANA”
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Midsummer fly fishing tips include taking a siesta in the middle of the day and trying your hand at catching trout with a size #22 Trico imitation.
In this episode, we discuss a few of the changes that come when fishing in the dog days of summer. Be sure to add your midsummer fly fishing tips in our comments section below!
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Parents, both mothers and fathers, play an inordinate role in the belief systems and destiny of their children. This weekend is Father’s Day Weekend, and so we wanted to share the lessons from our fathers while hunting and fishing in the great outdoors.
In this episode, we select three lessons each (six total) that our fathers taught us while we hunted and fished. Neither of our fathers was a fly fisher, but both loved to hunt and fish. Their legacy lives on in our lives.
LISTEN NOW TO “LESSONS FROM OUR FATHERS WHILE IN THE OUTDOORS”
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Dry fly fishing is one of the great joys of the sport. One key element of success is where you cast your dry fly. It’s both art and skill.
In this episode, we identify the eight places where you should cast your dry fly. None of this is new, but the episode is a good reminder about the importance about where you cast your dry fly.
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Like all of life, fly fishing has become increasingly complex: Just try to sort through the dizzying array of fly fishing rods before you purchase your next one. In this episode, we discuss our aspirations to simplify our fly fishing experience.
What might that look like for you?
LISTEN NOW TO “SIMPLIFYING YOUR FLY FISHING EXPERIENCE”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. Often, it’s the little things that make a big difference, increasing your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
The best all around fly rod is up for debate. The answer is, of course, it depends. Many fly fishers have more than one rod, but if you had to choose, which would be the best of all that’s available?
In this episode, we make a case for the nine-foot, five-weight or nine-foot six-weight rod as the best all around fly rod. However, if you’re fishing smaller creeks, you may want to consider an eight-and-a-half four-weight fly rod.
LISTEN NOW TO “BEST ALL AROUND FLY ROD FOR NORMAL FOLK”
This is a book of fly fishing pearls. Hundreds of hundreds of pearls.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. Often, it’s the little things that make a big difference, increasing your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Stalking trout is a basic concept of fly fishing, but yet it’s often not part of the curriculum of new fly fishers.
In this episode we identify six practices for stalking trout and tell a few stories when we found success for our efforts. Stalking trout is especially important on smaller freestone rivers and spring creeks. Many adventure fly fishers today use a spotter to spot big trout in the streams. And then they stalk the fish, creeping up to a place where they can cast without spooking the fish.
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. Often, it’s the little things that make a big difference, increasing your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Flies that work anytime and anywhere are essential to your fly box. Yes, there may be some specialty flies that work only during specific hatches, but more often than not, the basics are pretty much all you need (most or at least much of the time).
In this episode, we discuss two dry flies, two nymphs, a streamer – and what we’re calling a “wild card.” You can pretty much go to the bank with these flies.
LISTEN NOW TO “FLIES THAT WORK ANYTIME AND ANYWHERE”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. Often, it’s the little things that make a big difference, increasing your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Your next fly fishing trip may seem like years away in this moment in history, but soon enough, it will be time to plan. It’s never too early to start dreaming about your next trip.
In this episode we discuss four questions to help winnow your options to make the best decision about time of year for your next fly fishing trip. We also discuss our favorite time of year for a trip.
LISTEN NOW TO “4 QUESTIONS FOR YOUR NEXT FLY FISHING TRIP”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. Often, it’s the little things that make a big difference, increasing your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Landing bigger fish is impossible if you simply try to rip in the fish like you would if you were spin fishing.
In this episode we identify several tips that have helped us increase our catch rate when Moby Dick hits our streamer or nymph. One tip is a different mindset, which comes only after one’s heart is broken after the big one got away.
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. Often, it’s the little things that make a big difference, increasing your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Fishing emergers during a hatch is as fundamental as it gets. While it may seem counter-intuitive to the new fly fisher, it’s a staple of the veteran.
In this episode, we start off with a couple great stories from recent trips when the stars aligned, and we hit a hatch perfectly. But the fish were not hitting our flies on the surface. We had to drop an emerger.
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. Often, it’s the little things that make a big difference, increasing your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Soft river bottoms pose a unique risk to wade fishers.
In this episode, Dave recounts a winter fly fishing experience in which he got stuck in the mud while trying to wade to a run. It was 31 degrees. Dave had no cell coverage. He had gotten wet. And his fly fishing partner was about an hour away. Dave lived to survive the ordeal, but the story serves as a reminder about the risks of soft river bottoms and the importance of thinking more critically about our approach to wading.
There are many ways to die in the outdoors. We all know not to wade into water that is moving too fast, but what about stagnant water with a soft bottom?
LISTEN NOW TO “THE WADING RISK OF SOFT RIVER BOTTOMS”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast.
There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. Often, it’s the little things that make a big difference, increasing your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Safe wading is rarely the first thought on a fly fisher’s mind as he or she plans for a day on the river. It should be.
In this episode, we interview Dave Kumlien, a Montana outfitter for 40 years, former fly shop owner, and former coordinator of Trout Unlimited’s Veteran Service Partnership. We start out this episode on safe wading by busting a few myths. Some of the common ideas about wading safely are patently false.
Just recently, an acquaintance of one of Dave’s friends lost her life while wading the Yellowstone River in Paradise Valley, Montana. She had a guide. And her husband and son watched her fall and get pulled under as she headed downriver. It’s critical to pay attention to your surroundings as you wade.
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. Often, it’s the little things that make a big difference, increasing your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
The hope of fly fishing is a day in the not too distant future when our fears have been suspended and we make our way upstream with only the next run on our mind. In this episode, we focus not on the present moment but days gone by when we endured hardship while also making time to fish. We want our conversation to be a source of encouragement as we wait.Maybe that stretch of river that rarely disappoints will be even better months from now.
LISTEN NOW TO “THE HOPE OF FLY FISHING AMID THE WAITING”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. Often, it’s the little things that make a big difference, increasing your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
The first thought of a fly fisher as the river water pours over the top of the waders is losing his or her fly rod.
No, no, no!
The first bodily response to the 55-degree water is hyperventilation, muscle spasms, an adrenaline burst. The next thought, Oh god! And then, again: Rod!
It’s late summer. Steve (my podcast partner) and I inch single file and thigh deep against the heavy current, fly rod in one hand and the other on the scrub brush and rocky ledge on the river’s edge. We have no business wading the ruthless currents of the Yellowstone. No matter how low it seems this time of year. Up ahead fifty yards is a stretch we’ve never fished before. We’re almost there. We make it and start to cast. It’s hopper season, and the cutthroat are naive.
Within a half hour, Steve has moved about 50 yards above me, hidden behind a rock outcropping the size of a small car. I am in the middle of a side channel, casting downstream. I shift my weight too quickly, stumble, and start to flail downstream.
It’s said that drowning is a silent affair. I thrash in solitude and in silence and tumble for what seems to be a hundred yards. It’s probably only ten. I roll over onto some gravel in shallow water and spy my fly rod another five yards downstream, caught on some dead fall. I make it to my knees and lurch forward to grab the rod. It’s still whole.
I gather myself on the sandy bank. I still can’t see Steve.
Re-rigged and Chastened
An immersion in the Yellowstone even on a warm afternoon in late summer is like a surprise bucket of Gatorade after a playoff win. I peel off my waders to empty the water out of my boots and then twist and pull the entire sopping apparatus back on. Chilled and chastened, my adrenaline ebbing, I re-rig my rod and head back into the river. I mention my baptism later when I catch up to Steve, but oddly, not until years later do we discuss the danger of the moment.
On that day, had I drowned, Steve may have not known I was missing for another hour or more. I’m sure my body would never have been found, given how far into the back country we had hiked.
It’s also said that fly fishing is no extreme sport, and I am a physical testimony to that. I couldn’t do anything extreme. For a lifetime, though, I have tromped around in what’s called the great outdoors. That day on the Yellowstone, I had a bit of God’s luck, as some of my father’s cronies call it. Others have not been as lucky.
Last fall in Montana, a fly fisher succumbed to an assaulting current on the Boulder River, which is not much wider than a city street in some places. His fiancée was nearby, and I wonder if she had her back turned to the river or whether she saw him fall, watching as he made his last cast right before the river knocked him downstream. They say he likely struck his head on a submerged boulder, as he struggled to gain his footing.
His body was never found. The locals say it is probably at the bottom of one of the deeper pools on a stretch where the river cascades about a hundred yards downstream.
Almost two months later, Steve and I stopped by Fourmile Campground where the fly fisher had slipped. We had fished all day about a mile below the area. At the exact spot where he ostensibly fell in, the river didn’t seem that all that intimidating, though the current was likely much faster two months earlier. I’m not sure what compelled us to stop.
Maybe as moment of silence for someone who had succumbed to the wild places.
Gift and Risk of Fly Fishing
Drowning while fly fishing is always possibility.
Even with all the disciplines that fly fishers put into place (no wading above the knees or fishing only with a partner or always using a wading staff), the moment we step outside our trucks and into the river, we add to our day a new element of risk. I accept, and maybe even enjoy, the risk that comes with life in the outdoors.
As spring arrives, however, and I anticipate more days on the river, I am reminded once again that fly fishing is both a gift and a risk. Life is truly fragile.
Friendship makes the outdoors better. At least that’s our perspective, given that our outdoors friendship has lasted four decades. In this episode, we discuss the makings of friendship and how certain kinds of competitiveness can prevent friendship from forming. We also discuss how “idle” friendships can be reinvigorated or restarted again. The old advertising line, “Things go better with Coke” should be reframed as “the outdoors go better with friendship.”
LISTEN NOW TO “THE MAKINGS OF AN OUTDOORS FRIENDSHIP”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. Often, it’s the little things that make a big difference, increasing your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Yellowstone runners are the big brown and rainbow trout that move up from Hebgen Lake into Yellowstone National Park’s Madison River each fall. In this episode, we discuss Chester Allen’s delightful book, Yellowstone Runners: Chasing a dream fish in Yellowstone National Park during the Madison River’s Famous Fall Run.
Allen is a terrific storyteller while also providing all sorts of fishy information for those considering a fall trip to the Madison. Many of you may have fished the Madison in the spring or summer, but the fall is special.
LISTEN NOW TO “A CONVERSATION ABOUT YELLOWSTONE RUNNERS”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. There are thousands of techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. Often, it’s the little things that make a big difference, increasing your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who prefer to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and, like a handful of peanuts, you won’t be able to stop at one.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Fly fishing lessons happen every time we fish. Every day on the river is the chance to grow in your understanding of how to fish. Every item of gear that you purchase gives you some information about what to buy (or not buy) the next time around. In this end-of-the-year episode, we offer up our top 10 fly fishing lessons from a year of fishing.
One is the importance of where to cast your streamer when fishing smaller creeks. Fly fishing spring creeks have forced both of us to up our streamer chops.
LISTEN NOW TO “TOP 10 FLY FISHING LESSONS OF THE YEAR”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. There are a thousand techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. These accumulated tips and ideas and hacks will make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and you’ll read on to the next.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Late season fly fishing can be challenging for a variety of reasons.
One is obviously weather. Another is that the hatches are over, with the exception of midges or the occasional baetis. You’re typically fishing nymphs or streamers. In this episode, we reflect on several trips in late fall and what we learned during this gorgeous yet changing time of year.
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. There are a thousand techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. These accumulated tips and ideas and hacks will make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and you’ll read on to the next.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
All good things must come to an end, and this was the final day of our fly fishing trip in mid-September. Rain was in the forecast, so we hoped upon hope that there might be some baetis hatching on the Madison River at the mouth of Beartrap Canyon.
Spoiler alert: There wasn’t a mayfly within a state or two that final day. This is the last installment of four episodes from a recent fly fishing trip to Yellowstone Country in Montana and northern Wyoming. We decided to call this episode “One Fine Rainy Day on the Madison.” We had another terrific day on the water, but let’s just say that the fishing was below average. Dave caught a large brown, and that was it. If you haven’t yet listened to the first three episodes in this series, visit the Fly Fishing Podcast Archives page.
LISTEN NOW TO “ONE FINE RAINY DAY ON THE MADISON RIVER”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. There are a thousand techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. These accumulated tips and ideas and hacks will make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and you’ll read on to the next.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
After two terrific days on the Yellowstone River, we changed it up a bit. We headed to the Boulder River, south of Big Timber, Montana. This is the third of four episodes from a recent fly fishing trip to Yellowstone Country in Montana and northern Wyoming. We decided to call this episode “One Fine Strange Day on the Boulder.”
Almost two months earlier, a fly fisher had drowned near the stretch of river we fished that day. And the body was never found. The Boulder is treacherous to wade in places. But it is not a big river; it’s more of a stream. Some think the fly fisher is stuck at the bottom of a 15-foot pool not far from where he fell in. That weighed on our mind as we fished nearby. If you haven’t yet listened to the first two episodes in this series, visit the Fly Fishing Podcast Archives page.
LISTEN NOW TO “ONE FINE STRANGE DAY ON THE BOULDER”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. There are a thousand techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. These accumulated tips and ideas and hacks will make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and you’ll read on to the next.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Our second day on the Yellowstone this fall was even better than the first. This is the second of four episodes from a recent fly fishing trip to Yellowstone Country in Montana and northern Wyoming. After a terrific cloudy day on the Yellowstone, we had “One Fine Sunny Day on the Yellowstone.”
There is nothing like catching cutthroat trout on a hopper pattern. If you haven’t yet listened to the first episode in this series, visit our Fly Fishing Podcast Archives page.
LISTEN NOW TO “ONE FINE SUNNY DAY ON THE YELLOWSTONE”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. There are a thousand techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. These accumulated tips and ideas and hacks will make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and you’ll read on to the next.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
We are not good at quitting. This is the first of four episodes from a recent fly fishing trip to Yellowstone Country in Montana and northern Wyoming. In August, after four wonderful years, we stopped publishing a weekly episode and writing a weekly article. We thought we were done. But then we had “One Fine Cloudy Day on the Yellowstone.” And we had to record again.
So we’re baaack! Not in the same way, however. We’re not publishing a weekly episode anymore, but we do plan to publish episodes occasionally, in batches. As inspiration hits us. Thank you for your listenership.
LISTEN NOW TO “ONE FINE CLOUDY DAY ON THE YELLOWSTONE”
Fly fishing is a lot more than simply learning how to cast. There are a thousand techniques and hacks that can help you catch more fish. These accumulated tips and ideas and hacks will make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and find new ways to catch more fish. Read one list, and you’ll read on to the next.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
The past four years of podcasting and writing articles (weekly for both!) have been a terrific fly fishing adventure in its own right. We announced in our last podcast that we’ve come to the end of our run. We are feeling a bit sad. But the time is right, and we’re excited about what’s next.
That includes more fly fishing. You can listen to our last podcast to hear the reasons behind our decision. So in honor of four wonderful years, we thought we’d pontificate even more to make your next fly fishing trip a most excellent fly fishing adventure:
1. Now is urgent. [Dave]
You’re not getting any younger. Even if you’re only 25.
It’s tempting is to kick the can down the road. Don’t. Pick up your fly rod now. And go fish. Pick a date on the calendar. Put it all on a credit card. And save your regrets for later, when you’re paying it all off one month at a time for two years.
2. Pack carefully. [Steve]
I am still shaking my head about the time I grabbed the wrong rod tube on the way to catch a flight to Colorado.
I meant to take my 4-weight rod. I spent the week in small mountain streams casting a 4-weight line with an 8-weight rod! Actually, it handled better than I anticipated. But it’s best not to forget your rod, reel, flies, waders, and boots — or to grab the wrong fly rod.
3. Find a Fishing Partner Who Is a Planner. [Dave]
Steve is so organized that he pulls his socks from the bottom of his carefully stacked clean pairs in his tidy drawer. He wants to wear each pair of socks out equally.
I like that in a fishing partner.
Steve would happily plan what I have for dinner after a great day on the water, if I let him. God bless planners. They design great fly fishing adventures.
4. Don’t bring your family along on a fly fishing trip. [Steve]
You’ll be disappointed. So will your family.
In fact, they might leave you. At least they will be mad at you. If you insist on trying to fly fish, agree on a set amount of time you’ll be gone. If it’s 3 hours, you’d better get back on time. We’ve learned this the hard way.
So do as we say, not as we’ve done.
5. Go easy on the guide’s new Orvis rod. [Dave]
Guides for the most part are warm, kind, and generous.
They bring a 3,000-calorie lunch for you even though you won’t burn even 179 calories casting from the drift boat. They might roll their eyes as you snap off another fly, but they do it behind your back. They might silently mock you when you can’t cast farther than 20 feet, but they wait to laugh uncontrollably until later that evening with their fellow guides at the local bar.
But the generosity ends when the guide warns you not to let the big rainbow dart under the drift boat, yet you still do. And the $1,000 fly rod that the guide most generously lent you snaps in half. It’s all fun and games until you break the fly rod.
This is no fly fishing adventure for the guide, trust me.
6. Now mend your line. [Steve]
Those words from my mentor, Bob Granger, still ring in my ears every time I cast a fly on the water.
Trout will ignore your fly if they spot the slightest bit of drag. So mend your line. Add small mends (stack mends) as you go. Consider a “C” loop while your fly line is in the air. Do whatever you can to avoid that dreaded drag on your fly. Water skiers leave wakes; dry flies should not.
7. Use a landing net. [Steve]
You may not need a net to land a trout; but the trout will thank you.
The rubber netting is a lot easier on their bodies than your hands. Besides, a good net will keep you alert. As you’re sneaking through the brush, the net will get caught in a pine branch or a bush. Then, after you walk five more paces, it will snap back and slap you square in the back. At this point, you’ll be a lot more alert as you approach the river.
Plus, you’ll remember that you brought your net. Win, win.
8. Bring ear plugs. [Dave]
Now I’m not saying that I have never snored.
Maybe I have. Maybe I haven’t.
But if you’re on a trip and the two beds in the hotel room are only five or six feet apart, then you need to bring a pair or two of ear plugs. Ear plugs are as basic as hopper patterns in mid August. Essential.
You need to be fully rested for the hard day of fishing ahead of you.
9. Stay safe. [Steve]
Yeah, we’ve hammered this point to death.
But that’s because a modicum of prep can keep you from death, or at least from serious injury. Bear spray. Wading staff. Fishing buddy. Caution. Quality wading boots. You know the drill.
And if you’re in Yellowstone on your fly fishing adventure, don’t pet the bison. Seriously.
10. Grab your rod tubes from the overhead bin. [Dave]
It’s always a win when the case you make to your spouse for a new fly rod is based on the fact that you really need a fly rod.
You forget to mention to your beautiful wife that you lost your two favorite rods on the last fly fishing trip. It’s hard not to imply that someone “stole the rods,” even if the stealing probably happened after you forgot them in the overhead bin as you made your way off the plane in Chicago.
Every day of fly fishing has a beginning. And an end. There’s often a sense of sadness right before, and certainly, after the last run of the day. Not every “last run of the day” is packed with emotion, but we’ve had several experiences when the final moments of the day felt thick with meaning. In this episode, we recount several memorable days on the river – and how we felt as we made our final casts.
LISTEN NOW TO “THE LAST RUN OF THE DAY”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights and stories of our listeners.
We’d love to hear about some of your most poignant moments from your favorite last run of the day. What were you feeling? What made it so moving? Please post your comments below.
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and discover helpful hacks and tips.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Fall is approaching. It is a fantastic time of the year to fly fish. The air temperature moderates, the leaves begin to turn color, and the pressure lessens. That’s because some fly fishers pick up their shotguns, rifles, or bows and leave their fly rods home. The trout fishing can be exceptional, but it does require some fall fly fishing tactics.
Here are are a few worth remembering when you head to the river or creek this fall:
Adjust to lower water
Rivers and creeks will be at their lowest. So the trout will be spookier – especially in smaller creeks and streams.
This requires more stealth. This may have to do more sneaking and make a more intentional effort to stay hidden. Too much false casting can send trout darting for cover. A smaller tippet size than normal might be helpful as well. Some anglers like to use longer leaders (although I confess I’ve never felt the need to go longer than nine feet).
Don’t forget about terrestrials
Keep tying on those hoppers, beetles, and ant patterns you used during the summer. They can still work great in September.
I’ve had some good days using terrestrials on the Yellowstone River in Yellowstone National Park on fall days. I always seem to do better with hoppers, beetles, and ants on sunny days.
Make streamers a priority
You can catch trout on streamers in the spring and summer. But streamers are dynamite in the fall.
Trout are eating bigger meals as they get ready for winter. Plus, the brown trout getting ready to spawn tend to be more aggressive. You don’t have to get fancier than a Woolly Bugger. Go with basic colors like olive, brown, and black. Even white will work well in some rivers.
I’m partial to a JJ’s Special — a Woolly Bugger on steroids. It has rubber legs and a conehead (great to help get them deeper) in a brown/yellow color combination.
Try an egg pattern
If you’re fishing with nymphs in places where brown trout are present, consider an egg pattern as one of your flies. You can even use it either as your lead fly or your dropper — depending on what other fly gives you the most chance for success.
When I fish the Beartrap section of Montana’s Madison River in the fall, I tend to use an egg as a lead fly and then drop a size #18 Copper John (red or copper). Some days I’ll do better on one than the other. However, if I’m fishing the Gardner River inside Yellowstone Park in October, I’ll tie on brown stonefly pattern with rubber legs as my lead fly and then use the egg pattern as the dropper.
Go later than usual
As one of several fall fly fishing tactics, this more relevant when you’re fishing terrestrials. I’ve fished in Montana on September days where the temperatures dip into the high 30s overnight and then rise to the low 80s during the day. It takes longer for hoppers to “wake up” on these kind of days than in the hot days of August.
However, streamers and nymphs will work about any time of day. I remember fishing the Gardner River a few years ago around 7:30 AM – just when it was legal to start the day. I did it to beat the crowds (then realized there were no crowds, let alone any other fly fishers on that stretch of water!). I hooked trout on my first few casts, all before sunrise.
The action was steady all morning.
Seize the bad weather days
As one of the fly fishing tactics, bad weather (rain, snow) is all the more reason to get out on the river in September and October! I’ve had rainy September days on the East Gallatin River in Montana when rainbows seemed to gorge themselves on Blue-Winged Olives (BWOs).
I’ve learned, too, that cold, wet weather gets the salmon moving into the rivers from Lake Michigan in October. It does the same for the runners coming up out of Hebgen Lake into the Madison River in Yellowstone National Park. Yes, the worst weather for fly fishers usually turns out to be the best weather for fly fishing!
Dave, my podcast partner, and I are getting ready for a 5-day fly fishing trip this fall. We hope you’ll get out on your favorite river or creek and enjoy this amazing season of the year. For one of our best fall fly fishing podcast episodes, see S3:E13: The Mystique of Fall Fly Fishing
Fly fishers gain confidence by fishing for brook trout. Brook trout are forgiving, and there’s nothing like an afternoon of catching 15 brook trout to increase one’s confidence. That’s only one of several strategies that we discuss to help newer fly fishers gain confidence. It’s easy to feel discouraged during a stretch of no fish. We hope this podcast gives you hope for your next time out on the river.
LISTEN NOW TO “HOW FLY FISHERS GAIN CONFIDENCE”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights and stories of our listeners.
What advice would you give to help fly fishers gain confidence? We’d love your ideas to help newbies stay the course and learn to enjoy the sport.
Please post your comments below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and discover helpful hacks and tips.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
I recently fished a productive-looking run in Rocky Mountain National Park’s Fall River. It was the best run I had seen all morning. My sons and I had hiked into a steep ravine in search of water that rarely got fished. It was a harrowing hike, but I was finally rewarded with a long run that flowed out of a deep bend in the river (well, it was really a small mountain creek at that point).
I tied on a size #14 Elk Hair Caddis. Nothing. So I switched to a size #18 Parachute Adams. Same result. I even tried a black ant pattern. Still no interest by any trout.
My go-to approach when this happens is to tie on a streamer. I found a brown Woolly Bugger in my fly box and drifted it into the deep bend. I waited a couple seconds before I started the retrieve. During the first strip of line, I felt that old-familiar tug, and I ended up landing a fat, colorful Brookie.
One of the challenges I’ve noticed with streamer fishing is getting deep enough. Streamers may be the most effective way to catch trout hunkered down in deep pools and runs. But you have to get your streamers deep enough to where the trout lie. So how do you do it? I suggest three techniques. You may even need a combination of them.
Weight them
The most obvious way to get your streamers deep enough is to weight them.
Surprisingly, though, I’ve watched numerous fly fishers neglect this. If you tie your own flies, consider wrapping weight on the hook before wrapping the body. I’d also encourage adding a beadhead or conehead to the front of the fly. If you don’t tie, look for streamers with beadheads or coneheads.
If your fly is not weighted, then by all means, add weight to it before you toss it into a deep run or pool. I’ve even added weight to an already weighted fly! Some fly fishers like sleek line weights. I’m still fine with adding a removable split shot. I’ll typically use only one in a larger size. You can put it a few inches above your fly. Or, you can put it at the head of the fly, immediately in front of the knot that you’ve tied to the eye of the hook.
I’ve caught enough trout on Woolly Buggers with a silver split shot at the front that I don’t worry about a fish laughing at it and retreating to shelter.
If you’re fly fishing a larger river or a lake, then a sink tip line is a great way to go.
Wait to Get Your Streamers Deep Enough
Even if you have sufficiently weighted your fly, you need to give it time to sink.
I wonder how many times I’ve missed trout because I didn’t give my Woolly Bugger time to sink to the bottom of a pool before I retrieved it. Occasionally, you might get a strike as your streamer is sinking. But in my experience, it’s in the first couple retrieves that fish attacks the fly as it heads to the surface.
If you’re using a sink tip line in a lake, you’ll need to wait a few seconds (depending on the weight of the line) to get it to a sufficient depth before you start your retrieve.
Drift Them
This is actually a variation of the previous point. In moving water, the best way to get a fly to the bottom is to cast is well above the spot you expect to hook a trout. If you’re fishing downstream (one of my favorite approaches with streamers), drop it into the current and start feeding line. Give the streamer 10 or 20 feet to sink before it reaches the hot zone, then start your retrieve.
Use the same approach if you’re fishing a run from the side—that is, the river’s edge.
Cast your streamer far enough upstream so that it has time to sink as it floats. Once it reaches the hot spot (below you), start your retrieve. The streamer will swing, and this is when you’ll often get strikes. I experienced this a few years ago in Alaska. I was a few hundred yards up Clear Creek from the spot where it ran into the Talkeetnah River. I found a nice deep run, tied on a Dalai Lama, and started to fish. It took me a few tries to cast the streamer far enough upstream to let it get deep enough by the time it entered the prime section of the run. But once I hit the right depth, I had strikes on every cast.
Streamers are ideal for deep pools on days when trout are not feeding on the surface. But getting your streamers deep enough where the trout lurk is the discipline.
Strange sightings while fly fishing are part of the overall experience of the sport. In this episode, we recount watching a car float by while fishing the Yellowstone, a mink steal a duck from a nest, and a forest fire glow while on our way to fish Hebgen Lake.
LISTEN NOW TO “STRANGE SIGHTINGS WHILE FLY FISHING”
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and discover helpful hacks and tips.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
There is a magical season in every fly fisher’s journey. It is a season where everything seems to come together, and the fly fisher makes a leap in his or her proficiency. Confidence replaces frustration. Casts shoot to their destination and land softly rather than slapping the water. Fly selection become a science rather than a mystery. I’ve watched a lot of fly fishers make this leap, and they all have something in common: a fly fishing mentor.
Sure, there are a few naturals who watch a handful of YouTube videos or read a book on fly fishing and arrive at the river’s edge with the Midas touch. But most fly fishers who make significant progress in their ability to catch fish do so because they have spent time with a mentor.
If you’re a new fly fisher, or an old one who is still struggling, a mentor will make all the difference. But where can you find one?
Fly Shop Owner
This might seem obvious, but a fly shop owner can be a great mentor—especially if you’re a faithful customer. Buying the right fly rod may well involve some practice casting. Every time you stop by to buy a handful of flies or a new leader, you’ll learn what patterns to use and when to use them. You will learn where and when to fish. Fly shop owners and their associates can be a tremendous source of learning.
Fly Fishing Guide
Sometimes you have to buy a mentor. Hiring a guide for a day can lead to remarkable progress in your fly fishing skills. The $500 or so you split with a buddy (we recommend sharing a guide!) will give you a lot of one-on-one instruction. Using the same guide once or twice a year can accelerate your progress.
Fly Tying Instructor
I’ve talked about this before, but when I took a fly-tying class at Montana Troutfitter’s in Bozeman in 1996, my fly fishing skills spiked. Yes, I learned to tie Elk Hair Caddis patterns and Beadhead Prince Nymphs. But I also learned when and how to fish them. I started to think like a trout!
Fly Fishing Buddy
Now we move into the “less expensive” category of mentors! Not everyone has fly fishing buddies who are proficient enough to be guides. But if you do, set aside your pride and mimic them, pick their brains, and accept their criticism. I’ve benefited from the expertise of Bob, Kevin, Chaz, Doug, Mark, and several others with whom I’ve had the opportunity to fly fish.
Fly Fishing Mentor at a TU Chapter
A few months ago, Dave, my podcast partner, and I spoke at a local Trout Unlimited chapter. I was impressed with how helpful the veterans were to a couple of younger, inexperienced fly fishers. There’s nothing better than a community of mentors!
Fly Fishing Parent or Child
Don’t overlook family members. If you have a parent or a child who is a proficient fly fisher, don’t be too proud to let them pass on their expertise to you. This goes both ways. I taught my two sons to fly fish, and now I gain new information and learn techniques from them.
Fly Fishing Spouse
The risk, I suppose, of learning fly fishing from your spouse is more marital conflict! But I’ve been impressed as I’ve watched my sons teach their wives how to fly fish. I’m amazed with their patience and encouragement, and their wives are smart women who catch on quickly. Obviously, it can work the other way around, too. Some wives have become proficient fly fishers and can be the best mentors their husbands could ever find.
Here is a final thought: develop a community of mentors. When I think of my mentors, my mind goes to more than one. They have been friends, relatives, guides, fly shop owners, and instructors. So don’t obsess over finding the perfect mentor. Build some relationships, and you’ll benefit from multiple sources of input. Along the way, you may just find that your fly fishing soars to a new level.
Trout lies are places in the river or stream where trout hang out. One of the most well-known trout lies is called the “feeding lie,” where trout sit in the current or pockets of water and grab insects or larger chunks of calories as they drift by.
Often, a fly fisher can spot the feeding lie or food line by the line of bubbles in the current. In this episode, we review the three kinds of trout lies and discuss the importance of knowing which is which. It’s all about “reading water,” as one of our favorite fly fishing authors Gary Borger describes it. It’s critical to know where are the best places to drift your fly.
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and discover helpful hacks and tips.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Fly fishing is like farming. So many things can go wrong. I spent last week fly fishing some beautiful mountain creeks in Colorado. I had a great time with my two sons, a brother, and a nephew. But the fishing was lousy. The creeks we fished flowed clear, but the water was unseasonably high. It was late July, but the water levels resembled what is typical in late June. In fact, we scrapped plans to fish an outstanding stretch of a river that fishes best at 600 cfs (cubic feet per second) when we learned it was flowing at 1700 cfs. Fly fishing high water is no fun.
We made the most of a tough situation. Notice that I’m not calling it a “bad situation” because the higher water reflects above average snow pack in the high country and an abundance of rain. This is good.
By the end of the week, we caught a few fish, enjoyed some fantastic scenery, and laughed a lot (especially when a group of people on horseback rode past us on a trail above our stream and the lead wrangler pointed us out and said, “Look! There are some fly fishers in their natural habitat.” Yup, that’s us!).
When the water is high, here are a few important practices to make the most of your experience:
Exercise extra caution when fishing high water
Fly fishers should always be cautious in and around moving water. High water, though, calls for extra caution. The problem is not wading in deeper water. The problem is wading in faster water that delivers a lot more force. Make sure you have a wading staff, and don’t take unnecessary risks. Save yourself for a more productive day when the water levels subside. When in doubt, stay out!
By the way, if the water looks like chocolate milk, stay out! Never wade if you can’t see the bottom.
Add more weight
If you’re nymphing or slinging streamers, you’ll need more weight than usual to get those flies to the bottom where the current is slower and the fish are feeding. Some runs will simply be too fast to fish successfully. But if you think you have a chance, put on an extra split shot (or whatever kind of weight you like to attach). This weigh will slow down your fly as well as help it sink.
Choose visible flies when fishing high water
If the water is off-color, you’ll want to choose more visible flies. This means larger nymphs or streamers with some flash to them. Off-color water is a great time to put on a San Juan worm since the conditions often dislodge worms and send them floating down the current.
Look for slower water
This is about the best advice I can offer.
Last week, I caught trout on dry flies, nymphs, and streamers. But every trout I caught was in a slower moving stretch of water. This meant skipping a lot of runs I’d normally fish. I did my best when I found pocket water or pools or eddies where trout were feeding on the surface or just below it.
One day, one of my sons and I fly fished a one-mile stretch of high mountain stream. We only found five fishable runs. We had a lot of action in each one. Yet we did a lot of walking and wading to get to those spots. So skip the fast stuff and find the calm, slower water.
Yes, fly fishing resembles farming. A lot can go wrong. When it comes to high water, go to a lake if you have the time. Or wait a week or two if you can. But if your only chance to fish is during high water, you can still make it enjoyable.
Hopper season is upon us. And from now until some time in early to mid-September, trout will be attacking grasshoppers that fall or are blown into the river.
In this episode, we offer up an introductory conversation on fishing during hopper season, what to expect, and how to make the most of this most wonderful part of the fly fishing year. Often the action doesn’t start until mid-morning – as grasshoppers seem to need the sun to start moving. But once it starts, the action continues often until late afternoon. You can drift hoppers, skate them across the surface of the river, or even add a dropper.
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and discover helpful hacks and tips.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Some of the best fly fishing occurs at dusk. The crowds are gone, the temperature is cooler, and the trout (especially Browns) feed more aggressively. This has been the case in Colorado this week where my wife and I are visiting family. The best fishing this past week has been fly fishing at dusk, the hour before dark.
If you’re planning on fly fishing at dusk, here are a few tips to help you be successful and safe:
1. Keep it simple
It’s more challenging to tie tippet to your leader and flies to your tippet. So make sure your initial rig is in place before you get to the river.
If you have to switch flies, consider going with a single fly rather than taking the time to tie on a dropper. Time is slipping away. So is the light. If you know which patterns work in the area where you’re fly fishing, you could tie some droppers onto lead flies in advance.
2. Use visible flies
Assuming that you’re dry fly fishing, make sure your fly has a white post. A Parachute Adams, for example, is much easier to see than a fly with a red post or no post.
If you use an Elk Hair Caddis, use one with light elk hair. Or, if you tie your own flies, tie some white synthetic fibers to the top of the fly.
3. Wear a head lamp
Some kind of flashlight is a must.
A cell phone flashlight will do. So will a conventional mini-flashlight. But what I like best is a headlamp. You can buy a lightweight one for $20 or less. I always put one in my vest when I’m going to fish at dusk. The “hands free” approach works great. Plus, it makes it a lot easier to tie on a fly when it’s almost dark.
4. Be alert for wildlife
This is true everywhere, but especially in the West. Moose and elk have a way of showing up out of nowhere when you’re fly fishing at dusk. Mountain lions and bears do the same.
5. Watch your step when fly fishing at dusk
A few days ago, I was wading at dusk and slipped on a rock I couldn’t see.
I took a tumble into the small mountain stream and dropped my rod. Before I could grab it, the current whisked it away. I searched for it, but left the stream without my rod and reel (a $500 investment).
The story has a happy ending.
I returned a couple of days later to search for it after the water level had dropped a bit. My son found it at the bottom of the creek in some brush. The tip section was broken, but Orvis will repair or replace it for $60.
When fly fishing at dusk, the shadows and low light can make it harder to see — especially beneath the surface of the water. Take it from me, watch your step when you’re fishing at dusk!
Animal encounters are a fact of life in the outdoors. We’ve discussed at length the precautions to take when fishing in grizzly country, but there are other types of encounters to avoid or at least to prepare for. In this episode, we discuss insects, birds, and even domestic cows. Animal encounters (and other kinds of critters) are part of the great wonder of outside living.
LISTEN NOW TO “SURVIVING ANIMAL ENCOUNTERS IN THE GREAT OUTDOORS”
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and discover helpful hacks and tips.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
I have no business writing about euro nymphing for beginners, other than I tried the technique. And I liked it. I’m an old school fly fisher – I fish nymphs with a strike indicator and two flies, the last fly tied on the bend of the hook of the first. I might add a split shot above the first fly if I need to get the nymph into the hot zone.
However, at the urging of our one listeners, I decided to give euro-nymphing a try. At the end of this post, I offer up a three resources, including a four-minute overview video that I found on the technique.
I thought you might benefit from five basics that I’ve learned from my short journey.
1. Start out using your existing rod.
With euro nymphing, the recommendation is to purchase a longer rod. And for sure, you need to purchase one if you plan to get serious about the technique. Euro-nymphing rods are longer, between 10 to 11 feet, and you generally purchase the rods in a 2 or 3 weight.
Initially, I thought, “Hey, my 9 foot, 6 weight should work. Why don’t I try euro nymphing first? One or two feet can’t make that much difference, right? If I like it, then I’ll purchase a new rod.”
Now that I own a euro-nymphing rod (10 foot, 3 weight), I realize how lousy my regular rod was for this technique.
However, I caught quite a few fish on my regular rod using the euro technique. One day in Montana, I caught eight browns in about 45 minutes while Steve and a friend sat along the bank and ate lunch.
So you may want to try out euro nymphing with your main rod, just to see if you think you’ll like the different way of nymph fishing. Once you’re all in, though, you definitely need to pick up a euro rod.
Just so you know: I picked up an “Echo” euro nymphing rod for about $250. One of the top rods on the market (at least by way of reviews) is the Sage ESN at around $900. I’m too lousy of a euro-nympher to appreciate the nuance of a $900 rod, so I went with the Echo at the recommendation of a friend.
2. You’ll need a different kind of leader.
With euro-nymphing, not only is the rod different, the tackle is different.
I purchased a Rio, 11-foot leader, but frankly, any brand works. Don’t get side-tracked by which is the better brand. The euro leader is longer than a traditional leader. The 11-foot leader is basically 9 feet of a tapered leader with two feet of “indicator material” or “sighter” – which is different in color than the opaque white, so you can see it in the water.
At the end is a tippet ring. You will tie on additional tippet (and then your flies) on the end of it.
3. You will need a “sighter” at the end of the leader.
A sighter is simply colored material at the end of the leader to which you tie your tippet. You can buy leaders that already have the sighter material attached to it. That’s what I prefer. Other fly fishers purchase the leader and the sighter separately – and then tie the two together.
I buy the full euro leader with the sighter material. Life is too short for one more knot to tie.
4. You need weighted nymphs.
With euro nymphing, you do not add split shot or weight to get the nymph down into the hot zone or near the bottom of the river. The nymphs themselves are weighted. They are called “tungsten weighted nymphs.” The eyelet is to the side and looks like an old fashioned jig.
In fact, they are called “jig nymphs.”
I purchased four standard nymphs to start: the rainbow warrior, the pheasant tail, the gold-ribbed hair’s ear, and the prince nymph.
5. I use double-tapered fly line.
Many euro nymphers use “level line,” because, frankly, you’re only casting out about as far as the leader, maybe a little farther. I’ve found that euro nymphing works best in smaller rivers with well-defined runs that I can get up on. I’m sure the professionals would mock my lack of expertise, but my longest casts tend to be fifteen, maybe twenty feet.
In general, the fly line takes on a lesser role in euro nymphing.
The one tip I took away from a book I read (the one listed below) is to use double-tapered line. That way, I can switch to a dry fly rig without having to carry two rods or having to run back to the truck to grab my regular rod. You can’t sling dry flies with level line.
Three resources
The videos, books, and articles on euro-nymphing for beginners are legion. Here are just three:
Fly fishing trips are not easy to plan well, especially if you are heading to a new place. Two factors unravel the best laid plans: weather and whether there is a bite on. Through the years, we’ve had to fight against the tyranny of Steve’s hyper-planning and the chaos of Dave’s “Let’s just see what happens.” In this episode, we discuss the importance of creating a plan for the fly fishing trip that includes space for flexibility.
LISTEN NOW TO “FLY FISHING TRIPS – PLANNING VS FLEXIBILITY”
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and discover helpful hacks and tips.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
The graphite fly rod you hold in your hand is an amazing instrument. It is designed to shoot line, maneuver line, fight fish, and lift line off the water. If you’re planning a trip to the river, the following four fly rod hacks might be useful. Even if you’re a veteran fly fisher, it never hurts to review the basics.
So here we go:
Write the Letter “C”
Fly fishers learn early on to cast and then mend their line.
Mending is flipping the middle of the line upstream so that it doesn’t get ahead of the fly and drag it through the current. But it’s possible to put a mend in the line during your cast. Actually, this is something you do right at the end of your forward cast. As soon as you complete your forward cast, and the is shooting out to the target, draw a small “c” with your rod tip. A regular “c” puts a mend to the left. That is, you will create a “c”-shape bend in your line as it drops to the water.
A backwards “c” puts a mend to the right. Remember that you want your mend to go upstream.
You will want to try this a few times. But you’ll be surprised how quickly you can pick it up. Think small “c” rather than a capital “C.” In other words, this is a quick, small maneuver. Of course, if you want a larger loop, then, make your “c” larger. However, it’s easier to go smaller at first.
Lift before your back cast
If you get a nice long drift but no strike, you’ll want to try another cast. But rather than trying to pick up your line and make a back cast all in one motion, lift your rod tip to a 45 degree angle. This lifts your line off the surface.
Then make your back cast. Breaking this into two steps — lift then back cast – is especially important if you have a lot of line on the water.
The lift will break the surface tension. Then the back cast will go a lot easier.
Use a back cast when your forward cast needs to go to the right
Here’s the situation. The river bank along which you’re standing is lined with trees. You simply cannot make a back cast without hooking a branch or a bush. To make matters more complicated, the river is flowing from right to left. To cast upstream, you need to cast right.
Fortunately, the solution is easy.
Face downstream (assuming you’re right-handed), and make a forward cast parallel to the bank on which you are standing. Then, looking back, angle your back cast to the head of the run you want to fish. Let the rod do the work. Then, mend your line, and get ready for a strike!
Change the Rod Angle
Who doesn’t love the image of a fly fisher fighting a trout with rod tip pointed to the sky?! The photo looks even more impressive when fly fishers hold the reel above their heads. It’s a Norman Rockwell print waiting to happen.
But there are times to lower that rod tip. As you lower it, the flex point moves from the tip to the mid-section. This means that lowering the rod from a 90 degree angle (rod tip pointed up to the sky) to a 45-degree angle will force a trout to fight against a stiffer part of the rod. It’s helpful to know this after you’ve tired out a fish and you’re ready to bring it to your net.
Your rod is designed to do more than you think. So remember these fly rod hacks, and you’ll have a better experience — better casts, better mends, and better fights with those trout you hook.
Fishing Rocky Mountain National Park is a different experience than is fishing the national parks in Wyoming and Montana for several reasons. One is that there are no grizzlies. Another is elevation: Fishing in Colorado is more demanding physically, simply because the lowest elevation to start hiking is around 7,800 feet.
In this episode, we give you an overview of fishing Rocky Mountain National Park, discuss a few of its streams and high mountain lakes, and, hopefully, inspire you to carve out some time to fish this gorgeous place. The park may be crowded, so if you are fishing in the dead of summer, expect to work harder find places to fish. But it’s worth the effort.
LISTEN NOW TO “FISHING ROCKY MOUNTAIN NATIONAL PARK”
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and discover helpful hacks and tips.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
My non-fly fishing friends marvel that fly fishers catch large trout on flies the size of a Tic Tac mint. Catching a 20-inch trout on a size #20 fly (or smaller!) is possible, in part, because of Midges.
Here is a brief profile of these tiny insects that are an important part of a trout’s diet:
Names
• Midges belong to the insect order “Diptera”—a Greek term meaning “two wings”; and
• Fly fishers sometimes refer to Midges as “Chironomids” because they belong to the family of insects known by its scientific name, Chironomidae (Latin).
The Basics
• Midges live in all kinds of water. Midges in rivers are a lot smaller (the average is size 20, though they can range from size 16 to size 24) than those living in ponds are lakes;
• Midges, like all Diptera, go through complete metamorphosis—larva, pupa, and adult stages; and
• Midges can have up to five generations a year, so trout feed on them constantly in moving water. This means fly fishers can fish them year round. However, the winter is the best time—especially for dry fly patterns—since they are about the only thing hatching.
The Stages of Midges
• In their larval stage, Midges live in the bottom of streams and rivers, feeding on algae or on decaying plant or animal matter. Dave Hughes, an Oregon fly fisher and entomologist, does not think fly fishers should spend much time trying to imitate them since they are challenging to imitate and since trout do not seem to feed on them exclusively (like they do at times for the next two stages);
• The pupal stage may be the most important one for fly fishers. When the larvae reach maturity, they begin pupation and are ready to float to the surface. They do this more by floating than swimming, though they wiggle their abdomens a bit to get started. Once they reach the surface, they are trapped until they break the surface tension. This is a time when trout can go into a feeding frenzy. It may look like they are feeding on Midges on the surface. But the trout are actually feeding on Midges in the surface film or just beneath it. Although pupae emerge throughout the day, they show up in larger numbers in the afternoon—and sometimes into early evening; and
• Midges enter their adult stage once they push through the surface film. In colder months, they float longer, waiting for their wings to harden before they fly away. Mating occurs either on land, in the air, or even in the water. Since they come off the water in great numbers, Midges often form clusters. At times, trout may focus more on these clumps of Midges — a larger meal!—than singles.
Effective Patterns
• A Zebra Midge, a Brassie or a Krystal Flash Midge can imitate Midges in their larval stage;
• Midge pupa patterns are legion, so you might need to visit a fly shop and ask for help. Some of the more effective patterns, though, for Midge pupae include the Biot Midge Pupa or the Traditional Midge Pupa. The CDC Transitional Midge or CDC Stillborn Midge are great choices, too, since they imitate the Midge in its transition—or failure to transition—between the pupa and adult stage;
• For the Adult stage, my favorite patterns – that work well especially for a cluster of Midges – include the Griffith’s Gnat, the Renegade, and the Parachute Adams. Keep in mind that you may have to go to sizes 22 to 26 if you are trying to imitate a single Midge! That’s why I prefer to imitate the clusters.
Lefty Kreh was actually both a lefty and a righty. One of the most beloved and popular American fly fishers, Lefty cast right handed, because he felt it was easier for the majority of folks (who were right handed) to watch him and learn. Lefty was an original. He was a World War 2 veteran and fought in the Battle of the Bulge; fished with Ernest Hemingway; and was a close friend of Joe Brooks, another fly fishing legend. In this episode, we attempt to give an overview of this amazing fly fisher’s life and discuss Lefty’s significant contribution not only to fly fishing but to what it means to be an American.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights and stories of our listeners.
Do you have any stories from meeting Lefty Kreh at a fly fishing show or watching him cast? We’d love to hear your stories.
Please post your comments and stories below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and discover helpful hacks and tips.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Many moons ago, I shared a beaver pond with a moose.
I was a teen, fishing near Hoback Junction in Wyoming. A large Brookie darted out from under a rock to take a swipe at my Woolly Worm. Meanwhile, a cow moose watched me from 25 yards away. It was standing in three feet of water on the other side of the small pond.
The moose was dangerously close. But I didn’t panic for three reasons. First, I was so intent on hooking the Brookie (I eventually did) that the potential danger did not register. Second, I knew that the pool created by the beaver dam was at least six feet deep. Third, although I was right about the unlikelihood of a moose trying to charge me through a six-feet deep pool, I underestimated the danger like a typical teenage boys do all the time.
However, I have learned to fear the moose I encounter in the outdoors. I have not had any close calls, although a cow moose came within 30 yards of me when I was bow-hunting elk in a wilderness area in Montana. It stared at me for a couple of minutes before I backed away. A year later, a cow moose—and the bull following her—charged my brother while he was quartering a bull elk he shot on a mountainside in that same wilderness area. The pair veered off when they were ten yards away! My healthy fear of moose comes mainly from the accounts I’ve read and stories I’ve heard.
When a fly fisher encounters a moose, there are ways to avoid the danger. And there are ways simply to avoid the encounter in the first place:
Keep your dog home
No hate mail, please.
“Keep your dog at home” is not a hard and fast rule. But if you’re hunting in moose country, think twice about it. At least keep your dog on a leash. Moose may think your dog is a wolf. There’s nothing pretty about your beautiful lab getting sliced by a knife-sharp moose hoof.
Stay Alert
“Duh, Captain Obvious,” you say.
But alertness is critical, especially true in the spring and in the fall. Whether you’re fly fishing in Maine or Montana, stay alert. Cows calve in the spring, so they will be more cranky and protective of their offspring. Bulls are aggressive in September and October during the rut.
The thick streamside vegetation moose inhabit is the right recipe for a close encounter of the wrong kind.
Stay Away
If you see a moose while you’re on the river, stay away. Don’t risk getting close. Admire it from a distance. Conventional wisdom says to stay at least 25 yards away. However, I’d double that. If you see a cow with a calf, then double it again. There’s no reason to risk an encounter.
Back Away
When a fly fisher encounters a moose (because he or she is so focused on next run to fish), the best strategy is to back away slowly from it.
Run Away
If a moose charges, then run. That’s right! Run. This is lousy advice for dealing with a charging bear. But running from a moose will not incite it. Nor will it be tempted to take you apart with its teeth like a grizzly could.
Moose are not carnivous.
Of course, you can’t outrun a moose — unless you can run faster than 30 miles per hour. But running still works for at least two reasons.
First, as Rachel Levin points out in her book, Look Big, a moose will not follow you very far.
Second, you can usually out-maneuver a half-ton animal if you’re running in a forest, dodging trees and boulders. Find a place to hide. A moose simply wants you out of its space.
Encounters a Moose
There are a lot of dangers to consider when you fly fish — lightning, swift current, venomous snakes, and grizzly bears. When a fly fisher encounters a moose, he or she should But don’t forget about moose if your favorite river or stream happens to be in their back yard.
Other articles we’ve done on safety and the outdoors include:
Trout eat pretty much anything put in front of them, including their young. Much of fly fishing is focused on the insects, such mayflies, caddisflies, and stoneflies. But often trout are looking to consume a bigger chunk of calories. In this episode, we regale each other with stories of things we’ve heard trout eat. One such story comes from Craig Mathews, who founded Blue Ribbon Flies in West Yellowstone. After this episode, you’ll renew your commitment to fish more streamers.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights and stories of our listeners.
Anything unusual that you’ve seen trout eat? We’d love to hear from you.
Please post your comments and stories below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and discover helpful hacks and tips.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Sometimes our listeners tell us fly fishing stories that keep us awake at night.
Perhaps that is an exaggeration. Yet their stories make us shudder. Here are three scary-but-true fly fishing stories our listeners have shared with us.
Gary and the Rising River
“I once had a dangerous moment on Chatahoochie River in Georgia just below the Buford Dam.
”When the dam is about to release (which it does a few times per day), a series of horns will sound indicating the need to get out of the river and head to high ground. I was downstream on the opposite bank when I heard the first horn sound. I immediately began wading across the stream to get to safety, but the pool was already deeper than I expected.
“Then the second horn blew.
“I had to work my way back upstream to find another place to cross. I was mid-stream as the third horn made its call. At that point, I had to tighten my belt and swim across deeper pool created by swiftly flowing 45 degree water. I made safely across the pool.
“But the adventure was not over.
”I still had to run through the woods to avoid being cut off from my party by small tributary now gaining depth. After this final test, I looked back at river. It had risen ten feet in just under 15 minutes.”
Russ and the Deer Hunter
“One morning in late October in the middle of my state’s second rifle season, I arrived at my chosen fishing spot on the South Platte River and noticed a truck in the parking lot that didn’t appear to belong to a fisherman.
“As I walked down to the river, I noticed a group of mule deer bucks across the river in a meadow. I looked repeatedly from the truck to the deer. Then I looked at my waders and jacket. I was tan from top to bottom! So I decided to wait in my truck for a bit. Sure enough, right at shooting light, I heard a gunshot from the hills on the other side of the river. While the hunter did everything right, shooting away from the river and road, I’m still glad I decided to play it safe.
“After that experience, I always wear hunters orange while fishing during hunting season.”
Michael and the Charging Otter Fly Fishing Story
“I often fish alone in some of California’s more remote locations, and I have experienced quite a few nerve-racking encounters involving wildlife–bears, mountain lions, and rattlesnakes.
“However, regardless of how far-fetched it might seem, my scariest confrontation involved a river otter.
“I had just exited the river and was hiking back to camp when I spotted an otter about twenty yards away. I became mesmerized as I watched it swim effortlessly against the strong swift current of the Pit River. I quickly moved behind some brush about five yards from the riverbank and froze, hoping to go unnoticed in order to prolong the moment.
”Bad move.
“As it approached the bank, the otter left the river at a run and headed directly towards me. It gave no indication of slowing down! I went from this serene moment of thinking “how wonderful it is to view wildlife in a natural setting” to “yikes, this thing’s coming after me!” The otter kept charging until my yelling and arm-waving got it to stop. It was only two feet away when it suddenly turned and headed back to the river.”
Fishing Yellowstone National Park is a one of life’s great thrills. There’s nothing like hearing the shrill bugle of an elk in the fall while casting a hopper into the Yellowstone in early September. In his book on great fishing spots in Yellowstone, Richard Parks, founder and owner of Parks Fly Shop in Gardiner, Montana, identifies more than a hundred places to fish. And thus the challenge. In this episode, we provide an overview on fishing in Yellowstone National Park and offer a few ideas on when and where to fish.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights and stories of our listeners.
Which rivers or creeks have you found productive when fishing Yellowstone National Park? We’d love to hear any stories you have about fishing in any of our national parks!
Please post your comments and stories below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
To purchase Richard Parks’ book on Yellowstone, visit Amazon.
This book is a must-read for folks who like to scan lists and discover helpful hacks and tips.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Casting is your biggest challenge as a fly fisher. Sure, fly selection is important. So is reading water. However, if you can’t cast, you can’t catch fish. Improve your casting and you’ll improve your catch rate.
Before you hire a guide or take fly casting lessons from your local fly shop (both are great strategies), here are some “short” adjustments you can make on the fly (pun intended). Trying these immediately might lead to immediate casting improvement.
Shorten Your Casting Distances
I am continually surprised at how many trout I catch with casts of 10 to 15 feet. This is true even in big rivers like the Madison in Montana or the Yellowstone in Yellowstone National Park. If you are struggling with accuracy, limit your casts to 10-15 feet. You will find plenty of fish within this range.
Don’t forget that a lot of the fish in the river live and eat right next to the bank.
Shorten Your Arm Action
Some fly fishers cast like symphony orchestra conductors. They wave their arms, and sway their upper. Perhaps the “shadow casting” scene in A River Runs Through It has inspired this technique. However, all you need to do to make your rod work for you is to flick your wrist.
Practice this before you even pick up your rod: Make a pistol out of your hand (index finger pointing forward, thumb pointing up). Snap your wrist down, then snap it up. Do this over and over. It’s the motion you want to use when you pick up your fly rod to make a cast.
You can move your arm as you flick your wrist. But think of yourself as a baseball catcher trying to throw out a runner attempting to steal second base. The key to a strong throw is the flick of your wrist. The same is true of casting a fly rod.
You’ll be shocked how easily the line shoots out with minimal effort when you put some snap in your cast.
Shorten Your Stroke
I’m still an advocate of viewing your fly rod as a hand on a clock (with apologies to those of you who have long since ditched clocks with ‘hands’ for digital models).
Begin with your rod pointed straight up in the air at the 12 o’clock position. Then, snap it back to 11 o’clock and snap it forward to 1 o’clock. In reality, your back cast may take you to 10, and your forward cast may take you to 2. But if your rod extends to 9 o’clock on your back cast, your fly line is likely to hit the water or the brush.
In my experience, the most egregious casting errors involve the back cast. So concentrate on it. The forward cast usually takes care of itself.
Note that the point of the 11 to 1 approach is not hitting the precise numbers on an imaginary clock. Rather, you are trying to shorten your stroke. If your back cast is too long, your cast will lose energy—not to mention the problems you’ll create by slapping the water or snagging the brush behind you.
Limit the Number of False Casts to Improve Your Casting
The more false casts you make, the more chance you have of snagging brush, creating tangles, and spooking fish.
Why, then, do fly fishers (myself included) make so many false casts?
I’ve pondered this question and have a couple of answers: First, we want our casting rhythm to feel “right.” It may take several false cases to get into the right rhythm. But trout do not award style points for your casting. Nor does the right rhythm guarantee a better cast. Second, I suspect the biggest reason for more false casting is the fear of a wrong landing. So we keep casting our line back and forth in the air.
However, the best fly casters make one back cast and then place the line on the water on the forward cast. There are, of course, exceptions. As long as I’m not false casting over the water, I will make a few false casts to dry out a water-logged dry fly. Also, if I’m making a longer cast, it may take me two or three extra casts in order to let out a sufficient amount of line.
However, as already noted, to improve your casting, shorter casts ought to be the rule — not the exception.
Less is often more. These short adjustments may seem rather simplistic. But they work. They can lead to more effective casting, which leads to catching more fish. So remember, shorten up for success to improve your casting.
This past week, we celebrated our four year anniversary. Second only to fly fishing (of course), publishing our podcast has become one of the great joys of our lives. We’ll continue until we run out of stories or run out of joy.
Traditions in the great outdoors are routines with meaning. It’s one thing to make a single memory with a fly fishing or hunting trip. But traditions in the great outdoors create multiple layers of memories that enrich and give joy to life. In this episode, Steve and Dave interview Dave’s father on his family’s traditions – and what they means to the family.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights and stories of our listeners.
What are your favorite or most memorable traditions in the great outdoors? We’d love to hear your stories.
Please post your comments and stories below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
A few weeks ago, I fished a deep undercut bank at dusk.
My podcast partner, Dave, and I had an outstanding day on a little spring creek in the Minnesota Driftless. We decided to return in the evening to see if any fish were rising — or if any big ones might be coaxed out of their hiding places. The creek is full of brown trout, so we thought we might get a chance to hook into a big one on the prowl.
We only saw a handful of rising fish. So I tied on a Woolly Bugger to fish a deep undercut bank. After a few strips through the dark water, a fish slammed my fly. It felt like a big fish. Dave concurred. The fight was on! Then it happened. As hard as I tried to keep it from escaping to its lair, the trout managed to get to the undercut bank and tangle my line around a submerged tree branch.
Perhaps the biggest trout I hooked on that little creek became “the one that got away.” I have other stories like this. They keep popping up in my memory. And I keep bringing them into conversations with my fly fishing friends. “Did I ever tell you about the one that got away when I was fishing the Bear Trap section of the Madison?”
It dawned on me recently that these memories—and my inclination to share them—have some upsides. I can think of at least two upsides to “the one that got away.”
Mystique of the One that Got Away
First, the big trout that get away add a bit of mystique to our experiences on the river. I keep wondering if that Minnesota brown I hooked was 18+ inches. Dave and I know there are some monsters that lurk in a few those deep pools. Yet the largest brown I’ve caught in that spring creek to date is about 14 inches.
A couple decades ago, I purchased a new Orvis fly rod. The first time I used it, I tied into an aggressive rainbow.
At least I assume it was a rainbow.
I was fishing the Bear Trap section of Montana’s Madison River in the spring. I hooked a fish while nymphing, and it felt like a big fish. Then it decided to run. I ran after it — well, as fast as one can run in a couple feet of water! Shortly before it got into my backing, it wrapped itself around a large rock and snapped off the line. In retrospect, I should have been more aggressive in fighting it.
But I still have memories of that fish.
Initially, the memories were painful. Oh, I would have liked to see that trout! I’ve caught several twenty-inchers in that stretch of the Madison during the spring, and this one seemed even bigger. In more recent years, though, I’ve felt more nostalgia than pain when this memory surfaces. That elusive fish is part of the mystery that accompanies fly fishing. I’ll always imagine it as larger than it probably was.
Challenge of the One that Got Away
Another upside, I suppose, of the one that got away is how it reminds you that fly fishing is a challenging pursuit.
Let’s face it: if you caught a large trout on every cast, fly fishing would lose its appeal. Sure, it would be a blast at first. Eventually, though, it would resemble fishing in hatchery pond. The lack of challenge would diminish the satisfaction.
Part of the satisfaction that comes from fly fishing relates to overcoming adversity. Getting skunked is one form of adversity. But it’s worse when you were close—oh, so close—to landing what feels like a monster trout. It’s like blowing a 3-2 lead in the ninth inning of Game 7 of the World Series. It stings more than losing the series in four games.
The big fish I’ve hooked and lost remind me how hard they are to land. Any number of things can go wrong. On those occasions when everything goes right, I have a greater sense of appreciation for what I accomplished. The ones that got away remind me that I’ve overcome a challenge when I finally get that 22-inch trout into my landing net.
Hope for the Future
I’ve shared the story before of a fall day on Montana’s Madison River with my son, Luke. He was about 11 years old at the time. On his first cast, he snagged a rock. Or so he thought. I waded over to see if I could dislodge his fly without snapping it off. As I tugged gently, I sensed movement at the other end.
“Luke, you’ve got big one the end of your line!”
He played it well, and I moved in with my net. The trout rolled in the film. It was monster brown! Suddenly, as big fish tend to do, it took off just as I was lifting the net. It wrapped itself around my legs and snapped off. I felt sick. I could see Luke was upset. So I consoled him with words of hope: “Luke, there’s more in here like this. You’ll probably hook into another one on the next cast.” I’m not sure I believed this. But that’s exactly what happened. Luke caught a 20+ heavy brown on his next cast — and another half dozen over 20 inches before we left that day.
Every time I fish that stretch of the Madison in the fall, I remember the one that got way — even more clearly that the ones we caught the rest of the afternoon. Even on days when I catch nothing, or simply catch smaller trout, the one that got away reminds me that there are large trout in this river. Every cast is a chance to hook one of them.
Yes, the thought of a lost lunker can be depressing at first. But over time, the memories will provide a sense of mystique, heighten the challenge you face when you head to the river, and provide hope that you’ll tie into a big one again. Maybe next time you’ll land it.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights and stories of our listeners.
Have you ever had a day where you stayed in one run for most of the day? We’d love to hear your stories.
Please post your comments and stories below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
The late Bud Lilly said he often fished a hole with a streamer and caught nothing. Then, he tied on a Rubber Legs nymph, went back through the same water, and caught a nice fish.There’s a reason for this: trout love Stoneflies! So you should too.
Here’s a brief profile of this species:
Names and Varieties
Stoneflies belong to the order “Plecoptera.” If you’re an entomologist who is into etymology (that is, a student of insects who is into the study of word origins), this Latin term comes from two Greek words: “braided” and “wing.” Yes, it looks like Stoneflies have braided wings!
The four most important Stonefly species for fly fishers (with apologies to the smaller Little Brown Stones and Olive Sallies) are Salmonflies, Golden Stones, Yellow Sallies, and Skwala.
The Basics
Stoneflies spend most of their lives in the nymphal stage that varies in length from seven months to four years. Yes, four years! That’s why Stonefly nymph patterns can work any time of the year. For example, Dave, my podcast partner, and I have had great success with them in late October on the Gardner River in Yellowstone National Park.
Stoneflies have an incomplete metamorphosis, existing in only two stages: nymph and adult. Mature nymphs migrate to the shoreline and then crawl out of the water. They emerge into the adult stage anywhere from a few inches to fifty feet from the river’s edge. Their emergence usually takes place at night—out of the sight of birds that would prey on them. The adult Stonefly emerges when its nymph skin splits. Then it slowly crawls out and walks away from the shuck.
Stonefly nymphs have long, segmented bodies with two antennae sticking out of their heads, two tails, and three pairs of legs. Each leg has a couple claws which enable Stoneflies to grip the rocks in the swift water they inhabit.
Adult Stoneflies mate in streamside vegetation rather than in the air. However, the egg-laden females then fly over the water—with their abdomens hanging down—to deposit their eggs (which then sink to the bottom of the river). Trout can go crazy when Salmonflies or Golden Stones are depositing their eggs. The other reason you might entice a trout to take a Stonefly pattern on the surface is the tendency for Stoneflies to fall into the water from vegetation. I’ve seen Salmonflies get blown by the wind into the Yellowstone River in June.
Smaller Stoneflies (Little Brown Stone, Olive Sally) range from ¼ to ½ inch in length. Yellow Sallies and Skawala can approach an inch. Golden Stones can reach 1 ½ inches, while Salmonflies can extend to 2 inches.
Effective Patterns for Stoneflies
You can’t go wrong with Stonefly nymphs year round! My favorites are the Rubber Legs patterns with either a black or brown body in a size 4 to 8. Aside from the obvious patterns (Golden Stone Nymph, Yellow Sally Nymph, etc.), try a Kaufman’s Golden Stone or a Kaufman’s Black Stone. A Copper John in a size 12-16 usually works as well as a Yellow Sally Nymph. Similarly, a Hare’s Ear will fill in quite nicely for a Golden Stone Nymph (in sizes 4-8) or for a Skwala Nymph (in sizes 10-12). Did I mention how effectively the Rubber Legs patterns work? Yes I did, but it’s worth repeating. When all else fails, put on a big nymph with rubber legs!
For Stonefly adults, I like a Yellow Stimulator or a Madam X (size 6-8) for imitating Golden Stones. An Elk Hair Caddis with a green abdomen (size 10-12) will work well for Olive Sallies. If you get a chance to fish the Yellowstone River in June (assuming the runoff hasn’t turned it brown), an Improved Sofa Pillow or Warren’s Salmonfly (size 4-8) will do the job.
The size and color of a particular Stonefly species will vary from one river to another. After all, Golden Stones come in four subspecies. Also, some rivers (like the Missouri in Montana) do not have many (if any) Stoneflies. So check with your local fly shop before you hit a particular river.
You can’t make this stuff up – that’s a common expression after seeing or experiencing something unusual. On a recent fly fishing trip, we collected several strange moments that in aggregate made the trip one to remember. Steve had some apologizing to do after this trip.
LISTEN NOW TO CRAZY MOMENTS FROM A RECENT FLY FISHING TRIP
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights and stories of our listeners.
We’d love to hear from you a few crazy moments from a recent fly fishing trip.
Please post your comments and stories below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
Fly fishing from a drift boat was a bit unnerving.
I worried I would snag my friend who was rowing. It turns out that my fear was well-founded. But I didn’t discriminate that day. I snagged myself as well. I also snagged a tree branch on the side of the river. I felt like the drift boat was zooming along at 50 mph even though we were simply drifting the speed of the current.
However, fly fishing from a drift boat can be a terrific experience once you get used to it. It’s easy on your feet, and you can cover a lot of water. Here are a few basics to remember when fly fishing from a drift boat.
1. Thou shalt not rent and row a drift boat with no experience.
Rowing is not something you can learn “on the fly” (no pun intended). I’ve tried rowing a couple of times in friends’ drift boats, and there’s definitely a big learning curve. Usually, you’ll end up in a drift boat for the first time because you’ve hired a guide or because a friend invites you.
By the way, there’s no need to feel bad if you don’t know how to row a drift boat. You’re not missing out on something. The truth is that the rowers are the ones who miss out. They don’t get to fish!
Of course, learn the skill of maneuvering a drift boat if you can. Your fly fishing friends will thank you.
2. Relax and enjoy the ride
I’ll stop with the “Thou Shalt Nots …” for now, but drift boats are set up for your comfort and ease. As long as you’re in the boat, you don’t have to hike or wade or walk on boulders!
Typically, there’s a cushioned swivel seat with a standing platform (into which you can fit your knees) at both the front and the rear of a drift boat. Standing with your knees in the platform is best, although you can sit if you like. In fact, that’s how some vessels work — including rafts and Au Sable River boats (flat-bottomed boats originally used by loggers). They simply have benches.
3. Do not worry about making long casts
A good rower will get you close to the run you want to fish. Usually, that run is up against a bank. I rarely cast more than twenty feet when I’m fishing from a drift boat.
That’s not always true all the time, of course. Last fall, Dave (my podcast partner) and I fished Quake Lake with a guide, and our whole strategy was to stalk rising fish. Often we cast 40 feet or more.
But generally, as you drift down the river, your casts are much shorter.
4. Do get used to casting in a tighter space
To say it bluntly, you need to avoid hooking the rower! This is not a problem if you are right-handed and casting to the left while standing in the front of the boat — or casting to the right when standing in the back of the boat. Otherwise, you need to keep line high and straight over your head when your casting hand/arm is on the side of the rower. It seems a little daunting at first. But you will get used to it.
Guides are (should be) patient people and will help you if it’s your first time.
5. Do keep your line in your zone
The “zone” or space your fishing is in front of you or behind you. If you’re casting from the front of the boat, you can cast directly to your left or right, or even slightly ahead of the boat if you are casting into slower current. If you’re in the back, you need to cast slightly behind the boat.
This minimizes the risk of getting your line tangled in the oars or in the other fly fisher’s line.
6. Do share the front of the boat with the other fly fisher
Most guides will tell you when to switch.
But it’s a good idea to share since the person at the front has a slight advantage. If you’re at the front, the fish in any given run see your fly first.
Second, the guide is focusing on you and is maneuvering the front of the boat to get you into the best position to fish a particular run. However, there are days or moments when the person in the back does as well or better. So you can catch fish from either spot.
7. Do keep your fly in the water
This sounds like another tip from Captain Obvious.
But you only get one shot at a good run unless you’ve got a great rower who is willing to “back up” and let you try it again. In most cases, you can get a good long drift since your fly will travel about the same speed as the drift boat. The more false casting you do, the more fish you will miss — and the greater the chance of snagging the rower.
8. Do not panic if you get snagged
You will get snagged if you’re trying to throw your fly tight up against the bank (which you ordinarily want to do) or if you’re getting your nymphs or streamers deep enough.
Often, your rower will be able to circle back so you can retrieve your fly. Loosen your drag if necessary. If there’s no chance of retrieving your fly, then point your rod directly at the snag so that what breaks is your line — not your rod tip!
9. Do not let the fish go under the boat
My podcast partner, Dave, may or may not have broken a guide’s expensive Orvis rod because he let a monster brown trout run under the boat. However, Dave declined to be interviewed for this article.
When you hook a fish, fight it like you would if you were standing in the river or on the bank. Pull it from side to side. As it gets closer, your guide or fishing buddy will (should) have a long-handled net to net it before it’s too close to the boat.
But beware of that last-second dart for cover.
10. Do stop and wade-fish the most promising runs
One of the benefits of floating a river is the opportunity to stop and fish runs that might otherwise be inaccessible. The hike might be too long, or there may be private property you have to cross before getting to the river.
Let your guide or friend know that you would be happy to stop to fish runs that deserve more than a 30-second, all-or-nothing attempt.
If you want to listen to our episode on fly fishing from a drift boat, listen to this episode
Buying a fly fishing rod should be easier than it is. It’s certainly easier to buy your second or third rod than it is your first. If you are purchasing your first rod, the brands and options are endless. In this episode, we attempt to cut out much of the noise on fly rods – and discus some basic ideas on how to think about your purchase. We each have multiple rods, and we do not have rods that are the same.
LISTEN NOW TO THE BASICS OF BUYING A FLY FISHING ROD
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights and stories of our listeners.
How do you go about buying a fly fishing rod? How many fly rods do you have? What would you recommend to a newbie? Which brand do you like most?
Please post your comments and stories below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
Dry fly fishing during a hatch can be thrilling. It can also be frustrating.
I’ve had moments where a river or creek comes alive. The water seems to thrash with rising trout. Yet my fly will drift through the frenzy untouched. I’ve learned a few things, though, over the years, when dry fly fishing during a hatch. Here are five tips that have increased my success during Caddis, Pale Morning Dun (PMD) and Blue Winged Olive (BWO) hatches.
Be ready for the waves
Hatches typically arrive in waves.
Sometimes they are sustained, but often they subside after a few minutes. If you’re not ready for the next wave, you might miss out while you’re tying on a fly. I had this happen recently. I was leisurely switching from a size #18 Parachute Adams to a size #20. As it turns out, I was too leisurely. By the time I was ready to cast, the BWO hatch suddenly started, slowed and then stopped. I had to wait fifteen minutes until the action began again. It always amazes me how trout will ignore the right pattern for ten minutes and then suddenly begin attacking it.
Dry fly fishing dishing a hatch is all about timing.
Land and release fish quickly
I realize that this sounds like a tip from Captain Obvious. But I’ve squandered some five minute feeding craze because I took three minutes to land a trout that should have taken one minute.
Use a net and have your hemostat (forceps) handy to remove the hook and release the trout gently and quickly. The goal is to get back to fishing to catch one more before the hatch subsides.
Make your dry fly visible
A blizzard of bugs on the surface means you will have a hard time identifying your fly. You may laugh the first time this happens. But after a while, it will drive you crazy. I have found a little hack that works, though.
If you’re fishing during a BWO or PMD hatch, use a pattern with a red or lime green post. If you’re fishing during a Caddis hatch, use a pattern with red or green fibers on the top of your Elk Hair Caddis. I’ve purchased flies like this, and I’ve even put red synthetic fibers on the top of the Elk Hair Caddis flies that I’ve tied.
If you can’t find a red or lime green post on the BWOs you purchase, use a Sharpie marker to turn the white post red or lime green.
Use an emerger or a nymph as a dropper
Recently, while fishing a little creek in the Minnesota Driftless, I felt helpless (and a bit angry) that I couldn’t get a trout to rise to my size #20 Parachute Adams. I knew it was the right size given all of the bugs I saw fluttering in the air.
But then, during a particularly intense hatch, I realized that the trout were feeding on emergers. I saw several dart through the water without breaking the surface. Those that did simply broke the surface with their fins. So I tied on a foot of tippet to the bend in the hook of my dry fly. At the end of the tippet, I tied on a small beadhead Copper John. I had action immediately and ended up catching about ten trout in the next half hour.
Switch to nymphs or streamers if nothing works
Sometimes, though, nothing works.
Before giving up, try a streamer. Or try nymphing. Yes, you can use a nymph as a dropper as I described above. But traditional nymphing will get your flies deeper. That might just be the ticket to success. Trout, at times, prefer to feed on emerging nymphs well before they approach the surface of the river. Streamers can work, too. A trout that won’t budge for an emerger may well show interest in a super-sized meal.
There’s nothing quite like fishing during a hatch. But there’s nothing to like about it if you’re not getting some strikes and hooking a few fish.
Fishing where grizzlies and mountain lions live requires a heightened level of vigilance. It seems as if there have been more reports of mountain lion attacks the past year or two than in recent memory. Not long ago, a runner in Colorado was attacked by a young mountain lion while trail running west of Fort Collins. And just this spring a boy in Montana turned back a charging grizzly with bear spray. In this episode, we recount a few hair-raising stories of encounters while fishing where grizzlies and mountain lions live. And also offer up a few practical ways to ensure your safety when out and about in the great outdoors.
LISTEN NOW TO FISHING WHERE GRIZZLIES AND MOUNTAIN LIONS LIVE
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights and stories of our listeners.
Have you had any close calls while fishing where grizzlies and mountain lions live? Or maybe you’ve seen a grizzly or mountain lion while in the outdoors?
Please post your comments and stories below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
Fly fishing is a wisdom sport. The more you fish, the more you accumulate tips and ideas and hacks – that make you more proficient and increase your enjoyment of the sport.
This book is just that – lists of wisdom that we’ve accumulated through the years. It has come from guides, fly fisher friends, from our reading, and from watching videos.
This book is like a plate of hors d’oeuvres. You simply can’t have one. Read one list, and you’ll read the next. Visit Amazon to buy your copy today!
America’s first national park provides endless venues for fly fishing. This is the second installment of our series: Yellowstone National Park – the Waters. Richard Parks, fly shop owner just outside the northern entrance to Yellowstone National Park (YNP), has identified over 100 streams, rivers, and lakes to fish.
Here are ten waters to consider if you make a trip to fly fish in Yellowstone:
Yellowstone River
This is the major river in YNP.
Perhaps the most popular section is the 13-mile stretch between Yellowstone Lake and the Upper Falls — especially in Hayden Valley. After the mighty ‘Stone emerges from the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, access is difficult until Tower Fall.
Dave, my podcast partner, and I like to hike down to the river from the Tower Fall parking area and then fish upriver. You can also access the river from the bridge near Tower Junction.
Madison River
The Madison begins at the confluence of the Firehole and Gibbon Rivers at Madison Junction. You can expect to catch 8- to 14-inch trout (the locals) during the spring and summer. Then, the “runners” — the big brutes heading up from Hebgen Lake to spawn — typically show up in late September and October.
Lamar River
This is an outstanding fishery!
However, it gets a lot of pressure. Also, as the joke goes, all it takes to make the Lamar muddy is an elk urinating a few drops into it. Actually, even light rain seems to turn this river chalky or brown.
Gardner River
Like the Madison, the Gardner has local trout in the 8- to 14-inch range. But during October, the browns come up from the Yellowstone to spawn. Dave and I have also caught some big rainbows and cutthroats that trail behind the spawners in search of eggs.
There’s usually less pressure on the Gardner in October than there is on the Madison.
Slough Creek
This is another well-known fishery in YNP, but frankly, it’s a long hike to get to the second meadow where the best fishing begins. I rode in on horseback with my dad and a friend several years ago (the fishing was good), and that’s the only way I’d do it.
Firehole River
This fabled river, well, stream, fishes best in June and October — before the thermal water flowing into it warms it up enough to make the trout lethargic. It’s a superb choice if you like dry fly fishing.
Gibbon River
The Gibbon River is more stream than river.
The good news is that the stretch from Elk Park (near Norris Geyser Basin) to Madison Junction is right along the highway, making for easy access. That’s also the bad news. It gets a lot of pressure from anglers. But it usually fishes well through the summer.
Indian and Panther Creeks
If small creeks are your thing, these are great choices. At least they were a couple decades ago when my family and I used to camp at the Indian Creek Campground. We had a great time fishing these little creeks. The trout are small but abundant. Both creeks join the Gardner (or Upper Gardner, to be precise). I’ve had success in all three waters.
Lewis Lake and River
The inlet and outlet are the most productive places to fly fish Lewis Lake. As far as the Lewis River, the fastest sections below Lewis Falls usually give anglers the best chance for success. Brown trout run up into this stretch from Jackson Lake in the fall.
Yellowstone Lake
This huge lake fishes best early in the season — that is, for the four weeks or so after it opens on June 15. The fish are closer to shore. Try some of the sheltered bays as well as the shore near the inlet streams and the outlet to the Yellowstone River.
A disclaimer
There is terrific fishing in the other 90+ waters I did not have time or space to mention! For more detailed information, consult Richard Park’s fine book, Fishing in Yellowstone National Park
Admittedly, I’ve weighted my suggestions towards moving water and towards the northern part of Yellowstone. That’s where I have spent most of my time over the years.
Also, check out our previous post on the basics of fly fishing in Yellowstone—including the need to carry bear spray! We hope you get a chance to fish in this magnificent area.
Landing larger trout takes a different skill set than what most of us practice on a regular basis. It takes a different set of chops to net a 22-inch rainbow than it does to rip out a 10-inch brook trout. Most of us have lots of experience landing smaller fish and rare opportunities of landing larger trout. In this episode, we lament the monsters we’ve lost and offer up some practical advice to make sure you net the next big fish that you hook.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights and stories of our listeners.
We’d love to hear about a big fish that you lost. Or landed! And what other tips would you recommend? Steve needs all the help he can get.
Please post your comments and stories below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you.
Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop.
If you are a nonprofit, serving the outdoors community, you have our permission to reprint our content in your online or print newsletter with the appropriate credit and links. Thank you for your trust.
People laughed at John Colter’s description of the area that became Yellowstone National Park. They referred to it as “Colter’s hell” because his description of bubbling mud pots and boiling waters seemed too amazing. The place is amazing, and so is fly fishing in Yellowstone. Your fly fishing bucket list needs to include Yellowstone National Park (YNP).
Here are the basics you need to know about fly fishing in YNP if you’re planning on making a trip.
Seasons
The earliest you can fish in YNP is Memorial Day weekend. So if you plan an April trip to Montana (a great time to fly fish there!), don’t expect to make a side trip to YNP. The season opens the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend and extends through the first Sunday in November.
However, some waters do not open until June 15 or July 15. Most notably, the Yellowstone River upstream of Chittenden Bridge near Canyon does not open until July 15.
Some of the best fly fishing is in the fall when the crowds of tourists are gone and the brown trout are spawning.
Permits
Anglers 16 years of age and older need to purchase a YNP permit. Currently, you can purchase a 3-day permit for $18, a 7-day permit for $25, or a season-long permit for $40. You can purchase these at fly shops outside YNP as well as in the Park at visitor centers, backcountry offices, or the Yellowstone General Stores.
You do not need a state permit (Wyoming or Montana) to fly fish in YNP. However, if you’re fishing near the Park’s boundary, make sure you have a state permit or else know exactly where the boundary line runs. For example, if you fish the Baker’s Hole area on the Madison River, you may want to fish both in Montana and in YNP.
Wading Boots
Felt-soled footgear is prohibited!
The purpose of this restriction is “to reduce the potential for introduction or spread of aquatic invasive species” (according to YNP regulations).
Flies
There are two restrictions that fly fishers can easily overlook. First, your weights must be lead-free. This applies both to split shot used for nymphs and streamers as well as to the ribbon or wire wrapped into your streamers. I still have a few Woolly Buggers I tied years ago and weighted with lead wire, so I remove those from my fly box when I fish in YNP.
Second, hooks must have barbless points.
YNP regulations say that you can pinch down the barbs with pliers. I sometimes carry a small pair of needle nose pliers for this purpose. You can even use your hemostat (forceps) to do this, but in my experience, it only works well with size 16 flies or smaller.
Grizzly Bears
YNP is grizzly bear country! So take the necessary precautions.
First, it’s best to avoid fishing alone. Second, make noise—especially where visibility is limited. Preventing surprise encounters will go a long way to ensuring safety. So talk loudly or sing. You may feel silly hollering “Whoa bear!” every time you approach timber or thick brush. But it could save your life. Third, do not leave your vehicle without bear spray! Your life may depend on it. You can purchase bear spray in stores outside YNP.
Alright, that covers the basics. You can find out what waters to fly fish in our upcoming article on “Fly Fishing in Yellowstone National Park — The Waters.”
Also, please note that regulations can change from season to season, and so do water conditions. So make sure to check with area fly shops, and by all means, ead YNP’s fishing regulations for yourself.
Joe Brooks was one of America’s greatest sportsman, and his contribution to the rise of fly fishing in America, including the conservation of our fisheries, is unparalleled. With this episode, we start a new series called “Legends of Fly Fishing,” in which we profile some of the great contributors to our sport. First up is Joe Brooks, whose first half of life and second half of life couldn’t be more different. Joe’s life is inspiring on so many different levels, one of which is that he didn’t make his most important contribution to the sport until late midlife. See below for a link to where you can watch the full documentary on his amazing life called “Finding Joe Brooks.”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights of our listeners.
What part of the story of Joe Brooks do you resonate with most? Do you have other, additional anecdotes about Joe Brooks?
Please post your comments below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
Fly fishing has its share of critical moments. But one is especially important when it comes to landing the trout you’ve just hooked. It’s the moment right after the hook-set.
Tricky situation
The good news is that you have a fish on the other end of the line. The bad news is that you may have several yards of fly line at your feet or in the water. This line needs to be retrieved so that the fish is fighting against your reel as well as your rod.
Sure, some fly fishers prefer to fight fish without the aid of their reel. Yet a good fly reel is designed to manage the tension while the fish is fighting on the other end of the line. When its drag is properly set, the reel provides some resistance to the trout that is trying to escape. It also prevents a fish from snapping the line when it suddenly darts or lurches.
The reel lets out line before the weakest part of your line — the tippet or the knot you’ve tied—reaches a breaking point.
Maintaining tension
While you retrieve the excess line with one hand, you need to maintain tension with the other. So, if you’re right-handed, you’ll need to maintain tension on your fly line with your right index finger. Sounds easy, right? If you’ve ever done this, you know that it’s easy to clamp down too hard on the line with your index finger. Then, when the trout makes a sudden move, the line can snap because there is no “give” in it.
However, if you don’t clamp down a bit on the line, there’s no tension. The hook can slide out of the fish’s mouth. Or, the trout can more readily “shake off” the hook. This is especially the case with larger fish.
Retrieving excess line
Getting the proper amount of tension with your right index finger is only half the battle. Your left hand must simultaneously pull in the excess line. This is what a reel handle is for, right? Perhaps. But if you pay attention to the way fly reels are designed, you’ll notice that the spool is exposed. This allows you to “palm” spool—that is, to spin it quickly with the palm of your hand.
Don’t worry about making a neat, tidy retrieve of your line. Just get it in as quickly as you can. Later, after you’ve landed, admired, and released your fish, you can strip out the line and rewind it in a more even manner.
Adjusting the drag
As soon as you have retrieved the excess line, remember to adjust the drag. I usually keep my tension light so it’s easy for me to strip out more line as I’m casting. So when I have a fish in the other end, I invariably need to “tighten” the drag a bit. It’s easy enough to do. The size of the fish and the amount of fight it has determines exactly how much adjustment I make.
It’s a relief to get through this critical moment!
Now I’m playing the fish against my reel. I can reel in line as needed and let the fish run a bit (but only a bit!). I’ve lost my share of trout because I was clumsily trying to retrieve excess line. Don’t make the same mistake. If you can retrieve your excess fly line while keeping sufficient pressure on the line, you have a much better chance of keeping the fish on your life.
This is a case where your right hand needs to know what your left hand is doing. Keep them working together!
You arrive first on the river. You have a couple miles of river to fish by yourself. The day is slightly overcast. Fishing reports have been fantastic. This is the day. You fish the first run. Nothing. Then the next. Nothing. You switch to streamers. Nothing. Then to nymphs. Nothing. Three hours later, you’ve had one strike. And you missed the hook set. What do you do when nothing is working?
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights of our listeners.
What do you do when nothing is working? How do you think about your day on the river? What tactics do you change up?
Please post your comments below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you. Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop. Thank you for your trust.
My friends and family members are making me envious. Yesterday, my friend, Greg, showed me photos of a couple steelhead he caught in Wisconsin on streamers. Both were about 20 inches. Last week, on the same day I enjoyed catching an 11-inch brown on a size 20 dry fly in the Wisconsin Driftless, my son, Luke, sent me a photo of a 22-inch rainbow he caught on a tiny Zebra Midge.
Gazing (with envy) at those photos reminded me how challenging it is to land large trout. I’ve landed my share of trout over 20 inches. But I’ve lost a lot of them too. Here are some practices I’ve learned for landing larger trout. If I had used all of them sooner, who knows how many more big fish I would have caught!
Use a stronger tippet
I’ve landed 20-inch rainbows in Montana’s Madison River on 5x tippet. But a 5x tippet is only 4.75 pound test. Going to a size 4x increases that to 6 pound test, and a 3x tippet increases is to 8.5 pound test.
Using a stronger tippet with streamers is a no-brainer. Admittedly, it’s a bit more challenging with tiny dry flies or nymphs.
When I’m fishing with nymphs, I will typically use a 3x tippet on my lead fly if it’s large – like a size 8 or 10 stonefly. Then, I’ll use the 4x on the smaller dropper—such as a size 18 Copper John. In most cases, the increase in size doesn’t spook the fish. It’s helpful, though, if there’s a bit of color to the water.
Pull the fish from side to side
Gary Borger taught me several years ago that pulling a fish from side to side tires it out more quickly than simply pulling it in straight. Pulling it from side to side works the fish’s muscles. So point your fly rod to the side when you’re trying to land a large trout.
If you’re using a stronger tippet, then you can be a bit more aggressive and land the fish quicker. That’s a win-win situation. The trout will be less stressed than if you prolong the fight. You’ll also have less opportunities for a trout to run on you and snap the line on a rock or submerged branch. I’ve had both happen.
Use a long-handled net
The net I carry when I have a chance to hook into large trout has an 8.5-inch handle. The extra length extends my reach. That can make all the difference when trying to land a monster. I’ve had the frustration of getting a large trout almost within reach but needing an extra 2 or 3 inches.
A long-handled net cuts down on that frustration.
I don’t always catch large trout. But when I do, I have a much better chance of landing them when I’m practicing these three tips.
Scant attention is paid to fly care and presentation. So much of the focus is on fly rods, reels, waders, boots – and every other fly fishing gadget known to humankind. But without the fly itself, there is no catching. In this episode, we concoct a list of aphorisms – short witty statements about how to care for your flies.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights of our listeners.
Any advice that you’d like to share with our listeners about fly care and presentation? Where did we miss the mark? What should be added to the conversation?
Please post your comments below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you. Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop. Thank you for your trust.
Spring is in the air. So are millions of flies. Mayflies. Caddisflies. Craneflies. It’s the time of year when dry fly fishing begins to work.
If you are new to fly fishing and wonder what dry flies to have in your fly box, here are the two basic patterns you need:
Parachute Adams
If the fly fishing authorities limited me to one dry fly pattern for spring, I would not think twice. My hands-down choice is the Parachute Adams. This pattern imitates midges and Mayflies — and especially the sub-species of Mayflies known as Blue-Winged Olives (BWOs). My favorite size is an 18.
However, last week in the Wisconsin Driftless, I saw trout rising to small BWOs. So I put on a size 20 Parachute Adams and promptly caught an 11-inch brown.
In the interest of full disclosure, the size 20 pattern I used was a Parachute Purple Haze. It’s the same fly as a Parachute Adams, only with a purple body. Honestly, I haven’t noticed that one works better than the other. Trout seem to like either one. Perhaps the Purple Haze gives them a slightly different look from the tried-and-true Parachute Adams. But that advantage is disappearing as more fly fishers give in to the “purple haze craze.”
What I like about the Parachute Adams – or its flashy cousin (the Purple Haze) – is the white post or “parachute” that makes it visible. Even a size 20 sticks out as it floats down the run.
The Parachute Adams works well in the West, the Upper Midwest, and (from what my friends tell me) the East as well. Wherever you find midges and BWOs, the pattern will work. Midges appear throughout the winter and into spring, while BWOs show up in March.
Elk Hair Caddis
My other go-to pattern for spring fly fishing is the Elk Hair Caddis. Caddisflies appear in mid-April in both the West and the Upper Midwest. Fly fishers in southwest Montana — on the Madison and Yellowstone Rivers — eagerly await the “Mother’s Day Caddis Hatch.” Of course, by the time Mother’s Day appears on the calendar, the rivers usually look like chocolate milk. However, late-April fishing before the spring runoff can be fantastic as Caddis hatches intensify.
The Elk Hair Caddis is a bushy fly, and the tan elk hair wing makes it quite visible. The only problem is that it doesn’t stand out among dozens of other Caddisflies on the surface of the water. You can solve this problem can be solved by tying (or buying) an Elk Hair Caddis with some red or pink fibers on top of the elk hair wing.
The best sizes range from 14-18. It all depends on the watershed you’re fishing as well as the time of year. The best way to figure out the size is … you guessed it … check with a local fly shop. Also, some rivers will fish better with certain body colors. When I’m on the Yellowstone River south of Livingston, Montana, I like a green or a tan body. When I’m in the Wisconsin or Minnesota Driftless, I prefer a black body. I’ve even used some flies with elk hair that has been dyed black.
Other Patterns
I’m tempted to end the article here because these two flies will work in the spring 80% of the time when bugs are in the air and on the water. However, the later you get into spring, you’ll start to see some other flies that require other patterns.
In the Upper Midwest, Hendricksons appear as early as mid-April. Sulfers, March Browns, and Craneflies show up in May. I remember an evening on a little stream in the Wisconsin Driftless when the trout refused everything but a Cranefly pattern.
In the West, March Browns in a size 12 work well surprisingly early on the big rivers like the Yellowstone. There are Stonefly hatches as well that happen in the spring. Even a Stimulator can be effective at times — even though I tend to think of it as a pattern for summer.
Your best bet, though, will be to have plenty of Parachute Adams and Elk Hair Caddis flies in various sizes and — in the case of the Elk Hair Caddis — various colors.
While nymphs and streamers are always a sure bet in the spring, don’t neglect dry flies. You might miss out on the fun!
Fly fishing tends to move from simplicity to complexity. You start out learning to cast. And you have one fly rod. You pick up a couple of attractor patterns. And you have one fly box. You purchase a vest, waders, and wading boots. And head to the river. Over time, however, you wind up with four fly rods, thirteen fly boxes with hundreds of flies, and a couple vests that are weighed down by every gadget known to humankind. Fly fishing has become complex. In this epsidode, we discuss ways for simplifying your fly fishing experience.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights of our listeners.
How have you simplified your fly fishing experience? We’d love to hear from you. Please post your comments below, and we’ll consider them for our Great Stuff from Our Listener’s segment.
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If Mayflies resemble small twin-engine airplanes, Caddisflies resemble B-52 bombers. The long wings of Caddis flies flank their abdomen, meeting at the top like the two slopes of a gable roof. This means Caddis patterns are easy to see on the water.
However, during the thick of a hatch, it’s hard to pick out your fly in the midst of dozens of other bugs on the surface. I’ve even had to scoop away Caddis adults that are crawling on my glasses, my nose, my hat, and my sleeves.
It’s no wonder that Gary LaFontaine called the Spotted Sedge Caddis the single most important trout-stream insect. I’ve caught fish on Caddis patterns from Wisconsin to Montana. Here is a brief profile of this important species:
Names
“No matter what the subspecies, fly fishers simply refer to them as “Caddis.”
“Caddisflies belong to the order ‘Trichoptera.’ Occasionally, books on flies and fly patterns simply refer to ‘Spotted Sedge’ — the most notable subspecies of Caddisflies for fly fishers.”
The Basics
Most Caddisflies have a one-year life cycle. Once they emerge, the adults can live for as long as a month—as opposed to a couple of days for most Mayflies.
Caddisflies, unlike Mayflies and Stoneflies, have complete metamorphosis, going from egg (1-3 weeks) to larva (9-10 months) to pupa (2-5 weeks) to adult (1-3 weeks).
Entomologists divide Caddisflies into five groups based on the way their larvae behave. The five groups are: free living (no case or shelter), saddle-case (dome-shaped case with an opening at each end), net-spinning (a case with a web next to its entrance to catch food), tube case (portable case that enables the larvae to move around when threatened), and purse-case (a case of silk and fine sand).
Spotted Sedge Caddisflies are net-spinners.
According to Dave Hughes, trout probably eat more Caddis larvae than any of the other stages. Trout are likely to feed more selectively on pupae than on larvae or adult Caddisflies.
Caddisflies hatch about any time of the day. To be sure, the 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. window is usually a given. But I’ve fished in Caddis hatches between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. and as late as dusk—both in the Upper Midwest and in the Intermountain West.
Effective Patterns for Caddisflies
Most fly fishers will concentrate on patterns that imitate the larva and the adult stages. But since Caddisflies (like Mayflies) can get “stuck” in their pupal shuck, the right pupa pattern can be effective.
It’s best to check your local fly shop for the best larva pattern to use since there is such a wide variety of Caddis larvae. Some of the more popular patterns include the Tan Caddis Larva and the Olive Caddis Larva (both with beadheads). I’ve also used a Beadhead Red Fox Squirrel Nymph successfully in the Yellowstone River in Montana.
Popular pupae patterns include the Deep Sparkle Pupa (either brown or yellow), the Krystal Flash Pupa, and the Beadhead Caddis Pupa. Fly shops will typically have a particular pattern that works well in the local waters.
The most famous of all the adult patterns is the Elk Hair Caddis. This fly has tan elk hair, although we’ve used patterns with the elk hair dyed black in the Driftless region of Wisconsin and Minnesota. The body of an Elk Hair Caddis will typically be tan or green or (in some instances) black.
The X-Caddis pattern, developed by Craig Matthews and John Juracek, is a great option for imitating adults which are caught in their pupal shuck.
often tie a bit of red or pink antron body wool on the top of my Elk Hair Caddis pattern (see the above photo) so that they are visible to me when surrounded by a dozen other Caddisflies in the current.
Sizes 12-18 are standard for all stages, although I’ve done the best over the years with sizes 14-16.
Spring dry fly fishing is one of the most delightful stretches of the fly fishing year. While there are other hatches, the two most dominant in most streams and rivers, of course, are Blue Winged Olives (BWOs) and Caddis. In this episode, we discuss patterns that we like, the use of an emerger with a dry fly, and the importance (once again) of size and color.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights of our listeners.
We’d love to hear your tips for catching more fish on dries in the spring. Are there any patterns that work especially well for BWOs and Caddis? Please post your comments below.
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Fly fishing gear has come a long way since I first started fly fishing in the late 1970s. Fiberglass rods have given way to graphite rods. Lightweight breathable fabric waders have replaced the body-hugging neoprene kind. Everything else from wading boots to reels reflect better technology. Fly fishing gear developments have made the sport a bit easier — if not more expensive.
Here are four noteworthy developments I’ve appreciated in the last decade or so. Some are arguably more significant than others. But each one makes the sport a bit easier for fly fishers — and even the fish we land.
4-piece fly rods
For years, two-piece fly rods were the standard. The first decent fly rod I purchased — an Orvis Silver Label — came in two pieces. The length wasn’t an issue except for backpacking trips to high mountain lakes.
Then, about the time I moved away from Montana, airline flights started charging for extra carry-ons. Thankfully, the four-piece rod became a thing about that time. Rod makers redesigned tapers and ferrules so that a four-piece rod performed as well as its two-piece counterpart.
Sure, some of the best casters can tell a difference between the way a two-piece and a four-piece rod handles. But most of us would be hard-pressed to figure out which is which if we did some casting with each one while blindfolded.
I am a big fan of the four-piece fly rod because its rod tube fits inside my suitcase. It also straps onto the side of my backpack frame without reaching into outer space.
Rubber nets
If you haven’t noticed, newer landing nets come with rubber netting. There are no strings attached.
This is a huge development for fish health for at least two reasons.
The first is obvious: Rubber nets flex, so they are less jarring to the fish than string nets. It resembles the difference between falling back onto your mattress (and the resulting bounce) and falling back onto your box springs (ouch!). Second, I suspect that rubber nets remove less mucus from a fish’s body than string nets do. That mucus is a vital protector of a fish’s skin.
Besides, I’ve noticed that the hook on my flies — especially the one the trout didn’t take on a two-fly rig — doesn’t get tangled in rubber webbing like it did in my stringed nets.
Foot Tractor Soles
Another great development was Patagonia’s Foot Tractor boot soles. There’s nothing like felt soles for traction on slippery rocks. But felt has fallen out of flavor (and is illegal in some watersheds) because of concerns about how it might trap microorganisms and transport them to the next river you fish.
However, before you rush out to buy a new pair of wading boots, you need to be aware of another new development. Patagonia’s Foot Tractors have retailed for the past few years at about $279. That price is hefty enough, but I could justify it for the sake of safety. Now Patagonia has collaborated with Danner Boots to produce a beautiful pair of leather wading boots with the patented Foot Tractor soles. But these boots retail at $549. Gulp!
Unfortunately, the “old” model is being phased out. You might want to buy the “old” model on closeout — if you can find them. I did that recently so I’ll have an affordable pair when my current pair of Foot Tractors wears out.
Zip-front Waders
I like this new development!
Admittedly, I haven’t purchased a pair of zip-front waders yet. But I’m going to consider them when my current waders wear out. Waders with a waterproof zipper make it easier to get in and out of them, as well as to answer the call of nature.
There is one downside. Yes, you guessed it—zip-front waters cost more than the traditional kind. However, I recently saw a pair of Cabela’s zippered waders for $149.
Honestly, fly fishers do not need every new gadget or model that shows up on the floor of a fly shop or the pages of an online store. But there are a few gear developments that make fly fishing a more satisfying experience — for both fly fishers and fish.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights of our listeners.
We’d love to hear about a one-fine-day story from one of your recent trips. Please post your comments below!
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Whether you tie or buy your flies, it’s tempting to think that if you’re not catching fish, one reason may be that your fly does not match exactly what’s transpiring in the water column. However, the Law of Diminishing Returns seems to apply to how closely you need to match the actual insects. Here are six mostly true statements about matching the hatch:
1. Trout are not like us.
While there are days when I think my teenager may have a single digit IQ, it’s more likely true of trout. No doubt that big brown is wily, but its feeding pattern seems to be driven largely by an evolutionary algorithm that takes into account calories divided by energy. The numerator always needs to be greater than the denominator.
Ergo, the calories need to be worth the effort.
While we may worry that we don’t have the perfect fly for any given situation, the trout may be ignoring what we’re casting for a different reason other than it is not the exact bug that is rolling along the bottom, emerging or hatching on the surface.
2. Some flies work everywhere.
A wide variety of nymphs are highly effective anywhere where trout are found. That’s no surprise, I’m sure.
Just to name two old standby nymphs: the Pheasant Tail Nymph and the Gold Ribbed Hare’s Ear. These are just gold, pretty much in any cold-water fishery across the world.
And then there’s the trusty, old-and-tired Parachute Adams, your grandfather’s dun pattern. In various body colors, this fly can represent nearly all the mayflies, caddis, and midges that are emerging at the film, where the adult pulls itself free from the pupal skin.
The Parachute Adams is not sexy, but it works. Somehow, the trout find it strike-worthy even though it isn’t a perfect match to the BWOs that are popping.
3. Suggestion is more important than imitation.
In fly fishing, the “close enough” principle seems to be at work.
I’ve been surprised how even a Colorado fly like the H & L Variant, a high riding attractor pattern, fools trout on the Driftless streams in the Midwest. It can be used to imitate Green Drakes on the Frying Pan in Colorado as well as the Crane Fly (also known as “leather jackets,” “daddy-long-legs,” and “skeeter eaters”) in the Driftless.
Perfection is not the end game; catching fish is.
4. Color and size trump the perfect match to the hatch.
This morsel of fly fishing advice is as old as the river you’re fishing, but it holds true and is worth repeating:
If you’re not catching fish, try a smaller fly. Or change color. That’s especially true with dry flies, but it also is true of nymphs and emergers.
On one fly fishing trip, I couldn’t figure out how to catch browns on a stream in the Driftless region during a caddis hatch in early May. It’s not like I’d never catch a riser, but I’d land one or two when I thought I should have caught ten or more. I finally grabbed an adult caddis one morning and analyzed its coloring. It was largely black. Then I looked at what I was casting – a tan-bodied caddis pattern.
Duh!
I picked up some black-bodied caddis later in the afternoon, and the next morning I was golden. Or at least more golden than I was the day earlier. I also dropped a size #18 Olive Serendipity about eight inches from my dry fly. The emerger seemed to work when the browns refused the adult caddis pattern.
5. Less is more, and more is more.
The knowledge that fish tend to prefer suggestion over imitation can help you simplify the number of patterns that you carry. Less is more as it relates to carrying all the possible flies for each hatch.
And more is more as it relates to color and size.
6. Some trout are more picky than others.
That’s certainly true on spring creeks, with even flows and temperatures, clear waters, and seemingly an unlimited food supply. You always need to refine your tackle and techniques when fishing on spring creeks.
Also, if your stream gets slammed during certain parts of the year, with fly fishers at every bend, fish seem to appreciate more precision or a different look.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights of our listeners.
What are your thoughts on Peter’s vision for sustainable fly fishing products?
For more information on Peter Stitcher and his fly fishing business in Colorado, visit Ascent Fly Fishing.
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We would love a referral from you. Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop. Thank you for your trust.
Raindrops on rainbow runs, hands without mittens Bright colored Copper Johns, trout that are smitten Browns slamming streamers so hard as they swing These are a few of my favorite things
Perhaps this is not what Rodgers and Hammerstein had in mind when they wrote the show tune “My Favorite Things.” But spring fly fishing makes me want to break out in song! Here are a few of my favorite things about fly fishing in the springtime.
A new beginning
Spring is the new year of fly fishing.
After a long winter (and, boy, was it long in the Upper Midwest this year), this is the first of the three best seasons of the year for fly fishers—spring, summer, and fall. Let the fun begin!
Oh, yes, there’s a chance to use the new gear purchased with Christmas gift cards and, uh, money that could otherwise be put into savings.
Insect hatches
Spring is the time of year when the river bottom comes to life. The first brood of Blue Winged Olives shows up in March. Then Caddis emerge as the water temperature rises in mid-April. After a fall of slinging streamers and a winter day or two of drifting midges, the explosion of insect life is a welcome gift.
Runners
Spring is as a time for runners — the rainbows that head up the rivers to the redds (spawning beds), as well as other species of trout, which lurk behind in wait for eggs or small egg sacs to drift down the river. I’ve tied into some large rainbows on Montana’s Madison and Missouri Rivers during the spring rainbow run.
If you’re fishing during the spring, make sure to stay off the redds. There’s no need to add stress to spawning fish. Once you know what to look for, it isn’t hard to spot the redds. Look for shiny spots in gravelly places. You can fish below or above them. But please leave the redds alone.
Fewer crowds
Depending where you live, you still might see a lot of fly fishers in the spring — especially if you’re on a stretch of river where big rainbows are on the move. But tourist season is still a few weeks away. So you typically won’t have to deal with large crowds.
By the way, I have nothing against tourists or fly fishers who can only fish on a summer vacation. I’m now a tourist, I suppose, when I return “home” to Montana where I lived and fly fished for the better part of 25 years. The reality, though, is that you’ll have less competition in the spring than in the middle of July.
Crazy weather
Call me crazy, but I’m intrigued by crazy weather.
I’ve fly-fished in Montana and in Wisconsin on 60-degree days in March. I’ve also stood knee-deep in Montana’s Madison River in April when the snow softly falls. A few years ago, my podcast partner, Dave, and I floated the Upper Madison with a friend on a mid-April day. I think we saw at least three seasons, complete with sun, wind, sleet, and rain. It’s rather fascinating.
Alright, these are a few of my favorite things about fly fishing in the spring. Hooray for spring! It’s time to grab a fly rod and head for the river.
When no trout bite When the sleet stings When I’m casting bad I simply remember my favorite things And then I don’t feel so bad
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights of our listeners.
What would you tell your 20-year-old self, if anything? Some of you might say, “Get out on the river right now!” We look forward to your comments.
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We were getting ready to step out of the Owyhee River in eastern Oregon and head to our SUV when my son exclaimed, “Dad, there’s one of those pale flies!” He was right. I turned and watched a couple Pale Morning Duns flying near the opposite bank.
It was a late morning in July, and so we tied on a couple of “pale fly” patterns and caught a handful of 16-18 inch browns. Veteran fly fisher Dave Hughes says that Pale Morning Duns are the second most important mayflies for fly fishing — not far behind Blue-Winged Olives.
Here is a quick profile of this species.
Names
“Pale Morning Dun” is commonly abbreviated as “PMD.”
There are two species of PMDs—inermis (the most numerous species) and infrequens. It is impossible to tell the two apart, but it really doesn’t matter to fly fishers.
The Basics
Like Blue Winged Olives, PMDs inhabit all kinds of rivers and streams in the western United States. You will find the heaviest populations in spring creeks and tailwaters.
PMD hatches are most prolific in June and July, although they appear in May and continue into August.
The best time of day for PMD hatches is late morning to early afternoon. While hatches can begin as early as 9 a.m., PMDs are more likely to emerge around 11 a.m. and continue into the afternoon—until 3 p.m. or so.
Nymph Stage
PMDs nymphs belong to the crawler group of mayflies.
PMDs in the nymph stage are poor swimmers. They are slow and rather feeble, drifting along the bottom for quite a distance before they reach the surface.
PMD nymphs have blocky bodies with a modest taper, and their color ranges from reddish brown to dark brown with a bit of an olive tint.
Adult Stage
As their name suggests, Pale Morning Duns have a pale-yellow colored body with yellow-gray (female) or pale gray (male) wings. They also have small hindwings.
PMD Duns tend to have trouble getting off the water. So they drift for long distances while their wings dry. Frequently, they get stuck in their shucks as cripples. They often flutter in an attempt to lift off, but then end up back on the surface of the river.
Once PMDs emerge and molt into the spinner stage, they mate. Both the spent males and females end up on the water’s surface.
Effective Patterns
The classic PMD nymph pattern is a Hare’s Ear in an olive-brown color. A Beadhead Fox Squirrel nymph works too.
For an emerger pattern, a PMD Floating Nymph/Emerger is best.
For the dun stage, Craig Matthew’s Pale Morning Sparkle Dun is my favorite. A burnt wing pattern (like the one pictured above) usually works well, too.
For the spinner stage, try a PMD Parachute Spinner or Pale Morning Quill Spinner.
PMD nymphs need to be in the size 16-18 range. PMD Dun and Spinner patterns should range between size 16 and 20.
One thing to keep in mind about PMD patterns: they all seem to look different in color, wing type, etc. – depending on the tyer.
For many fly fishers, fishing is more than the simple act of catching a fish. It’s not merely the transaction of hooking and landing a trout or salmon or bonefish. In this episode, we reflect on several quotes from Nick Lyon’s wonderful book, “Spring Creek.” The world of fly fishing has a few things to teach us about life, pointing us to something greater than a 30-fish afternoon.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights of our listeners.
Any reflections on Nick Lyon’s quotes from the episode? What stories did the quotes trigger for you? Please post your comments below. We’d love to hear from you!
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Why do fly fishers wear waders when fishing a small creek on an 80-degree day?
I admit to doing an eye-roll when I’ve seen fly fishers do this. But as one of our podcast listeners recently reminded me, there are at least two good reasons for it. I added a couple more that came to mind. So here are four reasons you might want to wear chest waders even when they don’t seem necessary.
1. Ticks
Ticks spread Lyme Disease.
The US Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 300,000 people a year get Lyme Disease. Most cases occur in the Northeast and upper Midwest. In fact, 14 states account for over 96% of cases reported to the CDC.
It makes sense that chest waders can provide an effective shield. Of course, long pants and long-sleeved shirts can help, too. But it’s possible that chest waders offer a bit more protection from a tick crawling up underneath your pants leg or untucked shirt and burrowing into your flesh.
2. Poison Ivy
I remember getting nasty rashes when I was a boy after tromping through the brush on my grandparents’ farm in Pennsylvania. The culprit was poison ivy.
Once again, a pair of long nylon pants and a long-sleeved might be sufficient. But waders might just be the ticket. If you know you’ve walked through poison ivy, be careful about grabbing the legs of your waders when you remove them!
3. Snakebites
I have a few friends who always wear waders when in rattlesnake or copperhead country. Sure, a venomous snake’s fangs could puncture your waders and sink into your calf. But it’s also possible the fangs could get caught in your baggy waders.
Honestly, I don’t know how effective this works — and I hope I never have to find out. But if you have had firsthand experience with waders preventing a snakebite, I’d love to hear from you.
4. Warmth
On a cold winter or spring day, chest waders are the ticket for staying warm. They provide an extra layer of insulation, and they are waterproof.
Do you think of any other reasons to wear chest waders when the temperature is so warm or the water is so shallow to make them unnecessary?
I don’t always wear chest waders when I’m fly fishing. But when I do, it’s for a good reason.
Fly fishing wading boots are the undisputed, most important safety purchase you’ll make for the sport. There are felt soles, rubber soles, rubber soles with studs, and rubber soles with aluminum bars. In this episode, we discuss our philosophy of wading boots, given the number of days we fish each year – and make a case for one type of sole. We offer up several questions to help you determine which type of boot is best for you.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights of our listeners.
Which fly fishing boots do you use? Do you have more than one pair of boots? How do you handle longer hikes? Do you pack a pair of wading shoes? Please post your comments below. We’d love to hear from you!
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We would love a referral from you. Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop. Thank you for your trust.
A sign in the dentist’s office caught my attention: “You don’t need to floss all your teeth. Just the ones you want to keep.” I think something similar can be said about using a net to land trout: “You don’t need to net all the trout you catch. Just the ones you want to protect.”
Landing Nets Versus Barbless Hooks
I’m a big advocate for using a net for 12-20 inch trout. Some of the veteran fly fishers and guides I’ve talked to claim that using a net is more important for trout safety than using a barbless hook—especially since barbed hooks today have much less severe barbs than those of yesteryear.
A Confession
However, I have to confess that I’ve never bothered to take a net when I’m catching small trout of the little streams I fish in Colorado, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. By small, I’m referring to 8 to 11 inch trout.
Okay, perhaps I should say 6 to 11 inch trout!
In fact, I’ve even smirked inwardly at some anglers I’ve seen with nets clipped to the back of their vests on some of these small streams. Who needs a net to land an 8-inch brookie?! Or maybe the smirk was for wearing chest waders on an 80-degree day along a stream whose deepest run is three feet.
An Excuse to Buy More Gear
I repent, though.
I just ordered a Brodin Phantom Firehole Net. My old Brodin, which was made not far from where I used to live in Belgrade, Montana, has string netting. I wanted one with rubber netting since it’s much easier on trout. I have a Fishpond Nomad which works great for bigger trout. But that would be overkill for smaller trout.
At least that’s my excuse to make a new purchase.
The Brodin Phantom Firehole Net is only 23 inches long with a hoop that is 7 inches by 15 inches. That makes the handle 8 inches long. This will work nicely for small trout, and it would work in a pinch for a larger one.
An Obvious and Not-So-Obvious Benefit
One of the benefits of using a net for little trout is obvious. It prevents excessive handling of the trout. It also keeps them from flopping on boulder-lined banks. Even (or especially) smaller fish are not indestructible.
But there is another not-so-obvious benefit:
It’s the habit and skill this will form. If I commit to using a net every time I fly fish, then it will become a habit. Furthermore, there is a skill (maybe even an art) to landing trout. The more practice I get, the better I get—assuming that I’m using the right techniques (lifting up the net rather than stabbing at the fish, lifting my rod when I’m about the land the fish, etc.).
The next time you see me toting a net on a small stream, please don’t smirk. Or if you do, make sure it’s not because I’m using a net for small trout. You can shake your head or roll your eyes because I’ve justified yet another fly fishing gear purchase.
Spring is no where to be seen in the Chicago area. Winter is still roaring like a lion. If spring comes in like a lion as well, then we’re toast. But at least the days are getting longer, and inevitably, spring fly fishing will be in full swing. In this episode, we interview Peter Stitcher, an aquatic biologist and owner of Ascent Fly Fishing in the Denver, Colorado, area. We asked Peter to help us understand the nuances of spring fly fishing – what to look for when temperatures start to rise, which patterns seem to work best, and what times of day to fish. See below for more information on how to fish ethically during spawning season.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the of every episode, we reflect on a comment from one of our listeners. We’ve learned so much through the years from the insights of our listeners.
How do you think about spring fly fishing differently? What have you found that works best as the water temperatures start to rise? Please post your comments below. We’d love to hear from you!
FISHING ETHICALLY DURING THE SPAWN
In the episode, Peter mentioned a video on best practices when fishing during spawning season:
Veteran fly fisher Dave Hughes claims that Blue-Winged Olives are the most important mayflies for fly fishing. I believe he is right. Trout seem to feed on them with the same intensity that kids (and adults!) eat popcorn. Here is a quick profile of this species:
Names
“Blue-Winged Olive” is commonly abbreviated as “BWO.”
BWOs are also known as “Little Olives.”
The Latin name for BWOs is Baetis. Technically, the BWO is a sub-species of Baetis, but many fly fishers use “BWO” and Baetis as synonyms.
The Basics
These flies are ubiquitous. You will find them in slow, medium, and fast currents. They live in freestone rivers, spring creeks, and tailwaters.
Although BWO hatches happen every month, they are most prolific in April-May and again in September-October.
The best time of day for BWO hatches is late morning to early afternoon — the warmest part of the day. Cloudy, rainy conditions intensify and lengthen these hatches.
Nymph Stage
While BWOs in the nymph stage are excellent swimmers, they tend to drift with little or no movement.
BWO nymphs have slender, tapered bodies which some fly fishers describe as “torpedo-shaped.” Their color ranges from olive to dark brown.
BWO nymphs have two long antennae and three tails—with the center tail considerably shorter than the outer two.
Adult Stage
The most prominent feature of a BWO dun (newly hatched adult) is its large wings in comparison with the rest of its body. The wing color varies from a pale gray to a dark gray with a bluish tint — hence the name “Blue Winged Olive.”
BWO duns ride the surface of the current for up to twenty feet until their wings dry and they can fly. Also, some BWOs get stuck in an “emerger” phase while they are trying to scape their nymphal shuck.
A fully mature BWO adult is called a “spinner.” Within twelve hours of emerging to the surface and flying to streamside bushes or brush, the sexually mature BWOs mate in swarms near the edge of a river or stream. So trout typically feed on BWO spinners in slower water near the river’s edge.
Effective Patterns
The classic BWO nymph pattern is a Pheasant Tail (or some variation of it).
One of the best emerger patterns is Craig Matthews’ Little Olive Sparkle Dun.
For the dun stage, a Parachute Adams will often work as well as a Parachute BWO. If the trout are not hitting one of these standard patterns, then switch to a Red Quill Spinner or a Blue Quill Spinner.
Hook sizes for BWOs will range between 16 and 24. However, a size 18 or 20 usually does the trick.
Sources: Bob Granger, Dave Hughes, Craig Matthews, Jim Schollmeyer
Trout Unlimited is a distributed army of passionate conservationists, united by the mission to save the coldwater fisheries of North America. Recently, the Lee Wulff Trout Unlimited chapter invited us to share the story of 2 Guys and a River at one of their monthly meetings. This episode is an edited version of that wonderful evening at the Village Pizza and Pub in Carpentersville, IL. The pizza was fantastic, the conversation invigorating. And for almost an hour, the delightful folks at the Lee Wulff Trout Unlimited chapter tolerated our ramblings and generously laughed at our feeble attempts at humor. We hope you enjoy this episode as much as we enjoyed the January evening with them.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. Our theme in this episode is about why we love fly fishing. We’d love for you to post a story that captures the essence of why you love our sport.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you. Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop. Thank you for your trust.
Here are some of his more reflective quotes. Each one makes me pause and ponder a bit more deeply about life and fly fishing. And about how the two intersect.
How many fish make a good day
“I’m always astounded when I read of someone catching forty, fifty, sixty trout in an afternoon, ten of them over such-and-such size. Why? Why continue? A few good fish make a day. More make an orgy. A flurry of fish-catching satisfies me completely. I don’t want to catch every fish in the river. I don’t want to “beat” my companion. I don’t want to break records.”
The newness of familiar water
“I never went to Spring Creek without seeing something new.”
Why life should be like a riverbank
“At times I have wished life as simple as this riverbank — the world a logical structure of bend, current, riffle, and pool, the drama already unfolding on the glassy surface, and me, here on the bank, armed with some simple lovely balanced tools and some knowledge, prepared to become part of it for a few moments.”
What he wants his writing to achieve
“I’d like the stew to be rich enough to catch some of the stillness, complexity, joy, fierce intensity, frustration, practicality, hilarity, fascination, satisfaction that I find in fly fishing.
“I’d like it to be fun, because fly fishing is fun—not ever so serious and self-conscious that I take it to be either a religion or a way of life, or a source of salvation. I like it passionately but I try to remember what Cezanne once said after a happy day of fishing: he’d had lots of fun, but it “doesn’t lead far.”
Why trout fishing is not enough
“I would like to be here for weeks, even months, but I could not live all my life in trout country. I have other fish to fry and, difficult as that other world might be, I’d rather be in the thick of it, blasted by its terrors, than sit outside and snipe. If all the year were holidays, to sport would be as tedious as to work—and I have rarely found work tedious.”
How trout fishing benefits your life
“Tough fishing stretches you, provides you with skills and confidence for a thousand lesser moments–and it eggs you on to take great chances. It’s not just courage that’s required, of course, but some knowledge of the kinds of major tactics that can be necessary on a trout stream, and then a perfection of the skills needed to enact them.”
The best fly fishing advice comes in bits and pieces over a long period of time. One accrues advice. In this episode, the second in a series, we offer up some some bits of fly fishing advice that has helped us catch more fish. Some of this will be obvious to many of you, but to us, it’s some of the best we’ve received. If you haven’t yet listened to Part 1 of Best Fly Fishing Advice, do so here.
One of the finest fly fishing books in the last three decades is Spring Creek by Nick Lyons.
It offers an account of 31 days Lyons spent on a spring creek in Montana. He originally published it in 1992. The writing is vivid and crisp, and it is full of wit and wisdom. Here are a few gems from the book that will make you smile and reminisce about your own fly fishing experiences. Enjoy!
First, though, a public service announcement: you may not be able to stop laughing after you read the final gem in the collection below!
How fly fishing resembles a tennis court
“Fly fishing is both a restriction (like putting up a net and outlining a court, so two tennis players don’t just smash a ball at each other, wantonly) and an opener of new worlds.”
The difference between spinning and fly fishing
“I’m not quite sure why one switches from spinning to fly fishing — it’s like going from something that works to something that, for a long time, doesn’t work.”
But Lyons has a tongue-in-cheek answer
“One cannot get enough equipment: seven rods are not enough; three thousand flies do not quite serve all possible contingencies. One cannot study entomology hard enough, read enough magazines and books. Marketers of such stuff call this an “information-intensive” period; I think the novice is just gut-hooked and loony.
“There’s so much to learn: plop casts and reach casts, subtler stream reading, twenty-seven different knots, wading techniques, insect cycles, ninety-three new fly patterns “you can’t do without,” new hot spots, new techniques … of which there are as many as rocks in a stream. By comparison, spinning is one-dimensional: it bypasses virtually all that makes fly fishing a joy and a consummate challenge, and it leaps solely to the catching of trout, which it does very well, but with a limited number of necessary options.”
The calming effect of the river
“I had come to the river full of tension and Saint Vitas’s dance, but by the end of the first week, the rush, the fret, the wolf, the tooth of the world began to slip away, over the bench past the far range of snow-capped mountain ranges, into left field.
“My eyes and ears began to catch more and more: the muskrat, the sparrow, the bald eagle, the white-tailed deer, the great wealth of wild things in this valley, which the two of us fished alone. But mostly I watched the water and listened to the water.”
A float tuber’s worst nightmare
“A friend, fishing from a float tube, was once blown across an arm of Hebgen Lake by heavy wind; he ended in a tangle of brush on the opposite shore and was contemplating the long walk back, around the arm, in flippers or bare feet, when he saw a helicopter descending in the nearby field.
“He began to call to them but then noticed that they were depositing something from a scrotumlike net beneath the plane. It was only a rogue grizzly — and my friend was persuaded to hide in the brush for an hour or so, until the wind died down, and then head back across the lake.”
Steve has fished in Alaska, but other than that, neither of us has gone on a fly fishing trip outside North America. We’ve recently been wondering if it is time. But where to start? We decided to interview Toby Swank, who owns one of the premier fly fishing shops in Bozeman, Montana, and has conducted hosted trips to places like Mexico, Belize, and New Zealand. In this episode we interview Toby on what fly fishers should expect when taking an exotic fly fishing trip. For more information on Toby’s fly shop, you can visit Fins & Feathers.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. Have you been on an exotic fly fishing trip before? Would love to hear your stories. Please post your highlights below- and we may discuss your comments at the end of one of our next episodes!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you. Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop. Thank you for your trust.
Winter is a different animal when it comes to fly fishing. If you insist on heading to the river on a winter day in the United States north of Interstate 80, here are five more hacks to keep in mind. (I already offered seven in a previous article: Winter Fly Fishing without Losing It)
1. Don’t snap ice off your rod guides
It’s so tempting, but this can easily result in a broken guide. Simply dip your rod into the water. This will dissolve the ice because the cold water is still warmer than the air temperature.
If you’re into preventative measures, try coating your guides with lip balm. Some fly fishers like Carmex because it is not petroleum-based. The jury is out on whether lip balm with petroleum can damage your fly line. I suspect, though, that the risk is minimal. Another option is Stanley’s Ice-Off Paste which your local fly shop may carry.
2. Focus on deep pools as well as shallow water
Here I’m pushing back a bit on my earlier suggestion that you focus on shallow water rather than on deep pools. That was Bud Lilly’s suggestion. He observed that trout in shallow water will feed more aggressively than trout in deep pools. The reason is that the sun can trigger insect activity of even the metabolism of a sluggish trout in a shallow riffle. This is true.
However, the opposite can be true as well. It depends on the conditions and the particular river you are fishing. Tom Rosenbauer, another veteran fly fisher, notes that fish tend to “pod up” in deeper pools during the winter. So look for deeper, slower water if you’re not seeing or hooking trout in the shallows.
3. Get your nymphs deep
This is always good advice. However, it’s especially critical if you’re fishing a deeper pool in the winter. The fish may be deeper than usual. Besides, the current runs the slowest at the bottom of a river or stream. Slow is better on winter days when trout don’t move as quickly. So use more weight than normal.
How can you tell when your fly is deep and slow enough? Watch your strike indicator. You’ve hit the right depth and speed when it moves than the bubbles on the surface of the water.
4. Make a few more casts than usual
Trout do not feed as voraciously in the winter as in the other three season of the year. This means the feeding window for a particular trout is smaller than usual. So make more casts than normal to insure you’ve drifted your nymph through every possible window in a run.
5. Stock your fly box with Midge patterns
Mayfly hatches are almost non-existent in the winter. The same is true of terrestrials. So you want to take along plenty of midge patterns—both in nymphs (such as the Zebra Midge) and dry flies (a size 18 Parachute Adams works well for this).
Winter fly fishing doesn’t appeal to every angler. If it holds enough appeal to prompt you to venture out into the cold, stay safe and stay warm. Perhaps one of these hacks will make your day a good one to remember.
Fly fishing goals may seem like a bit of overkill when thinking about the new year. But life often crowds out the good, so setting some fly fishing goals helps us focus on what, truly, is most important. In this episode, we discuss our goals for 2019, which includes more time on the water (with family), honing some skills, and definitely more days on the river (with no family!).
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. What fly fishing goals have you set for 2019? Please post your answer below – and we may discuss your comments at the end of one of our next episodes!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We would love a referral from you. Simply mention our podcast to your TU chapter or fly fishing club or even local fly shop. Thank you for your trust.
Fly fishing the Madison or Yellowstone Rivers in Montana used to be no big deal.
I simply tossed my gear in the back of my Toyota pickup and drove for 45 minutes to one of the two rivers. If I only had a couple hours to fish, both the East Gallatin and the main Gallatin Rivers were 5 minutes from my house. The only cost for those trips was a gallon or two of gas.
Then I moved to the north suburbs of Chicago. This has made the trip to those rivers a lot more costly. Still, I have fished in Montana at least once a year since I moved to Illinois twelve years ago.
I have modest amount of discretionary income, so I’ve had to figure out ways to keep my trips to Montana affordable. Here are a few cost-cutting hacks which have worked for me. Some are big, some are little. Even the little ones help.
1. Go in the spring or fall
This is a great idea simply because spring and fall fishing in the Rocky Mountain west is fantastic. But it’s cheaper, too. No one is flocking to the beaches of Montana or Wyoming for spring break. Nor do families vacation in Yellowstone National Park in early October.
So hotels are cheaper (especially when you book them on Orbitz or Hotwire), rental cars are cheaper, and flights are cheaper (usually!). If you plan to book time on a spring creek for a day, rod fees are cheaper, too.
Summer is a great time to fly fish in the west. But it’s more crowded and more costly.
2. Go with a friend
Perhaps this is a no-brainer. But it’s cheaper when you can split the cost of a hotel room, rental car, and a guided trip. Yes, you need to invest in at least one guided trip if it’s the first time you’re headed west! Besides, going with a friend is safer and more fun.
3. Pack economically
Baggage fees for airline travel vary. But most airlines charge around $25 for each checked bag (one way) and then let you bring a carry-on for free. I have figured out how to get everything into a checked bag (an Eddie Bauer Drop-Bottom Rolling Duffel) and a carry-on suitcase.
Most of my fly gear goes into the duffel. It’s long enough for my 4-piece fly rod tubes and my net. If you insist on carrying your rod tube, it might pass as a personal item. Occasionally, if my duffel bag is pushing the airline weight limit (usually about 50 lbs.), I’ll put my wading boots in my carry-on.
Yes, my duffel bag cost me about $175. But eliminating the need to check 2 bags for a round trip saves me $50 a trip. My duffel bag has long since paid for itself. Of course, a cheaper large suitcase can work as long as your rod tube(s) fits into it—perhaps at an angle.
4. Eat strategically
Dave, my podcast partner, and I like to enjoy a good evening meal. It caps off our day of fly fishing and allows us to savor the experiences we had on the river even as we savor the food.
We don’t mind paying for an evening meal at a nice steakhouse because we cut corners the rest of the day. If we can handle the food at our hotel’s free continental breakfast, we eat it. If not, we find a reasonable café. Lunch is a cheap sandwich on the river or sometimes even protein bars.
5. Budget for the unexpected
Perhaps I should say budget for the “expected,” because you can always expect some unexpected expenses! We’ve had to replace damaged reels, leaky waders (which were beyond repair), and lost fly rods (don’t forget to check the roof of your vehicle before you leave the fishing access parking area!). We’ve even forgotten about national park entrance fees or the rising cost of a non-resident fishing license.
Trust me, you can count on losing, breaking, or forgetting something on your trip. So save a bit more than you think you will need.
6. Purchase fishing gear and flies strategically
There are no hard and fast rules here other than to shop with savvy. Do you need to replace your fly rod before your trip? That Orvis or Sage rod will typically be the same price at the fly shop in your town as it is in Bozeman, Montana. But there is no sales tax in Montana. Nor is there in Oregon. I typically need a new pair of wading boots every three years. Unless I find a great sale (and the boots that work best for me are never on sale!), I wait until I’m in Montana.
On the other hand, it may pay to stock up on flies before you arrive at your destination. If you tie, then that’s easy enough to do. If you don’t, then stock up on Parachute Adams, Prince Nymphs, and your other go-to flies from the cheapest place you can find. You always need a good supply of basic patterns.
Local fly shops definitely have the best intel for what to fish on the area rivers, and the hottest fly may be something you didn’t anticipate. Make sure you support the fly shops where you ask for advice.
Also, figure out where you are unwilling to cut corners. You get what you pay for. I’m willing to pay a bit more for the best quality wading boots and rods. But I’ll compensate by going for the mid-range waders, fly vests, and even reels. I’m fine with an off-brand fly fishing shirt. I think you get the idea.
It takes a bit of savvy, but you can make your next fly fishing trip to the western United States more affordable with a bit of thought and preparation. We will see in you Bozeman or Thermopolis or Estes Park!
Success on the river comes in part from knowing your river. There’s an intimacy that forms between the fisher and the river: You know the primary runs on the stretch you fish and the lies where the fish hang out and the time of year it fishes best. In this episode, we offer seven questions to give fly fishers a framework for a deeper knowledge of the rivers they fish.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What questions did we miss? What other categories should we have added to getting to know your river? Please post your comments below.
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We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
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To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Some of the most effective fly fishing techniques are so obvious that we overlook them.
Maybe we practice them instinctively. Or maybe we don’t. But if we thought about them a bit more, perhaps we would practice them more strategically.
One such practice (and there’s no need for a drum roll because this may seem patently obvious) is giving your fly rod a lift. There’s no mystery here. Just lift up the tip of your fly rod. Yes, that’s it!
It can make a big difference. Here are four reasons to give your rod a lift:
1. To pick up slack line on a close, short drift
On smaller streams, I frequently fish runs that are only three or four feet in front of me as I stand on the bank. These runs are typically short, so it’s easy to let out too much line when I make my cast.
Since the fly reaches the “hot zone” almost instantly, I need to retrieve slack immediately. Otherwise, I can miss a strike (too much slack to remove before the actual hook set happens) or risk drag (too much line on the surface for a swift current to pull). In either instance, a simple rod lift solves the potential problem.
2. To pick up my line at the end of a long drift
At the end of a long drift, a fly fisher needs to do one of two things.
Ideally, you will need to set the hook on the trout that has taken your fly on the swing at the end of the drift. Or, you will need to pick up the line to make another cast. In either scenario, you will have to reduce the surface tension. Otherwise, your hook set will be too slow or you will make a scene on the surface of the river.
The simple solution in each case is a quick, deliberate rod lift. Then continue your hook set or your back cast.
If you’re not sure why this is effective, give it a try the next time you’re nymph fishing and using a strike indicator. Let your nymph drift forty or fifty feet downstream from where you are standing. Then, give your rod tip a deliberate (but not violent!) lift. Make sure the lift is straight up and not to the side. You’ll be surprised to see your strike indicator shoot towards you!
It’s when you pull your rod to the side that surface tension messes with your hoot set or back cast.
3. To give your fly some movement during the drift
My podcast partner, Dave, and I watched our friend, Dave Kumlien out-fish us last fall on a beautiful tailwater creek in Montana. Our friend caught two or three fish to every one we caught. We were all using the same streamers. But it dawned on us later that he was lifting and lowering his rod tip to give his streamer a twitch and to make it move up and down in the current — even as he retrieved it.
This technique works well with nymphs, too. Lift and lower your rod during the drift, and you may be surprised at how it entices a trout to strike.
4. To keep you line from breaking when fighting a fish
When you are fighting a fish, you rely on both your reel and your rod to absorb the force created by the fish’s sudden lunge or race for cover. Too much force results in a snapped line.
This is where the drag on your reel comes into play.
When set properly, it provides some resistance – but not so much that the force of a running fish exceeds the strength of your line (or the knot which ties your tippet to your line or your fly to your tippet). Your rod can play an important role too. The lower your rod tip is to the surface, the more the pressure point on your rod moves from tip to butt.
When I’m trying to move a big fish, I lower my rod to a 40 or 45 degree angle (in relationship to surface of the water) so that the pressure goes to the mid-section. I also pull the rod to the side. But if the fish suddenly darts, I lift my rod tip. This moves the pressure point closer to the rod tip where there is greater flex. This means less force on my line However, you need to do this with caution. Lifting your rod tip too high (at a 90 degree angle to the surface) too quickly can result in a broken rod tip!
There are so many little things to remember during the cast, drift, retrieval, repeat cast, and (hopefully) fight with a fish. I know, it can seem maddening. But do your best to think about your rod tip. You may get better results if you give it a lift.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What have we missed? What other wading commandments need to be added to our list?
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Fly fishing brings me a lot of satisfaction. If it didn’t, I’d choose another pursuit.
Sure, there are moments of frustration. Certain days leave a bit to be desired. But all in all, I find fly fishing highly satisfying. This is significant, I think, because I’m an average fly fisher. Yes, even fly fishers with average skills can find great joy in the sport. So what makes for a highly satisfied fly fisher? There are five disciplines which come to mind.
1. Competence
Let’s face it. You need a modicum of skill. If you can’t cast, tie a couple basic knots, or “read” a river, you’re not going to have an enjoyable experience. But the good news is that you don’t have to become a pro in order to find fly fishing satisfying.
Tim Wu wrote a fantastic article for The New York Times titled “In Praise of Mediocrity.” He argues that we get too obsessed with our hobbies, striving for a level of excellence which creates anxiety rather than joy. I love his description of “the gentle pursuit of modest competence.”
It’s fun to get better. Read a fly fishing book or watch a series of fly casting videos. Learn the improved clinch knot (for tying flies to your tippet) and the infinity knot (for tying tippet to leader). Concentrate on improving your cast.
Just don’t overdo it.
2. Simplicity
This goes for everything from acquiring new gear to learning skills.
Fly fishing is a gadget-intensive hobby. In some respects, that is part of the fun. But an obsession with the latest pair of waders or the upgraded version of the fly rod you use can leave you frustrated. Greed never says, “Enough!” It always wants more.
The same is true of learning new skills. If you’re interested in Euro-nymphing or learning to tie flies, go for it! If you’re not, that’s fine, too. Focus on what interests you. If there are fifteen practices of highly successful fly fishers, you probably only need to master five of them. Don’t let fly fishing become too technical.
3. Friendship
I like solitude as much as the next lone fly fisher.
But I get so much satisfaction out of sharing experiences with my podcast partner (Dave), my brother (another Dave), and my sons (Ben, Luke), and other friends with whom I occasionally fly fish (Kevin, Bob, and yet an additional Dave). The laughter and comradery is priceless. I go home with a full heart every time I fly fish with one or more of these folks.
4. Adventure
I’m not talking about high-adrenaline experiences. Rather, I’m referring to trips or days on the water that require more than just a casual stroll to the river’s edge. It might be a six-hour float on a picturesque river. Or, perhaps it involves a strenuous hike into a remote stretch of river. It might even be fly fishing in grizzly bear country. All of these adventures will provide experiences or sights that you’ll savor for years to come.
5. Variety
Sameness is a leech which sucks the life out of you. Sure, it’s fun to go back to the same spot day after day—or week after week—if it’s productive. But variety really is the spice of the fly fishing life.
So vary the time of year you fish. Take a fall trip one year, and a spring trip the next. Try fishing nymphs or streamers as well as dry flies. Fish different kinds of water—from large freestone rivers to small spring creeks to high mountain lakes. If you mix it up a bit, you’ll have richer experiences.
Sure, catching fish is a big part of satisfaction. Yet each of these disciplines, in their own way, contributes to a full, rich experience on the river. They reflect what satisfied fly fishers do.
Have you ever had one of those days on the river that transported you to a different dimension? Not every day of fly fishing is a day of mystique, but through the years, we’ve had special moments that are burned into our memory. It’s not merely about catching lots of fish or hooking into a monster. In this episode, we attempt to describe the emotion or experience of mystique, that magical time when time is suspended and fly fishing becomes something more than fishing.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
We’d love to hear about a day of mystique on the river that you’ve had. Please post your comments below.
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
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You will also love the shampoo – and the beard oil!
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off your first order.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Christmas came early this year. Whether you’ve received fly-fishing-related gifts and stocking suffers (or not), you’ve been enjoying the real gift of fly fishing all year long. Or at least during the seasons of the year when you were able to fish.
The new reel or fly rod or gift certificate to your local fly shop is great. But the real gift is fly fishing itself. It’s an experience that gives you more than you might think. Sure, there’s the joy of hooking and catching a trout. But there’s more, and Charles Orvis recognized this in 1883 when he wrote:
More than half the intense enjoyment of fly fishing is derived from the beautiful surroundings, the satisfaction felt from being in the open air, the new lease of life thereby secured, and the many, many pleasant recollections of all one has seen, heard, and done.
Orvis identified at least three gifts in this statement. These gifts are still a huge part of fly fishing today.
1. Beautiful surroundings
It’s one thing to see a snow-covered mountain range from your car or from a scenic overlook along a highway. It’s an altogether different experience to see it when you’re standing in the current of a river. It’s the difference between being a spectator and a participant. It’s also the difference between a quick glance accompanied by a photo opportunity and the chance to linger in the moment for an hour or more.
Even when the scenery is not remarkable, the pasture-land or the trees along a river exude their own beauty. The water is stunning, too. Riffles, eddies, seams, and pocket water provide an endless source of fascination.
Weather adds a flourishing touch, sometimes transforming a tranquil scene into a wild or a haunting one.
Fly fishing bids its participants to slow down and soak in the magnificent grandeur or the gentle beauty in and around the river.
2. A new lease on life
A day on the river can also secure a new lease on life—or “of” life, as Orvis said. A few hours can bring clarity to a situation, insight into a challenge, or energy to face a problem.
If you fly fish, you know this from experience. That’s why fly fishing can be some of the best medicine for a weary or uptight soul.
3. Pleasant memories
Fly fishing gives birth to so many good memories—or pleasant recollections, as Orvis called them. Such memories lead us into peaceful sleep at night. They warm our hearts. They connect us with places and people long, long ago. They nurture a desire for what lies ahead.
I recall a warm summer evening on a little creek in the Black Hills of South Dakota. The year was 1978. My younger brother and I took turns casting the cheap fly rod we shared. Every cast resulted in a 10- or 12-inch brookie, rising to our size 14 Royal Coachman. As the sun began to set, I remember running back to our campsite in the Custer National Forest to report to our father what we had accomplished.
One of most striking memories from this past year is landing a brown trout in the Gardner River in Yellowstone National Park while a herd bull (elk) was bugling on a hillside about 200 yards above us. I’m sure I will remember this as vividly in 40 years (if I make it to 97!) as I do the memory in the Black Hills.
These are only three of fly fishing’s gifts. There are others. If you were able to enjoy fly fishing during the past year, then Christmas came early. It will next year, too, because fly fishing is a gift that keeps on giving.
A day on the river always comes with a series of decisions that can make or break your fly fishing day. In this episode, we identify a few of those and discuss how we go about moving from decision to decision. For example, one nagging question is, “How quickly should I move to something else if what I first put on isn’t working?” That’s only one of many small decisions that a fly fisher makes throughout the day.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What did we miss? What other decisions, small or large, do you make as you make your way through your fly fishing day?
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
Crisp IPA
Gold Moss
You will also love the shampoo – and the beard oil!
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off your first order.
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We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
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To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Fly fishing changes. The sport is different in 2018 than it was 135 years ago in 1883.
However, some bits of fly fishing wisdom from 1883 still hold true today.
Recently, I’ve been reading The Orvis Story by Paul Schullery (2006, The Orvis Company). The beginning of each chapter includes a quote from Charles Orvis, the founder of what is now The Orvis Company. These quotes appeared in a book that Charles co-edited with A. Nelson Cheney in 1883, Fishing with the Fly: Sketches by Lovers of the Art. Incidentally, I ordered a re-print from Amazon for less than twenty bucks.
Here are some of bits of wisdom from Charles Orvis in 1883. They still make sense today.
The Last Hour Before Dark
“Perhaps during the last hour before dark you may fill your basket, that has been nearly empty since noon. Don’t give up, as long as you can see—or even after—and you may when about to despair taking some fine large fish.”
Catch-and-release fishing was not yet in vogue when Orvis penned these words. But he’s right that the hour before dark—and even after—can be especially productive. It depends on the river, but I have some spots in Colorado and Wisconsin which I don’t bother fishing until dusk.
Wading with the Current
“It is easier to wade with the current.”
If you’re not convinced of this, try wading against the current! Wherever you’re headed, be it the opposite bank or a better approach to a promising run, let the current work for you.
Fishing with an Expert
“To one who has not acquired the art of fishing with a fly, let me suggest that a day or two with an expert will save much time and trouble. There are many little things that cannot well be described, and would take a long time to find out by experience, that can be learned very quickly when seen. It is not easy to tell one exactly how to fish with a fly.”
That quote is chock-full of wisdom!
Dave, my podcast partner, and I keep repeating this message. If you’re a new fly fisher, you need to fish with an expert. That may be a friend (free) or a guide (a bit more expensive!). But the dollars you spend on a guide for a day will be tremendous investment in your fly fishing future.
Enjoying Fly Fishing
“Unless one can enjoy himself fishing with the fly, even when his efforts are unrewarded, he loves much real pleasure.”
My wife and I both go to the gym regularly.
Okay, she’s more consistent than I am. But she enjoys it; I find it boring. This is how folks approach fly fishing. Some enjoy it; others do not. You can only grow to love fly fishing if you find joy in the art itself–even if your fly casting does not look particularly artistic! There’s something about the rhythm of the cast and about a well-executed cast, whether the trout takes your offering or not.
Patience and Perseverance
“In conclusion, be patient and persevering, move quietly, step lightly, keep as much out of sight of the fish as possible, and remember, trout are not feeding all the time.”
This is great advice. It’s as true in 2018 as it was in 1883. All the best to you, our listeners and readers, as you get ready for another great year of fly fishing!
The East Gallatin River would look like a piece of ribbon candy, if you viewed it from a drone. It’s a slow moving creek that for the most part runs through private property north of Bozeman, Montana. One fall day, Steve found himself in the middle of a BWO hatch. In this episode, Dave interviews Steve about one fine day of catching rolling rainbows rising to blue-winged olives on a rainy and occasionally snowy Montana September day.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Please tell us about one fine day you’ve had on the river. What made it special?
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
Crisp IPA
Gold Moss
You will also love the shampoo – and the beard oil!
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off your first order.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
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To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Cormac McCarthy’s novel, The Road, tells the poignant tale of a father and son traveling through the ravaged landscape of America. The novel does not fill in back story. Yet the gray snow and ever-present ash suggests the aftermath of nuclear war. The novel ends with these haunting words:
Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. . . . On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.
While this grim conclusion unsettles any reader, it particularly troubles fly fishers.
Imagine there are no longer brook trout in mountain streams!
These days, our greatest threat to trout and the waters they inhabit may not be nuclear war. Rather, it’s likely a hundred smaller threats belonging to categories like invasive species, disease, pesticides, predators, mishandling (by anglers), and development. As another year ends, we might ponder what we, as fly fishers, can do to protect the future of fly fishing.
Here are four small practices that can make a big difference:
1. Pack out trash
There’s simply no excuse for littering the banks of a river with beverage cans or candy wrappers. Yet I frequently find these items along the rivers or streams I fly fish. My sense is that most fly fishers are eco-friendly; yet there are always a few bad apples in the bunch. Blessed are those fly fishers who not only pack out their own trash but do the same with the garbage others leave behind.
2. Handle fish carefully
This amounts to a bunch of small but significant habits:
Land fish as quickly as possible
Use a net. If you want a photo
Keep your hands wet
Don’t squeeze the fish too hard
Stop fishing if the water temperature exceeds 68 degrees (or even well before).
I keep a thermometer in my fly fishing vest for the last habit.
3. Don’t spread aquatic invasive species
No one does this intentionally. At least I hope not. But we can unwittingly spread invasive species if we fail to clean waders, boots, and drift boats after use. So get the mud off! Rinse your boots and waders. Let gear dry. Switch from felt soles to rubber soles with some kind of metal studs or traction bars. All of this is especially critical when you’re moving from one river to another.
4. Donate to conservation efforts
Your local Trout Unlimited (TU) chapter is a great place to start. I’m also partial to The Missing Salmon Project of The Atlantic Salmon Trust. You can also donate your time as well as your money. Your local TU chapter may sponsor some cleanup days on a local river or some kind of restoration project.
We need a few thousand fly fishers pursuing these small practices. Then, hopefully, we will never have to utter words like “once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains.”
The best fly fishing advice often comes with a small dose of humiliation. Or at least with a palm to the forehead, “Duh!” That’s how we felt when a guide recently said to us, “Why are you trying to cast harder into the wind. It won’t improve your distance. Your mechanics need to be the same, wind or no wind.” Of course! That’s only one bit of advice that we’ve take to heart through the years. In this episode, we each offer up five pieces of “best advice” that we’ve received from listeners, guides, books, and mentors.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What is single best piece of fly fishing advice that you’ve received? We’d love to hear about it. Please post your comments below!
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
You will also love the shampoo – and the beard oil!
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off your first order.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Of all the pieces we’ve published, by far the most popular (per our tracking data) is “The 10 Commandments of Wading.” Based on your feedback, and on further reflection and on additional experiences, here are five more suggestions for safe wading. They may not be on the level of “commandments,” but they at least deserve consideration.
1. Use a second wading belt
This may seem like overkill, but it’s a wise strategy if you insist on wading in deep water.
Typically, a wading belt will go around your mid-section. The place to add a second belt is around your chest—that is, near the top of your waders. It can keep the top part of your waders from filling up, especially if they do not have some kind of a drawstring or mechanism to seal them around your chest.
2. Use a Personal Flotation Device (PFD)
Alright, this one might really strike you as extreme. But I can see the value in it if you need to wade in deeper water.
I remember floating the Wyoming Bighorn a few years ago and stopping to wade a few stretches. I was surprised how much deeper I could wade because the current was not as swift as, say, Montana’s Yellowstone River. Also, the river bed consisted of gravel instead of greased cannon balls (what I suspect lies on the bottom of the Yellowstone). But whenever I waded into deeper water, I noticed how the current gently drifted me into deeper water. I struggled to get momentum to back out of it or to turn around and walk towards the bank.
A PFD would have provided a great safeguard. I’m not suggesting that fly fishers need to take one along in most conditions. But if you insist on wading into deep water, a PFD might keep you from getting in over your head.
3. Wear Patagonia Foot Tractors
Full disclosure: I am not secretly sponsored by Patagonia!
I only mention this particular brand and model because I haven’t found any other wading boots (aside from those with felt soles) which provide such good traction. The aluminum bars in zig-zag fashion on the soles of these boots really do the job. Felt soles seem to be on the way out. They are now illegal in Yellowstone National Park, and I expect other watersheds or even states to follow suit.
4. Beware of Mud
I’ve had a few situations over the years where my feet have sunk a ways into the mud—both in the west (Montana’s East Gallatin River) and the Midwest (Canfield Creek in the Minnesota Driftless).
This fall, I was wading the inlet of Quake Lake (not far from West Yellowstone, Montana) when my boots started sinking into a sandbar. I was standing in knee-deep water at the time. I moved too quickly, and actually fell down. It was a bit tricky to stand back up with both feet being stuck.
It reminded me to test any suspicious looking spots before stepping into them. It’s quite a fight against suction to pull out your boots when they get stuck in the mud. Add a couple feet of water into the mix, and the situation can become downright dangerous.
5. Slow down
Per my previous point, the worst thing you can do when wading (or trying to stand up after you’ve fallen!) is to panic and hurry. I tend to hurry this most when I’ve crossed a difficult stretch and I’m nearing the bank. It’s tempting to run those last few feet. But a couple times, I’ve hurried too quickly and have slipped into the water. I have to remind myself to slow down. Slower is safer in most cases. It preserves your balance and helps you keep your legs together so that you’re providing only one pressure point – not two — for the current.
Admittedly, it’s a bit of a hassle to following some of these suggestions. But your life may depend on it. Whatever you can do to stay safe while you’re wading is more than worth the inconvenience.
Fly fishing burnout seems like a malady for someone with too much time on his or her hands. But there can be too much of a good thing. Some have taken time away from the sport, others have stopped fly fishing altogether. In this episode, we grapple with the topic and try to frame the issue into the larger context of our lives. We look forward to your reaction to the topic.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Have you ever experienced fly fishing burnout? Have you ever intentionally stepped away from the sport for a while?
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
You will also love the shampoo – and the beard oil!
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off your first order.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
New fly fishers have a long list of needs. They need to learn to tie knots. To improve their casting. Remember to mend their line. Figure out which fly to use. And to read water so they can cast their fly where the fish are feeding.
But there is something more basic to success:
The Secret of a New Fly Fisher’s Success
What new fly fishers need most is intel. That’s right. They need intelligence about where to fish and what to use. I know, you can’t catch a trout if you can’t cast a fly. True. But I’ve watched brand new fly fishers catch fish because someone told them where to go and what pattern to use.
Poor casting in the right place at the right time always beats great casting in the wrong place at the wrong time.
A Colorado Success Story
My belief that new fly fishers need intel more than anything else came from a text message I received this fall. My nephew, who lives in Colorado, had tried his hand at fly fishing a few times. But every time he returned home with zero success. Then, he asked a generous fly shop owner for an idea about where to fish. A day later, I received a text from my nephew describing a couple of big browns he caught. He had the photos to prove it. I realized that while he needs work on casting, mending, and streamside entomology, his greatest need is for intel. He needed to go where the fish were hanging out, and he needed to use the kind of patterns they were attacking.
Where to Get Intel
If you are a new fly fisher, where do you get good intel?
The key is to develop a relationship with a more experienced fly fisher. Often, the place to start is at a fly shop. The best time to ask where you might fish and what you might use is immediately after you have purchased half a dozen flies—or better yet, a new fly rod or waders.
Also, a good friend who is an experienced fly fisher is invaluable. Birds of a feather flock together. This means that if you’re interested enough in fly fishing, you’ll develop some friendships with others who like to fly fish. If these friends are better than you, don’t resent them. Take advantage of their expertise. Hopefully, your friendship adds value to their lives, too. If it does, they will be happy to share some intel which will put you into some good fishing.
Of course, you can always hire a guide. This is the ultimate way to get good intel because your guide will take you to a good stretch of water and then help you fish it effectively. Believe me, it’s worth the cost.
Intel as Preventative
Sometimes, intel works as a preventative measure.
Last fall, my podcast partner, Dave, and I planned to spend a couple of days on the Gardner River in Yellowstone National Park. We had visions of brown trout dancing in our heads as a result of the success we had the prior fall. When we stopped by Parks’ Fly Shop in Gardiner, Montana (yes, the river and the town are spelled differently due to a mistake) for some intel, Richard Parks told us that the fishing on the Gardner for fall runners was the worst it had been in 25 years!
That was not encouraging. But it forced us to come up with Plan B (the Yellowstone River), and we ended up doing quite well.
Sure, we would have figured out soon enough that the fishing on the Gardner was not great. Yet without the intel, we probably would have spent much more time trying to catch fish on a river that was not as full of fish as in prior years.
If you’re new to fly fishing, learn to cast, mend, read water, and identify the hatch. But there’s simply no substitute for good intel. Don’t leave home for the river without it.
Catch and release fly fishing has been around for more than a half century. In recent years, there has been a renewed push for fish survival with the Keep ‘Em Wet movement (#keepemwet), the idea being to make sure the fish stays wet the entire time it’s out of water. In this episode, we interview Dave Kumlien, fly fishing guide, former fly shop owner, and coordinator with Trout Unlimited, on what he calls the “angling interval.” The key to the trout surviving the catch-and-release interruption is reducing the time from when the fish is hooked to the time it is released.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
We’d love to hear you tips for protecting your fly rod. As well as your breakage stories. Please post your comments below.
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
You will also love the shampoo – and the beard oil!
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off your first order.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
It is Thanksgiving Day 2004. My son, Luke, and I rise before dawn to spend the morning hunting whitetail deer. Hunting deer or elk on Thanksgiving morning has been a family tradition as long as I can remember. Luke is eager to join me even though he is a year away from being old enough to buy a license and carry a rifle. My son, Ben, is in his senior year of high school and wants to sleep in a bit.
So Luke and I head for the Dry Creek area north of Belgrade, Montana. The Dry Creek Road transitions from pavement to gravel where the Gallatin Valley floor gives way to the foothills at the base of the Bridger Mountains.
We turn off onto a side gravel road and drive past a grain field which sits below the butte we want to hunt. I park my truck at the side of the road, and we close the doors quietly. Six years ago, my dad and I just missed getting off a shot at a big buck on the hill on the opposite side of the little creek we will need to cross. I tell Luke this story before we get out of the truck, urging him to be as quiet as possible. We cross a barbed-wire fence and prepare to sneak through the tall grass towards a plank that bridges the little creek. Six steps after we cross the fence, Luke whispers, “Dad, there’s a buck!” Sure enough, a 4×4 whitetail peers at us from across the creek, about ninety yards away.
We are five minutes into legal shooting light, so I aim, fire, and drop the buck in its tracks. This is the easiest deer hunt I have ever had! Luke helps me field dress the buck, and then we drag it to the truck, the length of a football field away. It is now 7:55 a.m. We arrive home fifteen minutes later and hang the buck in our garage. I prefer to let a deer hang for a day before skinning it.
By the time we finish this, it is only 8:30 a.m. An idea begins to take shape. It is a rather warm day. Already, the temperature has risen past forty degrees. We have four or five hours to kill before we gather with some friends for Thanksgiving dinner.
So, why not spend it fly fishing!
Nice Buck, Fat Rainbow
Ben is up by this time, and he joins Luke and me in search for our waders, fly fishing vests, and fly rods. By 9:30 a.m., we reach the Warm Springs parking area on the Madison River where it exits the Bear Trap Canyon. Predictably, no one is parked here today. We enjoy the warmth of the sun as we walk in the trail. There is a bit of wind, but the conditions are pleasant. So is the fishing.
It would be an exaggeration to say that we slaughtered the trout on this day, but in the next two hours at our favorite spot, affectionately known as “Rainbow Run,” we each land three trout. One of mine is a seventeen-inch rainbow, which I catch on a San Juan worm. This is the easiest fly in the world to tie.
You simply tie the middle of a piece of red chenille to the shank of the hook Then, you burn off each end with a lighter or a match to make the ends bead. It may be simple to tie, but it is effective.
The wind picks up about 11:30 a.m., so we begin the twenty minute hike to the parking lot, then make the forty minute drive home. By 12:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving day, I have accomplished something I have never done before. I’ve taken a nice whitetail buck and caught a seventeen-inch rainbow with my fly rod on the same morning.
It’s a Thanksgiving Day double! I don’t recall the Pilgrims doing anything like this on the morning before they sat down with members of the Wampanoag tribe at Plymouth Plantation to eat the first Thanksgiving Day meal.
If you spend enough time fly fishing, you’ll have days that humble you and some that elate you. You’ll even have some that are crazy enough to provide a deep sense of satisfaction.
Protecting your fly rod is as simple as obeying this rule: “Slow down!” We’ve lost rods, stepped on rods, and broke other fly fisher’s rods. In this episode, we step back to offer up some “Don’t be like us” tips – to help you protect your investment. Just a modicum of thought goes a long ways towards keeping your fly rod safe.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
We’d love to hear you tips for protecting your fly rod. As well as your breakage stories. Please post your comments below.
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
You will also love the shampoo – and the beard oil!
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off your first order.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
If you want to be a great fly fisher, it’s going to take some time — perhaps time you can’t afford to spend. Recently, I saw a blog post claiming it takes a minimum of 50 days a year on the water to be a great fly fisher. 100 days is ‘way better,’ and 200 days is “better yet.” According to the post, if you spend only ten days on the water per year, you can only be an “adequate angler.”
I don’t dispute this. Yet, I’d argue that you can be a good fly fisher if the 10 days you spend on the water are well-spent. Not every day on the river is created equal.
Practice makes permanent
There’s an old adage that piano teachers and basketball coaches and, perhaps, fly fishing instructors quote: “Practice makes perfect.”
Well, not necessarily. The truth is, practice makes permanent. It takes practice to get better. But if your next practice is not better than the last one, then you are only reinforcing bad habits. This is the reason why a couple days on the water with a professional guide or with a fly fishing friend who is better than you will be more productive than ten days on your own — at least when it comes to the rudiments of fly casting and reading water.
Substitute for time on the water
Another comment I frequently read in fly fishing blogs is that there is no substitute for time on the water.
Actually, there is — provided that it takes place between the times you spend on the water. I realize that casting in your backyard is not quite the same as casting into a river. But I’ve seen newbies learn casting basics in their back yard and then translate those same basics into good casts on the river.
Between trips to the river
So then, if you can only fly fish 10 to 15 days per year, the key to improvement is what you do between trips to the river.
In addition to practice your casting, you can watch videos and read fly fishing books. Taking a fly tying class at your local fly shop will boost your skills as well. Even if you never tied a fly once you completed a class, your knowledge of streamside entomology (what bugs are hatching in what stages) will help you the next time you cast your fly upon the water.
Another difference maker
There is an additional difference maker that factors into whether you move from adequate to good to great.
It’s your natural aptitude and your athletic ability.
Perhaps “athletic ability” isn’t quite the right descriptor. But some people just have the fly fishing gene. I think of a guy who fishes fewer days than I do per year. He has not read nearly as much as I have about fly fishing; nor has he ever taken a fly tying class. Yet this guy is a natural fly fisher and can outfish me any day of the week.
Here, then, is the takeaway. You can be a good fly fisher if you make the most of the 10-15 days you spend on the water and if you use the time between them strategically.
I honestly don’t know if I’m an “adequate” or “good” fly fisher. I definitely know I’m not great. But as one who spends 15 days or less on the water a year, I get better every year, and I catch a lot of fish when the conditions are right. At the end of the day, that’s all that matters.
Quake Lake was formed in 1959 when an earthquake triggered the collapse of a side of a mountain. The mountain fell into the Madison River, creating a natural dam. This fall, we fished Quake Lake near West Yellowstone, both for the first time. In this episode, we reflect on the experience, describing the emotion of fishing this haunting lake. It wasn’t one of the best days of fishing we’ve ever had but one of the most memorable.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Where do you draw the line in your pursuit of fly fishing or any other hobby? What’s “good enough”? Please post your comments below.
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
You will also love the shampoo – and the beard oil!
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off your first order.
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I have a novel proposal for fly fishers who are not catching fish. It may seem a bit extreme. But hey, if you’re not catching fish, you’ll try anything, right?
If you think you have the right fly size and pattern, if you mend your line to reduce the drag on your fly, if your casts don’t send fish fleeing for cover, and if you’re getting your nymphs deep enough, then here is my suggestion:
Step away from the river.
That’s right, stay out of it. Stop wading.
What Fly Fishers Do
I told you my suggestion sounded a bit extreme.
Wading in the river is what fly fishers do. That’s what a friend figured the other day when he heard I was a fly fisher. He is not. But he was interested and said, “Oh, is that the kind of fishing where you stand in the water?”
Yes, I suppose that’s our mental image of fly fishing. And yes, I will admit there’s something enchanting about standing in a river as you cast—especially on a late fall morning when the snow is softly falling or at dusk on a warm summer day.
But I’m more and more convinced that fly fishers who are not catching fish should stop wading. It’s not a punishment! Nor is it always and forever. But fishing from the river’s edge should be your default mode; wading is the exception. There are at least two reasons why.
Fishing near the bank
First, follow the lead of the fly fishers in drift boats. They typically cast to the banks. That’s where the trout are lurking. Sure, there may be some runs on the other side of the stream or perhaps fifteen feet away from the bank. But a lot of feeding lanes crowd the bank.
If you must wade, find an entry point between runs and walk out far enough so you can cast back toward the bank.
Whenever I hike up the Yellowstone near Tower Fall in Yellowstone National Park, I leave my waders in the truck. I’m not a fan of hiking 3-4 miles up the river in waders before I start fishing. Surprisingly, there are few places where not having waders puts me at a disadvantage.
Honing your observation skills
The second reason is related to the first. If you commit to fishing from the bank (at least for awhile), you will likely pay more attention to what is happening near the river’s edge.
I remember a time on Montana’s Madison River when I was getting ready to wade out to a run about 20 yards from the bank. Seconds before I stepped into the water, I saw two trout rise five feet in front of me. If I had not seen them, I would have sent them racing for cover when I walked through the little run where they were feeding.
Have I over-stated my point? Perhaps. But with so many prime places for trout to feed along the bank, it’s worth fishing that area before you think about setting foot in the water.
So, when all else fails, step away from the river.
Is fly fishing truly a hobby for you? We recently read a New York Times column called “In Praise of Mediocrity,” which ripped on America’s fascination with turning every hobby into a “pursuit of excellence.” We fish less than 25 days a year; we’re not professionals. So how good should an amateur get? How should we think about our sport if casting 100 feet in 20 per hour wind is an unreachable feat. What is good enough for the time we’re able to invest in the sport? This is another fun episode in which we explore the edges of what makes our sport so enjoyable.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Where do you draw the line in your pursuit of fly fishing or any other hobby? What’s “good enough”? Please post your comments below.
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
You will also love the shampoo – and the beard oil!
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off your first order.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I love fly fishing with streamers. I suppose it reminds me of those days long, long ago when I fished Mepps spinners with an ultralight spincast rod and reel. Streamers also catch large trout — especially in the fall when brown trout are on the move. Mainly, though, I love the shock of a trout attacking the streamer as I retrieve it.
If you’re new to fly fishing (or fly fishing with streamers), the good news is that there are a few basic patterns which work consistently — from season to season and year to year.
Here are my top five favorites.
Woolly Bugger
The Woolly Bugger is the poster-child of streamers. I’ll bet I fish with one 85% of the time I fish with streamers.
The construction of this “fly” (if you can call it that) is simple. It’s basically a chenille body – with hackle wrapped through it — followed by a maribou tail. This pattern looks lively as it darts through the water.
I prefer garden variety colors—black, brown, and olive. The color combinations are endless, though.
For example, I tie my olive Woolly Buggers with black hackle and sometimes with black maribou. I’ve even used red chenille with sparkles along with black hackle and then black maribou with a couple strands of red crystal flash.
Fly fishers often refer to patterns like this as Crystal Buggers.
My preference for size is anywhere from 6 to 10, and I rarely fish a Woolly Bugger without a beadhead or conehead. Weight is important.
You can find more information on Woolly Buggers here: Know Your Pattern.
JJ Special
Technically, a JJ Special is a Woolly Bugger with a bit different color scheme.
But the pattern is so popular and unique that it deserves (in my opinion) its own entry. The JJ Special features a brown (chenille) body with gray hackle and yellow rubber legs. Then, the tail is brown over yellow maribou.
The brown and yellow color scheme makes the fly resemble (you guessed it) a young brown trout. This has been a go-to pattern for me when I’m fishing browns in the fall. Also, I am partial to the conehead version of this fly — although a beadhead will work just as well.
Muddler Minnow
To be honest, I rarely fish with Muddler Minnows. It’s not that they don’t work. They really do. It’s just that I do so well with Woolly Buggers and can tie them rather easily.
A Muddler Minnow imitates a minnow (surprise!) or a sculpin. Or, if you skim it on the surface of the water, it can imitate a floundering moth or mouse.
The head consists of spun deer hair. Some fly tyers enjoy the artistry of spinning hair. Others, like me, find it time consuming compared to slipping a conehead or a bead onto the hook! The other prominent feature is a wing and an underwing.
Zonker
This is another pattern I rarely use since a Woolly Bugger works so well. But the Zonker is a classic. It can be terrific on big rivers because it is a super-sized meal for large trout. A long strip of rabbit fur with the hide attached gives this fly its heft.
Dolly Llama
I don’t always fish with something the size of a 1957 Chevy Wagon. But when I do, I opt for the Dolly Llama (aka Dali Lama, aka Dalai Lama).
Like a Zonker, it uses a strip of rabbit fur attached to the hide. But this fly is long because it includes a second hook which is connected by wire to the first hook, trailing behind a couple inches.
This fly worked superbly a few years ago when I fished Alaska’s Clear Creek a few hundred yards upstream from where it emptied into the Talkeetnah River. I caught several 19-20 inch rainbows on a white Dolly Llama. To be honest, I haven’t used it in the big rivers in Montana (that’s why Woolly Buggers exist), but my friends in the Pacific Northwest like the Dolly Llama for steelhead.
You can’t go wrong with any of these patterns. Learn to fish them effectively and you’re bound to have a blast.
And if you haven’t yet listened to our episode with Dave Kumlien, fly fishing guide and streamer fisher extraordinaire, you can do so here: Catching More and Bigger Fish with Streamers.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What have we missed? What other “dont’s” should be on this list?
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
You will also love the shampoo – and the beard oil!
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off your first order.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
If you want to catch trout, you need to know the truth about trout lies. I’m referring to the places where trout lie — as in “hang out and spend their time.”
Gary Borger is the expert on this. In his book, Reading Waters, he defines a lie as the “place that the fish holds in the current.” Then, he identifies three basic categories of trout lies. Fly fishers who understand these will know where to look to find trout:
The Sheltering Lie
Trout need protection from predators.
According to Borger, these “sheltering lies” exist under something. This might be a place under the bank, under a rock, under a log, under deep water, or under vegetation. Typically, fish do not eat when they are in these places. Borger says they zip their mouths shut and hunker down until they feel it is safe to go out again.
The Feeding Lie
Trout, of course, need to eat.
They need protection from the currents in the river, yet they need those currents to bring food. So they will often lie in slower current, right at the edge of faster moving current. We refer to this spot as a “seam.” Borger notes that the slow current behind a rock or another obstruction is a great place for trout to feed.
One of the easiest ways to spot a feeding lie is to look for the line of bubbles which meander down the current.
This is the food line! It’s where insects drift through the current.
The Prime Lie
Fly fishers hit the jackpot whenever they fine a prime lie.
According to Borger, this is both a sheltering lie and a feeding lie rolled into one.
A classic example is an undercut bank. The bank itself provides protection from birds of prey. Yet, the current brings the food close to the bank. That’s why trout will dart out from under a bank to take your hopper pattern or even a tiny dry fly. Sometimes, you’ll find a prime lie in a deeper pool or in water under a foam patch. The key is to look for places which provide both cover and food.
Good fly fishers shouldn’t tell lies. But they should be able to spot them.
At the request of our listeners, we’ve now published an episode on euro nymphing. Our take is a bit different. Instead of interviewing an expert, Steve interviewed someone who is clearly a non-expert – Dave. In the last six months, Dave picked up euro nymphing on his own, watching videos, reading books, and fumbling with learning a new technique. In this episode, Dave tells his story of starting the journey to learn the basics of euro nymphing. It’s not pretty. But this interview may inspire you to pick up the technique.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Have you tried learning the basics of euro nymphing? Any advice for Dave? Have you purchased a longer rod? How long did it take to catch fish? What type of streams do you euro nymph?
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
You will also love the shampoo – and the beard oil!
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off your first order.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
My nephew texted me a few days ago to ask me about winter fly fishing. He said, “I’m not sure I want to wait until spring to fish!” The same day, I saw on Facebook that a guide-friend from New York state thanked his clients and fellow fishing guides for a spectacular season.
It reminded me that the fly fishing off-season is here — or almost here. I consider the off-season November through February. If you’re a fly fisher, what can you do to survive it?
1. Go fishing
Personally, I’m not a big fan of winter fly fishing.
One year when I lived in Montana, I caught trout on a fly rod every month. But after doing it to say that I did it, I rarely made it to the river in December and January.
Other than Midges, the hatches are minimal. Plus the temperatures are frigid most days.
Still, if you’re patient and content to catch fewer fish, you can do well in the winter on nymphs and even on the surface with Midge patterns (yes, a size #20 Parachute Adams will work). My podcast partner, Dave, and I had a fantastic February day last year on the Blue River (really, a small creek) in Wisconsin. The temperatures were in the high 50s, and the browns were hitting our nymphs.
If you live near brown trout fisheries, play close attention to when these waters close for the year.
For example, the fishing season in Yellowstone National Park runs through the first Sunday in November. If I still lived in Montana, I’d take a break from elk and deer hunting to make one last trip to fish the Gardner River for the “runners” that are heading to their spawning beds.
2. Reflect a bit
I’m convinced we (fly fishers) need to get better at this. We need to savor the moments we’ve had over our past year of fly fishing.
So go back through your photos to re-live your best fly fishing memories. Review your journal if you keep one. If you don’t keep a journal, grab a sheet of paper (or open a file on your word processor) and write down your top ten favorite memories from the past season.
The tendency to rush from one run on the river to the next one can carry over into rushing from one season to another.
Stopping to reflect a bit on the past year of fly fishing can provide a lot of satisfaction. It will also create anticipation for next season.
3. Get ready
Use the time from November through February to do what you can never find time to do during the prime months of fly fishing (March through October).
Tie some flies. Watch some You Tube videos on fly casting. Read The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists (couldn’t resist). Go through your gear and take inventory. Re-organize your fly box. If you’re planning on purchasing a new rod or waders or whatever, the off season is a time to do some research—whether online or in your local fly shop.
It’s almost November, but March is coming! We will all survive the off-season (I think).
Bigger fish on streamers is common promise. Often you hear, “If you want to catch bigger fish, throw on a streamer. Yet fly fishing with streamers is not popular among many fly fishers. In this episode, we interview Dave Kumlien, who has been a fly fishing guide for forty years, owned a successful fly shop in Bozeman, and now works for Trout Unlimited. One key part of this episode is what Dave Kumlien calls the “twitch” – a technique for stripping in the streamer. For more information on the twitch, see the link below to an article by Tom Morgan on the twitch technique. Catching bigger fish with streamers is not just a promise; it’s a fact.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Do you fish streamers? What’s the biggest fish you’ve caught with a streamer? Have you found that you catch bigger fish with streamers? Please post your comments below.
In the podcast, we reference something called The Morgan Twitch. Here is the article by the legendary Tom Morgan, who at one time owned R.L. Winston, the fly rod company, and also co-founded Tom Morgan Rodsmiths. Tom has passed away, but his legacy lives on in his fly rods and in his contribution to the larger fly fishing community.
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
You will also love the shampoo – and the beard oil!
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off your first order.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
When my son, Luke, played tight end for the University of North Dakota Fighting Hawks, he played football on two kinds of surfaces. All his home games took place on artificial turf in an indoor stadium. He even played on red turf at Eastern Washington University on a field dubbed “the Inferno.” But when he traveled to the University of Northern Colorado, the game took place on a natural grass field.
These two different kinds of surfaces — artificial turf and natural grass – required different kinds of cleats and different approaches.
This is true of the rivers you fly fish as well. While every place you fish is unique, you can group rivers into one of three kinds of rivers. The better you understand the characteristics of each type, the better you can make adjustments and set yourself up for success.
1. Freestone Rivers
Surface waters provide the main source of water for freestone rivers and streams.
This means rainfall and snow runoff.
Not surprisingly, then, freestone rivers rise and fall with the conditions. They can flood easily. When the spring temperatures warm and the snow melts, freestone rivers swell with water. This heavy water churns through the river or stream bed, displacing stones—hence the name “freestone.”
All this has a definite effect on fly fishing.
Of the three kinds of rivers, freestone streams may be the most volatile. Anglers must re-learn familiar stretches of river from year to year. A flood may scour out a larger undercut bank where large trout lie in wait for food. Alternatively, the same flood may deposit silt in a productive channel or run so that trout abandon it as a feeding lie.
Conditions can change rapidly, too.
I’ve had good fly fishing on Montana’s Yellowstone River one day, only to find it swollen the next day. In dry years, water levels drop, and water temperatures rise. This means staying off rivers when water temperatures creep into the high 60s. Fighting fish in such warm conditions endangers their lives.
One year, my podcast partner and I fished a creek that Dave and his brother had fished a couple years earlier with great success using hoppers. The stream is a smaller creek that flows into the Gallatin River. But the year Dave and I fished it, we could hardly find a run that was deep enough to fish. There was little snowfall the winter prior, and the creek was so low that the fish were bunched up in small pockets of water.
2. Spring Creeks
Since their main source of water is underground, spring creeks are more uniform in water level and temperature throughout the year. They typically flow through mineral-rich soil. This translates to significant aquatic plant growth which translates to an abundance of aquatic life (insects, scuds, crayfish, leeches, worms, etc.) which translates to a healthy fish population — both in terms of numbers and size.
The spring creeks I fish in the West and in the Midwest tend to have more silty areas than rocky areas. This makes for easier wading.
Spring creeks typically run crystal clear, so trout have the advantage.
When I used to fish Nelson’s Spring Creek south of Livingston, Montana, I found the trout to be more selective than spooky. These clear spring creeks have a few riffles, yet the runs tend to be gentle with slower current. Trout get a clear, long look at what you offer them. So fly size and tippet size matters.
In recent years, Dave, my podcast partner and I, have fished more spring creeks than freestones, given that we both now live in the Midwest. I’ve come to appreciate the more technical chops needed to catch fish in a spring creek.
3. Tailwaters
A tailwater is essentially the river or creek that flows out of a reservoir or lake created by a dam. These, these fisheries resemble spring creeks with their even flow. Because water is often released at the bottom of a dam where it is cooler and where the sediment is rich with nutrients, tailwaters can produce some large fish.
Tailwaters are often a bit off-color, so the fish tend to be less spooky.
I have been able to sneak up a lot closer to feeding fish in the Owyhee River in eastern Oregon — a fine tailwater full of brown trout—because it is slightly off color on most days. Like spring creeks, tailwaters resist the volatile swings that weather conditions create on freestone rivers. Conditions are more likely to change from of a discharge from a dam than from a snow runoff or a heavy rainfall.
So the next time you head to the river, identify its type. A little bit of understanding can go a long way towards success. All three kinds of rivers have their challenges, but all three are fun to fly fish.
When starting out in the sport, most fly fishers struggle to build skills in all the areas required for success: casting, reading waters, grasping a cursory understanding of entomology, and simply identifying places to fish. It’s a fire hose of information, knowledge, and skill. In this episode, we focus on a different set of problems – when you’ve plateaued. That is, you may be bored with your level of proficiency or you’ve simply stopped getting better. You’ve stopped making progress. This episode is for those who want to grow. We identify some ways to get off the plateau – and to fall in love again with the sport.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What kind of plateaus have you experienced? What did you do to begin a new growth curve or get better at the sport? Please post your comments below.
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
You will also love the shampoo – and the beard oil!
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off your first order.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I recently fulfilled a long-time dream. I fished Quake Lake near Yellowstone National Park. A 1959 earthquake split off a chunk of mountain, and the 80-million ton landslide into Montana’s Madison River created a natural dam. The lake behind it, which backs up almost to Hebgen Lake, stretches 6 miles long and reaches depths of 190 feet. Fishing Quake Lake is something I can now check off my bucket list.
For years, I’ve heard about some of the large trout that lurk in Quake Lake. Finally, on a recent mid-September morning, my podcast partner, Dave, and I got our opportunity to fish its upper reaches. Here are a few takeaways — reminders or lessons — from that memorable day.
1. The early bird gets the worm
That is, the early bird gets the worthwhile spot.
We hired a guide to take us to a productive area near Quake Lake’s inlet. Shortly after dawn, we boarded a drift boat equipped with small trolling motor. We arrived first, so we had our pick of spots. Later in the morning, we could see a half dozen other drift boats in the surrounding waters.
It reminded me how important it is to arrive early if you want your choice of places to fish.
2. There is a haunting beauty unique to each fishery.
Perhaps the final line in Norman Maclean’s novella, A River Runs Through It, suffers from overuse.
But it’s true: “I am haunted by waters.”
Each river or lake has its own mystique. It’s hard to describe the eerie beauty of Quake Lake at dawn, with patches of fog on the water, clouds of Midges and Tricos fluttering in the air, and the ghost-like remains of tall trees poking up through the water’s surface.
3. It’s pure joy when you catch a trout you’ve hunted
The first fish I caught in the morning was a 17-inch rainbow. I saw it feeding while we were hunting for larger fish in a couple of feeding lanes. I tossed a size #20 Midge pattern a few yards above it and let the current take it above the trout’s nose. I expected the strike and set the hook at the right time.
Yet it still startled me.
This sensation is why I love dry fly fishing.
4. Soft landings work best
Lest my previous point give the impression that I’m a master fly fisher, I will quickly confess that I missed my share of fish on Quake Lake that day. I missed some strikes, made a few errant casts, and spooked a couple of fish when my casts thumped the surface of the water.
I had to remind myself to pull up my rod tip slightly on my forward cast to stop the forward thrust of the line. This makes the line go limp and then fall gently to the surface.
5. Sometimes it’s not your fault if you’re not catching fish
We caught some beauties during our day on Quake Lake — both on dry flies and later on nymphs. But it was a fairly average day of fly fishing.
At times I wondered how many more fish I would have caught if I was a better fly fisher.
At one point, one of us asked our guide: “What are we doing wrong?”
Our guide, who freely speaks his mind and offers blunt criticism when appropriate, replied: “Nothing. Sometimes it’s not your fault if you’re not catching fish.”
He explained that he has fished Quake Lake enough to know the difference between a day when the trout are feeding sporadically and they are in a feeding frenzy.
Our day was the former type. That’s simply how fly fishing works—or doesn’t work. We had a satisfying day, and between sporadic success and the mystique of Quake Lake, it’s a day that I’ll remember for a long time.
The fly fishing universe is filled with mysteries. One deep, unsolvable mystery is how few calories a day of fishing burns relative to the large amount of calories consumed at the Supper Club or steak house later in the day. The mysteries are dense. Virtually impenetrable. But in this episode, we peer behind the curtain, identify a handful of new mysteries, and attempt to solve the unsolvable.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Surely you’ve come across some fly fishing or outdoors mysteries. Please post your new mysteries below!
We love Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
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To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
You never know what you will see during a fall day in Yellowstone. Here are 9 sights from a memorable day of fishing in Yellowstone National Park:
1. A bull elk bugling at Mammoth
Even though this huge herd bull and his harem were occupying a manicured Park Service lawn, his raspy bugle reminded me of the days when my dad and I hunted elk during archery season about 35 miles north of Yellowstone National Park.
An elk’s bugle is one of the most stunning sounds in nature.
2. A tourist trying to coax a deer to eat an apple
No kidding. A tourist with a camera in one hand and an apple in the other outstretched hand had a mule deer doe within twenty yards. Apparently, the font size on the “Don’t feed the wildlife” sign at the park entrance wasn’t large enough for this tourist to see.
3. A grizzly track on the bank of the Yellowstone River
I felt a chill go down my spine when I spotted this track right along the river. At this point, my fishing partner and I were on a remote stretch of the Yellowstone about 3.5 miles from our trailhead. We both checked the position of our bear spray canisters on our belts.
4. Healthy cutthroat trout
We both caught some fat, colorful Yellowstone Cutthroat trout. They were all 14-17 inches with football-shaped bodies. I caught them on hoppers, terrestrials, and streamers. The fishing was solid. We each landed 8-10 cutts.
I’ve had days where I’ve caught more on this stretch of river. But it was still a satisfying day.
5. My fishing partner sliding off of a rock into the river
Since we had such a long hike (see below), we decided not to wear waders. We opted for hiking books and nylon pants. We knew from prior trips that wading the stretch of river we planned to fish was not essential.
At one point, though, my fishing partner was crouched on a rock fighting a fish when his feet slipped and he slide into the water. He got wet but was never in danger.
I may or may not have laughed.
Also, I will not confirm whether or not this fly fisher was my podcast partner, Dave.
6. A bull bison blocking our trail on the way out
On our return, we climbed to the top of a small plateau and instantly spotted a brown animal on the trail in front of us.
My first thought was “Grizzly!”
As I reached for my canister of bear spray, I realized a bull bison was lying down on the game grail in front of us. We made a wide circle and left the bull undisturbed. He stood up to face us and confirm we were leaving.
But he didn’t make any hostile advances (unlike the bull bison we encountered a few years before on the same trail).
7. My Fitbit watch showing 22,324 steps
At the end of the day, I felt like I had hiked 8 miles. But my Fitbit showed 22,324 steps and calculated the distance as 10.4 miles.
My response was “10-4, good buddy!”
8. An elderly couple struggling to stand on a retaining wall above Tower Fall
I saw this right after leaving the Tower Fall parking area. Their view was stunning. But so was the drop-off below them. I shuddered when I thought about how many people in Yellowstone have fallen to their deaths.
9. A wrecker pulling a jeep up a steep bank
The final “sight” which impressed me was a wrecker pulling a Jeep Wrangler up a bank. The driver had obviously driven off the road—whether by swerving or simply veering off the edge where there was no shoulder. Thankfully, the bank was not steep or the driver would not have survived.
So what should I make of what I saw?
I’m not sure I learned anything new. Still, what I saw on that fine fall day reinforced some long-held convictions:
The sights and sounds of a fall day Yellowstone are stunning. Aspen leaves burst with color, and the bugles of herd bulls and satellite bulls pierce the morning air. It’s hard to beat mid-September.
It is wise to carry bear spray.
It’s better to share the experience with a friend than to be alone — especially when your friend provides a bit of entertainment.
Fall tourists are no smarter than summer tourists.
There is a new vista and a new danger around every bend in the road or trail.
Mid-September is simply an awesome time for a fall day in Yellowstone.
Planning a memorable fly fishing trip is pretty easy if you do a few things right. There are factors that you can control, of course, and then there is the weather – and whether the fish are in the mood. In this episode, we lift the veil on our do-it-yourself fishing trips. Which is probably not saying much. However, we have a lot of trips under our proverbial wading belt. All trips are memorable, we suppose, but some trips stick in our minds because we figured out how to catch fish while enjoying every day on the trip and keeping costs to a minimum.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What are your best practices for designing a successful fly fishing trip? We want to know! What works? What doesn’t? Please post your comments below.
We are big fans of Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Midges account for about half of a trout’s diet. Plus, they are about the only hatching insect available to trout during the winter. So here are five facts about midges that you need to know if you are going to fish midge patterns effectively.
1. Midges in rivers and streams are tiny.
According to fly fishing author Dave Hughes, the average size for midges in moving water is around size 20.
A size 16 is a big one, and some midges get as small as 24 or 26. This is why I typically stick with midge patterns in the size 18-20 range for nymphs and in the size 20 range for dry flies.
2. Midges have up to five generations per year.
This means you can fish midge patterns all year.
Fly fishing expert Jim Schollmeyer claims that trout often feed selectively on midge larvae in heavily fished streams even when other insects are hatching. However, trout feed most heavily on midges from late fall to early spring when there are few other insect hatches. This explains why you must fish midges if you’re on the western rivers in February.
3. Trout eat midge larvae constantly
Trout are more selective when feeding on midges in their pupal and adult stages. Yet they constantly feed on midge larvae in moving water. That’s why I always have a handful of beadhead Brassie or Zebra midge patterns (both nymphs) in my fly box.
4. Midges cluster on the surface
Mating midges will form clusters on the surface of the water as groups of males gather around single females.
In my experience on Montana rivers, this happens especially during late winter and early spring. What dry fly patterns work best?
A Griffiths Knat is a great pattern to imitate clusters of midges, although I’ve used a Parachute Adams with success on Montana’s Lower Madison during the winter.
5. Spent midges end up in slow water
Have you ever noticed trout sipping on tiny black dead bugs in a pool or eddy (slower water behind an obstruction) at the river’s edge? These trout are feeding on spent females that have laid their eggs and have been swept downstream.
Some anglers like a CDC Biot Midge, although a Renegade or Parachute Adams usually works for me.
It seems like Mayflies and Caddisflies get all the press. But don’t head for the river without some tiny midge patterns — especially if you fly fish during the winter.
Fly box chaos is real. You start out nice and organized, with pretty little rows, and then the Law of Entropy kicks in. Next thing you know, your fly box looks like a tossed salad. In this episode, we interview Peter Stitcher, with Ascent Fly Fishing. Peter has come up with a simple but biologically organized method for making sense of your fly box. Peter is a legit biologist, and his solution is briliant. By the way, Peter has given our listeners a discount on his “Creating Order in Your Fly Box” film to help you implement his approach. Scroll down to get your promo code.
By the way, we (Steve and Dave) receive no financial benefit from your purchase of Peter’s film in any way. This is simply Peter’s gift to you.
GREAT STUFF FROM OUR LISTENERS
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Does Peter’s method make sense? How do you simplify your fly box? How many flies do you carry out on the river? What is your biggest frustration with managing your flies?
We are big fans of Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I am currently in preparation mode for a fly fishing trip. Dave, my podcast partner, and I are leaving in a few days for the West. Last week, I shared some tips for planning a fly fishing trip to a specific region—the area in and around Yellowstone National Park. In this post, I want to zero in on what I do to get ready for a trip two weeks in advance, what to do before your fly fishing trip.
This is about preparation, not planning. Here are three simple ways I prepare:
1. I ramp up my workouts
I usually make it to a local workout facility about three times a week.
But when I’m two weeks away from a trip, I ramp up both the frequency and the intensity of my workouts. I take some longer walks on days when I’m not doing my lifting and elliptical regimen.
Yesterday was too nice to work out inside, so I rode my mountain bike on the Des Plaines River trail and stopped to run up a long sledding hill a couple times. On my way back, I paused to look at the muddy Des Plaines River and reflect on how I’ll see clear water in a few days! I make sure, of course, not to overdo it. I intentionally do not work out on the two days before I leave for a trip.
We have a hard hike planned for day one of our trip, so I want to give my body time to rest and recover from my intense workouts.
2. I read some “pump up” material
When my son played college football, he had his air buds in several hours before a game to get pumped up and ready to hit the field.
Honestly, I haven’t found any tunes that seem to fit a fly fishing trip. Suggestions, anyone?
Maybe John Denver’s American Child would work if I was “going up to Alaska” to fly fish. But it seems like overkill to jam to Taio Cruz’s Dynamite or one of U2’s more raucous hits.
So I read a good fly fishing book. It may not make the adrenalin run, but it does stir my sense of anticipation. Since I’m headed to the West, I’ve been re-reading Yellowstone Runners by Chester Allen—a memoir about three weeks of fishing the wild trout that migrate from Hebgen Lake into the Madison River.
Of course, any good fly fishing book will do.
3. I take inventory of my gear
This seems obvious. But if I start doing this two weeks in advance rather than the night before, I end up being a lot more prepared.
My fly boxes need re-organizing, and I need to figure out if I have enough tippet material, dry fly dressing, and first aid kit ingredients. I make sure my rods are and reels are ready to go. I also set aside some of the little items that can easily be left behind — neck gaiter, thermometer, headlamp, and plastic bags (for wallets and keys on days I wet wade).
Then I remember to look for my favorite hat and favorite fly fishing shirt. How can I expect to enjoy the trip if I forget them?!
T-minus two weeks. What will you do to get ready for your next trip?
What fishing does for our day job is more than just relieve stress. That’s important, of course. But fly fishing is about something bigger, or maybe deeper. While both of us would love to fish more days each year, we certainly don’t wish we could fly fish full-time as professionals (and certainly not possible, given our chops!). We like our day jobs. In this episode, we explore the edges of what keeps us focused on our work and how fishing rounds out a full life.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
How you think about fly fishing and your day job? How does fly fishing fit with the whole of life? If you could fish more days a year, how many more would you fish?
We are big fans of Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Fly fishing trips to the Greater Yellowstone area in Montana or Wyoming are not cheap. I’ve made not a few fly fishing trips to the Greater Yellowstone area. And I’ve assembled a few tips that come from a decade of making annual trips from the Midwest to the West, as well as from the two decades I lived and fly fished near Bozeman, Montana.
I suspect these tips will apply — at least to some extent – to other regions in United States. But they relate specifically to fly fishing in and around Yellowstone National Park.
1. Go in the Fall or Spring
If summer is your best or only option for a trip, you can have a great time. But there are a couple reasons for planning a fall or spring trip.
First, you will avoid the crush of tourists and crowded rivers which come with summer. Second, you can fish “runners”—the fish headed up-river either to spawn or to wait below spawning beds for eggs which drift down the current. If you’re new to fishing, rainbows spawn in the spring, while brown trout spawn in the fall.
You can even catch the tail end of grasshopper season if you go early in September.
I should also point out that fall flights, vehicle rentals, and hotel rooms or cabins are cheaper during the off-season.
2. Choose a Fly Shop
Fly fishing success depends on knowing where to fish and what fly patterns to use. The best information you will get comes from the staff at a fly shop. I recommend visiting a handful of local fly shops on your first trip. Then pick one and build a relationship with the fly shop owners. The advice is free, yet you may get even more helpful intel if you are a paying customer year after year. So buy your leaders or next pair of waders at the same shop once you find one you like.
3. Book a Guided Trip
I can’t over-emphasize how much you will learn and how much intel you will gather when you hire a guide for the day—or for a half-day. You might be able to go back again and fish the same stretch of river on your own. Some fly fishing guides have even encouraged me to do this. But it’s a courtesy to ask a guide if he or she will take clients on this stretch another day. If so, ask about some other places you might try.
Splitting the coast with a friend always makes sense. Drift boats are set up for two fly fishers anyway. Also, the custom is to tip 15-20%. If you can split the cost with a friend, a day in a drift boat or wading with a guide will be worth every penny.
4. Create a Sustainable Schedule
When Dave, my podcast partner, and I fly to Montana for a 4-day or 5-day trip, we fish every day. However, we’ve learned to pace ourselves. We act like we are in our mid-30s, at least for day one. Then, reality hits. We are both in our mid-50s. So if our Fitbits tell us we have hiked 8 miles during a day of fly fishing, then we might get a later start the next day. Or, we might follow a more strenuous wade trip with a float trip
Also, build in a bit of down-time. If you hit the river at the crack of dawn, take time for a nice mid-day lunch. Or stop early to get dinner at a popular steakhouse before it gets crowded.
Enjoy the drive along the river or through Yellowstone National Park.
5. Keep the Last Day or Two Free
It took us a few years to figure out this tip. We sometimes wished we had an extra day to return to the hotspot we stumbled into on day one. Now we build a “flex day” or two into our schedule to make this possible. Where we go on day four or day five depends on where we had the best success. This means you are better off scheduling your guided trips earlier in the week.
Fly fishing trips cost time and money. So do your best to make the most of them. These simple tips will help.
No where are there more pictures of fly fishers handling and photographing fish than on Instagram. Everyone has a unique angle on the fish – close up, far away, underwater, one-handed, two-handed – and a thousand other ways. How should a fly fisher who expects to release the fish handle the fish? How long should the fish be out of the water? In this episode, one of our listeners, Tyler Farling (who is becoming a fish biologist) helped us with six key points for the proper care and release of the fish we catch.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What did we miss on this episode of handling and photographing fish? Please post your comments below. We’d love to hear from you!
We are big fans of Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Stupid is as stupid does. Forest Gump, a fly fisher, said that. At least we assume Gump was a fly fisher, because fly fishers can do a lot of stupid stuff. Well, at least my podcast partner, Dave, and I can. We’ve had a few forgettable fly rod moments.
Here is a list of some of our worst fly rod moments. We’ve discussed these in various episodes. But perhaps a list of them can function as a public service announcement to be more careful with that expensive instrument without which you cannot fly fish.
1. The time Steve left his fly rod on the top of the SUV
Dave and I were hiking into Fan Creek in Yellowstone National Park when we stopped to share the narrow trail with some approaching hikers. At that moment, I noticed my fly rod was not in my hand. I thought I dropped it, then realized I left it on the top of our SUV in the parking lot! I hiked out a half mile and retrieved it (thankfully, it was still there).
Meanwhile, Dave waited patiently (I think) while a fly fisher passed us and took the very spot we were hoping to fish.
2. The time Dave left his fly rod on the top of the SUV
It gets worse.
One spring, we were fishing between Quake Lake and Hebgen Lake on Montana’s Madison River. Halfway back to my house near Belgrade, Montana, Dave realized he forgot to take his fly rod off the top of my Toyota truck and put it in the cab. I pulled into a turnout, and we checked the roof. But the rod was long gone.
Yet every cloud has its silver lining. The rod Dave lost was a cheaper one, forcing him to buy a higher end rod. Do you suppose that Dave intentionally … ?
No, let’s not go there.
3. The time Steve broke his fly rod
It was a dark and stormy night.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have the sense to turn on the light when I walked into our “mud room” (as Montanans call it) to grab something from my fly tying bench. As I approached the bench, I felt something under my shoe and then heard a sickening crack.
I shuddered as I remembered that I left my fly rod leaning against my bench to dry off after an afternoon of fishing.
Thankfully, the Orvis rod guarantee covers those “stupid is as stupid does” moments, and I got it fixed for a minimal fee.
4. The time Dave broke his fly rod
Do you see a pattern here?
What one does, the other does. Awhile after I broke my Orvis rod, Dave broke his (yes, the one he purchased after losing the first one off the top of my truck). We were scrambling up a cliff above the Yellowstone River in Yellowstone National Park when Dave snapped the tip off of his rod on some brush. I have to say that he did a pretty good job the rest of the day casting hoppers without a rod tip.
In fact, he caught so many cutthroat trout that I suggested he always break off his rod tip for good luck on our way to river. Sadly, Dave hasn’t embraced my suggestion.
5. The time Steve dropped his fly rod tip section in the river
Accidents happen.
But this one was, well, plain stupid. My son, Luke, and I had just finished a good day on the Owyhee River — an excellent tailwater in eastern Oregon. As Luke waded towards me from the opposite bank, I began taking fly rod apart to put it back in its rod tube. Suddenly, the top half of the fly rod slipped through my fingers and into the river.
No worries, though. The run below the bank was only three feet deep, and surely the rod tip would float. To make a longer search story short, we never found it — even after Luke went into scuba diving mode without a mask or tank.
Once again, Orvis came to my rescue! They honored their rod guarantee and replaced the tip section (actually, it appeared to be a brand new rod).
6. The time Dave broke a guide’s expensive fly rod
Alert readers will notice a break in the pattern. Dave didn’t do anything as stupid as losing part of his fly rod in the river.
No, he only snapped in half a guide’s brand new Orvis H2 (their most expensive rod at the time).
In defense of Dave, he had reeled in a large rainbow to the boat when we were fishing the Lower Madison River. As the guide lowered his net, the trout suddenly darted under the boat. Before Dave could react, the rod snapped in two as the trout bent it over the boat’s starboard sidewall.
The guide coughed slightly, turning his head for a moment, and then proceeded to act as it was all part of a wonderful day on the river.
Lessons Learned
This would not be a public service announcement without identifying a few lessons we’ve learned about protecting our fly rods. Ready?
Turn on the light and watch your step when you are in fly rod country.
Check the top of your SUV before you leave the parking lot—unless you want to upgrade to a more expensive rod. (Why not avoid placing your fly rod on the top of your SUB or truck altogether? Because it’s a safe spot free from the crunch of car doors and the boots of people who don’t watch where they step.)
Step away from the river when you disassemble your fly rod.
And, for goodness sake, don’t let a trout dart under your drift boat. Or, to be on the safe side, don’t ask to try out the guide’s newest, most expensive fly rod.
Fishing in snake country is pretty much inevitable. Rattlesnakes and copperheads, just to name two venomous snakes, pose a risk to fly fishers, depending on where you live, in late spring, summer, and early fall. In this episode, we recount a harrowing tale of a fly fisher in the eastern United States, bitten by a copperhead, and offer some basic advice for staying alert while on the river.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Have you seen a venomous snake while fishing? Any hacks or techniques that you use to stay alert on the trail?
We are big fans of Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
What is the best time of day to fish? After fly fishing for more than four decades, I’m rather adamant about my answer. I’ll stand by it no matter what any other fly fisher says.
My answer is: it depends.
Yes, the best time of day to fly fish depends on time of year, weather, water conditions, and the unique characteristics of each local stream or river. The best way to determine the best time to fly fish a particular stream or river on this day under these conditions is to gather intel from a local fly shop or from some successful anglers.
Or, you can experiment yourself.
Early morning
For years I avoided the early morning.
I loved dry fly fishing so much that I preferred waiting until mid-day (see below). But a couple weeks ago, on a day when I was prepared to spend my early morning hours on the front porch of my cabin on Montana’s Boulder River, my son, Luke, reported that he was catching some nice rainbows on Caddis flies at about 7:30 a.m. — right about the time the sun peeked over the mountain to the east and flooded the river with light.
For nymphs and streamers, early morning typically works well all the time. This is a no-brainer on the Lower Madison River in Montana during the dog days of summer. By mid to late morning, the river temperature creeps into the high 60s, and fighting a fish under such conditions can be lethal (for the fish).
However, early morning also works well on cooler—or downright cold—days in the fall and spring. A couple falls ago, Dave (my podcast partner) and I started catching trout after trout on the Gardner River in the northern reaches of Yellowstone National Park as soon as it was legal to begin fly fishing. (Hours are daily from sunrise to sunset.)
We were using nymphs. These trout were feisty, not sluggish, even at 7:30 a.m. The following spring, we tied into big rainbows on the Missouri River near Helena, Montana as soon as it was light enough to see and to sling and strip streamers.
Lesson: Get up early if you’re fishing with nymphs or streamers. But don’t take the early morning for granted when it comes to dry fly fishing. Check a fly fishing report for your river online. Or, better yet, visit the river in person to see if there are any early morning insect hatches.
Mid-day
The prime window for dry fly fishing is 10 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Or 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m.
Or 11:00 to 1:00 p.m.
Or even 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.
You get the idea. There is a prime window for dry fly hatches. The time will vary, though, from region to region — and even river to river.
For example, Tricos on the East Gallatin River north of Bozeman can start as early as 9:00 a.m. and finish by 11:00 a.m. But Blue-Winged Olives (BWOs) and Pale Morning Duns (PMDs) will wait to appear on the East Gallatin until about 11:00 a.m. regardless of the season. At least that was the case more than a decade ago.
Recently, a listener posted a comment about a fly shop near Big Sky, Montana, told him to focus on “bankers’ hours” — 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. — rather than early or late in the day. Yet a few more miles to the south, the best chance for summer anglers to catch trout on the Madison River just inside Yellowstone National Park is late in the evening when a final wave of Caddis flies show up.
I’ve typically had good success with nymphs or streamers during the middle of the day — particularly if nothing is happening on the surface. Yet, I’ve also had some summer days when the middle of the day is best spent taking a nap because that’s what the trout seem to be doing.
Lesson: Think mid-day, but find out from a fly shop or the local experts exactly when to expect a particular hatch to begin and end.
Late Afternoon and Early Evening
Fly fishers often speak glowingly about the “evening rise.”
I remember a terrific late afternoon and early evening on a little stream in the Black Hills of South Dakota many moons ago. The water seemed to boil as trout slurped insects off of the surface.
One of my best days on a little stream in the Wisconsin Driftless (near Timber Coulee) happened when the day was about done. A half hour before sunset, both Crane flies and Blue Winged Olives (BWOs) started emerging, and the trout did too.
Yet I’ve had mixed success during evenings on the same stretch of the Yellowstone River south of Livingston, Montana. Some evenings were gold; others were coal.
Lesson: Keep the evening rise in mind, but remember that it might be hit or miss. Again, you’ll need good intel — whether you get that from your own “trial and error” or pick it up at a fly shop.
After Dark
It is common knowledge that the best time to catch large browns is after dark. Stripping streamers or “mousing” (stripping a large mouse pattern on the surface) can lead to a violent-but-satisfying strike. I’ve even caught brown trout in the Colorado high country on a size #20 Parachute Adams when it was so dark I could not even see the fly’s white post. In northern Michigan, fly fishers float the Au Sauble River and catch some of their largest trout between 10:00 p.m. and midnight.
Lesson: If you really want to have some fun, plan an after-dark night of fly fishing. But make sure you know what you’re doing! Dangers seem to be magnified after dark.
Wild salmon have gone missing in the United Kingdom. For every 100 salmon that leave the rivers of the UK for the sea, less than five return. That is a decline of nearly 70% in just 25 years! In this episode, we interview Mark Bilsby, CEO of the Atlantic Salmon Trust. He oversees The Missing Salmon Project, a tagging and tracking project that seeks to uncover the secrets of the missing salmon to help prevent further decline of this iconic species. More than forty scientific and conservation organizations have banded together to attempt to solve this problem. After interviewing Mark, we felt compelled to donate to this terrific project on its crowdfunding page, and we would love for you to do so as well. You can donate at The Missing Salmon Project.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Are the wild fish at risk in the fisheries that you fish? What are you seeing that concerns you about the future of fishing where you live?
We are big fans of Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
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To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Too bad trout are not brand-savvy; I’d have more reasons to buy more gear and a pair of Simms pants. No, it’s not about the brand. Dressing for success on the river is all about staying comfortable and healthy.
So here are some essentials to wear to the river:
1. A long-sleeved polyester shirt
I always start with this, whether the air temperature is 40 degrees or 90 degrees.
Why polyester (or some other kind of micro-fiber)?
I want a shirt that wicks moisture away from my body and offers sun protection. I wear long sleeves even on a hot day. I want to avoid the short-term (sunburn) and long-term (skin cancer) effects of the sun’s rays. A long-sleeved shirt also offers protection against mosquitoes.
Now what about a fly-fishing shirt?
Sure, these shirts look cool (and they are cool in the summer). I often wear one over my long-sleeved polyester shirt. A fly fishing shirt is the next layer you want to add to your upper body.
Of course, if you like pockets, a fly-fishing shirt is a fine alternative to a long-sleeved polyester shirt—even on a warm summer day. Simply wear it over a short-sleeved tee-shirt, preferably a polyester one which wicks away moisture.
However, a fly fishing shirt is not indispensable. I sometimes wear a cotton-polyester blend dress shirt that feels as comfortable as any of the fly fishing shirts I own. It’s light-weight, stretchy, and it cost me less than my fly-fishing shirts.
Whatever else you wear over it, start with a long-sleeved polyester shirt. It won’t let you down.
2. Nylon pants
Nylon pants are light-weight, so they dry out more quickly when than jeans and feel less waterlogged. They fit better under waders, too. If the weather turns cold, I’ll wear a pair of long johns under them. Layering is the key rather than a bulky pair of jeans or heavy pants.
Even when I wet-wade, I prefer long pants to a pair of nylon shorts. You can probably guess why — skin protection from the sun and from mosquitoes. The only time I opt for nylon shorts is when I plan to wear my chest-waders or waist-waders on a warm day. You can also purchase nylon pants with removable pant legs. This lets you choose instantly between long pants or shorts. But I don’t like these because the zippers tend to irritate my legs.
I’m not as picky about brand or quality as I am about a long-sleeved shirt. Don’t be fooled by descriptors like “guide pants” or “insect-shield pants.” Nylon pants are nylon pants. I buy the marked-down pair or the off-brand pair at the big box outdoor stores (Bass Pro, Cabela’s, REI, etc.).
3. Neck gaiter
Don’t overlook this little item!
A neck gaiter provides your neck with the same protection from the sun and insects that a shirt does for your arms. Besides, I’ve used one on cool, windy days to keep my face warm.
My neck gaiter is rather bland with its light-tan color. But a lot of fly shops sell these with more colorful fabric which has the same patterns as the body of your favorite species of trout.
Studies have shown that neck gaiters which look like the trout you’re trying to catch — cutthroat, for example — will increase your catch rate by about 23%.
Alight, I’m just kidding. But studies have shown (I think) that you’ll pay more for a neck gaiter in your local fly shop than at an outlet store.
Remember, trout don’t give you style points when it comes to what you wear — although your fly-fishing companions might. Whether it’s bland or colorful, don’t leave home without a neck gaiter.
4. Moisture-shedding hat
I used to wear a blue St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap (the kind the Redbirds used for away games). It was comfortable, but it was made out of cotton. Whenever it rained, it got water-logged. I did have the sense, though, to wear a wool cap (made by Woolrich) on cooler, rainy days. It handled the moisture fine.
Now, I wear either a Simms GORE-TEX lightweight cap on summer days or a Simms GORE-TEX fleece-insulated hat with flaps to cover my ears on colder days. I hope more fly fishing cap manufacturers will offer some with GORE-TEX. The stuff is amazing.
There are other features in a hat you might consider, too. Some fly fishers like hats with a bill all around them (such as a cowboy hat or a sombrero hat) for more sun protection. Others prefer a cap with a long brim and a cape to cover one’s neck and ears (an alternative to a neck gaiter).
There are a lot of options. The key is to choose a hat which is comfortable, sheds moisture, keeps you warm or cool (depending on the conditions), and provides ample protection from the sun. Plus, it shouldn’t cost as much as your fly reel.
5. Lightweight rain jacket
Prepare to spend the money you save on your hat or neck gaiter on a rain jacket. This is an essential, although I don’t wear it unless it’s cool or rainy. Instead, I stuff it into my fly fishing vest.
I have an older, no-frills Simms lightweight rain jacket that is no bulkier than a fly fishing shirt. It has been a life-saver on sunny days when a rain-shower seems to come out of nowhere. It also provides an extra layer of warmth on a cool morning or evening.
Successful fly fishers dress for success. You don’t need to spend a lot of money. Nor do you need to look like a model on a fly fishing website. Just make sure you dress for comfort and protection.
Dry fly fishing lessons happen when you, well, fish with dry flies. This summer, both of us got away to fish while on trips to the West, caught some nice fish, and relearned a few basic lessons. In this episode, we identify a handful of practical takeaways from our summer, including, “fish early and late” and “listen to the Millennial at the fly shop when he recommends the parachute flying ant.”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What dry fly fishing lessons have you learned or relearned this summer? We’d love to hear about them. Please post your stories below!
We are big fans of Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
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To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I like to travel light. For a long hike into the river, I’ve always preferred my small Brodin net. It’s so light I hardly know it’s attached to my fly vest. Besides, it’s compact enough that it rarely gets caught in brush and snaps back at me.
Yet, I’m gradually changing my mind and carrying my Fishpond Nomad Emerger. It’s a larger net with a bigger basket and a longer handle. There are three reasons why bigger may be better when it comes to nets:
1. A bigger basket makes it easier to land a larger fish
The principle here can be illustrated by shooting a basketball into a regulation-sized hoop and one with the circumference of a bushel basket.
Bigger makes easier.
If you’re trying to land a trout quickly, it will still have a lot of energy when you bring it to the net. It will likely dart one way or another. So a larger net increases the odds that you’ll scoop it up the first time. With a smaller net, there is less margin of error—especially when you’re trying to land a 20-inch trout!
For example, my smaller hand net has a basket that is 13.5 inches long and 8 inches wide. By contrast, the basket on my Fishpond Nomad Emerger is 19 inches long and 9.5 inches wide. This gives me a significant advantage when trying to net a fish.
2. A longer handle makes it easier to reach a larger fish
The larger the fish, the longer the reach you need.
It’s tough to maneuver a trout close enough to scoop it up with a short-handled net. But a longer handled-net makes the job easier. For comparison, my small hand-held net has an 7-inch handle, while my larger one has an 13-inch handle.
A longer handle also gives me more space when I’m trying to land a trout on the end of my buddy’s line. I hate crowding my fly fishing friends when trying to land their fish.
I still remember the time my son was fighting a 20-inch (or so) brown, and it circled around me, wrapping the line around my leg and snapping it off when I moved in to net it. A longer handled net would have given me more distance and time to prevent that from happening.
3. The weight of a bigger net is negligible due to technology
The frame of newer nets consists of composite materials like carbon fiber and fiberglass. That’s the case with my Fishpond Nomad Emerger. The composite materials make the frame both lightweight and durable.
But what about bulk?
Surprisingly, I don’t snag it that often on brush and tree branches when I’m walking along the river. Its design is still fairly sleek.
Also, I suspect that a larger net makes me pay closer attention to potential snags, which I tend to forget when I’m carrying a smaller net. Whatever the case, I’ve been pleasantly surprised with the feel of my larger net.
When it’s clipped to the back of my fly fishing vest, I don’t notice any it any more than my smaller one. Bigger may really be better.
Drift boat fly fishing is often the first experience that someone has with fly fishing. The experience can ignite a passion for the sport. In this episode, we recall our first drift boat experiences as well as debacles. It’s definitely a unique challenge to cast and mend while moving at the speed of the river.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
How often do you fish in a drift boat? What is your best day on the water in a drift boat? What advice do you have for fly fishers who’ve never fished out of a drift boat?
We are big fans of Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar. But there are many others, including:
Eucalyptus Yogurt
Cool Fresh Aloe
Deep Sea Goats Milk
Bay Rum
Spearmint Basil
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to forward our weekly email to your network!
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
We have talked ad nauseam about some of the obvious dangers while on the river on our podcast: lightning, venomous snakes, drowning, and grizzly bears. But there are other hidden dangers for summer fly fishers to consider:
1. Livestock and (big) game on the road
Perhaps the most dangerous part of your fishing trip is the drive to and from the river. This is especially true if you’re driving early in the morning or late in the evening.
A few years ago, legendary basketball coach Bobby Knight totaled his SUV when he hit a cow while driving at night after fly fishing a Wyoming river. Dave, my podcast partner and I fished the same river the next day. On our drive to the river, we noticed that it was open range. We saw several mule deer, too, at dusk.
Just the other day while in Rocky Mountain National Park, Dave came up on a five-point bull elk as he rounded a curve from the Fall River to Estes Park. Fortunately, Dave wasn’t on his phone, or its velvet-covered antlers may have adorned the small truck he was driving.
Stay alert even while you’re driving and dreaming about the fish you’re going to catch – or fretting over the strikes you missed.
2. Ticks
One of our listeners just informed us about a fly fisher in Wisconsin who ended up with Lyme Disease as a result of a tick. According to the CDC, Lyme disease is “transmitted to humans through the bite of infected blacklegged ticks. Typical symptoms include fever, headache, fatigue, and a characteristic skin rash called erythema migrans.”
Our listener suggested we reconsider our habit of wet wading on a hot summer day. Perhaps chest waders are the way to go for protection against ticks.
At the very least, use insect repellent, and wear long sleeves and pants. Some of the light Dri-Fit products make long sleeves and long pants bearable even when the temperatures creep into the 90s. Whatever you wear, check yourself carefully at the end of the day for ticks.
3. Sun burn and dehydradation
The sun is your friend. But it is also your enemy if you don’t take the proper precautions. Skin cancer is a serious concern. So, either use sun screen or cover up. I prefer the latter. As suggested above, go with long sleeves and long pants. Use a neck gator or a hat which provides more coverage than a ball-cap does. You might try a cowboy hat. Yes, you’re allowed to wear a cowboy hat even if you don’t own spurs and wouldn’t know what to do on a good cutting horse!
Also, summer heat means you need to drink more water than you think you do. According to Mayo Clinic, “Dehydration occurs when you use or lose more fluid than you take in, and your body doesn’t have enough water and other fluids to carry out its normal functions. If you don’t replace lost fluids, you will get dehydrated.”
So it’s worth the extra weight in your fly vest or pack to include an extra bottle of water. That weight will disappear soon enough. For longer hikes to the river, you might consider water purification tablets or a bottle with a built-in water purification system.
I also drink as much water as I can before starting out on the hike.
4. Food poisoning
Huh? Yes, think twice before packing a chicken salad sandwich or anything else with mayonnaise. By the time you pull out your sandwich for lunch, the heat may have spoiled it.
If you can’t eat a turkey or beef sandwich without mayo, then include some packets of mayo (from a fast food restaurant) in your lunch. Your stomach will be glad you waited to smear on the mayo.
The fly rod is the foundational element of gear for a fly fisher. If you have one fly rod, you need two. And if you have two, you definitely need two more. We love fly rods, and in this episode, we drill down into what we use and why. This is all about gear talk. Steve even goes so far to say that he doesn’t need another fly rod, but he must be developing a strange form of fly fishing dementia. Shame on him.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What is your favorite go-to fly rod or fly rods? Which fly rod do you like most – and why? Please post your comments below.
We are big fans of Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar.
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
If you are headed to the Rocky Mountain west to fly fish this summer, make sure your fly box is full of effective dry fly patterns. There are some obvious choices: Parachute Adams (for Blue-Winged Olive hatches), Elk Hair Caddis patterns (for the ubiquitous caddis flies), Pale Morning Duns (PMDs), and, of course, grasshoppers.
Don’t leave home without an ample supply of hoppers!
The Purple Haze (a variation of the Parachute Adams, but with a purple thorax) is an effective dry fly pattern, too.
Other patterns, though, get easily overlooked. Yet they can be highly effective. We suggest you consider including the following seven in your fly box:
1. Stimulator
This is a terrific all-around pattern for stoneflies.
My brother, Dave, has had great success with this in the small streams in the high country in Colorado. I like it in sizes 14-18, although a size 12 can work well too. I always go with orange — whether an orange body or an orange head with an olive body.
This fly also works during the salmon fly hatches on the big western rivers in June.
2. Spruce Moth
A couple years ago, my friend, Brand, put me on to this pattern while fly fishing the Boulder River south of Big Timber, Montana.
Since then, I’ve used Spruce Moths successfully on other rivers throughout the west—wherever Spruce and Fir trees are found. These moths can be bad news for the trees, but they are good news for fly fishers. Trout jump (literally!) at the opportunity to feed on them because, like grasshoppers, they provide a lot of calories in one gulp.
I’ve used Spruce Moths throughout the summer, but they work especially well in August when there are hatches. I prefer them in sizes 12 or 14. They can even imitate small grasshoppers.
3. Renegade
This fly has been around for a long time, and it’s one of the first patterns I used in the late 1970s when I started fly fishing.
It’s a classic attractor pattern, meaning that it doesn’t imitate a particular insect. It has white hackles on the front, brown hackles at the back, and a peacock herl abdomen in the middle. The white and brown hackles make this fly visible to fly fishers.
Now it doesn’t take a lot for it to get waterlogged and sink just under the film. When this happens, don’t get frustrated. Keep fishing it, because trout love taking it when it has been submerged.
Standard sizes are 14-18.
4. Beetles and Ants
Perhaps these terrestrials do not get ignored as much as I think they do. But I’m surprised how many fly fishers will fish a hopper pattern without dropping a terrestrial behind it. When I fish a hopper plus a beetle or a hopper plus an ant, I seem to catch as many on the terrestrial as I do on the hopper!
I prefer smaller sizes like 16 or 18, although a size 14 is fine.
5. H and L Variant
Dave, my podcast partner, has already sung the praises of this flythis fly. I like it, too, because it’s a highly visible fly which holds its own in rough water.
In fact, I think of it as a vanilla Royal Wulff. It has the bushy hackle without as much color. Once again, the standard sizes (14-18) work well.
6. Royal Trude
This is a cousin of sorts to the Royal Wulff.
Rather than two hair wings which resemble a fly in its dun stage, the Royal Trude has a long white down-wing. This gives the trout a different look. In fact, the Royal Trude can work both as a salmon fly and a grasshopper imitation. I have a friend who fishes nothing but this fly on the Yellowstone River in Montana. He always catches his share of trout. Some even fish this as a wet fly or a streamer. But it’s highly effective as dry fly.
I like it in sizes 12-16.
7. Humpy
This is another rough water fly, and perhaps you wonder “why bother?” since other attractor patterns like a Royal Wulff or an H and L Variant work effectively.
But the Humpy is so bushy that it seems to stay “dry” longer these two. The lower abdomen of the fly is either red, yellow, green, or even purple (the “Humpy Haze,” anyone?). As for sizes, I am partial to a size 16, although a 14 is fine, too.
What are some other overlooked effective dry fly patterns that work well for you? Please leave a comment and let us know!
The outdoors and the good life are synonymous. And Ernest Hemingway embodied the good life, with his exotic safaris, hunting in Idaho, and fishing in Cuba. He prefigured many of the great fly fishing personalities, such as Lee Wulff, Joan Wulff, and Bud Lilly. In this episode, we reflect on the life of Hemingway, one of our favorite American writers, and try to sort through what the outdoors and the good life really mean for most of us who are not outdoor professionals or those who can spend their days fishing and hunting.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What do the outdoors and the good life mean to you? How do you balance your love for the outdoors with the demands of life and family?
OUR SPONSOR: DR. SQUATCH NATURAL SOAP
We are big fans of Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar.
Visit Dr. Squatch Outdoor Soap for Guys, fill your shopping cart with great outdoor products, and enter “2Guys” as the promo code. You’ll receive 20% off!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
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One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
In 1987, shortly after I moved to Helena, Montana, I bought a copy of “A River Runs Through It” by Norman Maclean.
I was browsing in a little bookstore in Last Chance Gulch, looking for the next Montana author to read. The movie had not yet popularized the novella, but a friend had recommended “A River Runs Through It.” So I picked up a copy. Ivan Doig, A. B. Guthrie, and other Montana authors would have to wait. The first paragraph captivated me, and I found that the book touched me deeply. Both the first and last lines are classic.
“In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing.”
“I am haunted by waters.”
There are, of course, several other lines worth pondering. Here are a few of my favorites, along with my musings about them.
It’s a Rod!
“Always it was to be called a rod. If someone called it a pole, my father looked at him as a sergeant in the United States Marines would look at a recruit who had just called a rifle a gun.”
The funny thing is, I was looking at high-end Orvis rods in a fly shop a few weeks ago, and the clerk (obviously a newbie) said, “Those are some really pricey poles you looking at.” I bit my tongue, but thought of the Rev. Maclean and how he would have frowned on this.
On Casting Technique
“Until a man is redeemed he will always take a fly rod too far back, just as natural man always overswings with an ax or golf club and loses all his power somewhere in the air.”
Been there, done that. I also witnessed it a few weeks ago while helping a new fly fisher with his casting. Bringing your rod back too far on the back cast will also result in hooking brush or tree limbs or in slapping the water behind you if you are casting straight upstream.
The Montana Mindset
“My brother and I soon discovered [the world outside] was full of bastards, the number increasing rapidly the farther one gets from Missoula, Montana.”
Residents of Bozeman, Montana would beg to differ!
There is a heated rivalry between the University of Montana (in Missoula) and Montana State University (in Bozeman). I won’t repeat some of the names fans from each city have called each other!
Bait Fisherman Take One on the Chin
“When [bait fishermen] come back home they don’t even kiss their mothers on the front porch before they’re in the back garden with a red Hills Bros. coffee can digging for angleworms.”
This was the younger brother Paul’s line. He was no fan of bait fishermen!
I’ll admit that I started out catching brook trout with worms. I have no qualms with this method if an angler is trying to catch dinner and honoring the limits set by a state fish and game agency. But there is no place for bait fishing — or spin-casting with treble hook lures — when it comes to catch and release.
The Glory of Nature
“Not far downstream was a dry channel where the river had run once, and part of the way to come to know a thing is through its death. But years ago I had known the river when it flowed through this now dry channel, so I could enliven its stony remains with the waters of memory.”
This is simply beautiful prose, and it comes from one who has interacted deeply with nature. Fly fishing is not just about catching fish (although I’m all about catching fish!). It’s about experiencing nature and seeing its patterns reflect that way the Creator has designed life.
The Twists and Turns of Life
“The fisherman even has a phrase to describe what he does when he studies the patterns of a river. He says he is ‘reading the water,’ and perhaps to tell his stories he has to do much the same thing.”
This quote comes right after Norman Maclean observes that “stories of life are more often like rivers than books.” I think he is saying that stories of life are fluid and take twists and turns that we do not anticipate.
The Big Idea of A River Runs Through It
“You can love completely without complete understanding.”
This is what Norman said to his father when they were discussing his younger brother Paul’s death. I believe it is the big idea of the book. Maclean’s novella is about more than fly fishing. It’s about family and about living with and loving those who elude us. And yes, it’s about how all things eventually merge into one and how a river runs through it (per it’s last full paragraph).
And yes, like Norman Maclean, I am haunted by waters.
Dry fly dropper rigs are tandem two-fly combos that can increase your chances of catching fish. In this episode, we discuss the art of two-fly rigs for dry flies, dip into a brief conversation about the euro-nymphing set up, with the heavier fly on the bottom, and then offer listeners a few of our favorite dry fly dropper rigs. We rarely fish hoppers without a second terrestrial, such as a flying ant, as the second fly.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
We’d love to hear about your favorite dry fly dropper rigs. Please post your comments and stories below!
Here is the link from The Fly Fishing Basics web site that we mention in the podcast: The Two-Fly Set Up.
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One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Every fly fisher knows what to wear when you wade the river. The Simms and Cabelas’ models have shown us. We need to don a pair of chest waders and pull on our wading boots. But sometimes, the conditions dictate another approach.
If you’re new to fly fishing, here is a guide for when you wade the river.
1. Chest Waders + Wading Boots
This is the default approach.
A good pair of chest waders will keep you dry and warm as you wade a cold river. They will also keep you safe if you fall in, provided you use a wading belt. Please, don’t leave home without a wading belt! Some fly fishers tell us they use two for added protection. A wading belt seals the waders around your waist or chest so that they cannot fill up with water and weigh you down.
A good-quality pair of wading boots are a must, too.
This is where it gets a bit tricky because the best sole for traction is felt (in my opinion). But conservation-minded fly fishers frown on felt because it can trap the microorganisms and thus spread invasive species as a fly fisher moves from one river to another. So I don’t use felt, ever.
Frankly (and unfortunately), rubber-soled alternatives do not work as well as felt.
But Dave, my podcast partner, and I are sold on Patagonia Foot Tractors (we receive no kickback for recommending them). The aluminum bars on the sole really do provide good traction. But you’ll want to wait until you get to the river to put them on. Your local fly shop will appreciate you for waiting — especially if the shop has hardwood floors; the aluminum bars are meant to dig into bottom of the river.
So when should you wear chest waders and wading boots?
The most obvious answer is any time you will be wading in water above your thighs. By the way, the term “chest waders” does not demand that you wade in chest-high water. I highly recommend that you do not do this for the sake of safety.
You can also wear chest waders if the weather is cold or cool — even if you’ll will only wade in ankle deep water. You could “layer up” with other kinds of clothing, but if you sit on the bank in the early morning when the dew is on the ground, you’ll be thankful for your waders.
And obviously, you always using your wading boots with your chest waders.
2. Waist Waders + Wading Boots
Sometimes, though, the weather is too hot for chest waders.
We wish a large gentleman we saw a few years ago would have gotten this memo. He was fishing a spring creek on an 80+ degree day and was wearing chest waders. There was no need to wade the little creek except to cross it at a few points (in ankle deep water).
No need to sweat profusely.
One alternative is waist waders plus your wading boots. This works well if you want to stay dry but want to avoid over-heating. I ordered an inexpensive pair from Cabela’s and they seem sturdy enough.
I’ve wondered if waist waders provide a safety risk to those fly fishers who wade into thigh-deep water. Could they fill up with water more easily if you slip and fall in the river?
I suspect that the belt around your waist would keep them from filling up with water. But I haven’t fallen in with my waist waders (only while wearing my chest waders!), so I’m not certain about this.
If it is a hot day in the summer, wet wading is an alternative.
I’ll talk about clothing alternatives in a moment, but this means your clothing will get wet — yes, soaking wet. Footwear for wet wading is either wading sandals, wading shoes, or your wading boots.
I prefer a pair of Simms wading shoes. They are light. The downside, of course, is the rubber soles (see above). Some older wading sandals have felt soles, but these are going the way of cassettes, VHS, and CDs (for the environmental concerns mentioned earlier).
Wading boots work fine, although they are a bit heavier.
If you wear wading boots without waders, you’ll want to use Neoprene wading socks. Almost all the major manufacturers of waders make these. However, don’t expect that these will keep your feet dry. I’ve never had a pair that really sealed around my calf so that water didn’t seep down into them. But these socks will keep your feel from slipping around in your boots — even if your feet get wet.
What Clothing to Wear When You Wade
While we’re on the topic of wet wading, let’s address clothing. One alternative is a pair of frayed, cutoff shorts, which you make from your worn-out jeans.
Oh wait, it’s not the 1970s!
A better alternative is a pair of nylon pants or shorts. Go to your local sporting goods store and buy the cheapest pair you can find. They work as well as the high priced wading shorts and pants you’ll find in your local fly shop. The reason you want nylon is because it doesn’t feel as heavy when it’s waterlogged, and it dries out fairly quickly. If you’re wondering how well jeans work, well, try it once. We guarantee you’ll never do it again!
Downsides to Wet Wading
One is more exposure when you are fishing in areas where there are venomous snakes.
We talked recently on a podcast about a fly fisher who got bit by a copperhead in Shenandoah National Park. Now we’re not guaranteeing that waders will protect you sufficiently (unless you can figure out how to make a pair out of Kevlar!). But loose waders and a pair of wading boots may protect you a bit more.
A listener of our podcast also recently reminded us that wearing chest waders is a deterrent to ticks in the summer. Good point!
Also, you can’t store your wallet, car keys, and cell phone in your pants pockets if you are wet wading.
However, you’ll be relieved to know that neither Dave or I have discovered that our white legs scare away the trout when we wet wade in nylon shorts. Sorry to leave you with that image!
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
You must have come across a fly fishing mystery in all your years in the outdoors. We’d love to hear it – and how you’ve made your peace with it!
OUR SPONSOR: DR. SQUATCH NATURAL SOAP
This is a first for us – a sponsor!
We are big fans of Dr. Squatch soap products for guys who love the outdoors. Our favorite bar soap is Pine Tar.
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WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
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One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Three years ago, in our second podcast ever, Dave and I identified “5 Ways to Catch More Trout.” We still stand by what we shared then. Plus, now that we are much wiser and much better fly fishers (insert laugh track or an eye roll emoji here), we have added a couple more ways to help you catch more trout. If you’re new to fly fishing or tired of the same old results, these insights might make all the difference.
1. Learn the art of nymph fishing
We all love to catch fish on the surface with dry flies. That’s the reason many anglers take up fly fishing.
Yet as every expert says – 85% of a trout’s diet is under the surface.
To catch more trout, learn how to drift a nymph (or a two-nymph rig) along the bottom of the river or stream you’re fishing.
2. Fish the banks
I’ve watched a lot of drift boats over the years on the Yellowstone and Madison Rivers in Montana.
Guess where they fish? The bank!
Trout often lurk at the river’s edge — not necessarily in the middle of the river or stream. Savvy fly fishers who are wading will sometimes walk out a ways into the river and cast back towards the bank. To catch more fish, fish the bank.
3. Improve your casting
You don’t have to be a great fly caster to catch fish. But you’ve got to get better. Short casts are more than adequate.
Some of the biggest rainbows I’ve caught in Montana during the spring on the Madison River and during the fall on the East Gallatin have been about 10-15 feet in front of me.
The key is accuracy and presentation. So watch fly fishers who are better than you — whether in person or view their instructional videos (on YouTube).
4. Go where the other fly fishers are not
This means walking a mile further than the next fly fisher.
Dave and I have been doing this for years on the Yellowstone below Tower Fall in Yellowstone National Park. We’ve had some tough scrambling to do in order to get up and over a cliff that stops many fly fishers.
However, going where other fly fishers are not does not always require a longer hike. I’ve learned to fish upstream from fishing accesses in Montana. A lot of fly fishers in drift boats are getting ready to take out, and so they skip some good water as they get close to the access.
5. Hire a guide
There’s some expense here, but every time we’ve fished with a guide, we have learned something new. Good guides help us with our casting skills, fly selection, and reading water. Split the cost of a guided float for a day with a friend, and you’ll be surprised and how much you improve — and how many more fish you catch than usual.
6. Fish with streamers more often
Both Dave and I got so infatuated with fishing nymphs and dry flies that we neglected streamer fishing for a few years. But about the time we started out podcast, we started slinging and stripping streamers more frequently, and the results have been fantastic. We’ve caught more fish and even bigger fish.
There’s nothing like a black or olive Woolly Bugger for getting the attention of a trout.
7. Hang out in your local fly shop more often
In the Age of Amazon and online shopping, it’s easy to order all your gear online.
But while ordering online might be more convenient, a trip to your local fly shop allows you to pick the brains of the fly fishing experts and guides who work behind the counter.
Make sure to buy a few flies and some of your more expensive gear from the shop. It needs your support. And you’ll be surprised at the intel you can pick up and use on your next trip.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
We’d love to hear your family vacation stories. How have you integrated fly fishing with family on a vacation? Please post your comments below!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I like to travel light when I fly fish. So instead of packing my fly vest tighter than a German sausage, I try to be a minimalist. Recently, I shared “10 Must-Have Items for Your Fly Vest.” But there are more items for your fly vest to consider clipping to your lanyard or packing in your vest or satchel.
The following ten items for your fly vest are mostly suggestions you (our readers) added to my initial ten:
1. Hook sharpener
Honestly, I’ve never carried one of these in my vest.
But our guide-friend, Glen, says they are a must: “Fishing nymphs and ticking the bottom can really dull your hook point.”
He argues that a sharp hook is a must if you want to catch large fish.
2. Thermometer
In the past I have clipped a thermometer (with a retractor) to the inside of my vest. Some fly fishers use a Carabiner clip to attach a thermometer to the tip of a fly rod for placing it in the river to get a reading.
Why bother with a thermometer?
Well, knowing the precise temperature might help you anticipate when a hatch is about to begin if you know a particular river well enough. Then, on any river, if the water temperature nears seventy degrees, it’s better to stop fishing. Temperatures this high will exhaust and endanger any trout on the end of your line.
3. Sunscreen
I’m all for protection from the sun, but I rarely carry it sunscreen. That’s because I always wear a long-sleeved microfiber shirt—even on a 90+ degree day—and a neck gator. I always wear a hat, too, and often one which will shade my ears from the sun.
But sunscreen is a great alternative and a “must” if you’re wearing short sleeves and don’t have a way of protecting your nose and neck.
4. Whistle and compass
A whistle is a terrific idea. It’s light, and the sound can be heard a long way off. I can see how a compass would make sense in certain situations, although it’s not really necessary where I fish in the west. It’s hard to get lost on a river or stream. Simply follow it one way or another — especially downstream.
But if you’re hiking a long way to get to a stream or a river, then a compass could help as long as you know how to use it. A GPS might be better.
5. Gloves
Yes, I always stash a pair of gloves in my vest when I’m fishing in the fall or spring. I like a thin wool pair for keeping my hands warm when I’m not fishing, and I’ll even carry a pair of waterproof gloves to wear when I’m fishing.
6. Lighter
I carry a small butane lighter if I’m hiking in a couple miles during late fall or early spring. Some kind of fire starter is a good idea, too.
I usually fold a piece of newspaper and put it in a plastic bag. Real cotton balls work well, and there are commercial types of tinder you can purchase at an outdoors store.
7. Two-way radio or Satellite Tracker
Dave, my podcast partner, and I frequently carry two-way radios when fly fishing in the backcountry — especially in bear country. Cell phones work in some situations, but if reception is not good, you’ll be glad you brought a set of two-way radios.
One of our listeners recently commented about carrying a satellite messenger tracker: “I subscribe to a relatively inexpensive satellite messenger system (SPOPT) [which] can ‘pop smoke’ [as well].” Trackers are especially important if you are fishing alone in remote places.
8. Zip-lock bags and a garbage bag.
I like to bring along a couple pint-sized bags to keep certain items dry — cell phone, key fob, wallet.
Of course, your waders will keep anything in your pants pockets dry. But in the summer, I often wet wade in nylon shorts or pants. That’s when a pint-sized plastic bag (which has a sealing lock) comes in handy. A small garbage bag or plastic grocery bag in a large back pocket of your vest can be handy for hauling out trash.
9. Light rain jacket
Alright, these final two suggestions are mine.
Even on warm summer days, I always stash a light Simms rain jacket in a large pocket in the back of my vest. It has saved the day a few times when I’ve gotten caught in an unexpected rain storm or when the temperature suddenly drops.
10. Hook threader
This is a sign of my aging eyes. These little hook threaders are amazing tools! They hardly take up any space, but they take a lot of frustration out of tying a size #18 Parachute Adams onto a piece of 6x tippet. Another option is a small pair of reading glasses or clip-on magnifying lenses.
I don’t want my fly vest to weigh as much as a flak jacket. But it may be worth a bit more weight to carry a few of these additional ten items.
Fly fishing rules include using light tackle to catch more educated fish, avoiding bright sunny days, and switching to nymphs when nothing is rising. There’s a lot of conventional fly fishing wisdom that works much of the time. But sometimes the wisdom is more a general guideline than a deep unalterable truth. In this episode, we refer to an article from the Vail Valley Anglers web site in Colorado and discuss the times when fly fishing rules may need to be ignored.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Which fly fishing rules do you think need to be broken? Is conventional wisdom always right? Please post your comments below!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Tippet to leader – that knot is the most at risk part of your dry fly or nymph fishing rig. How many fish have I lost because of my poorly tied knots? The very question makes me curl up into the fetal position.
Infinity Knot for Tippet to Leader
Adding tippet to the end of your leader requires a knot (unless, of course, you use tippet rings, which still require the clinch knot). And it’s this knot between leader and tippet that makes me nuts.
There are unlimited knot possibilities, of course, but not long ago, one of our listeners sent me a link to a video about how to tie the Infinity Knot. I won’t say the knot has transformed my life, but it has transformed my knot tying.
The Infinity Knot is quick, easy, and strong. Yes!
Nymph fishing tips from us are one thing. Nymph fishing tips from the true experts – you, our listeners – are quite another. The best part of publishing our podcast is all the wisdom from our listeners who post comments on this site or on Facebook. In this episode, we identify a handful or so comments on nymph fishing from our listeners, and discuss how we’ve implemented them (or promise to implement them!).
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What nymph fishing tips would you recommend? We’d love to hear from you. We’ll create another episode on this topic in the near future.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I helped a fly fishing beginner with his casting this week. He is athletic and definitely the “outdoorsy” type. But he made some fly casting mistakes that beginners tend to make. When I pointed them out, my friend quickly fixed these mistakes — although it took a bit of practice.
Here are 3 fly casting mistakes beginners make and how to fix them.
1. Exerting too much effort
My friend used his whole body to make his cast. His arm swiveled on his shoulder as he waved his rod back and forth in long arcs. Watching him made me tired.
The solution?
I worked him on casting by simply flicking his wrist. He was surprised how far the line shot forward with minimal effort. I pointed out that wrist-flicking causes the rod to do the work of loading and then shooting the line. Later I let him move his arm a bit in his casting motion. But I insisted on crisp, definitive wrist-flicks. I said, “Do that, and the rod will do the rest.”
2. Rushing the forward cast
I also heard the “snap of the whip” on a couple of my friend’s forward casts. I knew immediately that the line on the back cast did not have time to unfurl. I confirmed this by watching him. He allowed the line on his forward cast to unfurl, but after each back cast, he began his forward cast too quickly.
The solution?
First, I stood beside him and called out: “Snap, wait, snap, wait, snap, wait (etc.).” I told him to snap his wrist forward, wait on my command, snap his wrist backward, wait on my command, then snap his wrist forward. He discovered that as soon as he snapped his backcast (on my “snap”), he snapped his forward cast on my command to “wait.” It took a few tries, but he finally got into the right rhythm.
I even told him the story about Norman Maclean’s father teaching his sons to cast with a metronome.
Second, I told him to turn his body and watch his back cast unfurl before making a forward cast. He had no trouble on the timing of his back cast because he could easily see his forward cast unfurl. Turning to watch the back cast seems obvious, but it does not occur to a lot of new beginning fly casters.
Of course, I warned him not to make too many false casts when fly fishing. I told him that our practice sessions intended to give him a feel for casting. But false casting (and lots of it) in one’s back yard or city park is the only way to get comfortable with it.
3. Bringing the rod back too far on a back cast
I noticed another problem.
My friend’s back casts were landing on the surface—grass, in this case. As I watched him cast, I instantly solved the problem. He brought his rod back almost parallel to the ground. If you prefer to visualize the hands of a clock, his back cast brought his rod back to 3 o’clock.
The solution?
I told him to use his wrist-snaps so that his front cast stopped between 10:00 and 11:00 and his back cast stopped between 1:00 and 2:00. The combination of the wrist-snap and visualizing a clock face seemed to help. Before long, the line on both his back casts and forward casts were unfurling without dropping to the ground.
Sure, there is more to learn when it comes to casting. But these three problems need fixing first. Once a beginner overcomes them, he or she will be well on the way to effective fly casting — and catching fish!
Never has there been a better time to be a new fly fisher. The only word is “more”: more gear, more videos, more podcasts, more articles, more fly fishing shows, more YouTube channels, and more exotic fish to catch on a fly rod – than ever before. In this first episode of Season 4, we identify six fly fishing trends that appear to be on the rise. Since we started in June 2015, we’ve published 156 podcast episodes and 156 blog posts. What a blast!
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What fly fishing trends have you noticed? What did we miss? What are you most concerned or excited about?
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
All the gadgets dangling from a fly fisher’s vest or lanyard may bewilder someone new to the sport. The bulging vest pockets or compartments may seem mysterious as well. Do fly fishers really need all that stuff?
If you’re new to fly fishing, here are ten must-have items for your fly vest or lanyard or satchel. If you’re a veteran, perhaps the list will remind you why you clip on or carry these items:
1. Fly Box
Obviously. But it’s worth giving this some thought.
You want a sturdy, waterproof fly box to hold your flies for your fly vest. Go with one box if you can. Traveling lighter has its advantages. For a single box, I like something with double compartments—one for dry flies and one for wet flies (nymphs and streamers). As much as I like to travel light, though, I’ve succumbed to two boxes.
2. Nippers
This is one of those dangly items clipped to your fly vest or lanyard.
Ideally, it will be connected to a retractor so that you can pull the nippers away from your fly vest. So what do nippers do? Well, they “nip” the excess line from your knots or “nip” off a piece of tippet.
Nippers also have a pointed piece (think needle) which you can use to punch out the head cement from the eye of a hook or to help you untangle a knot.
3. Forceps
These are also known as hemostats (or hemos). You need a pair of these scissor-like devices so you can remove a hook from a fish’s mouth. Trust me, using forceps does a lot less damage to a fish’s mouth than reaching into it with your fingers. The corollary is that using forceps does a lot less damage to your fingers if you’re dealing with an 18-inch brown with sharp teeth!
You can pinch these to your vest or lanyard. But I still prefer to connect a pair of forceps to a retractor. Otherwise, you’ll accidentally drop them in the river or get them plucked off by the brush.
4. Spools of tippet
Some fly fishers have five or six spools of tippet hanging outside their fly vest or (like me) tucked away in a pocket. Tippet is the material you tie on the end of your leader so that it corresponds properly to the size of your fly.
The more I fly fish, the fewer tippet sizes I use. I go with 6x (lighter) for tiny flies like size #18 or #20. I’ve even used 5x successfully on these sizes. Then, 3x or 4x (heavier) for larger flies—particularly large stonefly nymphs and streamers. Thus, I’m carrying four spools at the most.
5. Leaders
A few fly fishers I know go through leaders like chewing gum. Others claim to use the same leader for an entire season, tying new pieces of tippet on it as needed. Whatever your preference, it’s always good to carry a few spare leaders. You never know when a vicious tangle or wind knot will make a new leader make sense.
Plus, if you’re fairly new to fly fishing and a bit slow at tying on tippet, you can always put on a new leader if you need to go from 4x to 6x tippet in a hurry—especially in low light at the end of the day!
6. Strike indicators
These are imperative for fishing nymphs unless you’re one of the few who goes by feel. I do not. I need to see the little plastic bobber (sorry, that’s what it is) “bob” or disappear to know that I have a strike.
You’ll find different varieties of strike indicators — including the little plastic ones I just described. Have someone at a fly shop show you how to attach and remove them quickly.
7. Weight
Unless you use weighted flies exclusively, you’ll want some small split shot to add to your nymphs and streamers. Even when I use beadhead flies or even streamer patterns I’ve weighted with wire as I’ve tied them, I still occasionally add a small split shot or two.
Please use environmentally-friendly split shot (no lead). In some watersheds, they are required.
8. First Aid Supplies
You can buy a first aid kit, although I prefer to assemble my own (to save space). At the very least, carry a few band aids, first aid cream (such as Neosporin), and some pain reliever. Mosquito repellant is a good idea, too.
9. Dry Fly Floatant and Drying Powder
You need to keep those dry flies as dry as possible!
While a couple of false casts can help, it’s important to put some kind of floatant on them before you fish. You’ll also want a small bottle of powder or crystals into which you can insert your dry fly after it has gotten water-logged (yes, the floatant only works for a while).
The options for these products are legion. Go to a fly shop to see what’s available.
10. Headlamp
I’ve recently started putting a small headlamp in my vest. It works must better than a flashlight because it’s “hands free.” It’s a safety device, but it also helps in tying on a size #18 parachute Adam in the dusk when you come across a run with rising trout.
There are other gadgets. You’ll want to carry water, and you may pack a lunch. But go as light as possible. If you have the items above, you’ll have everything you need for a good day on the river.
Every stream has its honey hole, the pool or run that consistently produces. But things change. The river changes: a heavy snowpack and then a spring blowout or maybe even a drought. And your honey hole disappears. Gone forever. We’ve lost a few honey holes through the years, and the disappointment is real. In this episode, we discuss some of our favorite runs and how we made the adjustments when they disappeared.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
How have you made adjustments when your honey hole disappears? What have you found helpful in catching more fish?
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
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One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Summer’s greatest danger for fly fishers may be the least obvious one. I typically worry about rattlesnakes, grizzly bears, and drowning when I head for the river on a hot summer day. But summer’s greatest danger for fly fishers is lightning.
It’s a danger that can strike almost without warning — although there are usually some advance signs such as dark skies and a drop in temperature. Here are a few tips I’ve read over the years for staying safe from summer’s greatest danger:
1. Stay alert when a storm is brewing or ending.
According to outdoor writer Keith McCafferty, most lightning strikes occur near the start or the end of afternoon storms.
“This is when positive and negative charges,” he says, “which collide to produce the flash between clouds and the ground, build up the most electricity.”
2. Put down that “lightning rod” (a.k.a., fly rod).
It’s no secret that that a graphite rod serves as an effective conductor of electricity. So put it flat down on the ground —not leaning up against a tree.
While you’re at it, avoid metal fence posts and tall trees.
3. Stay in your vehicle, not outside it
Mark Leberfinger, a staff writer for AccuWeather.com, says the notion that rubber tires protect occupants of a car is a myth. It’s the metal frame on which those tires sit that makes the difference. Lightning charges typically go around the outside of a vehicle (the reason why you want to be inside).
Plus, the metal frame directs lightning to the ground. Keep those windows shut, though. Backhoes and bulldozers with enclosed canopies are safe, too, during thunderstorms. But I’m guessing most fly fishers don’t use heavy equipment as their mode of transportation to the river.
4. Go low and get down.
Are you standing on a ridge? Get down! Take cover in low shrubs — not under tall trees.
Keith McCafferty recommends squatting like a baseball catcher. This gets you low to the ground but with minimal body contact — just your two feet. This works especially well for folks like Yadier Molina, All-star catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals.
However, middle-aged folks can’t do it for too long. Believe me, I’ve tried it. But do it if your skin tingles, your body hair stands up, and your mouth tastes metallic. Those are signs of an impending strike. Don’t get too low, though. By that I mean, avoid damp depressions. These act as conductors for lightning as it travels along the ground.
5. Row to shore
If you’re fly fishing from a drift boat, row to shore at the first sign of a storm. Then move away from the boat and take cover in small shrubs. If you get caught in a storm, stay as low in the boat as possible, keeping your arms and legs inside. Make sure your fly rod is lying flat.
According to the National Weather Service, lightning kills an average of 47 people in the U.S. per year. Hundreds more are severely injured. So don’t worry about being overly cautious.
When a storm approaches, do what you can to stay safe from summer’s greatest danger. The trout will still be there when the storm passes. Make sure that you are too.
What is fishing without the eating? No matter the luck on the river, we always wind up as two hungry fly fishers, looking to regale each other at a Wisconsin supper club or Montana bar and grill. This episode will definitely not help you catch more fish. But it just might motivate you to take the time to hunt down the great diners, drive-ins, and dives near the river. Let’s just say we never count calories after the thousands upon thousands of calories that we burn while fly fishing.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
For sure, you have eaten at some great places in your many trips to the river. We’d love to hear about them. Please post your stories below!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
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One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
It’s never a good idea to get sideways with people (or your fly fishing partner). But sometimes it’s okay to get sideways with your fly rod.
Most photos of fly fishers casting or fighting fish show the fly rod pointed up—vertical, perpendicular to the ground. But there are three times when it makes sense to get sideways with your rod:
1. The sideways cast
Dave, my pod-cast partner, and I like to fish a little trout stream in the Timber Coulee area of Wisconsin. One of the better stretches has three runs which are covered by low-hanging tree branches. If you look closely, you can see a couple strike indicators hanging from the branches.
One of them may or may not be ours.
But we’ve been able to fish this stretch successfully by using a side-arm cast.
It’s not that difficult. The main challenge is your back cast. If you have tall grass or low-to-the ground obstructions, it won’t work. But if you’re close enough to the run for low-handing branches to interfered, you probably won’t need a long back cast.
2. The sideways hook set
We use a sideways hook set for nymphing under two conditions:
First, the strike is right in front of us — not downstream. Second, the strike is just a few feet in front of us. I’ll explain why in a moment.
The rationale for a sideways hook set is simple. Rather than pull the nymph up and possibly out of the fish’s mouth, we pull it to the side so that it goes into the fish’s mouth. Fish face the current. That is, they look upstream. So when we set the hook, we pull to the side in a downstream direction.
However, this technique does not work well when the strike is downstream from you or twenty feet or more in front of you. In both cases, you have a lot of fly line on the surface. The surface tension will slow down your hook set. It will feel like trying to run fast in a muddy field. You’ll simply get bogged down.
So, it’s best to keep your fly rod vertical in these instances.
You’ll be surprised how a quick straight-up lift of your rod will get the line off of the surface before you can say “Trout!” Try this sometime when you don’t have a fish on the other end. Your line will lift off the surface so quickly that your strike indicator will come shooting at you. It shows how effective this technique really is.
3. The sideways fight
Holding your fly rod high and pointing it to the sky makes for a great photo when fighting a fish. But when you’re trying to land a fish as quickly as possible (for the sake of its health), pulling it from side to side works best. This forces a fish to use its lateral muscles, and it tires it out in much less time.
Perpendicular may look right. But sometimes, getting your fly rod sideways is the most effective way to cast, hook, and fight fish.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Have you ever had one fine day on a spring creek? We’d love to hear your stories. Please post your one fine day stories below!
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Pardon the overused pun, but I’m hooked on dry fly fishing. I love watching a trout rise to take a fly off of the river’s surface. My dry fly box is stocked and already in use for this spring and summer season of fishing. While I definitely carry more than five dry fly patterns, here are the five all-purpose flies, in various sizes.
I like these in sizes 14-18, with some size 20s in a couple of these patterns:
1. Parachute Adams
This is where it all begins for me.
If I could only use one dry fly, I’d choose a Parachute Adams for sure. This fly serves double-duty. I use it during a Blue-Winged Olive (BWO) hatch, but I also use it as an attractor pattern. It works equally well in Montana, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Michigan. I carry some size 20s in this pattern because it has worked on days when trout stubbornly refuse a size 18.
2. Elk Hair Caddis
Like the Parachute Adams, the Elk Hair Caddis serves well as both an imitation and an attractor pattern. My dilemma is always the dubbing. I like black for the spring creeks in Minnesota or Wisconsin Driftless creeks, but green or tan works well for the Yellowstone River in Montana.
I’ve even had success with a larger Caddis pattern (size 12) during hopper season.
3. Light Cahill
I always make sure my fly box has an ample supply of Light Cahills to imitate Pale Morning Duns (PMDs). I’ve run into a lot of PMDs on the spring creeks in Montana and tailwaters like the Owyhee River in eastern Oregon. Like a BWO, and PMD is a another mayfly species.
While the BWO has darker (gray) color, a PMD is much lighter pale color—as its name suggests.
4. Comparadun
I’m being a bit non-committal here as the Comparadun is a rather general pattern rather than a specific fly. I’ll go with gray if I want to imitate a BWO or light tan if I want to imitate a PMD. The key is that the Comparadun floats a bit lower in the film than a Parachute Adams or a Light Cahill.
This makes it look more a cripple or a dun that is struggling to take flight.
5. Royal Wulff
My final go-to fly is an attractor pattern. While I’m selecting a Royal Wulff as my fifth fly, my favorite attractor varies from week to week and from river to river. I like something with bushy hackle which can handle a lot of water.
So I’m also fond of an H & L Variant and a Red or Yellow Humpy. Occasionally, I’ll return to one of the first attractor patterns I ever used — the Renegade. It doesn’t stay “dry” quite as well in rough water, but even when submerged, it produces well.
You only need a few basic patterns for spring and summer dry fly fishing, but make sure you fly box is full of them in different sizes.
The Fly Fishing Universe is vast and filled with dark, unsolvable mysteries. One such mystery is, “Why are there no insect hatches on a perfectly overcast day in early spring when just the day before the caddis were coming off like a plague?” It’s a mystery. Just one of the great mysteries. In this hilarious episode, we explore five Mysteries of the Fly Fishing Universe. And make some feeble attempts to shed some light on the darkness.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Tell us your mysteries? What are the great mysteries of the Fly Fishing Universe that you have uncovered?
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Fly fishers often frown on barbed hooks. One guide and blogger wrote: “Barbs are barbaric.” The rationale is that a sharp barb on a hook damages a fish’s mouth when removed. Barbless hooks for fly fishing, however, slide out like a greased pig through the hands of its pursuer.
I was on board with moving to barbless hooks until a friend made an observation that caused me to question the whole idea.
Post-Release Survival
My friend observed that a landed trout’s survival depends more on how quickly it is released — and kept wet during the release – than on whether the hook is barbless. In fact, he argued, it’s easier to land a trout more quickly on a barbed hook than a barbless one. That is, the time that it takes to reel in a trout on a barbed hook is less and thus enables the fly fisher to release the fish more quickly.
The quicker the time from the hookset to the release, the better.
What Studies Suggest
Of course, advocates of barbless hooks cite studies that suggest such hooks lead to a lower post-release mortality rate for trout. Simply “Google” the topic, and you’ll find plenty of articles discussing these studies.
You might be surprised, though, when you discover a few biologists and fly fishers who question the results of these studies.
Two decades ago, Doug Schill, an Idaho Fish and Game research biologist, looked at several studies done over the years and found that barbed hooks led to a negligibly higher mortality rate — 0.3 percent. He noted that a particular creek in Idaho had an average annual mortality rate of 30% to 65%.
“It is normal for fish to die at that rate,” he said. “So that 0.3 percent makes no difference.”
If he is right, that is well within the margin of error. Some studies simply show little correlation between barbed hooks and higher mortality rates.
The Larger Problem
I think there is an even larger problem related to fish mortality research.
Many studies simply do not and cannot account for enough variables to determine their accuracy. A family friend is a leading medical genomic researcher — probably one of the top five in his field in the world. He conducts prospective and retrospective studies and analyzes large data sets as his day job.
Yet he frequently scoffs at the confidence people have in the data. For example, the accuracy of any large pharmacogenomic study of cancer patients is determined by the gritty details, such as “Did the patient take the pill every day for three years,” and “How can we verify that she did?”
The problem almost always lies in the data, how it is collected, and whether it can be fully trusted. It’s the old “garbage in, garbage out” problem.
So many scientific studies are simply not conclusive. That doesn’t mean I don’t believe in good science. I’m not a Luddite. It’s often non-scientific people, however, who talk the loudest and express the most emotion about the conclusiveness of scientific research. My podcast partner Dave has a saying, “Always confident, sometimes right,” to describe such people.
Personal Experience
Some anglers base their conclusions (understandably) on personal experience. But this does not come any closer to solving the problem.
I have read and listened to passionate accounts of how barbless hooks are the only way to go. Isn’t the issue common sense?
Yet others insist, from their experience, that barbless hooks for fly fishing create more problems than they solve. One angler claims that barbless hooks actually penetrate further than barbed hooks, creating more damage on their entrance than barbed hooks do on their exit.
This is why I have not jumped on the barbless hooks bandwagon.
I respect those who use barbless hooks for fly fishing, of course. And I always use barbless hooks when the law requires them. When in Yellowstone National Park, for example, I definitely use barbless hooks. I respect the laws of the land. I pinch down the barbs.
Fish-friendly and Conservation-Minded
But as conservation-minded as I am, I currently do not use barbless hooks when I have a choice. I’ve notice that other conservation-minded friends and fly fishing guides don’t either. I’m certainly open to changing my mind on this, though it will take more than the latest study to convince me.
In the meantime, I will land fish as quickly as possible, use forceps to remove the hook, and release a trout as quickly as possible. And always with wet hands.
Fly fishing safely is harder than it sounds, For sure, fishing is no extreme sport. Recently, however, while we were fishing in Yellowstone National Park, two fly fishers were attacked by a grizzly – just a drainage system over from us. Besides bears, there are other risks, of course, such as lightning. In this episode, Dave tells a harrowing story about a friend who was struck by lightning and lived to tell about it. But not before her heart stopped.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What did we miss? What are other important safety concerns when fly fishing in the summer? Tell us your stories of “close calls”!
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Every stretch of river I’ve ever fly fished has something in common. There was always a first-time. Fly fishing new water has been productive for me over the years. But it takes a bit of intentionality — at least to make the practice effective.
So here are five strategies I’ve found helpful.
1. Commit to it
I prefer to fly fish familiar waters.
I like places that are productive and predictable. But the only way to find these places is to commit to trying new water. As silly as it sounds, I’ve had to force myself to leave the old familiar places for a day to try something new.
So the first strategy has to do with a mindset. It’s making a commitment to spend every third or fourth day you fly fish on new water. You can only break this commitment if you’re in the thick of a caddis hatch or hopper season. Then you have an excuse to remain in those familiar waters as long as you’re catching fish.
2. Gather intel
There is no excuse for ignoring this strategy with all the accessible information.
Check online fly fishing reports. Listen to the gossip at fly shops. Pick the brains of fly fishing friends. Buy books about fly fishing certain areas. I have books on fly fishing particular regions, rivers, and even the national parks.
3. Just fly fish it
All the intel in the world won’t help you if you don’t use it. So get out there and give it a try. Force yourself to follow through on your commitment. Take the intel to new water and give it a try.
4. Fly fish it again
After you’ve fly fished a stretch of water for the first time, go back and try it again.
If it fished well, I don’t need to convince you to try it again. But if it wasn’t productive, give it another shot. Maybe the fish weren’t feeding that day. Maybe you didn’t walk far enough. It was on my fifth or sixth trip to Montana’s Madison River as it emerges from the Bear Trap Canyon that I finally stumbled onto an amazing run that has produced some large rainbows over the years.
5. Keep a journal
Buy a moleskin journal or create a file on your laptop to record your experiences.
Describe what patterns you used, what the weather was like, the water conditions, and how much success you had. I’ve been surprised over the years how I’ve used this information the second or third time when fly fishing new waters.
Fishing for spring spawners on Montana’s Madison River needs to be on your bucket list. There several stretches of the Madison – the Lower, the Upper, and, among others, the stretch between Hebgen and Quake Lakes. Each part of the Madison is unique. In this episode, we continue our “One Fine Day” series by telling the stories from a day over a decade ago on the Madison River at Bear Trap Canyon, about a nine-mile stretch from Ennis Lake to near highway 84 around Black’s Ford. We hiked upriver at the Warm Springs Access and the rest is, as we like to say, One Fine Day.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
We’d love to hear your “one fine day” stories? Tell us about a great day on the water and all the little things that made it special!
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Last week I stumbled onto an amazing bargain. I found a high-end St. Croix fly rod on sale for $1.60. Yes, you read that correctly—a dollar and sixty cents! The cost of fly fishing is amazing!
I also found high-quality flies on sale for 90 cents a dozen. However, it turns out that I’m 118 years too late. These deals appeared in a 1900 Sears catalog. I happened to see the catalog in a trendy coffee shop in Portland, Oregon.
Today’s Prices
This got me thinking about the cost of fly fishing today.
Even though a decent St. Croix fly rod will cost you a thousand times more ($160.00) today than it did in 1900, fly fishing is still a reasonably priced hobby. Sure, you can go crazy and burn through $3000.00 in a hurry to get set up if you insist on a top-of-the line products by Sage, Simms, Patagonia, Orvis, and Fishpond.
But you can fly fish on a tight budget, as Dave and I have had to do at times.
For the record, I own fly fishing gear manufactured by the afore-mentioned companies. I’m not knocking them, because their products are great. But the gear I’ve purchased from them was stretched over the last twenty-five years. I’m still wearing an Orvis fly vest that is over two decades old.
Recently, one of my sons purchased a “starter package” for his father-in-law. It cost $199. It included a decent fly rod, reel, line, a couple boxes of basic flies, and a few leaders. Throw in a pair of waders, wading boots, and a vest, and the total will still be between $400 and $500.
Starter Packages for Other Pursuits
If you’re tempted to complain about the price of fly fishing gear, consider what it costs to buy starter packages for other sports and hobbies.
A starter set of golf clubs will run about $200. Of course, you can spend that much on a driver. Don’t forget, too, about golf balls, and golf shoes. Oh yeah, add in green fees (which may run as much as a non-resident season fishing license in Montana).
Planning to hit the slopes?
A decent snowboard will cost between $300 and $400. Bindings and boots will set you back another $300 to $400. Lift tickets, like green fees, are not cheap either.
Big-game hunting is not cheap either. If you want a 30.06 or .270 caliber in a Ruger, Winchester, or Remington – expect to pay $450 or so for a basic quality rifle. Add another $200 for a decent scope. And that doesn’t include travel, lodging, and tags.
You get the idea. Fly fishing is a reasonably priced sport.
Why Cheaper is Better to Start
If you’re just getting started or buying for someone who is, I suggest starting with an affordable, modestly priced package. Here are three reasons why:
First, you don’t want to get stuck with expensive gear if you decide fly fishing is not for you.
Second, part of the fun is up-grading and saving for a high-end rod or waders.
If you start out with a Sage X or a Winston Boron IIIx, you won’t appreciate the high quality of these rods. Besides, you won’t be able to get anything better (even though you could spend more).
Third, you will have a better sense of what you want after you’ve fly fished awhile. A Sage X and a Winston Boron IIIx are comparable in price. But they act differently. The Sage X is more of a streamer rod and designed for distance. You’ll make a better choice as to which rod fits you after you’ve fly fished awhile.
If you plan to start fly fishing, you can be thankful that it’s a relatively affordable sport. But don’t expect to get a decent fly rod for less than two bucks unless you can travel back in time.
Some of you fish alone all or most of the time. We don’t. We probably fish five or six days with someone (often together) for every one day we fish alone. And yet both of us enjoy the days alone on the river. In this episode, we reflect on what makes fishing alone so different in kind from fishing with a buddy – and why we like our solitude.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
How often do you fish alone? Does it energize you? Or enervate you? What do you learn about yourself when fly fishing alone?
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
One early fall morning in Montana, I marched into a fly shop after a terrific day on the Madison River, bent on replenishing my dwindling supply of Olive Serendipities.
“What are you looking for?” the fly shop person asked.
“Got any Olive Serendipities?”
“You don’t want caddis,” he said. “The caddis stopped about a month ago.”
Of course he was right. The hatches ended some time in September.
A day earlier, however, I caught one of the heaviest fish I’ve ever hooked on a fly rod on a #18 Olive Serendipity, a caddis nymph. Steve and I were fishing near West Yellowstone, and we each caught a fat, 20-inch Hebgen Lake rainbow on our dropper at the far end of the swing.
At least in the West, this nymph pattern is consistently deadly. Here’s a little more background on the nymph:
1. Where it originated
In Fly Patterns of Yellowstone Volume vol 2, Craig Matthews and John Juracek trace the pattern to the late 1980s. A guy by the name of Ross Merigold brought the pattern to the attention of the tiers at the Blue Ribbon Fly Shop, which Matthews owned, in West Yellowstone. Mathews credits Merigold with the founding of the pattern. A California tyer, Merigold was also the creator of the RAM caddis, and the Serendipity is just a riff off the RAM caddis.
Today the Serendipity is a staple of fly fishers everywhere in the Yellowstone ecosystem.
2. How it’s made
The fly was first tied with a brown zelon body with a head of trimmed deer hair on a size #16 hook. Other versions then emerged, including a body with brown thread instead of the zelon, known as the Three Dollar Serendipity, named after the Three Dollar Bridge on the Madison River.
Tying the Serendipity begins by tying in a length of gold wire, wrapping the thread evenly over the wire to the bend of the hook, then forward back to the eye. The process ends by tying on a clump of deer hair on the eye, trimming it, and voila!
Easier said than done, of course. Twisting on the zelon to create the segmentation for the body takes some chops.
Today there is the Olive Serendipity, the Guide’s Serendipity, a white Serendipity, and a Chrystal Serendipity, which uses pearl Krystal flash for the body. And I’m sure there are a thousand other riffs off the original.
3. Why it works
This nymph doesn’t just work. It slays trout. Matthews and Juracek say, “We think that it is the most important nymph pattern to come on to the scene in at least thirty years and maybe more.”
No one really knows why it is so consistently effective.
Matthews and Juracek say that perhaps it was the smaller size (#16) that made it so effective in the late 1980s. Up to that point, fly fishers often tossed bigger nymphs (#12 and #14). Perhaps the nymph represents more trout food than other flies. The Serendipity seems, generally, to work better than the Pheasant Tail in the same size.
4. How to fish it
Steve and I fish the Serendipity as a midge-larva, dead-drifting it along the bottom. Depending on what we’re doing and where we’re fishing, we’ll drop the nymph anywhere from eight inches to a foot or more off a top fly. This fall, we tied on a #14 Stone Fly and then dropped the #18 Olive Serendipity. Steve caught more fish than I did on the nymph, but I got in the last word with the biggest fish of the day.
This spring, I plan to experiment with the Serendipity in the Minnesota and Wisconsin Driftless.
Fishing guides are the hardest working folks in the fishing industry. Each year, we budget one guided day on the river, most often float trips, though last year we did a wade trip on the Madison. We’ve accumulated a modicum of experience with fly fishing guides. And we’ve learned a ton about how to fish. However, the guides have also taught us a few things about ourselves. In this episode, we reflect on what the great fishing guides have taught us about our own aspirations and fly fishing chops.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Do you ever use fly fishing guides? What have you learned from them? Or, what what they taught you about yourself?
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
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One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
My son, Luke, keeps sending me hurtful text messages. These texts contain reports and photos of landing large trout on the South Platte River in Colorado. He has caught several 19- and 20-inchers in the last two weeks. I’m hurt since I’m not there to join in on the fun.
But a comment in one of his text messages struck me. Luke talked about something that made all the difference in landing these big fish. His comment got me thinking about the “difference makers” that lead to success in landing big fish. Here are four that have worked well for me when I have large trout on the other end of the line.
1. Fishing with a heavier tippet.
Go as heavy as you can. I used to think that I always needed a 6x tippet (roughly 3.5 pound test) with a size #18 fly whether a nymph or a dry.
Anything larger risks looking like a rope.
But I’ve had success with a 5x (about 4.75 pound test) and sometimes even a 4x (about 6 pound test) tippet. You can get away with a heavier size if the water is a bit off-color or the current is faster. Choppy current is your friend, too, if you’re fishing dry flies. The trout don’t get as good a look at the tippet.
2. Fighting the brute from the side.
If you’re striking a classic pose for a photo, then I suppose pointing your rod tip to the sky and trying to pull the fish directly towards you makes sense. But if you want to land that brute, you need to try something different.
You want to pull the fish from side to side rather than directly towards you. It is the side to side pressure which works against a fish’s muscles and tires it out.
So, for example, if you’ve pulled the trout to the left for thirty seconds or so, switch and pull it to your right. Go back and forth and you’ll tire it more quickly than you might expect.
3. Setting the drag properly on your reel.
Your fly reel has an adjustable drag — a lever or a dial which determines how much pressure a fish must exert to pull the line out of the reel.
The basic rule is to set the drag’s tension on the light side. However, if it’s too tight, a sudden surge by the fish will snap the tippet. But if it’s too light, the fish will invariably run for cover and snag or snap your line on a submerged branch or other obstruction. I often adjust my drag even as I’m retrieving a fish.
With a larger fish, I will typically tighten my drag as the fish tires and is less prone to make a sudden run downriver. I want to get it in as quickly as possible.
4. Using a long-handled net.
For years I’ve used a small hand-made net by Brodin.
A couple years ago, generous friends gave me a Fishpond Nomad Emerger. I can still clip it to my fly fishing vest, and it doesn’t feel as bulky as it might look. But it has a larger basket as well as a longer handle.
This has been a difference maker when I’m fishing alone. I don’t have to pull in a big trout as close to my body — where bad things tend to happen — with a long-handled net.
This was the difference maker for my son, Luke.
I told him to go buy the same net I’ve been using since he was running into some big fish. He did, and he reported that he would have had a hard time landing those twenty-inch rainbows with his shorter net.
Spring fly fishing is in full swing, though the weather still feels like winter in many parts of the United States, certainly in the northern states. Weather is certainly one variable in spring fly fishing, but there are others that affect the kind of day you’ll have on the water. In this episode, we identify some of the factors that make spring fly fishing so wonderful and so unpredictable.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What did we miss? What other variables do you encounter when fishing in the spring? We’d love to hear your stories of overcoming an element or two for a terrific day on the water.
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
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The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
You can find some great fly fishing tips below the surface. I’m referring to the surface of our articles and podcasts — not the film of a river or lake. There are some great insights in the “comments” section below each article or episode we post. Our readers post some terrific ideas, hacks, and tips.
Here are a few insights we found helpful. You might benefit from them too:
Wet Waders and Boots
I bring along a plastic garbage bag for transporting my wet waders home from the river. But Thomas suggested a better idea. He uses a low-walled plastic tub for carrying his wet boots and waders. It’s convenient and usually keeps the mud and sand on the bottom.
It’s a lot less messy than stuffing it all into a garbage bag.
Counter Intuitive Dry Fly Measures
My first reaction when my dry fly sinks is to retrieve it and dry it. But Duane’s story makes me pause.
“Once while fishing the Gallatin in Yellowstone Park,” he writes, “my orange Elk Hair sank, and in disgust, I was about to yank it out of the water for drying and recast when a large mouth on a BIG Cutthroat came up and grabbed it.
“The trout that day ignored it floating, but loved it sunk.”
Duane also says, “Many times I have tried matching the hatch on rising trout and was ignored, then changed to a #14 Royal Wulff – which looked absolutely nothing like the BWO hatch and bingo!”
Going with a High-End Fly Rod
On our podcast, Dave and I have been advocate for shelling out several hundred bucks for a higher quality fly rod. We prefer to save our money elsewhere. Of course, you can catch trout on a low-end fly rod. But if you fly fish enough, you’ll appreciate the quality that a high end rod provides.
Jim made this point in a recent comment: “I never believed it made a difference until I bought a Winston fly rod. I’ve had a lot of cheaper rods and they fished well. But once I upgraded, those cheaper rods don’t get used as much these days.”
Storing Dropper Rigs
Some fly fishers like to tie their dropper rigs in advance – in the warmth and leisure of their home. But how do you transport these without getting them tangled.
Thomas recommends the Smith Creek Rig Keeper for storing your dropper rigs. He says it’s been worth the few bucks to avoid frustrating tangles.
Making Small Adjustments
Dave and I have talked before about the art of making small adjustments.
One of our listeners, David, shared several small adjustments he regularly makes. These include going to a smaller tippet size on clear water under bright blue skies; lengthening his leader for dry fly fishing or shortening it for nymph and streamer fishing; switching to a fly of a different size or color; changing up the retrieve while streamer fishing; and varying the depth and weight while nymph fishing.
David claims that the endless adjustments you have to make while fly fishing is what makes it such a fascinating, wonderful sport.
We agree!
There’s more wisdom like this “below the surface” in the comments section of each article or podcast episode we post. You might find something that results in catching more fish or at least making your day on the water more enjoyable.
Episodes on Fly Fishing Adjustments
We’ve published two episodes on making fly fishing adjustments:
Hebgen and Quake Lakes in southwestern Montana bookend a short ribbon of the Madison River that is well known for its big rainbows in late March to mid April. In this episode, we recall one fine day on this stretch of the Madison, our first fly fishing trip together after college. Steve tells the story of the earthquake in 1959 that created Quake Lake, and Dave confesses one more time his dull-wittedness at the end of that one fine day.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
We’d love to here your “one fine day” stories when you hit it just right. Post your stories below!
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
When I was a boy, I devoured every issue of Field & Stream magazine. The piece to which I always turned first was “Tap’s Tips” — an advice column written by H. G. Tapply. I had no idea that dipping wooden matches in nail polish would waterproof them. Nor did I know, until I read “Tap’s Tips,” that cutting an old rubber or synthetic sponge in cubes provides a supply of bobbers. Uh, make that strike indicators. In the spirit of “Tap’s Tips,” I’ve come up with five suggestions for new fly fishers:
1. Tie on your dropper ahead of time.
My son, Luke, has caught some big trout this spring on the South Platte River in Colorado with a two-fly combination. I talked to him the other day, and he told me that he puts together about three “two-fly” combinations while he’s watching sports on television. It saves time for him when he’s out on the river—especially on cold days when fingers tend to fumble.
What this means is tying on a piece of tippet to the bend in the hook of your lead fly and then tying on the dropper (second fly at the end of the tippet). Then, when you get to the river, you only have to tie on your lead fly. Such suggestions for new fly fishers can turn frustration as you start your day on the river to confidence.
2. Take along a old throw rug and a garbage bag
You’ll use the throw rug when you’re sitting on the bumper and putting on your waders. It beats stepping in gravel, wet grass, or mud. Then, you can throw your wet waders and boots in a garbage bag for the drive home. It keeps the back of your SUV or the trunk of your car clean and dry.
Make sure you removed the wet stuff as soon as you get home to clean it and let it air dry.
3. Use barrel swivels to connect your leader to tippet.
Sure, you’ll eventually want to learn a surgeon’s knot or something similar for tying tippet onto a leader. However, you can get by with the same knot you use for tying on your fly—an improved clinch knot—if you use a barrel swivel. Simply tie the leader to one end of the swivel and the tippet to another. Use the smallest barrel swivel you can find. This works best for nymphing since the extra bit of weight is not an issue.
If you are dry fly fishing, you’ll need a longer tippet since the barrel swivel may sink slightly.
4. Flick your wrists when making a cast.
Most beginners use too much of their body when casting. The trick is to make your rod do the work.
To accomplish this, all you need to do is to flick your wrist sharply when making a cast. Practice by making a “revolver” out of your hand (index finger pointed forward, thumb pointed up). Then flick your wrist up and down. You’ll use this same motion when you have a rod in hand.
5. Pull fish to the side when you’re fighting them.
I learned this tip from Gary Borger, whose many books on nymphing, fly fishing gear, flies, and fly fishing techniques are packaged as practical suggestions for new fly fishers.
You’ll tire out trout more quickly when you pull them from side to side. This forces them to use their muscles in a way that pulling up on your rod does not. This, of course, probably doesn’t apply to the 8-inch Brookie that you’re ripping out of a small pool. The technique works great, though, in larger runs with larger fish.
Frustration almost always sets in when the same tactics yield the same results. If you fish only once or twice a year with a guide or outfitter, improving your fly fishing game doesn’t really matter much. But if you take fly fishing with even a modicum of seriousness, you know the importance of making small adjustments. In this episode, we offer our list of adjustments to improve our fly fishing craft from the past couple years.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What adjustments have you made to improve your fly fishing game? What single adjustment has had the greatest effect in the number of fish you catch?
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
There’s nothing more exciting than reflecting on the life cycle of a mayfly. Well, actually there is. It’s catching trout—and lots of them. If you want to catch more trout, it’s helpful (though not necessarily exciting) to think about the life cycle of a mayfly. It will help you know what you’re trying to imitate.
1. The Nymph stage
A mayfly spends all but one or two days of its life underwater as a nymph. It’s no wonder, then, that 85% of a trout’s diet comes from beneath the surface. It’s why fishing nymph patterns is almost always a sure bet. Nymphs move about the stream as they feed and molt and then drift into the current or dart from place to place.
If you want to get technical, there are four categories of Mayfly nymphs. Dave Hughes, in his Pocketguide to Western Hatches, classifies them as swimmers, crawlers, clingers, or burrowers. You could vary your strategy if you’re trying to imitate a certain kind of mayfly. However, most of the time, the tried-and-true dead drift method will work. Standard patterns include Hare’s Ear or Pheasant Tail. A Prince Nymph works fine, too, even though it was originally designed as a Stonefly nymph.
2. The Emerger stage
In this brief stage, the child becomes an adult when the skin splits along the back of the nymph and the winged dun escapes. This happens as the emerger rises to the surface and sheds its skin underwater. Some nymphs, however, crawl to the edge of the river where they shed their skin on the rocks or grass. This explains why you often see empty “casings” on rocks near a river’s edge.
It’s often a good idea to trail your dry fly with an emerger pattern, which you fish just under the film. Sometimes you’ll even see “rising” trout which don’t seem to be feeding on the surface flies. If so, definitely switch to an emerger pattern.
3. The Dun stage
Now the fly has become a young adult. The dun stage is a favorite for fly fishers, and many standard patterns—such as the Parachute Adams, the Comparadun, and attractors like a Royal Wulff—imitate this stage. Mayfly duns ride the surface until their upright wings are dry and hardened for flight. This ride can last for ten to twenty feet.
Fortunately for fly fishers, most mayflies hatch (technically “emerge”) during daylight hours. Prime time is 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., depending on wind and water temperature. Overcast, cool days are ideal, especially for Baetis flies and Blue-Winged Olives (BWOs).
4. The Spinner stage
This is the fully formed adult stage in which mayflies are ready to mate. As Dave Hughes says, “Mating takes place in the air, another bit of incomparable grace.” At this point, the females are spent and fall to the water. This creates a “spinner fall” — another opportunity for the trout to roil the surface as they feed. Anglers who see mayflies with flat wings like an airplane – rather than with wings sticking up – should switch to a spinner or “spent wing” pattern.
On some days, you might be able to catch a trout on a pattern that imitates any of these stages. But other days, trout are more selective and zone in on a particular stage. Switching to a pattern that reflects a different stage in a mayfly’s life cycle might trigger some superb fishing.
The fly fishing industry today is a mature industry with a thousand niches, such as salt water fishing, Tenkara, even fly fishing for carp. Before fly fishing’s emergence into the conscience of popular culture came the trailblazers, such as Lee Wulff, Joan Wulff, Lefty Kreh (who passed away recently), and, among many others, Bud Lilly. In this first in a series on fly fishing legends, we attempt to tell a little of Bud Lilly’s story and contribution to the broader fly fishing community.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Have you read any of Bud Lilly’s writings? Ever talk to him in person? What influence did he have on you?
WOULD YOU REFER OUR PODCAST?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.” Or you can simply subscribe to the RSS feed here:
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
My name is Steve, and I’m a half-hearted fly tyer. There, I admitted it. Perhaps it’s even an exaggeration to call me a fly tyer. Some of the flies I’ve tied might make a more skilled fly tyer laugh. But I’ve caught dozens of trout on patterns I’ve tied. I think that’s enough to give me membership in the fly-tying fraternity.
There are, though, a few confessions that I want to make. And not merely for catharsis, though confession, so goes the cliché, is good for the soul. Rather my admission is to empower other fumble-fingered folks who feel like fly-tying misfits:
1. I am a half-hearted fly tyer.
I know, I already said that. But let me unpack my revelations a bit:
My passion for fly tying resembles the moon. It waxes and wanes. I’m always ready to grab my rod and head for the river. But I don’t feel the same about grabbing my vise and Metz Dry Fly Neck (Grizzly color) to tie a Parachute Adams. I can fly fish for hours and never get bored. But some days I tie flies for only minutes before I’m bored. Some days I’m disinterested before I even start. Yet, sometimes the urge hits, and I will crank out a dozen flies of a particular pattern.
The lesson: Even half-hearted fly tyers can produce useful flies and save themselves some money in the process.
2. I am artistically challenged.
I can’t draw stick figures for the life of me, and my attempts to build a gingerbread house for our annual family Christmas gingerbread competition are pathetic. My creation ends up looking like a dilapidated chicken coop. Surprisingly, though, I can tie a decent fly. Sure, my flies bulge in the wrong places, and the wraps look uneven. However, I’ve discovered that the fish don’t care. Perhaps the bulges and unevenness make my flies look more buggy.
The lesson: Even clunky-looking flies fool trout.
3. I limit myself to a few simple patterns.
I’ve never tied a bad-looking Muddler Minnow.
That’s because I don’t tie Muddler Minnows. I’ve fooled around with spinning deer hair. But it’s an art I never mastered well. So I leave these kinds of flies to the pros. I stick with San Juan Worms, Brassies, Woolly Buggers, and an occasional Elk Hair Caddis. The latter is not an easy fly for me to tie. But I shot a bull elk a few years ago during archery season, and I preserved the hide with a bit of 20 Mule Team Borax. Every so often I can’t resist tying a handful of size #14 caddis flies so I can brag about catching a trout with a fly I tied using hair from a bull elk I called in and took with an arrow. That helps me save face when the fly falls apart after catching one trout.
The Lesson: Even the simplest of patterns can be deadly when it comes to catching trout.
4. I haven’t improved much in two decades.
I’m like the guy who spent five of the best years of his life in second grade.
Honestly, I haven’t tied enough to get a lot better. But again, my interests are not in winning fly tying contests (do those even exist?). I simply want to catch trout. And I’m fascinated enough with fly tying to dabble in it whenever I feel the urge. It is a thrill to fool a trout with a fly I’ve tied. It is fun to create something that looks halfway like the flies I see in the bins at my local fly shop. It is fun to create.
The Lesson: Even if you never get better, you can still feel the satisfaction of sporadic fly tying.
Now that I’ve finished this piece, I feel the urge to get out my fly tying vise, bobbin, dubbing material and … oh wait, I have to fill out my bracket for March Madness!
Fly tying will have to wait until next week. Or next month.
Fly fishing gear can last a long time, if well cared for. Steve just retired a pair of 20-year-old waders. Of course, he isn’t fishing 50 days a year, but just a modicum of care can prolong the end of fly rods, reels, waders, nets, and boots. In this episode, we offer up some simple tips for making your fly fishing gear last.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
How do you maintain your fly fishing gear? What sort of tips or hacks help prolong the life of your fishing gear?
We’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
The more I fly fish, the more I realize how many ways there are to catch fish. Surely, there are time-tested principles, but the tactics are legion.
Just recently, Steve (my podcast partner) and I fished streamers for several hours on the Blue River in Wisconsin. I threw mine upstream and stripped it back. Steve got on top of the run, tossed the streamer downstream, and stripped it back. Two approaches, same number of fish. Okay, so maybe he caught one more than I. But my biggest was bigger than, er, his biggest.
So in honor of our diverse means, I thought I’d list all the many ways I’ve caught trout on streamers:
1. Throw the streamer upriver …
and strip it back QUICKLY.
2. Throw the streamer upriver …
and strip it back SLOWLY.
3. Throw it upriver …
but don’t strip it back; let it dead-drift to the swing. Then strip it back in SHORT strips.
4. Throw it upriver …
but don’t strip it back; let it dead-drift to the swing. Then strip it back in LONGER strips.
5. Throw it directly across the river …
and strip it back in SHORT strips.
6. Throw it directly across the river …
and strip it back in LONGER strips.
7. Throw it directly across the river …
but don’t strip it; let it dead drift to the swing. Then strip it back in SHORT strips.
8. Throw it directly across the river …
let it dead drift to the swing. Then strip it back in LONGER strips.
9. Get above the pool or structure in the river …
and throw it downstream, stripping it back in SHORT strips.
10. Get above the pool or structure in the river …
and throw it downstream, stripping it back in LONGER strips.
11. Hold your fly rod behind your back with both hands …
and toss the streamer into the river and twirl around to retrieve the Woolly Bugger in short twirls, chanting, “Go Woolly Bugger, go!”
Harrison Flats is not listed on the trail head as you walk into the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness in Colorado. The trail ends about a mile below the lake, so finding it is cause for celebration. In this episode, Steve interviews Dave about finding and fishing this pristine high mountain lake that sits above the timberline. It’s one fine day of rising cutthroat, blue skies, and breathtaking scenery in the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Have you had an experience fishing in a place like the Collegiate Peaks Wilderness? We’d love to hear your story. Please post your comments below.
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
An app on my smartphone told me I needed to go fly fishing on a late February day. Oh, it didn’t say it in those exact words. But the weather app predicted a one-day window with mid-50s temperatures in southwestern Wisconsin. So I contacted Dave, my podcast partner, and we shifted our schedules to make it work.
Now, I’m at my laptop a couple of days later, and five lessons from that day come to mind:
1. Getting out of Dodge at the last minute isn’t easy.
Dave drove an hour from his home to mine on a Monday evening. We had decided to make the three-hour drive from my home that night to stay in a Super 8 near our fishing spot. That way we could hit water first thing on Tuesday morning.
Everything went according to plan.
But we were both fried emotionally when we left my house. Both of us overscheduled our Monday so we could be gone on Tuesday. I felt like I was on the run all day. Meetings ran longer than expected, and I had scheduled a razor thin margin between them. Dave’s SUV was in the shop, so he had to bring his family’s mini-van. I threw in two duffel bags of fly fishing gear because I didn’t have time to pack it into one.
Now I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that you have to push through the craziness that a last-minute trip creates. It’s worth it . . . eventually.
2. The early bird gets the worm.
Perhaps “getting the worm” is not an apt image for fly fishing. But bear with me.
Arriving at our destination on Monday night turned out to be a great move. We were able to get an early start on Tuesday and arrive at the Blue River before anyone else. The stretch we like to fish is less than two miles long. The “river” is really a small stream, so there are a limited number of productive runs.
The fly fisher who arrives first doesn’t have to take the leftovers.
3. Woolly Buggers are the ticket for coffee-colored water.
The Blue River always has a bit of color. It’s always a bit stained.
But there had been enough snow runoff that the water was coffee-colored. I suppose it was a rather weak coffee color. We guessed that Woolly Buggers would be our best bet, and they were.
Dave and I each landed two 14-inch browns — big fish for such a small stream. I also caught a nice rainbow and lost another brown after playing it for half a minute. All this happened in about three hours.
For a bright sunny day in February, we were pleased with the outcome. It was consistent with other days when we’ve had success stripping streamers in murky water.
4. The streamer bite has a definite window.
The first two hours on the river were productive. The last one was not. As the sun got higher and the temps warmed up, the fish stopped hitting streamers. Dave remarked that the streamer bite was finished for the day. I agreed for two reasons. First, I knew he was right. Second, it meant we could grab lunch at the local café sooner than later.
We both remarked that we could have (uh, should have) started an hour earlier. That would have given us a three-hour window of fishing rather than only two.
We’re not complaining — just observing: Once the trout are done feeding, it’s useless to keep fishing.
5. Mud can be slick.
I was worried about slipping on the ice and getting hurt. The good news is that this didn’t happen. The bad news is that I slipped on the mud and tweaked my ankle. It’s only a slight sprain, so I’ll survive.
Who knew that mud could be so slick! Let the fly fisher beware.
More Fly Fishing Lessons
Alright, I promised only five lessons, so I’m going to stop here. I won’t talk about:
How it’s best not to catch your front bumper on the concrete wheel stop at the head of your parking space. That might embarrass Dave;
How it’s easier to snap a front bumper back into place in the daylight than in the dark;
How it’s best to hide your limp (if you sprain your ankle) when you arrive home. Otherwise, your adult children might send the rest of the family a rather hilarious Snapchat video (complete with a satirical caption) at your expense.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
We’d love to hear a story about the largest brook trout you’ve caught! Please post your comments below.
REFER THE PODCAST!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Let’s keep it reel. Now that my feeble attempt at humor is out of the way, I want to offer you a few tips for protecting your fly fishing reel. Typically, fly reels are not high maintenance. But there are a few steps you can take to protect them:
1. Read the instructions that came with the fly fishing reel
Yeah right, you’re thinking. But you might pick up a surprising insight.
For example, Lamson reels do not need lubricant. Most Ross reels don’t either, yet the Ross Colorado LT does. Its instruction manual calls for applying a small dab of waterproof grease in between the interface of the clicker and the spring. Similarly, the Orvis Vortex requires the application of Penn Reel Lube once or twice a year.
So read your instruction manual. If you can’t locate it, you should be able to find it online.
2. Be careful where you place it on the ground
I set my fly rod on the ground dozens (I suppose) of times a day. I do this when I eat lunch, cross a fence, take off or put on a jacket, tie on new tippet or fly, or take a photo. The key is to take a moment to check the ground. Try to avoid sand, fine gravel, and dirt. Also, give your reel a soft landing when you set it on a rock.
3. Take off the spool to check for grit
Do this at least a couple times a year.
Once every fishing trip is preferable — especially if you haven’t been thoughtful about where you have set your rod. Some fly fishers carry a toothbrush for this purpose. But I prefer to keep it simple and use my fingers and the tail of my shirt (despite the danger of grease stains!).
4. Let your reel air dry
There is nothing wrong with getting your reel wet. Mine has even slipped into the river occasionally.
Make sure, though, that you let your reel air dry before putting it away for the day. If your reel has been submerged, definitely take off the spool. You might even want to pull out some of the line (even to the backing) so that moisture isn’t trapped in the line coiled around your spool. But you don’t need to do anything heroic like blow-drying it. Simply set it on a counter or on top of your duffel bag.
5. Use the protective case
This should be obvious. But I get lazy sometimes and toss my reel into my duffel bag. Or I simply place it in the pile of stuff in the back of my SUV. So let the protective case do its job — which is, well, protection!
6. Back off the drag during the off-season
I’ll confess that I haven’t done this in the past. It makes perfect sense, but it didn’t occur to me until I read suggestions from both Sage and Orvis to set the drag to minimum when you store your reel for the off-season. Lessening the tension will add more life to the mechanism (spring) that creates tension.
7. Carry an extra spool
Last fall, I slipped and dropped my rod—reel first—on a rock on the Yellowstone River. I bent the spool on my Lamson reel and had to bend it with some needle-nosed pliers to make it work.
When I returned from the trip, I ordered another spool. It’s good to keep a spare spool in your duffel bag—especially if you’re fishing a stretch of river in a more remote place (that is, miles from a fly shop).
Life gets in the way of fishing more than we’d like. We’ve had stretches during which we’ve fished little, and stretches that were full of days on the river. Life often gets in the way of doing what we love most. In this episode, we identify the big life obstacles to fishing and some ways to overcome them while still making good on what’s most important, whether family or work.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
When life gets in the way of fishing for you, what is the main reason? How have you overcome the obstacle? We’d love to hear your stories of what has helped you make good on your life commitments while getting out on the river more.
REFER THE PODCAST!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Sometimes I get tired of tying on a Prince Nymph. I use it so frequently that it seems boring. But every time I decide to replace it with something fresh, I return to this classic. There’s no mystery. Even though I may get tired of it, the trout never do. Here is the scoop on this superb pattern:
1. How it originated
This fly is not named for the flamboyant musician of “Purple Rain” fame. Nor is it named after the Nigerian prince who needs your help transferring millions of dollars out of his country.
Rather, the fly is named after its creator. Doug Prince of Monterey, California, developed it in the late 1930s or early 1940s. His original “Prince Nymph” had a black body, black soft hackle, and a black tail. A modification of this pattern, which he called the “Brown Forked Tail,” became the well-known Prince Nymph.
2. How it is designed
The Prince Nymph, a.k.a. Brown Forked Tail, features a Peacock herl body wrapped with gold or copper wire. The neck consists of brown soft hackle fibers. The distinctive feature, though, is the use of two white goose biots for the wings and two brown goose biots for the tail. This makes the fly difficult to tie — at least for casual fly tyers like me. The biots are fragile, and they never stay where I want them to stay when I’m trying to secure them with my wraps of threat.
I’m partial to a gold beadhead, so I always tie and fish the beadhead version of this fly.
3. Why it works
Doug Prince designed this as a stonefly imitation for fast water.
However, it’s a visually striking pattern which seems to imitate a variety of aquatic insects. I’ve had success catching trout on a Beadhead Prince Nymph during the Caddis hatch on Montana’s Yellowstone River and during the emergence of Blue-Winged Olives on the Madison River.
The Prince Nymph is versatile enough to use it as a larger lead fly (size #12 or #14) in a two fly rig. Or, it works in a smaller size (#16 or #18) as a dropper.
4. When to use it
The short answer is, “Any time.” Seriously!
It works in all seasons and in all kinds of water conditions. I’ve had success with it in the spring creeks of Wisconsin, the big rivers in Montana, and the mountain streams in Colorado — all four seasons of the year.
So what’s in your fly box? If you want to catch trout, your box will include an ample supply of Beadhead Prince Nymphs. Don’t leave home without a handful of them.
Fly fishing off color water is pretty much standard fare in the spring. We all fish different kinds of waters – freestone rivers, spring creeks, or tail waters – but when the water muddies up, it’s time to tweak our approach. In this episode, we discuss some practical adjustments to increase the odds of catching fish when the creek is no longer crystal clear.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What adjustments do you make when fly fishing off color water? Any go-to flies that you would recommend? Tell us about a time you caught fish in impossibly murky water!
REFER THE PODCAST!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Several years ago, I stole away to fish for six hours in mid January while on a business trip. When I left the city, it was 51 degrees. I couldn’t believe my luck. A warm day would surely surface a few risers.
When I arrived at the stream an hour later, it was 32 degrees. After an hour of fishing, sleet began to pelt the back of my jacket. The wind at my back, I kept fishing for another hour. Finally, I turned to walk back to the truck, against the wind. The sleet had hardened to what felt like sand against my face. At the truck, I felt like I was dog-paddling slowly in deep water as I peeled off my waders with cold stumps for fingers. I shivered as I bent down to rip off the iced-up velcro of the gravel guards at the bottom of my waders.
The temperature had plummeted to 20 degrees. The wind chill put the temperature closer to 0, Fahrenheit.
This is not a post about winter fly fishing in particular but fly fishing in general. Rarely do expectations match reality. You plan one thing, and then everything is upended. This is the true nature of fly fishing (and life, I might add). The ability to move from what you expected to what you encountered is the essence of the sport.
Intelligent Reaction
There is a concept in software development called “agile software development.” The word agile refers to the “ability to create and respond to change in order to succeed in an uncertain and turbulent environment.”
The old world of software development was more akin to the phrase “intelligent design” – highly organized and linearly planned software development. Designing the architecture was first, creating real-world applications was second. Agile software development, on the other hand, is iterative. It’s flexible, evolving. Yes, there is an initial concept for the project, but quickly, developers react to what the client or customer needs to be coded in real time.
In 2005, Adam Bosworth, a former Google engineer, gave a presentation in which he called this approach “intelligent reaction,” which is his foil to “intelligent design” thinking.
“Don’t obsess about a grand plan,” he said. “It doesn’t survive an encounter with reality.”
The agile mindset is all about intelligently reacting to current reality. It’s part of the soul of fly fishing.
The Agile Fly Fishing Mindset Meets Reality
If I could graph my “catching expectations” before a day on the river, the left-to-right graph on many days would move from high to low. I expect each day to be fabulous. I always think the fish will hit whatever I’m of sound mind to sling.
Rarely, though, does the emotional graph move from high to higher as the day wears on. I have had days where I was overwhelmed with my success, but those days are not numbered like the stars in the sky. I tend to manage my expectations downward as the day progresses.
That fine cold January, as I cheerily drove from the convention hotel to the river, I had fantasized about dry fly fishing in winter. The precipitous drop in temperature, though, killed that idea.
So, once on the river, I tied on a streamer. I began fishing deeper pools, mostly because I had just read an article on winter fly fishing. The article reminded me that since the metabolism of trout slows in winter, they tend to congregate in deeper pools where they don’t have to fight current. Made perfect sense. Like an obedient fly fisher, I followed the rules. I fished the slower water.
Nope. No strikes in the deeper pools. By this time, I couldn’t feel my face, and I wondered if the piercing cold in my right wading boot was a leak. Maybe my aging waders had finally betrayed me.
I then decided to try casting the streamer upstream in some swifter-moving runs – and quickly stripping it back. Why? I have no idea. I often will dead-drift a streamer with a dropper – just to mix it up. Some times I strip back the streamer as it starts to drift. Some times I wait to strip it back until after the swing. This day, for no apparent reason, I tried stripping it back as soon as the streamer hit the water.
Voila! I ended up catching two nice browns and had three other strikes within twenty minutes. And not surprisingly, the wind didn’t feel quite as bitter on my way back to the truck.
I’m trying to learn not to obsess about my grand plans each day I fish. They never survive reality. While reality can be cruel, it can also be a friend.
Big brown trout are in reality river sharks, as biologists have noted. Brown trout in general also tend take over rivers and streams. Biologists surmise they feast on other trout like cutthroat and small fish. In this episode, we discuss a report in Hatch Magazine about what biologists discovered in the stomachs of brown trout. The episode may simplify your fly box.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What patterns to you find most potent when fishing for browns? We’d love to read a great story of how you switched to a different fly and caught a huge brown!
REFER THE PODCAST!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
One person who purchased the book called it “cliffsnotes for fly fishers.”
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Henry David Thoreau once said: “Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” I have to agree. I love catching trout when I fly fish — the more the better. But I figured out long ago that what fly fishers pursue is much more than the fish.
Here is a brief list of what I’m after when I head to the river with my fly rod:
Beauty
I love the sheer beauty of rugged mountains, crystal-clear streams, snow showers, yellow aspen leaves, and the piercing bugle of a bull elk. Fly fishing gives me a way to experience this beauty — not just observe it. Whether I’m knee-deep in Montana’s Yellowstone River or in the Milwaukee River not far from where the Milwaukee Bucks play basketball, there is beauty to feel and see on the river.
Solitude
I like people, so it took me awhile to realize that I lean more toward introversion than extroversion. A couple lines from an old John Denver song resonate with me whenever I go fly fishing.
Now he walks in quiet solitude, the forest and the streams,
Seeking grace in every step he takes
There’s something about fly fishing that gives me the space and quiet and time to re-energize. The next couple items on my list are by-products of that refreshing solitude.
Clarity
I do some of my best thinking when I’m fly fishing. It’s rather unintentional, though. When I’m fly fishing, my single-minded focus is on casting to the right spot and getting the right drift. Yet this concentration clears my head of the white noise, and my mind begins connecting scattered thoughts and seeing solutions to problems I’ve been pondering.
The dynamic at work here relates to what a writer once counseled his students. He told them to quit writing for the day at a point of frustration. Later, during the mundane activities of the evening, one’s mind begins making connections until a solution appears. That’s what happens to me when I’m fly fishing. I go to catch trout and come back with a list of insights and ideas.
Solace
My friends describe me as an optimist and a rather positive person. But I can brood over failures and frustrations with the best (or worst) of people. Fly fishing provides a solace — a comfort or consolation that I don’t get elsewhere. Maybe it works because fly fishing provides physical exertion to counteract my fretting and brooding. Hiking and casting and wading serves as good medicine.
Togetherness
Ironically, fly fishing provides togetherness as well as solitude. I crave both. The most obvious form of togetherness is the experience and conversation I share with my fly fishing companions. This is most often my podcast partner, Dave, and occasionally my brother or one of my sons.
The time together on the river is rich. We alternate between silence and laughter. The conversation ranges between where we will eat at the end of the day and where we will be at the end of our lives.
There’s another form of togetherness, though.
Norman Maclean speaks of it near the end of his novella, A River Runs Through It. Fly fishing for him was a way of reaching out to those in his life who were gone. When I’m on the river, I think of times with my dad bow – hunting elk high on the mountain slopes in Montana’s Beartooth-Absaroka Wilderness Area. I think of the times when he waded into icy mountain streams to free my, uh, Mepps Spinner from a rock or submerged branch. Somehow, fly fishing triggers these memories more than anything else I do.
There’s also a sense of togetherness with the Creator of the rivers I’m fishing and the mountains at which I’m gawking. Or, in the words of a poet, there is a sense of “awesome wonder” when I consider all the works God’s hands have made.
Adventure
Of course, fly fishing is not all contemplation. It’s a blast, too!
Sure, fly fishing is not an extreme sport, but it is an adventure. There are cliffs to climb, moose to avoid, currents to wade, snowstorms to endure, and some of the most interesting people you could imagine. Will I catch a 20-inch rainbow today? Will I step on a rattlesnake? Will I make it out of this isolated stretch of river before dark? Once Dave and I walked around a bend in a trail and came upon a herd of bison, and one of the bulls wanted to get to know us better. The bull walked within 30 yards of us before switching its tail and heading up the ravine with the others.
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t like catching fish. I always on a mission to catch trout – and hopefully lots of them. But Thoreau was right. I’m after much more than the fish.
Mayflies are an important food source of trout. The short happy life of a mayfly is about a year – and all but roughly a day or so of its life are spent rolling around the bottom of the river. Their few hours as adults are mostly spent in a mating frenzy, after which the female deposits thousands of eggs into the river. And the cycle begins anew. The variations of mayflies are legion. But there are some basic patterns and types of mayflies that you’ll want to have in your fly box when, uh, opportunity rises. In this episode, we discuss the short happy life of a mayfly – and the happy life of a fly fisher when mayflies emerge.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
How often do you fish mayflies? What is your best story of success fishing a mayfly hatch?
REFER THE PODCAST!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
One person who purchased the book called it “Cliffs Notes” for fly fishers.
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I’m fond of trout fishing because I love crystal-clear rivers and streams. They are simply breath-taking and life-giving. So I can get a bit grumpy when a rainstorm adds a bit of color to make the stream more like chocolate milk.
But I’ve learned not to despair. Here are a few insights about fly fishing a murky river or stream:
1. A bit of color may work to your advantage
Sure, a swollen river gushing with snow runoff is usually not productive. Yet, fish are less spooky when the water is a bit murky. The murkiness prevents them from seeing fly fishers, false casts, and larger tippets.
2. Put on the San Juan Worm
There are a couple reasons why a murky river is a great place to try a San Juan Worm.
First, rainstorms and rising water often loosen up mud along the banks. This dislodges worms and sends them drifting down the current. Second, a pattern like a San Juan Worm is a bit larger than a size #18 Zebra Midge, so it’s easier for trout to spot it when visibility is limited.
3. Slow down your fly
Since visibility is limited, you want to give trout a longer-than-usual view of your fly. If you’re fishing nymphs, add a bit more weight to get your fly into the slower current at the bottom of the river. Remember, if the bubbles on the surface are moving faster than your strike indicator, you’re at the right depth. If you’re stripping a streamer, strip it a bit more slowly.
4. Keep an eye out for risers
I’m always surprised to see trout rising when the water is murky. But it happens more often than you might think. Often, I’ll find risers in slower water—either in the tailwater of a pool or even on the outside of a bend. These are places where the fish have more time to respond since the flies on the surface are not being carried along so quickly.
5. Look for fish in unexpected places
A few years ago, I fished the Lower Madison River in Montana when it had more color than usual. When I approached a familiar run, I was surprised to see a couple trout feeding near a shallow bank. I had never seen trout in that spot before. They were always in a deeper channel about six feet further into the river. But with murky water, they were less visible to predators.
I ended up catching one of them.
So don’t give up on fly fishing when your clear-running river gets a bit murky. You can work around a bit of color. Sometimes, it may even work to your advantage.
Learning to fly fish is the worthy pursuit of a lifetime. But the first couple years, depending on how often you fish, can be frustrating. You think it’s about casting, but that’s not even a fraction of what you need to learn to catch fish consistently. In this episode, we interview Steve’s two sons about learning to fly fish. The audio is patchy, and for that we apologize, but we thought Steve’s two sons had some great insights for newer fly fishers.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What was the most difficult part of learning to fly fish? If you were learning to fly fish today, what would you do differently?
REFER THE PODCAST!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
One person who purchased the book called it “Cliffs Notes” for fly fishers.
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Dear Matthew, we’re still stinging from your Open Letter to us on January 3, 2018.
The stinging was caused not by the content of your post but the reminder of our last Skype podcast interview with you. Gazing at your unbelievably pristine lumber-jack beard during the interview was a rebuke to our manhood. Even in midlife, Dave has no real shot at such facial hair, and Steve’s goatee is nothing short of pathetic, a feeble attempt to validate his deep outdoor insecurities.
So we must begin our reply with nothing but deference to and accolades for your facial accomplishments. You have achieved legendary countenance status in our hearts and minds.
Now that we’ve covered our annoying self-promotional, self-aggrandizing hoo-ha, we’d like to address the big idea of your post: that we need to broaden our fly fishing experiences to the East Coast.
Key Lines of the @Castingacross Open Letter
To properly respond to every nuanced thought in your post, we’ll break it down:
“I did want to remind you that I still haven’t received the royalty checks for my two appearances:”
Say what?
Didn’t you mean to say, “I still haven’t sent you the royalty checks for the privilege of being on the podcast?”
“… it is clear that your fly fishing hearts lie beyond the Mississippi.”
We think it’s clear that we are cheap. We begin all our fly fishing planning with, “Do we have family or ‘loose family ties’ that we can mooch off?”
Steve is a master mooch, and Dave is Steve’s mooch conspirator, for Dave never complains when Steve finds free lodging on one of their Montana excursions.
“I’m just asking you to seriously consider some angling opportunities that lie a little more eastward.”
Eastward. Hmmm. Is that a direction?
“A River Runs Through It has captivated recent generations of fly fishers, and rightly so. Still, that brand of western angling nostalgia only looks as far back as the early 1900’s. Places in the Catskills and Central Pennsylvania are literally the birthplaces of American fly fishing.”
Uh, this may be a bit embarrassing for you, but everyone knows Brad Pitt is the founder of fly fishing and that Norman Mclean was his father in real life. Everyone. Given that bit of historical, uh, truth, the royal lineage of fly fishing seems to run through Montana.
“It wouldn’t be a stretch to say that I am the chief sinner when it comes to just going where it is comfortable.”
We don’t want to judge you, but the phrase “chief sinner” had come to mind before you mentioned it.
“So what say you? Maine brook trout? Massachusetts striped bass? Carolina catfish?”
You had us at Carolina catfish.
“Sincerely, the hopefully-soon-to-be 3rd guy in a river out east,”
You are here by officially knighted as the Third Guy. We’ll send an invoice for a third of the expense of it all shortly. You can pay us by saying yes to another podcast episode real soon.
Making small adjustments on the river is the secret sauce to better days on the river. No one ever tells a new fly fisher that the three attractor patterns in his or her fly box won’t work every time out. Sooner or later, we all learn that fly fishing is all about a thousand adjustments. In this episode, we discuss the importance of the ability to know when to switch out one pattern for another or go up or down a size or switch to nymphs or streamers. It’s all about adjustments.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What kinds of adjustments do you make most often on the river? How patient are you when what you’re slinging isn’t working?
REFER THE PODCAST!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
One person who purchased the book called it “Cliffs Notes” for fly fishers.
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I have not conducted a formal study on the reason fly fishers stay home on a cold winter day. But I’m confident I know what it is. It’s not the problem of ice build-up on fly rod guides. Nor is it the less-frenetic feeding patterns of trout in the winter. It’s the problem of staying warm in cold conditions.
Here are ten commandments for staying warm when fly fishing on cold days. Most of these are obvious. But they are good reminders. Perhaps there’s one that you’ve missed.
1. Drink liquids — whether hot or cold
Chances are that you won’t cover as much water on a cold day. So there’s no need to obsess about traveling light. Bring along that small Thermos or Yeti tumbler filled with your warm liquid of choice—coffee or hot chocolate. Your tumbler might even double as a hand warmer.
Actually, water may be your best bet since it promotes circulation to your your fingers and toes. Drinking enough water also eliminates a huge contributing factor to frostbite and hypothermia: dehydration.
Be wary of spiking your drink with schnapps or brandy. Alcohol may make you feel or think you are warmer. But it actually drops your core body temperature.
2. Use a hand-warming device
Cold hands make it impossible to fly fish. It’s hard to tie on a fly or tippet when your hands don’t work. Cold hands also make fly fishers miserable. The most obvious solution is to purchase a pair of insulated, waterproof gloves. Personally, the ones with exposed fingertips don’t help me, because it’s my fingertips which get cold first! Occasionally, I’ll bring two or three pairs of lighter wool gloves so I can switch them when one pair gets damp.
Another possible solution is to use hand warmers. I’ve used the small, disposable, inexpensive packets which get activated when exposed to air. In my experience, most brands provide sufficient heat for only an hour or two. The downside is that these packets stop working when they get damp. If you spend enough time fly fishing on cold days, you might try the chrome plated hand warmers (about the size of a cell phone) which run on lighter fuel. I confess that I haven’t used one of these since I was in my early teens while spending the entire day in the woods deer hunting. But they put off a lot of heat.
Don’t forget to stop and stuff your hands inside your shirt against your flesh. If you can place your hand under an armpit (a lovely thought) you can warm both sides of your hand. Read on for another overlooked option.
3. Wear a warm hat
You might be surprised to learn that your cold hands are due, in part, to the heat escaping from your head. So wear a warm hat — preferably one with ear flaps. A stocking cap works fine — especially one with wool or microfiber.
4. Go with layers instead of one large jacket
I usually wear the same lightweight Simms rain jacket I use in July that I do on a cold winter day in January. It protects me against wind and moisture. Then, I add more layers underneath. More layers provide more warmth than one bulky jacket. Start with good moisture-wicking underwear. Even when it’s cold, you may sweat when walking to your fishing spot. Staying dry is essential to staying warm.
After a layer of moisture-wicking underwear, build layers with an assortment of relatively thin pullovers, sweaters, or wool shirts. Add a down vest if you need to. The advantage of layers is that you can peel them off as the day gets warmer. Your waders add another layer of warmth, too—even if you’re not wading.
5. Use a neck gator
Even a thin microfiber neck gator will keep your face warm. Your cheeks and tip of your nose will thank you at the end of the day.
6. Wear warm socks
I’ve never tried the battery powered socks or even the inexpensive, disposable foot warmers or toe warmers. But I suspect they are a terrific option—as long as your feet don’t get too hot. I opt for a thin pair of moisture-wicking socks covered by a slightly thicker wool blend pair. Keep reading for another strategy.
7. Keep moving
The most obvious way to keep your feet and body warm is to keep moving. At last, I have an excuse for moving so quickly from one run to another! Moving generates heat and compensates for the way that cold temperatures restrict your blood vessels, slowing down your blood flow.
But what do you do if you want to fish the same run for three hours because it’s producing? Take a walk anyway and come back to your spot in five minutes. It’s likely that most of your competition will be at home on the sofa watching the Winter Olympics.
8. Simplify your gear
The less time you rummage through pockets to find tippet or split shot, the less time your hands will be exposed to the cold. Also, this will decrease the time you are stationary. Remember, you want to keep moving–walking or casting—to stay warm.
9. Eat snacks
Whether you stick with health-conscious choices or go with a Snickers Bar, eating will provide the energy you desperately need in the cold. Plus, it will also boost your metabolism.
10. Limit your wading
I’ve stood knee-deep in Montana’s Madison River in January for long stretches of time and have remained surprisingly warm.
However, the deeper you wade, the more you put yourself at risk for disaster. Falling into a river when the air temperature is thirty degrees poses risks that falling into it when it’s seventy degrees does not. Hypothermia is always a concern. So be on the safe side. Don’t try anything heroic when it comes to wading.
If you spend a cold winter day in front of your television or fly tying vise, you have made a wise choice. But if you want to fly fish, you can have a great experience if you take the precautions needed to stay warm.
Parenting kids to love the outdoors is easier said than done. It requires intentionality, patience and flexibility. In this first-of-its-kind episode (for us), we invited several of our kids to ask them about our “outstanding” job of helping them develop a love for the outdoors. Joining us for this episode are Steve’s two boys, Ben and Luke, and Dave’s oldest, Christian. Steve has two other kids, and Dave has three others. This is a fun one, as the boys regale us for a hilarious episode on parenting kids to love the outdoors.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What advice would you give to young parents who want to instill a love for the outdoors? We’d love to hear your funny stories of the patience it takes to parent kids in the outdoors!
REFER THE PODCAST!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
One person who purchased the book called it “Cliffs Notes” for fly fishers.
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I’m looking forward to fly fishing in the new year. One never fully knows what opportunities or obstacles a new year will bring, but intentionality helps create good experiences. So the other day I scribbled down a few fly fishing resolutions for the new year.
I may modify my list as the year unfolds. But at least I have some direction:
1. Cut down on my false casting
The reason I false cast a bit too much is, well, because I can. But the trick with fly casting (as it is with a lot of skills) is to work smarter, not harder. The extra casts only increase the odds of spooking fish or getting tangled. So I’m going to try to concentrate on keeping it simple.
2. Stop, look, and listen more often
I actually managed to do this one day last fall on the Yellowstone River in Yellowstone National Park. Dave, my podcast partner, and I were fishing a remote stretch of the river. We had the whole day to fish, so I found myself more willing to sit down, nibble on the cheese and crackers I had packed, and watch a couple of elk on the opposite mountainside. I need to do more of this. It helps me savor the whole fly fishing experience.
3. Tie more flies
I hardly tied any flies last year.
At one level, I’m fine with that. My time is limited, so I’d rather cast flies on the water rather than tie them. However, I find it gratifying to catch trout on flies I’ve tied. Besides, I can’t bring myself to pay a couple bucks for something simple like a San Juan Worm or a brassie or even a Woolly Bugger.
My fly tying bench is now cleared off, so I have no excuses!
4. Work on my double haul
A double haul is using your “line hand” (your left hand if you’re casting your rod with your right hand) to haul or pull back the line on both your forward and backward stroke. This increases line speed by delivering velocity to your fly line. I’ve played around with it before, but I want to improve my technique. As soon as the weather gets warmer, I plan to head to the grassy field in a park about four blocks from my house to practice.
5. Transfer my flies to a new fly box
More than a year ago, I slipped and fell while fishing a small creek. The good news is that I didn’t get hurt. The bad news is the one of my fly boxes in my vest did get hurt. It cracked. So, I purchased a new box. One year later, that box is still in pristine condition. That’s because I haven’t used it yet! Somehow, I haven’t found the time to transfer a hundred plus flies from the cracked one to the new one. It seems tedious. But I need to do that before I get out on the river.
6. Save for a new pair of waders
My twenty-year old Patagonia waders finally gave out last summer. My fifteen-year old Simms waders are still going strong. But I suspect they have almost reached their life expectancy. So I need to save for a replacement pair before I really need to replace them. I’m intrigued with the waders that have a front zipper. I looked at a pair of Patagonia waders last year that make sense. So it’s time to start setting aside dollars so I can get them in early spring.
7. Introduce my grandsons to fly fishing
This is the one that’s most important to me this year. Our whole family is going to spend a week this summer at a mountain ranch in Montana, and I’m looking forward to helping my seven-year old and five-year old grandsons dabble in fly fishing. Even if I let them reel in a trout I’ve caught, I hope it will give them the feel – and the fever! — for fly fishing.
I don’t know what the next year is going to bring. But if I can follow through on some — or all — of these resolutions, I should have a good time fly fishing.
What are you New Year’s resolutions for fly fishing?
Your strike indicator gives off some important signals, the most obvious being whether a fish is working your nymph. In this episode for newer fly fishers, we discuss the various kinds of strike indicators – and how to read whether your nymphs are down far enough in the feeding zone. Nymph fishing is a high-interest topic of our audience, and going back to the basics now and then can help you find more success on the river.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What kind of strike indicator do you like best? Or do you even use one? Please post your comments below. We’d love to hear from you!
REFER THE PODCAST!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
One person who purchased the book called it “Cliffs Notes” for fly fishers.
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
A friend sent me a photo of one of the largest rainbows he’s ever caught on Montana’s Missouri River. He caught it in mid-December, the temperature was 8 degrees above zero. That’s cold. He endured frozen digits and iced-up fly rod guides for a day to remember.
I dislike fishing in a frigid weather for several reasons:
First, it’s really cold (an understatement, of course). Second, my fingers get really cold. Third, my toes get really cold. Fourth, my face gets really cold. Okay, you get the idea.
There’s another problem though. The guides on my fly rod collect ice like my hunting boots collect mud when I walk through a plowed field on a rainy fall day.
How do you deal with ice on your fly rod guides?
Preventative Measure for Your Fly Rod Guides
Some fly fishers coat their guides with Vaseline. Others apply some kind of lip balm. So maybe you should purchase that Simms lip balm the next time you’re in a fly shop (Kidding!That’s an inside joke that our long-time readers and listeners will get!) Seriously, a lot of fly fishers say that Vaseline or lip balm works. Others suggest spraying your guides with olive oil or some kind of cooking spray. This sounds like an easier approach as long as you remember to put a canister of it in your duffel bag or fly vest.
You’ll notice that I refer here to “some” or “other” fly fishers.
The truth is, I’ve never bothered with this measure. It’s not because I fear that the chemicals in these products will damage my rod or guides. The reason is it seems like a lot of work for a solution that will only be temporary. After a half hour, or so, of fishing, the ice reappears (from what other fly fishers tell me). At that point, I have no interest in fumbling around with lip balm or trying to retrieve a canister of cooking from my fly vest.
However, enough fly fishers swear by this approach that you owe it to yourself to try it to see if it works for you.
Fly Rod Guides No-No
Perhaps the most obvious solution is to use your fingers to break it off of the guides. Nooooo! Not under any circumstances!
You run the risk of breaking off the guides with the ice. You’ll use more pressure than you expect to break off those stubborn ice crystals. If Michael Scott of The Office were writing this article, he would likely describe it as a “Lose-Lose-Lose” approach. So don’t try it when you’re on the river.
Simple Is, Well, Best
This brings me to the approach I prefer. It’s simple, yet effective.
Dip your rod in the river you’re fly fishing. With the right depth of water and the right angle, you can do this without submerging your reel (and your hand!). I typically leave my rod guides submerged for a few seconds. To use the words of an old television commercial, the ice “rinses away like magic!” Sometimes, there is still some residue of ice. But it’s loose enough that you can remove it (gently!) with your fingers without breaking a guide.
Also, once I remove my rod from the water, I shake it to remove excess water. If light water crystals start to form, I simply blow them off with my breath or gently squeeze them with my fingers.
If all of this seems rather tedious, well, it is.
Chances are you’ll get cold and leave the river before the tedium of clearing the ice off your guides drives you crazy. The only other alternative is to stay home and tie flies or watch a video of fly fishers hauling in huge trout in New Zealand. But then you might miss out on the fish of a lifetime.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What were some of your highlights in 2017? What are some of your aspirations for 2018? We look forward to hearing your comments!
REFER THE PODCAST!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
One person who purchased the book called it “Cliffs Notes” for fly fishers.
To switch metaphors, perhaps it’s more like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I’ve never fly fished on Christmas Day. I’ve fished on Thanksgiving Day and New Year’s Day, but never on Christmas.
Yet I remember a year a couple decades ago when all I wanted for Christmas was to go fly fishing. I had a fly fisher’s Christmas wish:
‘Twas the week before Christmas, when there in my house
I looked out on the valley, and I started to grouse.
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
But it’s my stocking foot waders I wanted to wear
Our house overlooked the north floor of Montana’s Gallatin Valley. From our picture window I could it was beginning to look a lot like Christmas. A dozen or more houses glowed with Christmas lights. An inch of snow covered the valley floor with a white blanket. Inside our house, the tree was decorated, and the sound of Karen Carpenter singing “I’ll be home for Christmas” filled our living room.
Christmas was seven days away.
But I was desperate to go fly fishing. It had been two months since I last flung a fly on the water. Just then an idea began to form in my mind. I knew that tomorrow was going to be in the high thirties, and I figured out a way to take off work in the early afternoon.
So away from the window I flew like a flash,
tore open my duffel bag where my fly gear was stashed.
Before long I was nestled all snug in my bed,
While visions of rainbow trout danced in my head.
The next afternoon, I left work early at two o’clock and headed for the Madison River. I arrived at the mouth of the Bear Trap Canyon an hour later. My plan was to park at the Warm Springs fishing access and walk up about three-quarters of a mile to the rock garden where some decent sized trout always seemed to lurk. But my heart sank when I pulled into the parking lot and turned off the engine.
I had just parked my truck when there arose such a clatter,
I opened my door to see what was the matter.
It roared like a freight train, that miserable wind.
I knew that my chances to catch trout were quite thin.
No wonder the parking lot was empty.
I had no desire to hike three quarters of a mile in gale force wind. But it occurred to me the bend in the river that wrapped around the far corner of the parking lot. I was in no mood to be true to my mantra: “Always walk at least a mile before you start fishing.” Besides no one in their right mind would have fished this elbow during the last few days of blustery weather.
More rapid than eagles the snowflakes they came,
so I shouted at the wind and called it a name.
Then I tied on a prince nymph and went straight to my work,
while hoping a rainbow might give it a jerk.
For the next few minutes, I got into a consistent rhythm: cast, shiver, mend, shiver, retrieve, shiver, complain, shiver. And then it happened.
The wind just kept whipping that new falling snow,
I was about to stop casting, about ready to go,
When what to my watering eyes should disappear,
but my miniature strike indicator, and this caused me to cheer.
For the next couple minutes, I felt the old familiar tug of a fish on the end of the line. It turned out to be a 14-inch rainbow which looked surprisingly plump for the time of year. I wouldn’t call that catch a Christmas miracle. But it made my day.
After I released it the fish, I realized that my shivering had increased. It was cold, and the sun had slipped below the mountain. So I began the long walk back to my truck—all fifteen steps. Later that night, I stood at our picture window and looked out over the moonlit Valley. Beyond the houses dotted with Christmas lights, I could faintly see the gap in the distant hills where the Madison River emerged from the Bear Trap Canyon. I was thankful for the light and warmth of home.
But I was also thankful for those fifteen minutes on the river that lifted my spirits.
There I stood by the window and looked into the night,
and thought about the trout that put up such a fight.
And so I exclaimed as I turned off the lights,
Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.
Fly fishing exile is when you wished you lived closer to the big rivers. Steve moved from Bozeman, Montana, to the Chicago area more than ten years ago. And Dave moved from Colorado to the Chicago area more than 25 years ago. We’ve grieved the loss of close proximity to blue-ribbon waters. Now, we’re not griping. We’re not complaining. Well, maybe a little. In this episode, we reflect a bit on our decision to move to the Midwest and discuss what we love most about our lives today, now that we live with ten million of our closest friends in the Chicago area.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
How close to you live to great fly fishing waters? How far do you drive to sate your fly fishing thirst? Post your stories below!
REFER THE PODCAST!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
That is the most simple way to help us grow!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
A friend recently went through his late grandfather’s personal papers and stumbled upon the notes to a speech. My friend laughed when he saw a particular note his grandfather had written at the top of a page. The note read: “Weak argument, yell louder.”
Unfortunately, I’m tempted to adopt a similar approach when I’m fly casting against the wind. My inclination is to cast harder. But casting harder against the wind resembles yelling louder when the argument you’re trying to make is weak. It is highly ineffective.
Here are seven tips when fly casting against the wind. Some are obvious, some not so much. All of them can make a big difference.
1. Use 6-weight line
The current favorite for an all-around fly rod is a 9 foot, 5-weight.
But after years of fishing in the wind on Montana’s Madison and Yellowstone Rivers, I’m sold on a 6-weight rod for windy conditions. The added power of a 6-weight does help you cut through the wind. If you can’t afford another fly rod, at least get another spool with 6-weight line. It will work fine with your 9 foot, 5-weight rod.
By the way, you might want to shorten your leaders from 9 feet to 7.5 feet. A shorter leader is easier to control in windy conditions.
2. Cast between gusts of wind
Alright, this is one of those rather obvious tips. But it works when fly casting against the wind.
One of the windiest days I ever fly fished was during the Mother’s Day Caddis hatch on the Yellowstone River south of Livingston, Montana. I had to stop for a while and close my eyes to keep them from filling with dust. But I discovered that if I waited, I would get 5 or 10 second windows to cast. I had to be quick, but the window was sufficient to get my fly on the water.
I caught a lot of trout that day.
3. Use your wrist, not your whole body
Again, the temptation is to work harder when you cast in windy conditions—to put your whole body into it. If swinging your arms and swaying your entire body is your approach, stop it. The wrist flick is where the power is. That’s what makes your rod work for you. If you try to get your entire body into the cast, you actually diminish the performance of your fly rod.
The wrist flick — back and forward — makes the rod do what it is designed to do.
4. Learn the double haul
One of the best ways to cut through the wind is to use the “double haul.” This technique increases line speed by delivering velocity to your fly line. Joan Wulff says: “The rod is loaded more deeply, and that transfers to greater energy in your line.”
Basically, you use your “line hand” (your left hand if you’re casting with your right hand) to haul or pull back the line on both your forward and backward stroke. It’s much easier to see than to describe.
The idea is to keep your line low — perhaps under the wind. There are two ways you can do this.
First, use a sidearm cast. You can still double haul while casting sidearm. A second way to lower your cast is to crouch or kneel. I can’t remember how many times I crouched while standing knee deep in Montana’s Madison River on windy days in March and April.
6. Shorten your casts
This may seem obvious, but you may need to remind yourself to keep your casts shorter. The less line you have in the air, the less problem you’ll have with the wind. You can live with a shorter cast if you can extend your drift as much as possible. So keep feeding line until your fly drifts through the feeding zone.
7. Don’t cast against the wind
That’s right. If at all possible, figure out how to get the wind at your side or, preferably, at your back. This might mean fishing the opposite bank or casting downstream instead of upstream.
If you practice these techniques when fly casting against the wind, the day won’t make you quite so angry. You may not even mutter or yell inappropriate words. Instead, you’ll happily hum Bob Seger’s old tune, “Against the Wind” as you make one effective cast after another.
Fly fishing shows are not our expertise. We’ve been to a grand total of one in the last five years. We needed an expert, and so we called on Matthew Lourdeau, a fly fishing blogger and fly fishing show frequenter. Matthew lives on the east coast, and in this episode on fly fishing shows we interview Matthew to help you make the most of your next show.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
When was the last time you attended a fly fishing show? How do you making the most of your time at an outdoor show? What do you recommend for newer fly fishers?
REFER THE PODCAST!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Now mend your line.” Those words from Bob Granger, one of my fly fishing mentors, still ring in my ears. I needed all the help I could get on mending for new fly fishers.
Curtis, another fly fishing guide, recently said: “Better menders catch more fish than better casters.” I am convinced he is right. So here is a quick primer on mending for new fly fishers.
What is mending?
Once your fly line is floating down the river or stream, mending is simply flipping the mid-section of the line upstream of your fly line.
So if the current is flowing from right to left, flip the mid-section of the line to the right. The end result is that your fly line should resemble the letter “C” as it floats down the river — with the back of the “C” on the upstream side of the current.
Why is mending for new fly fishers important?
Mending is critical because it eliminates drag.
If the mid-section of your line gets ahead of your fly, it will drag it through the current. Your dry fly will resemble a water-skier, leaving a wake that will send trout scattering for cover. Your wet fly will zoom through the current more quickly than any nymph normally drifts through it.
The point, then, is to get a natural drift. Your fly should look like a normal morsel floating freely on top or underneath the surface.
When is mending important?
The answer is, almost every cast. Every cast needs to be mended at some point.
It’s possible to put a mend in the line during your cast. On your forward cast, simply draw the letter “C”—normally if the current is going from left to right or backwards if the current is moving from right to left. Otherwise, you will almost always need to mend your line once it lands on the water.
How can I avoid disturbing fish while mending?
First, do your mending well before the fly enters the hot zone. If you are casting a dry fly to rising fish, cast well above this spot. If you are nymph fishing or even dry fly fishing when nothing is rising, then cast well above the zone where you figure the fish will feeding.
Second, practice mending so you don’t disturb your dry fly or your strike indicator. The first few times you try to mend your line, you’ll probably jerk your fly or strike indicator a couple inches.
Of course, that’s not the end of the world if you’re mending well before your fly reaches the hot zone. But it’s best to eliminate this. You’ll get a feel for it with more practice, but the key is to lift up as much fly line as you can from the water before you make your mend.
How can I mend longer casts?
The more line you have on the water, the more difficult it is to mend it effectively with a single mend. Longer casts require multiple mends, depending on the current. By multiple, I mean two or three — not seven or eight! Instead of trying to mend the entire line in one flip, concentrate on moving the section closest to you. Then move the rest of it in another mend or two.
What is stack mending?
You can also use the technique of multiple mending to create “stack mends.” Stack mending refers to the creation of successive loops of line on the water. This allows for a much longer drift before your fly ever begins to drag. You might be surprised at how many trout you’ll catch towards the end of a long drift. Stack mending makes longer drifts possible.
So don’t just stand there after you make a cast. Do something. Mend that line.
The fish will not thank you, because you’ll fool them more often. But you will be a more satisfied fly fisher.
Baker’s Hole is a bucket-list stretch of the Madison River near the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park. Baker’s Hole Campground is located approximately three miles north of West Yellowstone, Montana, and in the fall, Hebgen Lake rainbows move up the Madison River to spawn. The stretch that winds near the campground features several deep runs where running rainbows stack up as they move up the river. Click now to listen to “One Fine Day on the Madison River at Bakers Hole”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Do you have a story from a fine day on the river from this past year? We’d love to hear about it! Post your story below.
REFER THE PODCAST!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
You should have been here yesterday – I can’t think of a more annoying comment. I’ve had some great days on the river. But I’ve also had a lot more days on the river when I was reminded later by some jerk I had never met before that the previous day had been a lot better.
The phrase “You should have been here yesterday” is not really all that witty. It’s pretty much a thoughtless taunt. At least it feels like a taunt. Maybe it’s simply small talk. It’s unnecessary chitchat, for sure. It’s a saying that complete strangers at a fly shop or at the coffee shop will offer up with no warning.
It’s mindless. And flippant.
Shame on My Friends
Worse, it’s a saying that even friends and family have the audacity to blurt out, with little to no provocation.
For a generation each fall, I have hunted upland game and waterfowl with my father and his cronies. For decades, I carved out a week of my life and traveled back to North Dakota. My sons and brother and I bounced around the prairie with my father’s generation, who regaled us with Ole and Lena jokes, some of which raised the eyebrows of my young sons, who giggled at the occasional potty language and body parts.
Invariable, no matter how good a week of hunting, one of my father’s friends would pipe up, just as sure as the sun rose that morning, “It’s too bad you weren’t here last week. We shot so many geese.”
This is another perverse form of saying, “You should have been here yesterday.”
Last week. Yesterday. The other day. Shoulda, woulda, coulda.
Maybe I’m just being too sensitive. But when an inconsiderate slob, even a family friend, makes the brainless observation that I should have been fishing here yesterday, he or she puts me in a mood.
I wasn’t here yesterday. I am here today. And the fishing stinks.
I will say, though, that the wisecrack rarely comes up on a guided float trip down the Yellowstone River.
Before we put in, the guide may say, “Man, it was really good yesterday. The browns were slamming hoppers.” However, as the day goes by, especially on the slower trips, the conversation rarely drifts to yesterday. That’s good. Because I’m still thinking about his earlier comment how good the fishing was yesterday while feeling grumpy about the action today.
Guides are pretty savvy. They know their tip comes at the end of the day. So, it’s never strategic to offer up the saying to an exasperated client at 4:30 PM.
My Bigger Struggle with “You Should Have Been Here Yesterday”
A couple years ago, Steve, my podcast partner, and I fished a stretch of Montana’s 16 Mile Creek. By sheer luck (Steve’s connections and a rare opening on private waters), we spent six hours reeling in trout after trout until we cried “Uncle.” At about 4 PM, Steve said, “I am wrecked.” I was too.
Exhausted, we wrapped up the late afternoon and early evening with 4,000 calories each at the area’s best steak house.
The next morning, we were back at the fly shop, still feeling sluggish from the carnage at the steak house, and I began to make small talk with one of the shop monkeys. I mentioned that we had fished 16 Mile, and he said that had fished a stretch of the river not long ago.
The best part of any fly fishing trip is often the exceptional people you meet. Yes, we like to catch fish, but often what gives the trip color and creates great memories are the unexpected conversations. In this episode we identify five exceptional and one unexceptional conversations from a recent trip to Montana.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
We’d love to hear a story about some exceptional people you’ve met while fly fishing. It could be a great guide, a person at a cafe, or the characters at your favorite fly shop. Please post your story below.
Refer the Podcast!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I have much for which to be thankful as Thanksgiving Day nears. My list begins with the love of God, the love of family, good health, good friends, and a job which I love. Yet fly fishing is high on my list of reasons to give thanks. This week, fly fishing and Thanksgiving have given me pause for some reflection.
Here are seven of the fly-fishing-related gifts for which I am thankful.
1. I am thankful for the years I lived within an hour of famous trout waters.
I lived in Montana for over two decades.
One year, I lived in Paradise Valley — just two hundred yards from the Yellowstone River. Then, I moved to Helena where I could drive to some terrific spots on the Missouri River in less than an hour. Five years later, I moved to the Gallatin Valley near Bozeman. The house we built was less than a mile from the East Gallatin River and less than an hour away from the Madison and Yellowstone Rivers. It’s been twelve years since I moved from Montana to the north suburbs of Chicago. But once or twice a year I return to fish those amazing rivers.
I know where to go and how to fish them because I had the privilege of living in fly fishing heaven for so long.
2. I am thankful for the relative affordability of fly fishing.
My favorite outdoor sports are elk hunting, deer hunting, and fly fishing for trout. But I rarely hunt these days because of the cost. Now that I am a nonresident, an annual fishing license in Montana costs me $86. By comparison, the cost of a nonresident Elk Combination license (which includes fishing and upland birds) costs $868. A nonresident Deer Combination license is $602. You will find significant differences between the costs of guide services (if you use them) for fly fishing and big game hunting.
You might be surprised, too, when you compare the costs of fly fishing to other outdoor sports like downhill skiing or golf.
Thankfully, fly fishing is fairly affordable — even if you splurge for a Winston Rod or a pair of Simms waders.
3. I am thankful I can fly fish year round.
When I lived in Montana, the window for big game hunting was roughly Labor Day to Thanksgiving Day weekend. Once you filled your tags, you were done. However, you can fish every month of the year in Montana if you like. I have caught fish in Montana every month of the year. Three of the four seasons—spring, summer, and fall—offer fantastic opportunities.
That is nine months of prime fly fishing!
4. I am thankful for the friendships which have formed around fly fishing.
My podcast partner, Dave, and I have other interests besides fly fishing. But our love of casting a fly on trout streams and rivers has given us a context for our life-long friendship to flourish. I’ve developed several other friendships solely because of fly fishing.
There’s something about it which creates and deepens relational bonds like few other activities do.
5. I am thankful for the way fly fishing has strengthened family ties.
Fly fishing provided a means of communicating and relating with my sons even during the most difficult seasons of their youth (middle-school years). We’ve had some tremendous memories catching cutthroat trout on hoppers in the Yellowstone and big rainbows on nymphs on the Madison.
The memories we share while fly fishing have drawn us closer to each other.
6. I am thankful for the mentors who have taught me to fly fish.
I have written about this elsewhere, but I am profoundly grateful for the guys who helped me learn to cast, to mend my line, and to tie flies. I am also thankful for mentors who shared their favorite spots with me as well as their wisdom. I am thankful for the patience of all those who got hooked by my backcasts or who had to help me untangle my two-fly combination after an unnecessary false cast.
7. I am thankful for the conservation efforts which make good fly fishing possible.
I am grateful for the foresight of anglers like Bud Lilly and the ongoing efforts of folks like Craig Matthews to protect fish and fisheries. I am thankful for the Skinner brothers—ranchers near Belgrade, Montana who were ahead of their time in implementing practices to protect and even restore sections of the East Gallatin River.
I am appreciative of Trout Unlimited, a conservation organization to which I belong, for all of its initiatives and projects which protect wild trout.
As Thanksgiving Day nears, I hope you’ll take a moment to reflect on all the reasons you have to be thankful for fly fishing. It is an amazing pursuit!
Yellowstone National Park is no doubt our happy place. It’s one of our favorite places to fish, especially in the fall. This fall we fished the Yellowstone and Gardner near the north entrance of Yellowstone Park as well as the Madison River near West Yellowstone. In this episode, we recall one fine day on the Yellowstone River in mid October.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Do you have a great day on the river from this past year? Wed love to hear about it. Please post your stories below!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
We’d love to hear some funny stories from your time on the river? Or even while hunting.
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Other Articles and Podcasts on Funny Outdoor Moments
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
The most important letter in the alphabet for fly fishers is the letter “C.” If you can draw the letter “C” with the tip of your fly rod, you can manipulate your line in some important ways.
C is for Mending
Once you have cast your fly upon the water, you’ll want to mend it to get the middle part of your line upstream—behind your fly. If the middle section of line is in the lead, it can drag your fly through the current. No trout with any sense will give your fly another look.
Mending essentially puts your line in the shape of a “C.” Picture your fly at the top tip of the letter and the point where your fly line first touches the water at the bottom tip of the letter. If the current is moving from left to right, you will want to create a normal “C” shape. If the current is moving from right to left, you will want to create a backwards “C” shape.
The way to perform the mend is to draw the letter “C” with your rod tip shortly after your line lands on the river or stream. Draw this letter quickly. You’ll figure out with some practice how to do this without disturbing the fly on the surface.
C is for Looping
Another option is to create a “C” loop which your fly line is still in the air. At the end of your forward cast, quickly write the letter “C.” This will put a loop in your line so it falls in the surface in a “C” shape, requiring little or no mend.
Remember to use a backwards “C” if the current is moving from right to left.
C is for Feeding Line
Once your line is floating downstream, you want to get the longest drift possible. This is true whether you are nymphing or dry fly fishing. You will need to feed more line. The best way to do this is to keep writing the letter “C” to feed the extra line you have available. You could actually close the loop and make the letter “O.”
Again, you can learn to do this motion in a way that does not disrupt the line that is already on the surface.
C is for Line Pickup
Finally, you can pick up your line by writing the letter “C” with your rod tip. Gary Borger has perfected this technique. He says it needs to be a quick flip of the rod tip. According to Borger, “The curl introduced by the ‘C’ movement will flow down the line and snap it up off the water.” But it doesn’t stop there. Immediately after writing the “C,” continue right into your backcast.
Borger says not to hesitate between the two movements.
Who knew that learning to write the letter “C” in your first grade classroom could make you a better fly fisher!
Laughter really is the best medicine when your best laid fishing plans go sideways. Or when you snap off the tip of your fly rod on the first day of your fly fishing trip. Or when your partner’s lack of planning almost ruins the first day of your fly fishing trip (let’s just say it’s not Steve). Click now to listen to our latest episode on laughter and fly fishing.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
We’d love to hear some funny stories from your time on the river? Or even while hunting.
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Other Articles and Podcasts on Funny Outdoor Moments
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I aspire to be a better fly fisher. But it’s not what you might think. Sure, I want to improve my casting so I can consistently drop my fly an inch from the opposite bank. Someday, I hope to put the whip finish on my flies with the speed of a calf roper tying a half-hitch.
I’d also like to think like a fish—as Paul Maclean aspired to do. But I have higher aspirations. I want to be a more generous fly fisher:
What Generosity Looks Like on the River
Instead of hoarding information about my favorite spots, I’d like to be more willing to share helpful intel with others I meet on the river.
Instead of hogging a good run, I’d like to share it more readily with others. If someone watches me catch a trout in a particular run, I’d like to be generous enough to invite them to take a few casts.
Instead of feeling smug when I see a newbie fly fisher cast like I did when I first got started, I’d like to be jump at the chance to offer some pointers and some words of encouragement.
A Fine Role Model
If I have a role model for the generous fly fisher I want to be, it is Craig Matthews. He is the founder and former owner of Blue Ribbon Flies in West Yellowstone, Montana. When you talk to him, his responses are enthusiastic, not arrogant.
Ask him a question, and his answer is gracious, not condescending.
What impresses me most about Matthews is a comment he made in an interview recorded in Chester Allen’s book, Yellowstone Runners. When asked what kind of water he likes to fish late in the season when the “runners” are heading up the Madison River, Matthews talked first about the type of runs he likes. But then he made this comment: “I stay away from ‘behind the Barns’ [the well-known runs just inside the west entrance of Yellowstone National Park] and other popular places since I live here, and I can fish anytime and leave the popular spots to elderly angers and visiting anglers.”
That, my friends, is generosity. And that’s the kind of fly fisher I aspire to be.
I recently ran into Matthews in West Yellowstone and he regaled the fly shop with stories of big browns and streamers the size of 56 Buicks. Even in his storytelling, he was warm and giving back to others, making us feel part of his story and the larger narrative of fly fishing.
The Old Man I Don’t Want to Be
Unfortunately, there are always a few fly fishers who think they are “it.” As my podcast partner Dave says about them, “Always confident, sometimes right.” You’d think these folks invented the sport of fly fishing.
A guide in Blue Ribbon flies recently told us about an encounter he had with an older fly fisher at the Barns Pools. There are some terrific people who frequent the Barns Pools every fall. But this guy seemed to have an ego the size of a jumbo jet.
A young teen was fishing with a hopper pattern. Nearby, his grandmother sat watching him.
Meanwhile, the older fly fisher began to mock the young teen, grousing about him using a hopper pattern. That’s not how you fish the Barns Pools. After a couple minutes of this, the guide piped up and told the older guy to shut up. After briefly strutting like a peacock, the older guy came to his senses, shut his mouth, and sulked and muttered as he walked away.
The grandmother on the bank spoke up for the first time and thanked the guide. She said, “This has been my grandson’s dream. All he wanted to do was to fly fish in Yellowstone National Park. Thanks for sticking up for him.”
Age has a way of magnifying our character traits. Our hard edges become sharper, and our soft edges become even more polished. If you practice generosity now, chances are it will become an even more pronounced trait that will not fail you even when your eyes and legs do. That’s the older fly fisher I want to be.
Fly fishing solo can be confusing when you’re first starting out, especially if all you’ve ever done is guided float trips. Making the transition is not a snap for everyone. Many folks take a guided float trip and never make the time to learn the sport. In this episode, we identify several ways to make the journey from guided float trips to fly fishing solo.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
How did you make the transition to fly fishing on your own? What advice would you give someone who wants to start the learning curve to fish on his or her own?
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
What is the best way to set the hook when fly fishing nymphs? I have been an advocate of the “side pull” approach. A Montana fly fishing guide first suggested it to me. He pointed out that lifting my fly rod — pulling it straight up — could yank the nymph out of the trout’s mouth. Better to do a “side pull” in the direction of the current.
Since trout are facing the current, pulling the rod to the side in a downstream direction take the nymph into the trout’s mouth. He was right. Some of the time.
Surface Tension
The “side pull” approach makes perfect sense. But it has one big problem: surface tension.
Suppose you get a nice long drift so that your strike indicator bobs when it is twenty feet downstream. Try yanking your rod to the downstream side. Since your fly line will be floating on the surface, pulling it to the side requires it to fight through surface tension. If you’ve ever tried running through three feet of water, you can appreciate what your fly line faces as it skims through the surface or even the film.
There is too much resistance for a quick, effective hook set.
The Quick Lift
The solution is to go with “the quick lift.” Simply lift your rod tip. That is, go with your instincts and pull up on your rod.
When you do this, it’s remarkable how quickly the rod will lift your line off of the surface of the water. Try this sometime when you don’t have a fish trying to ingest your nymph, and you will be amazed at what you see. As soon as your fly line lifts off of the water and the surface tension is gone, your strike indicator will lurch towards you. That gives you an indication what happens when a trout has taken your fly.
You will get a solid hook-set.
I suppose you still might run the risk of pulling the fly out of the trout’s mouth. But the “side pull” method is so slow that your hook set will probably be useless. If the trout has hooked itself, you’re fine. But if not, it can spit out the fly before the gets pulled into the side of the trout’s mouth. Even then, the hook set will lack in force because of the resistance you’re facing from the surface tension. Alright, enough with the physics lesson.
I think you get the idea.
Madison River Monsters
My pod-cast partner, Dave, and I used the “quick lift” technique effectively on a day we recently spent on the Madison River right outside Yellowstone National Park. We were fishing for the big “runners” which come out of Hebgen Lake for fall spawning. Without exception, every trout we hooked was 15-25 feet below us. Rather than fighting the surface tension with a “side pull,” we used a quick lift. I do not have lightning-quick reflexes at age 55, but most strikes resulted in hooking fish.
The Exception for Setting the Hook
There is a situation when I still use the “side pull” approach when fly fishing nymphs. It works under two conditions:
First, the strike has to take place above me (upstream) or right in front of me.
Second, the run I’m fishing has to be less than twelve feet in front of me. This enables me to keep little or no line on the surface as long as I keep my rod tip high. Without any resistance, a pull to the side in a downstream direction works quite well.
Once your indicator gets past you, though, forget the sideways pull when you get a strike. It’s too awkward, and there will be too much drag. Instead, go for the quick lift.
Best overall fly rod – it’s not a debate for the ages, but it’s important to new fly fishers. You probably are not going to purchase two fly rods out of the gate. In this episode, we sort out a few key issues and discuss how we approach fly rod length and line weight.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
If you have multiple fly rods, which is your go-to rod for most situations? Which fly rod do you want beside you in your casket?
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Most fly fishers use a strike indicator when fishing with nymphs. When the little plastic bubble or tuft of synthetic yarn bobs or twitches, it’s time to set the hook. A trout is taking your fly. (Or perhaps you’ve hit bottom!) It’s all about how to read your strike indicator. But your strike indicator does double duty: It indicates something else that will make or break your success on the river. It tells you whether you are deep enough.
Conventional Wisdom on How to Read Your Strike Indicator
To succeed when fishing nymphs, the trick is to get the artificial flies down to the right depth. They need to be in the trout’s window.
Conventional wisdom says that you’re not fishing deep enough if you’re not getting snagged occasionally on the river-bottom. So, when the strike indicator disappears and you’ve snagged a rock rather than hooked a fish, that signals you are at the right depth. Your nymph or nymphs are deep enough to entice the trout.
We’ve advocated for this signal in previous articles:
However, there is a problem with conventional wisdom. Unless you’re fishing scud patterns, you may not need to get your nymphs to bounce along the bottom.
Yes, the fish are at the bottom of the river or stream. But they are looking up unless they are nosing around in the mud or rocks for scuds. Your nymph needs only to be deep enough to be in the river’s lower zone where the trout are feeding. But you don’t need, necessarily, to bounce your nymph off of the bottom.
A More Excellent Way to Read Your Strike Indicator
So how do you know that you’re fishing deep enough if you don’t see your strike indicator disappear occasionally because you’ve snagged the bottom?
There is another signal.
Your eyes still need to be on the strike indicator. But if the indicator is moving more slowly than is the surface current, then your nymph or nymphs are deep enough. The fact is, the current at the bottom of a river or stream moves more slowly than the current on the surface. When your nymph(s) and weight float in this slower current, they will slow down the speed of your strike indicator on the surface.
Recently, I was fishing for “runners” on the Madison River just outside West Yellowstone, Montana. On a particular run, my two-nymph combination never once caught on the bottom. Yet I knew I was deep enough because my strike indicator was moving along more slowly than the surface current. After a few casts, my indicator disappeared, and I had the joy of fighting and landing a heavy brown trout.
Watch the Bubbles to Read Your Strike Indicator
This raises another question, though.
How in the world can you tell if your strike indicator is moving more slowly than the surface current?
Watch the bubbles on the surface of the water. That’s right. The bubbles tell the tale. It’s like watching a NASCAR race and seeing cars getting passed or lapped. If the bubbles on the river’s surface start passing your indicator, then you have reached the right depth. If the bubbles never pass your strike indicator, then you need to add more weight. Your nymph has not reached the slower current in the bottom zone.
Watching for the bubbles to start passing your strike indicator will also reveal how long it takes for your nymphs to reach the proper depth in the particular run you are fishing. It may take two feet or fifteen feet depending on the speed of the current and the depth of the run. This is important because it might reveal that your nymphs are getting deep enough after they drift through the spot where you suspect the fish are feeding. Armed with this insight, you can cast farther upstream so that your offering reaches its depth right before it enters the hot zone.
As always, keep your eye on the strike indicator. It gives the signal when you have a strike. But it will also tell you if you’re going to have a chance at a strike because your nymph rig has reached its proper depth.
Brown trout fishing is everywhere, mostly because the browns have taken over the American waters. Brought over to America in the 1800s, this European specie has thrived globally, even pushing out some native trout in the process. In this episode, we give a brief overview of this beauty, tell a few stories, and offer a few takeaways on catching more fish.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What is your favorite trout to catch? What is the biggest brown trout you’ve caught on a fly rod? Share your brown trout fishing stories below!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
It takes a village to raise a fly fisher. In my case, it was a village of fourteen fly fishing mentors who showed up in my life over the years and helped me learn the craft of fly fishing.
I’d love to pay tribute to them by naming them. But I’m not going to do so for two reasons: First, the list would resemble the credits at the end of a movie. Nobody cares about them except the producer and those involved in the production.
Second, I am still a mediocre fly fisher on my best days. So I wouldn’t want to embarrass anyone by citing them as one of my fly fishing mentors.
Perhaps I can pay tribute by listing a few characteristics that they all had in common. These characteristics can help you identify a mentor if you are new to the sport. Or, they can help you be more effective when you get the opportunity to mentor a younger fly fisher.
1. Patience
This is the number one characteristic by far.
My mentors did not sigh or curse (at least not audibly) when I slapped my line against the water, when I was slow to set the hook on a strike, or when my backcast hooked a branch. I may have even hooked one or two of my mentors. They simply went over their instructions again and again.
Bob never raised his voice when he kept telling me to mend my line, and Kevin didn’t roll his eyes when I tried to threat my tippet through my fly rod guides when we were getting ready to fish the Gallatin River.
2. The ability to simplify
Fly fishing is a complex sport. It can bewilder beginners. But good mentors break down complex concepts into simple explanations. One mentor encouraged me to stick with a few simple patterns while I learned to fly fish—the Woolly Bugger, Prince Nymph, Parachute Adams, and Elk Hair Caddis. Another boiled down my first lesson in casting to: (1) flick your wrist when you cast and (2) keep your eyes on the target. Still another taught me that the foam line in the current is the feed line. The simple explanations formed a knowledge base on which I’ve been building for more than three decades.
3. Creativity
Good mentors are also creative.
None of my mentors had me cast to the rhythm of a metronome like Norman Maclean’s father did in A River Runs Through It. But Gary Borger taught me to tie a couple important knots by using a small piece of rope rather than a tiny 6x tippet. He also taught me to pick up my line off of the surface by drawing the letter “C” with my rod tip.
Good mentors traffic in word pictures and analogies. They find vivid ways to show and tell.
4. Unselfishness
I’ve had some faux-mentors who simply left me on my own while they raced ahead to their favorite spots.
Real mentors, however, sacrifice the time they could be fishing and share the prime spots they could be fishing. They act more like guides whose mission it is to set up their clients for success.
I remember my mentor and friend, Bob, taking me to fish for fall browns on the Madison in Yellowstone National Park. He brought his rod along, but he didn’t make one cast that day. He simply devoted his time to helping me read water, cast, and (of course) mend my line. It’s rewarding to teach others to fly fish. But you have to be prepared to give up some rod time and even some of the hot spots you love to fish.
5. Humility
These mentors are some of the best fly fishers on the planet. But none of them felt the need to inform me about this. I had to coax out of them the stories about their fly fishing heroics The best mentors do not have egos the size of a jumbo jet. They do not need to tell you how great they are.
I’m convinced that humility is what enables patience and unselfishness.
Okay, maybe I will let the credits roll. I owe my fly fishing skills to the mentoring of Gerald, Duane, Doug, Kevin, Jerry, John, Murray, Bob, Toby, Harry, Dave, Gary, Leon, and Ben.
Thanks, fellas.
I’m fishing in and around Yellowstone National Park this week, and I’m a better fly fisher for all the ways you invested in my development. I wish you were all here. I still need all the help I can get.
Buying fly fishing gear is not merely about catching more fish. For some, it’s more like a shopping or hoarding addiction. For others it’s about status. For each of us, purchasing new fly fishing gear means something slightly different. This week, we discuss some of our recent purchases, what we plan to buy next, and what it all means in the small (not grand) scheme of things! Click now to listen to this week’s podcast.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What gear have you purchased this past year? When do you find the best deals on rods, waders, and other gear? What recent purchase was something you’d recommend?
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
This summer, I drove my youngest son to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. I dropped him off at a camp and then headed home. I decided to stop at a small creek in Wisconsin for a day of fly fishing. I was alone. It was hot. Muggy. And the bugs swirled around my head like the dusts of dirt around Pig-Pen, the character in the comic strip “Peanuts.”
I fished for about 30 minutes. And then quit. I had had enough. The stream in mid summer was weedy, with only small channels in the middle that were fishable. If I had been a new fly fisher, I would have been pretty discouraged. Maybe I would have thought, “This is too hard. I’m never fly fishing again.”
When you’re just started out, it’s important to find early success, and here are three ways to make that happen:
1. Learn to fish nymphs and streamers … immediately.
The learning arc for most new fly fishers is to learn to dry fly fish first. They take a fly casting class. They feel the surge of emotion of early casting success. But then struggle to catch fish during their first few outings. Perhaps there’s no obvious hatch, and they default to fishing a dry-fly attractor pattern like Parachute Adams or Elk Hair Caddis every time they go out.
You’ll catch more fish early on if you learn how to nymph and fish streamers while you’re also struggling to learn to fish dry flies. I might add that learning to sling a streamer may be the easiest first thing to do. It will force you to take a good look at your tackle, which needs to change if you’re fishing streamers.
I remember well my struggle learn to fish streamers. For starters, I was trying to hurl a size #6 Woolly Bugger with a 6x leader. I didn’t know any better. No one told me that I needed 2x or 3x tippet. I had learned to dry fly fish first, so it didn’t dawn on my that I needed different tackle.
My suggestion: if you’re struggling to catch fish and you only dry fly fish, add streamers to the mix. Yes, it’s one more thing to learn, but especially in the fall, you will find much more success.
2. Know and Avoid the Dead Zones.
Steve and I published an entire episode on fly fishing dead zones, those times of the day and seasons of the year when very likely you’ll not catch fish.
New fly fishers don’t have this knowledge. If they did, most likely they’d catch more fish and be able to fan the tiny flame of passion for the sport.
Dead zones to avoid are winter (of course), early morning and late evening in the spring, and midday during the heat of the summer.
In the spring, especially late April and early May, I like the 10 AM to 2 PM window during the day for fishing dry flies. In mid to late summer, when the water is low and the temps are hot with lots of sun on the river, the best opportunities are fishing dries during the evening until dark. And in the fall, I primarily nymph fish and streamer fish. Most often, the streamer bite is on in the mornings in late September and October.
Of course, veterans can catch fish during any time, and there is much more nuance to dead zones and hatches than I can write about in this short space. The point is that new fly fishers would do well to know when not to fish.
3. Rethink Float Trips.
My brother, who is a competent fly fisher, often takes his oldest son (who is now 13) to Oregon for a couple days on the McKenzie River. They float for a couple days and catch a zillion rainbows – about 8 to 12 inches. It’s a lot of fun for Matt’s son.
This year, Matt came back and said, “I’m really tired of these kinds of trips.”
One reason is that on most float trips, the guide hands you a fly rod, instructs you on where to cast, and, voila! you catch fish. The big problem with float trips is that you don’t learn a lick. Steve and I are big proponents of hiring guides, but we do so only once or twice a year. Our primary goal is to gain intel when fishing a new area. (I do find that I learn quite a bit on guided wade-fishing days.)
We all have “friends” who go on big trips out West, take gorgeous pictures of huge trout, and think that they are fly fishers. They are not. Very little is learned on a guided float trip.
New fly fishers need take the harder path of the learning curve. It’s tempting to sate your desire to catch fish with float trips. The best move is simply more reps on river – making mistakes, finding success, and doing it all over again and again.
Barriers to fly fishing more include season of life, health, beginner frustration, finances, and many others. In this episode, we identify five common barriers and discuss how we can overcome them and get out on the water more often. So much of what keeps many from fly fishing more boils down to a question: Is fly fishing something I really want to do? It’s not for everyone.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
How do you find time to fly fish more? What have you done to make space in your life to find more time in the great outdoors?
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
It always amazes me how many people can’t see their fly.” Craig Matthews, veteran fly fisher in West Yellowstone, Montana, made this observation a few years ago when asked about common mistakes fly fishers make. “I’m really surprised at how few people can see their fly or see rising fish,” he said.
So what can you to do improve your dry fly fishing vision? Here are a few lessons I’ve learned over the years.
1. Concentrate
Yeah, yeah, this seems too obvious to mention for improving your dry fly vision. But it’s critical. And easily overlooked.
Without a laser-like focus on your dry fly, you simply won’t see it. You’ll be surprised how concentration will improve your dry fly vision. So develop a habit of zeroing in on your dry fly.
2. Wear polaroid sunglasses
Polaroid sunglasses reduce glare on the surface of the river or stream. I wear them even on cloudy days and in the low light towards the end of the day. Even a cheap pair works fine.
3. Use flies with white in them
This may be the most helpful tip I can offer to improve your dry fly vision.
The white post on a size #20 Parachute Adams makes this fly easier to see (at least for me) than a bushy size #14 Humpy. For an attractor pattern, I like a Royal Wulff or an H & L Variant because the wing material is white tufts of calf hair or synthetic material. Even with big hopper patterns, I prefer those with a white parachute. For flies that lack white on top, go light. An Elk Hair Caddis with lighter hair on top is easier to see than one with darker hair.
4. Make shorter casts
This is, perhaps, another no brainer. Yet it really helps. It’s easier to spot a dry fly fifteen feet away than thirty feet away from you. So if you’re having trouble seeing your dry fly, move in closer to the run you’re fishing.
5. Use a strike indicator
For tiny, almost invisible dry flies, consider using a strike indicator. This may be a larger dry fly. Try a size #12 or #14 Parachute Adams as a lead fly, and then drop your size #20 Pale Morning Dun or Blue-Winged Olive imitation off of it. Keep your eye on the larger fly. When it dives into the water, set your hook! I have even used thin foam strike indicators—the kind with sticky backing. I simply roll a small piece around my leader, a few inches above my fly. Fluorescent yellow seems to be more visible to me than fluorescent orange.
Seeing is retrieving. If you can’t see your dry fly, you can’t see when to set the hook—that moment when a trout sips it or attacks it. So do whatever it takes to keep your eyes on the trout’s target.
Elk Creek flows out of the Scapegoat Wilderness west of Great Falls, Montana. It’s one of thousands – small-creek fisheries in Montana filled with various combinations of browns, rainbows, brook trout, and even some cutthroat. In this episode, we walk down memory lane from a day more than 36 years ago. It was surely a day to remember. And surely was the inspiration for the next 36 years of fly fishing.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Are you able to pull up a memory from a decade or more ago? We’d love to hear a great story that is deep within your memory!
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and Woolly Buggers. They are America’s favorites. Well the latter is only popular among fly fishers. But it’s hard to argue against the notion that the Woolly Bugger may be the most popular, adaptable, effective fly pattern ever invented. It’s certainly the king of streamer patterns.
The Woolly Bugger is easy to tie, and it’s easy to fish. I’ve had great success with it in high mountain lakes, small Midwestern spring creeks, and large Western rivers.
Here is a profile of this super-effective pattern:
1. How it’s made
There are two main parts to this streamer.
First, the body of a Woolly Bugger consists of chenille wrapped around the shank of a 4X long streamer look (sizes #6 to #10 are the most popular) with hackle wound through it. Then, a marabou tail runs behind the body.
Both the hackle and the marabou make this streamer look active as it darts through the water.
The most popular colors for the Woolly Bugger are black, olive, and brown. I’ve even tied it using red chenille with black hackle and black marabou to catch the big trout in Hyalite Resorvoir in the mountains above Bozeman, Montana.
Normally, the Woolly Bugger is weighted with either a beadhead or wire (underneath the chenille).
2. Where it originated
It is unclear who gets the credit for the Woolly Bugger, but it’s definitely a modification of the Woolly Worm (a Woolly Bugger without the marabou tail).
3. Why it works
Conventional wisdom says the Woolly Bugger imitates leeches, but it likely also passes for crayfish, minnows, sculpins, and large aquatic nymphs such as hellgrammites, damsel flies, stone flies, and dragon flies.
Trout will chase it and go into attack mode because it’s a high-calorie meal. Compared to a tiny may fly, it’s like the difference between an eighteen ounce steak and a Chicken nugget.
4. How to fish it
The key is to retrieve it so that it darts through the water. You can dead drift it down a run, then swing it and retrieve it with deliberate strips. Or, you can simply cast it down river and strip it back against the current.
Depth is important.
Let it sink sufficiently in the lake or river you’re fishing. You may have to experiment to figure out the definition of “sufficient.”
Bud Lilly used to say that color seems to matter a lot with Woolly Buggers. If black is not working, try switching to olive or brown. Your best bet may be to get intel at your local fly shop.
After you’ve spent a fair share of time fishing with size #18 dry flies or nymphs, it’s refreshing to lob a streamer through the air, let it sink in the current, and then retrieve it vigorously. The attack will always take you by surprise, and then the fight is on!
Dry fly fishing lessons are best learned by doing – not by reading or in a classroom. This summer, we had some great days on the river catching brookies and browns on dry flies. We also learned a few things. Click now to hear some of the lessons we had to relearn as we fished on the surface.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.”
It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What lessons have you learned this past summer? Please post your comments below?
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
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We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Fly fishing gadgets are everywhere. There is no end to the number of little devices you can stuff into or clip onto your fly vest.
Beyond the obvious items like dry fly floatant and nippers, here are a few items which I always carry with me when I’m on the river.
Headlamp
This is a new one for me.
Last summer, I was trying to use my cell phone flashlight to tie on a size #18 Parachute Adams at dusk. It occurred to me that I either needed a third hand or a headlamp. Not surprisingly, the headlamp was a more feasible option. For less than $20, you can purchase a lightweight headlamp that lasts a long time and is hands free.
It works well when hiking into your fishing spot before dawn or walking out in the dark.
Drying powder
Is this truly a gadget? I’m not sure, but I’m calling it one.
Even though I use dry fly floatant, I still find drying powder to be the ticket for drying a dry fly after it’s been water-logged or slimed by a fish. For years I’ve used the Orvis Hy-Flote Shake-N-Float Renew. Or, if you want something with fewer syllables in the title, try Umpqua Bug Dust. Both brands use a combination of crystals and dust. You simply drop your fly in the bottle, close the lid, and shake it for a couple seconds.
It works like magic!
Magnetic net holder
Veterans know about this little gadget, but newbies may not: This item allows quick removal of my net, which hangs off of the back of my fly vest. The best part is re-attachment.
Since one of the magnets is clipped to the D-ring on the collar of my fly vest, I simply have reach behind my head with my net handle. The other magnet is attached to the end of my net handle, so that magnets quickly grab each other. There’s no yoga or gymnastics required to put the net back in place.
Believe it or not, there is a video with over 21,000 views. If you need to see how the gadget works, watch this clip. You can buy the Orvis magnetic net holder for $34 or the Scientific Angler one for $19.95.
Two-way radio
It’s nice to have a friend with two-way radios. That would be my podcast partner, Dave.
I often stuff one of his two-way radios in my vest when we’re fly fishing in more remote areas—like the back-country in Yellowstone National Park. We carry them for safety if we’re fishing different stretches of a river. We’ve also been known to use them to brag about the trout we just caught. You may be surprised at how many places you will have cell phone service. Yet it’s spotty at best in more remote areas, so we like the small two-way radios in case one of us needs help.
There are a million two-way radio brands, ranging from $25 to $300 or more. We like the Motorola brand, but frankly, almost every brand will do the trick.
GPS Tacker
For those of you doing more serious backpacking or fishing, you’ll want a GPS tracker. The major brand in GPS tracking is SPOT GEN3. You’ll want this device when you travel outside the bounds of cell service. With the simple push of a button, should the worst happen, you can alert emergency responders your GPS location. It’s small, pocket-sized, and can fit in your fly vest.
Of course, you can’t stuff everything into your fly vest, satchel, or front pack. Leave the fidget spinner at home. But there are some little items which really help with fly fishing and safety.
You can’t fix stupid is one of the all-time great phrases about how humans can behave in public. It’s also true in the great outdoors. “You can’t fix stupid” also applies to us. We’ve not been the most brilliant at times. Click now to listen to some stupid things we’ve seen others do in the outdoors. And a few of our own as well!
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
So what’s the most “you can’t fix stupid” outdoor thing you’ve seen while fly fishing? Okay, you can come clean: What’s the most stupid decision you’ve made while fishing?
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
There’s a four-letter word fly fishers should avoid. It’s not what you yell when you snag your fly on the bottom for the umpteenth time or when your back cast lands in a pine branch. Rather, it’s a word that can mislead you and set you up for disappointment. The four-letter word is “more.”
Here are five “more” fly fishing myths that you will do well not to believe. Each myth has the ring of truth. But at the end of the day, each one will mislead you or leave you dissatisfied:
1. The more I fly fish, the better I will become.
The problem is that practice does not make perfect. Practice makes permanent. It reinforces. If you’re intentionally working to improve, then you’ll improve. Otherwise, your bad habits will become more ingrained.
This is the reason why I watch casting videos, read helpful articles, and fish at least once a season with a guide. These habits help me unlearn some bad habits—like being lazy about keeping my fly line through my finger of my right hand at all times during my retrieve. When I fail to do this, I end up setting the hook on a strike with my left hand. That is much slower.
The truth is, the more you work at the craft of fly fishing, the better you will become. The fly fishing myth that more time on the water will lead to better skills is just that – a myth.
2. The more flies I have in my fly box, the better my odds at catching more fish.
There is some truth to this.
If you’re fishing when Pale Morning Duns (PMDs) start coming off the water, and all you have are darker flies like a Parachute Adams, then you won’t have success.
However, some of the most skilled fly fishers I know say that using fewer patterns has helped them catch more fish. If you have a few dry fly patterns (Parachute Adams, Pale Morning Dun, Elk Hair Caddis), a few nymphs (Beadhead Prince, Copper John, Zebra Midge), and a couple streamers (perhaps a black Woolley Bugger and an olive one), you’ll be fine. This assumes that you have them in a few different sizes.
Of course, I have a lot more patterns than this in my fly box. I like trying new patterns. Yet I find myself returning to the same basic patterns over and over again. The reason is that they work.
The truth is, the more you can simplify your fly selection, the better your chances at catching fish.
3. I will fly fish more if I move to a prime fly-fishing area.
I could write a book on this one. I lived in Montana for two decades and loved it.
But I noticed how life got in the way of my fly fishing. They were high school sporting events to attend, evening board meetings, long hours at work, and all kinds of family responsibilities. I do not begrudge any of these. My point is simply that moving to a prime-fly fishing area sounds romantic. But life will crowd your calendar.
When I lived near Bozeman for fourteen years (and my parents lived on the Yellowstone River in Paradise Valley for several of those years), I was able to get away for a couple of hours here and a couple of hours there. Occasionally, I could slip away during the Mother’s Day Caddis hatch or when the Blue-Winged Olives (BWOs) were coming off of the East Gallatin less than a mile from my house.
Now, I spend about a week a year fly flshing in Montana. I probably spend as many hours on the water, though, as when I lived there.
If you get a chance to move to Montana or Maine or Oregon, do it. But don’t forget that
The truth is, you will have opportunities and obstacles to fish the great trout waters whether you live twenty miles from them or a thousand miles away. Living near a blue ribbon trout river is a terrific blessing. But it’s not bliss.
4. I will fly fish more at the next stage of my life.
Good luck with that!
I thought it would be easier when my kids were out of diapers and in school. But football, volleyball, soccer, concert choir, band, church youth group, and an endless string of activities took a lot of time. Then, when they moved away from home, I thought I’d have even more time. But now that “extra time” is spent visiting with them.
Of course, I love visiting them! I’m not complaining. I’m just saying that the next stage of life will probably not give you as much time as you want.
I’m not at retirement age, or close to it. But I suspect that my retirement body will not handle quite as much hiking and wading as I do now.
The truth is, you have to be relentless to carve out time at any stage of life to fly fish. Don’t wait for life to slow down. Get out there now because tomorrow will have scheduling issues of its own.
5. The more fish I catch, the more satisfied I will be.
Believe me, I love catching a lot of fish. I’ll take a forty-fish day over a ten-fish day any day! I’ve had a few of these the last two years. But when I do, I find that I have trouble slowing down the moment and savoring the experience when I catch one after another. I find myself almost getting greedy. I hurry to get one trout off the line to hook another one.
Then, I find at the end of the day that I rarely remember one or two specific fish I caught.
Besides, my desire to catch more fish doesn’t diminish at some magic number. I quit at 30 or 40 (if I’m fortunate to have such a great day) because I’m too tired or it’s too late—not because I’m so satisfied that I can stop. Catching trout number 30 makes me want to catch trout number 31 which makes me want to catch trout number 32.
The truth is, I need to savor each fish I catch and to remember that one more fish will not necessarily make the day better. It’s hard to say that, but it’s true. More satisfaction is just another fly fishing myth.
So don’t buy into the fly fishing myths of “more.” Thinking realistically will help you get more enjoyment out of your time on the river.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Have you ever tried “euro-nymphing”? What other tips would you like to share for catching more trout on nymphs?
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Kirk Deeter recently posed a question which took me by surprise. On a Trout Unlimited blog, he asked: “Will the 5-weight always rule trout fishing?”
My surprise came from my assumption that the most popular all-around fly rod for trout fishing was a nine-foot, 6-weight.
Whenever Trout Unlimited offered a nine-foot, 5-weight for anglers who purchased a lifetime membership, I figured it was because they got a great deal from Sage or Winston. Surely those companies saw that 6-weights were selling like crazy and that they had a large leftover inventory of 5-weights.
It turns out that I was wrong.
5 Weight Fly Rod of Choice
TU offers nine-foot, 5-weight rods because they are the rods of choice. Deeter wonders if 4-weights might take over if technology can make them “beefier” or if 6-weights might one day rule if it gets “lighter.” Then he says: “For now, I just don’t see the 5-weight ever being supplanted as the world’s No. 1 fly rod.”
All of this makes me wonder: is the best all-around fly rod for trout fishing a nine-foot, 5 weight? Or a nine-foot, 6-weight?
I really don’t feel like arguing about this until I’m blue or red in the face. It reminds me a bit of those arguments over whether a .270 or a 30.06 is the best caliber for a deer rifle. One is more flat-shooting, the other packs more wallop. In the end, it really doesn’t matter. What matters is a hunter’s ability to shoot steady and straight.
So whether a 5-weight or a 6-weight is the “best” all-around fly rod depends on you. Which one feels best and works best for you?
What Are You Slinging?
Jerry Siem, a rod designer for Sage, says that the choice is all about the size of flies you intend to fish. Kirk Deeter concludes: “Nothing really compares to the 5-weight when it comes to throwing either size 18 BWO dry flies or size 10 woolly buggers.”
However, after years of fly fishing big western rivers like the Yellowstone and the Missouri, I’m partial to a 6-weight. I suspect that’s why a lot of fly shops in the west suggest them to first-time buyers.
I follow the reasoning of the late Tom Morgan, the owner of the Winston Rod Company from 1973 to 1991. He preferred the 6-weight for handling wind (plenty of that in the west) and for making longer casts. He liked the delicacy of the 5-weight, but felt it was too delicate to be the right choice for an all-around rod—especially on the big rivers in Montana.
Personally, if I want more delicate, I drop down to a 4-weight.
This introduces another consideration: If you use multiple rods, do you want to go with even sizes (4, 6, 8) or odd sizes (3, 5, 7)? I like to go on the heavier side. By the way, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to own both a 5-weight and a 6-weight unless you have an abundance of disposable income or you are that good to appreciate the fine shade of difference.
How, then, should you determine what is the right size for your all-around, go-to fly rod?
Waters and Wind
First, consider what size of water you will be fishing and how much wind you will encounter. Trying to decide based on fly size is, in my opinion, a bit more difficult.
Second, get some help from the guides at a fly shop. You might want to talk to more than one guide to listen for recurring themes in their advice.
Third, and perhaps most important, try casting both a 5-weight and a 6-weight. Choose the one that feels best to you.
My brother, Dave, recently invested in a high-quality fly rod for his “go-to, all-around” rod. He asked me my recommendation. I strongly suggested he get a nine-foot, 6-weight. But instead of listening to his older (and wiser!) brother, he dissed my advice! He tried both a 5-weight and a 6-weight. The 5-weight felt better to him.
I am happy to report that my brother and I still speak to each other. Do we argue about whether a 5-weight or a 6-weight is best? No. We are too busy catching fish.
Unless you’re one of those people who has to be right about everything, get used to the idea that ideal rod-weight is in the eye of the beholder—or actually, in the feel of the fly-caster. Anglers — from novice state to expert stage — will continue to debate the merits of 5-weight versus a 6-weight.
The good news is that you won’t go wrong with either one.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
What is it that you appreciate most about fall fly fishing? What is your favorite fall story?
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club.
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Casting downstream is not generally my first instinct. But when I do, I have a good reason for it. Yes, the default mode for fly fishing is to cast upstream. It provides greater control of the drift, and a lot of the action happens as your fly drifts right in front of you. It also keeps you behind the trout you’re trying to catch. This prevents them from seeing you and fleeing to safety.
However, here are three times when it makes sense to cast your fly downstream:
1. You are fishing streamers in deep runs
Of course, you can cast a streamer upstream, let it drift down the current, and then strip it in back upstream once it swings across the current at the end of your drift.
But in deeper runs, I like to get above them and make my cast downstream.
I aim for the tail end of the pool or run and give my streamer time to sink. Then, I strip it back through the pool. This creates the effect of something swimming rather than drifting — and that is what you want with Woolly Buggers or Dalai Lamas or other streamers. I feel like I have better control that if I cast upstream, let my fly drift through the run, and then retrieve it. Often, the area above the run is too shallow to be fishable. So why bother?
I’ve fished a lot of runs from above in the fall on the Gallatin River near Bozeman, Montana. It’s been deadly on brown trout. Dave, my podcast partner, and I did this effectively too last fall on Willow Creek in Montana’s Gallatin Valley.
Even though when you cast your fly downstream, it puts you above the trout, they are less likely to see you when the run your fishing is deep. Of course, you can always find ways to stay hidden by crouching down or hiding behind some brush on the bank.
2. You are trying to cast a dry fly in a tight spot
Suppose you’re fishing upstream (with the current coming towards you), and you come to a run that is tight against the bank on which you are standing. You might be able to wade out into the stream or river to get a better angle. But on some streams or rivers, you cannot do this without spooking fish. It’s time to figure out how to cast your fly downstream.
I think of a run in the Yellowstone River that hugs a rock cliff for about two-hundred yards. This run is too deep to wade. It’s flows so tight against the bank (with little curve to the river) that it creates an awkward cast for a right-handed caster (which most of us are). The best solution is to fish it from above and cast your fly downstream.
Sometimes, the current can be a factor.
I think of particular runs where I could minimize drag (the current dragging my fly through the run) by standing above it (casting downstream) than by approaching it from below (casting upstream).
3. You are dealing with wind and shadows
This may seem obvious, but it’s worth pointing out: it’s harder to cast with the wind in your face than with the wind at your back. If the wind is strong enough (and it has not convinced you to quit), cast your fly downstream just so you can get the wind at your back — particularly if you need distance on your cast.
Later or earlier in the day, the shadows are longer. So the sun can be an issue. If the sun is behind you casting long shadows when you’re trying to cast upstream, then go above the run and cast downstream so your shadow doesn’t spook the fish.
Sometimes, one cast is the best shot you have at catching a fish from a particular run. Treat the cast like a golfer treats a putt on the green. Analyze the situation and figure out your approach. In a few cases, it might make more sense to cast downstream.
Fly fishing grizzly country should evoke a small amount of anxiety. Surprising a sow at her cubs while making your way along the trail to get to the river is no way to begin the day. In this episode, we discuss the 50-year-old events of the night of the grizzlies in Glacier National Park and come up with a couple takeaways for fly fishing grizzly country.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
Have you ever fished in grizzly country? What precautions do you take? How do you prepare for a day in grizzly country?
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We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Two is better than one when it comes to chocolate brownies, contact lenses, and trout flies. If you’re looking to increase your odds of catching trout, then double up. Use a lead fly and then a second fly, which trails behind it a foot or so.
Here are some double-fly combinations that really work. They include wet-fly combos, dry-fly combos, and dry-wet-fly combos. You never know which fly the trout may prefer on a given day:
1. The Hopper + Terrestrial
This is great for late summer during hopper season. Start with a size 6-10 hopper pattern—or some kind of large attractor pattern (such as a Stimulator). Then, trail either an ant or beetle pattern behind it. This is basically a dry fly combo, although it’s fine if your dropper (the ant or beetle) floats below the surface in the film. Last week, I was fly fishing in Colorado and talked to a fly fisher who used this combo in a high mountain lake and caught fish after fish on size 14 beetle pattern.
2. The Elk Hair Caddis + Caddis Emerger
This is a dry-wet fly combination which works well in the late spring (when the Caddis start to appear) and then into the summer as the Caddis flies continue to emerge.
I like a size 14 or 16 Elk Hair Caddis as my dry fly. Then, I use some kind of an emerger pattern as the dropper. One of my favorite droppers is a size 14 Red Fox Squirrel Nymph. I’ve had great success with this combo on the Yellowstone River in Montana’s Paradise Valley. With this combo, your lead fly acts as a strike indicator. I’ve often tied some synthetic red or white fibers at the top of Elk Hair Caddis so I can distinguish it from all the other Caddis flies on the water.
3. Woolly Bugger + San Juan Worm
My podcast partner, Dave, put me onto this combo. It’s worked well for us in the Driftless region of southeast Minnesota and southwest Wisconsin. This is a wet fly combo. Start with a smaller-sized Woolly Bugger (8-10) and then use a San Juan Worm (tied on a size 8-12 scud hook) as dropper. I use a strike indicator and drift it like a nymphing rig. Then, at the end of the drift, I will swing it and strip it back to me.
On the swing and strip, it’s the Woolly Bugger that is effective.
4. Egg Pattern + Copper John
When I’m fly fishing during the rainbow spawning season in the spring, I’ll often turn to this wet-fly combination. I’ll begin with a standard-size egg pattern (12-14) and then use a size 18 Copper John as my dropper. I like a Red Copper John. Or, I’ll use a Dave’s Emerger. This fly was developed by Dave Corcoran, then the owner of The River’s Edge Fly Shop in Bozeman, Montana.
Regardless of which dropper I use, this combo has been lethal during the rainbow run on Montana’s Madison River. It can work, too, during the fall when the browns are running. But continue reading for another dynamite wet-fly combo.
5. Stone Fly + Egg Pattern
Dave and I used this last fall in the Gardner River in the north reaches of Yellowstone National Park. We had outstanding results. Start with a Stone Fly nymph pattern (size 8-10). The options are legion.
A Golden Stone Fly or a Rubberlegs Stone Fly (with a brown or tan body) works quite well. Then, use a standard-size egg pattern (12-14) as the dropper. Last fall, I had a 30-fish morning on the Gardner using this combination. The browns were all between 15 and 20 inches. I estimate that I caught half on the Stone Fly and half on the egg pattern.
6. Beadhead Prince + Pheasant Tail
This wet-fly combo, or some variation of it, may be the standard go to pattern when there is no obvious hatch.
Use a Beadhead Prince Nymph in a size 12-14 as your lead fly. Or go with another standard nymph such as a Hare’s Ear. Then, use a size 18 Pheasant Tail as your dropper. Again, your dropper could be any number of nymphs—such as a Copper John or Zebra Midge.
Remember, two are usually better than one. Try one of these combinations or experiment with some of your own. You’ll likely double your chances of catching the trout which are monitoring the food line you’re fishing.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
When was the last time you took a risk and discovered new water? Any great stories about overcoming some obstacles to find some great fishing?
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We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
H and L Variant is a new fly. At least to me. I recently picked up the fly at a fly shop near Winter Park, Colorado. Frankly, I had not even heard of the H and L Variant until a friend put me on to it. Shows what I know.
The H and L Variant is no new fly, of course. Here is a snapshot of this oldie but goodie:
1. How it originated
R.C. Coffman (a western Colorado fly fisher) ostensibly tied the first H and L Variant. He apparently sold so many of the fly in the mid-to-late 1950s to President Eisenhower that he (Coffman) said he was able to buy a “house and a lot” (thus the “H” and “L”) on the Fryingpan River in Colorado.
Sounds apocryphal to me.
Using today’s math and valuations, Coffman would have likely had to sell $350,000 worth of $2 flies to buy even a sliver of real estate along the Fryingpan River.
I bet that Coffman was a really good story-teller. He certainly created a fly for the ages.
2. How it’s designed
I am certainly no fly-tying expert but when I saw the H and L Variant for the first time, it reminded me of the Royal Coachman chassis. Like the Royal Coachman dry fly, the H and L Variant has calf-tail wings and a body of peacock herl. According to Skip Morris, the H and L Variant body is created by partially stripping a peacock quill and wrapping it so “the bare quill forms the rear half of the body and the fiber-covered quill the front half.”
The other distinguishing feature is its calf-tail-hair tail, which along with its calf-tail-hair wings, gives it its buoyancy.
3. Why it works
The H and L Variant is what is known as a “rough water” fly.
That is, as one writer put it, “this fly floats like a cork.” It sits nice and high in swift-moving current and stays dry. I also love the fly’s visibility in low light. One writer called its calf-hair wings and tail “white beacons.” They are. And my middle-aged eyes appreciate it!
I should state the obvious: the H and L Variant is an attractor pattern, generally, though I did see at least one fly fisher mention that he uses the fly as a Green Drake imitation on western rivers, such as the Roaring Fork and Colorado.
4. When to use it
I’ve made the H and L Variant one of my go-to attractor patterns when I want to surface evening risers. I did that recently on the Fall River in Rocky Mountain National Park. I had caught several brook trout on Caddis emergers but not on a dry fly Caddis or a Purple Haze pattern, two of my favorites. Stumped, I tied on the H and L Variant, and within ten minutes I had my first brookie on a dry fly.
The H and L Variant is more visible (at least it is to me) than any other attractor pattern. So, if you are fishing small, swift-moving streams or rough water, this is the fly.
The H and L Variant Name
I do not mean any disrespect to Mr. Coffman, but name H and L Variant is just about the most clunky name for a fly that I can imagine. But I tip my hat to him for creating a dry fly classic with a rich legacy and a bright future.
Dead zones are those seasons of the year and times of the day when fishing will be unproductive. It’s important to know that as a new fly fisher. If you spend your first few times on the river during a fly fishing dead zone, you might think fishing is harder than it really is. In this episode, we discuss a few dead zones to avoid.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Where did you disagree with us on the dead zones? What have we missed? Tell us your best story during a dead zone.
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We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Glacier Park grizzly attacks are, today, not exceptionally rare. But they were 50 years ago, when an unimaginable night of terror unfolded in Montana’s Glacier National Park. Shortly after midnight on August 13, 1967, a grizzly bear dragged a 19-year old woman, Julie Helgeson, from her sleeping bag and mauled her. She died four hours later at 4:12 a.m. This was the first fatality from a bear attack since the park officially opened in 1910. Then, less than a half hour later, it happened again.
Eight miles away, as the crow flies, around 4:30 a.m., another Glacier grizzly dragged another 19-year old woman, Michelle Koons, from her sleeping bag to her death. Two separate grizzly attacks. Two dead. Same night.
Jack Olsen, at the time a senior editor for Sports Illustrated, provided the definitive account of this double-tragedy in his 1969 book, “Night of the Grizzlies.” In 2010, Montana PBS aired a documentary titled Glacier Park’s Night of the Grizzlies, which featured interviews with living survivors of the attack, as well as park officials and hikers involved in the events of that fateful night.
The fiftieth anniversary of the night of the grizzlies reminds us of the fragile relationship we have with the wild places — whether we’re fly fishers, hunters, hikers, photographers, or mountain-bikers.
Necessary Fear
Granite Park Chalet sits just below timberline at the hub of several back-country trails. It provides a breath-taking panoramic view of ice-capped mountains. But in the mid-1960s, hikers trekked to the chalet to view grizzly bears. The grizzlies were nightly visitors due to a long-standing practice by chalet staff members. They dumped garbage and leftover food at a site about two-hundred yards from the building.
Granite Park Chalet was full at sunset on Saturday, August, 12. So hikers Roy Ducat, 18, and Julie Helgeson, 19, headed to a spot about five-hundred yards from the building. Shortly after midnight, Roy heard Julie whisper, “Play dead.” Suddenly, a blow from a grizzly bear paw knocked him five feet away. The bear began biting into his right shoulder. Then it left him and began tearing away at Julie’s body, eventually dragging her down the dark flank of the mountain where rescuers later found her.
They carried her to Granite Park Chalet, but she died after doctors staying at the chalet tried to save her life.
Eight crow-flight miles to the southwest on the other side of a majestic mountain peak, Trout Lake had its own garbage problem. Hikers left behind their trash and unused food, so bears treated the area like a feeding ground. In the summer of 1967, one underfed, underweight grizzly in the area had been terrorizing campers–including a girl scout troop.
When Michelle Koons, 19, and four other friends arrived at Trout Lake late in the afternoon of Saturday, August 12, it did not take the grizzly long to appear. The bear walked into camp and stole food as the campers ran along the lake shore to get out of its way. The group debated hiking out, but it was late in the day. So they pitched a new campsite along the lake shore, built a bonfire, and tried to settle in for the night. The bear returned briefly around 2:00 a.m. and snatched a package of cookies left on a log. Then shortly after 4:30 a.m., it returned and attacked the campers. Four of them escaped to climb nearby trees.
Michelle Koons did not. She screamed when the bear approached her. She struggled to unzip her sleeping bag, but the zipper stuck. The bear dragged her away and mutilated her.
“The incidents that night were the catalyst for the move into a whole new era of grizzly bear management,” recalls Jack Potter, Chief of Science and Resources Management in Glacier National Park.
“We could no longer stand by and either actively feed or allow garbage to be left out for grizzly bears.”
Bert Gildart, a former park ranger in Glacier, remembers flying into Trout Lake a few weeks after the fatal attack to pick up garbage. He and another ranger loaded about seventeen burlap sacks of garbage onto a Huey helicopter. It was garbage campers had left behind.
Thankfully, the policies implemented in both Glacier and Yellowstone National Parks following the “night of the grizzlies” have limited grizzly attacks mainly to surprise encounters rather than predatory aggression. No longer do grizzlies scavenge food out of garbage dumps. Gone are the grizzles that became habituated and lost their fear of human beings.
Role of Humans
In 1975, grizzly bears were classified as a “threatened species” under the 1973 Endangered Species Act. The most recent estimates from the National Park Service show a population increase among grizzlies in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem from 136 in 1975 to 757 in 2014. This has been followed by a decline to 690 bears in 2016. However, the stable number of females producing cubs in Yellowstone suggests that the park may have reached the “ecological carrying capacity” for grizzlies.
So what should outdoor enthusiasts do to help manage grizzly bears and their habitat? Packing out trash and keeping clean campsites is a great place to start. Giving grizzlies their space is another. They are crowded as it is.
“The most distant place in the lower 48 states from the nearest road is 23 miles,” says Douglas Chadwick, a Wildlife Biologist and Conservationist, “which would take a bear a morning to walk out of. There is no big wild left out there. These guys are going to have to learn to live with us, which I think they are doing.”
We need to learn to live with grizzlies, too.
I still shudder when I recall a group of tourists in Yellowstone a few years ago standing outside their vehicles — with their young children — about sixty yards from a grizzly. My children were not happy when I refused to let them get out and join the crowd of onlookers. I still remember making eye contact with a park ranger who was on patrol. He returned my glance with a shrug and a look which seemed to communicate, “I’m not happy about this either, but there’s not much I can do.”
This kind of behavior puts grizzlies at risk just as much as it puts humans at risk.
According to the National Park Service, “There were 58 known and probable grizzly bear mortalities in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem in 2016. Thirty-eight were attributed to human causes. Four were of undetermined cause, 4 were natural deaths, and 14 [are] still under investigation.”
There are, of course, more complex issues related to grizzly bear management. Within the last few weeks, the Yellowstone grizzly bear has been delisted from its status as a “threatened species” under the Endangered Species Act. Some outdoor enthusiasts celebrate this. Others are outraged. There are good people (and arguments) on both sides. We must continue to listen to each other and work together to insure management practices which will allow grizzlies and humans to co-exist.
No Danger Free Zone
On June 29, 2016, in Glacier National Park, Brad Treat, a U.S. Forest Service law enforcement officer, rounded a blind curve on his mountain bike at about 20-25 miles per hour and ran into a grizzly. The surprise encounter resulted in the grizzly mauling and killing Treat.
No amount of management can make the wilds a danger-free zone.
Last fall, my podcast partner, Dave Goetz, and I fly fished a couple days in Yellowstone National Park. One morning, we came across a fresh set of grizzly bear tracks. Thankfully, we had no bear encounter. But a week later, two fly fishers a few miles from where we were was fishing stumbled into a grizzly bear and narrowly escaped when it charged them.
Whenever I fly fish in grizzly bear country in Montana and Wyoming, I follow the standard safety protocol. I make noise, pack out my garbage, avoid going alone, and always carry bear spray. I did the same when I lived in Montana for two decades and hiked and bow-hunted elk in the mountains north of Yellowstone National Park.
Mountain bikers are, perhaps, more vulnerable to surprise encounters due to the high rate of speed at which they can approach a grizzly. Chris Servheen, who served on the board that reviewed the tragic death of Brad Treat, cautions mountain bikers to take it slow when their sight-distance is limited. He offers this advice to mountain bikers in grizzly country:
When the trail is thick with vegetation or has curves, we recommend you slow down and shout when approaching blind curves. Speed and noise are the factors that get people when they’re out on their bikes. They’re moving faster and quieter.”
Some outdoor enthusiasts prefer carrying a .44 magnum to a canister of bear spray. Of course, firearm use is prohibited in Glacier or Yellowstone National Parks. But even in national forests or private land where firearm use is legal, I’ll take a canister of bear spray over a sidearm every time.
First, while its effects are temporary, bear spray usually incapacitates a grizzly instantly. Even a bear shot in the vital organs can keep coming.
Second, bear spray is the only safe way to get a grizzly off of a human being during an attack. Several years ago, I bow-hunted elk with a friend in Taylor Fork, a grizzly-dense drainage just north of Yellowstone National Park. We saw a lot of grizzly sign—both scat and overturned logs and rocks—but never encountered a bear.
The following fall, my friend was hunting the same area with an orthopedic surgeon when a grizzly charged them. The bear attacked the surgeon, eventually breaking his fibula, ripping gashes in his thigh and arm, and tearing off his ear. My friend charged the bear and shot it with a cloud of bear spray. Thankfully, the sow and her cubs took off running.
There was no way my friend could have attempted a shot at the grizzly without the risk of shooting the surgeon he was trying to protect.
Finally, the goal is to rescue a human from being mauled — not to destroy a bear.
There is no reason to eliminate a grizzly that attacks in self-defense. Defensive attacks, unlike predatory attacks, like those on the night of the grizzlies do not increase the likelihood that the bear will attack again. The grizzly which killed Brad Treat a year ago did not consume any part of its victim’s body. Nor did it attempt to cache the body by covering it with dirt or rocks. Unlike the “garbage bears” of the 1960s, this grizzly disappeared and has not developed a pattern of bothering hikers or mountain bikers.
Life after the Night of the Grizzlies
Today, about 1500 grizzly bears roam in the lower 48 states. Well, they don’t actually roam any longer. They are confined to particular areas in the intermountain west. About 800 grizzlies live in Montana, including 300 or so in Glacier National Park. Another 600 members of the Ursus arctos horribilis subspecies live in Wyoming in the Yellowstone-Teton area. The combined number of grizzlies in Montana and Wyoming includes the 690 in Yellowstone National Park. An additional 100 grizzlies live in northern and eastern Idaho.
Over forty years after the “night of the grizzlies” in Glacier National Park, the father of victim Michelle Koons expressed no ill will towards grizzly bears. In fact, he expressed sympathy for them. In an interview, he said: “I always would think about what civilization has done to bears, forcing them to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do.”
Survival of both grizzlies and humans means learning to adapt and keep at a healthy distance from the other species. The grizzlies are learning to do this. Humans must continue to do so as well.
Colorado high country makes for an amazing backdrop for a day on the river. We each take at least one trip to Colorado each year to fly fish, and the creeks and lakes we fish typically are in the Colorado high country. Most recently Dave was in Colorado fishing with one of Steve’s brothers, and besides the two yearling moose that wouldn’t leave them alone, they had a terrific day. Click now to listen to “Fishing the Colorado High Country.”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Any favorite places to fish in Colorado? Or elsewhere? We’d love to hear about your great days on the water.
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We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
I don’t always think about mayflies. But when I do, I usually catch more trout.
Here are 7 things you need to know about Ephemeroptera — the insect order popularly known as mayflies. I’ve learned these from my friend, Bob Granger, and from the writings of Dave Hughes and Jim Schollmeyer. The insights have made me a better fly fisher:
1. All but one or two days of a mayfly’s 365-day life span is spent underwater.
This is the nymph stage. No wonder 85% of a trout’s diet comes from beneath the surface. It’s why fishing nymphs is almost always a sure bet.
2. Most mayflies hatch at mid-day.
This means that 11:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. is prime time — depending, of course, on wind and water temperature. Overcast, cool days are ideal, especially for Baetis flies and Blue-Winged Olives (BWOs).
3. Mayfly duns ride the surface until their upright wings are dry and hardened for flight.
Duns are the first of two adult forms of the mayfly. Their ride through the current typically lasts for ten to twenty feet. Obviously, this makes the duns vulnerable to rising trout. And these rising trout are vulnerable to your mayfly imitation.
4. If rising trout ignore the mayfly duns on the surface, they are feeding on emergers.
The emerger stage is the brief transition between the nymph stage and the dun stage. The child becomes an adult when the skin splits along the back of the nymph and the winged dun escapes. Wise anglers will put on an emerger pattern in these moments.
5. Once duns turn into spinners, they mate in the air and the females deposit their eggs.
At this point, the females are spent and fall to the water. This creates a “spinner fall” — another opportunity for a trout feeding frenzy. Anglers who see mayflies with flat wings like an airplane rather than with wings sticking up should switch to a spinner pattern.
6. Mayflies vary in size and in the time of year they appear.
In the western rivers, BWOs generally hatch from mid-March through May. Pale Morning Duns (PMDs) are more prominent from May through August. Then BWOs show up in force again in September. Typical sizes range from 14 through 18. But the brown and green Drakes in Henry’s Fork of the Snake River tend to be larger — from size 10 to 12.
7. Mayflies need cold, clean water.
Water pollution makes mayflies disappear. When mayflies disappear, the trout do too. So water conservation is vital to trout fishing.
Wisel Creek is a gorgeous spring creek fishery with a tragic past. On August 6, 1866, a flash flood destroyed a community, killing 16 men, women and children in Preble Township, Fillmore County, Minnesota. Today, it’s hard to imagine that this quiet creek could flood anything. On a whim, after a no-fish day on another stream, we decided to fish the evening rise on Wisel Creek, which we had never fished before. And what an evening it was! Listen now to this episode.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
We’d love to hear about a recent “one fine day” that you’ve had on the river. Please tell us your story below. What surprised you about the fishing?
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Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
When I first started fly fishing, I gave little thought to using fishing nets. We always had a long-handled net in the drift boat. But I did not realize the value of a net for wade fishing until a friend gave me a small net made by Brodin — a company near Logan, Montana less than ten miles from my home.
It did not take me long to get hooked on using a net to land the 14-20 inch trout I caught. I lost fewer fish, and it was less stressful for the trout I landed. If you’re new to fly fishing, here is the scoop on fly fishing nets:
1. Do pay attention to the net frame materials.
There are two basic net frame materials.
Some frames are made out of wood. This is the case with my Brodin net. Wood is fine, but you will need to varnish it occasionally depending on how much use it gets. Other frames are made out of composite materials—carbon fiber and fiberglass. This is the case with the Fishpond net another friend gave me.
Side note: It’s nice to have friends who give you fishing nets as gifts!
2. Do not buy a net unless it has a fish-friendly bag.
Most nets sold today have a rubber or nylon bag—that is, webbing.
This has more flex than the traditional twine (string) bags. It is less stressful for a trout when scooped into the next. The difference between the two kinds of material resembles how you feel when you fall on mattress versus a kitchen table.
3. Do give some thought to the handle and frame size of your fishing nets.
You want a net with a large enough hoop (opening) to land large trout but small enough so it is not cumbersome to carry. Handle size is important, too.
My Brodin had net has a short handle. This makes it ideal for longer hikes up the river. But my Fishpond Nomad Emerger net has a longer handle, which allows me to land trout further away from my body. Trust me, it’s a lot easier to land a trout that is two feet way than a foot away.
4. Do not fail to purchase a magnetic clip with a retractor.
The magnetic clip (actually, two magnets) allows you to reach behind your head where your net is clipped to your fly vest and have it snap into place. The retractor allows you to drop your net in the water without fear of it drifting away.
5. Do exercise caution when walking through brush.
If you are wondering why I mention this, you have never caught your net on buckbrush, walked a few feet, and then had your net snap back and whack you!
6. Do not stab at a fish with your net.
When trying to land a fish with your net, keep the net under the fish and lift it up. If you try to stab or jab or flick with your net, it won’t work. You can’t move it through the water quickly enough. So no “net flicks.” Did you see what I did there? Sorry!
Of course, you do not always have to use a net. You can head for shallow water, and then “beach” your fish as long as the bank is soft.
My podcast partner, Dave, and I did this last fall on a particular run in the Gardner River. We were catching brown after brown in the same deep run. We didn’t want to get too close to the run to spook the other fish. So we would pull the trout onto the soft, muddy beach. But under most conditions, you’ll do well to bring along the right net and use it properly.
Fly fishing persistence is necessary if you want to catch fish. Wind, rain, cold, snow – fly fishers know the truism that the worst weather is often the best for fishing. There are times to persist. Make another cast. Walk another mile. Change up your rig one more time. And then there are times to call it quits. In this episode, we attempt to ballpark the times when persistence pays off – and when it’s time to go home.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
When did you stick it out – and have a banner day? What principles do you have for making a decision about when to fish and when to go home? We’d love to hear your stories and how you made decisions.
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
It happened again last week. I felt that familiar rush of adrenalin. The mild shock happened again and again as trout after trout attacked the Parachute Adams I drifted down a little stream. I had made my dry fly irresistible.
Dry fly fishing can be unpredictable. When it’s hot, it’s not. When it’s not, well, it’s not. But there are some tactics you can use to make your dry fly irresistible to the trout lurking beneath it:
Dry it
Dry flies, uh, get wet.
Even the heartiest among them (think: Elk Hair Caddis) can get water-logged. Never mind that I always put some kind of fly dressing on my dry flies before I cast them into the current.
Sure, I’ve had trout strike my submerged fly. But dry flies perform best when riding the surface.
A few false casts will help dry out your dry fly. Yet it’s not enough.
Over the years, I’ve grown fond of water-removing powder or crystals. I always keep a small bottle in my fly vest. I like both Orvis Hy-Flote (Shake-N-Flote Renew) or Umpqua Bug Dust. Simply open the bottle lid, put your soggy fly inside (still attached to your leader), and shake the bottle a couple of times.
Presto! Your fly is dry.
The white powder makes it look like a ghost. But a couple of false casts will remove the dust. There are some liquid products available too. These are quite effective, but I generally find them messy and sticky. So go with the powder!
Twitch it
Another effective tactic is to give your dry fly a twitch. This works especially well with Caddis.
I talked to a guide in a fly shop last week who was having luck in the evenings when he skated his Caddis fly across the surface. I used this technique many times when float-tubing Hyalite Reservoir in the mountains south of Bozeman, Montana. I skated a Madam X pattern on the lake’s surface and got a positive response from several large cutthroat trout.
Of course, twitching or skating a hopper pattern is always a good bet.
The art of twitching or skating is rather simple. For a twitch, pretend the fly rod in your hand is a hammer and that you’re tapping in a small nail into soft wood. For the skating effect, I simply strip line like I would with a streamer—only more gently.
Don’t overdo your twitch or skate. If the current is fairly fast, don’t bother. But if it’s slow, a little twitch or skating motion might make your fly irresistible.
Re-size it
My brother, Dave, was fly fishing a stream in the high country of Colorado last week. He tried the standard patterns and even an emerger or two. The fishing was slow until he tied on a large stimulator. I’m pretty sure that it was the larger size rather than the color (orange) that mattered.
As Bob Granger, one of my fly fishing mentors often said, “When the trout aren’t rising for your fly, try a different size before you try a different pattern.”
In general, if I’m fishing a Blue-Winged Olive (BWO) hatch and not having success, I’ll go smaller. I can’t remember how many times the switch from a size #18 to a size #20 Parachute Adams made all the difference. If I’m struggling to get strikes with attractor patterns when there is no hatch, I’ll typically go larger.
I’ll switch from a size #18 to a size #14. Often it works.
Reverse it
Another tactic is to reverse the direction of your cast.
Obviously, you can’t reverse the direction of your fly. It’s never going to float upstream—always downstream! Typically, fly fishers work their way upstream. This keeps us behind the trout. The idea is that we will be less visible to the trout when we cast. However, there are times when it’s advisable to approach the trout from upstream. This might be due to the current or to an overhanging branch.
More stealth is required when we are in front of the trout and casting downstream. But if that gets a better drift, or if it’s the only possible way to drift a fly through a promising run, then do it.
Crowd it
There’s a good reason not to crowd your fly against an undercut bank. You’re likely to snag it on the brush on the side of the bank. It’s safer to aim for a foot or two short of the bank. It’s also less effective.
If you want to catch trout, however, you have to get close to an undercut bank. That’s where the trout hide. So take the risk.
Last weekend, I fished a run and drifted my fly about eight inches from an undercut bank. It was a decent cast. But nothing happened. On the next cast, I crowded the bank. You guessed it, my cast was about six inches too long, and it ended up in the grass on the bank. I gently tugged at it, and my fly landed in the current, about one inch from the bank.
A few seconds later, a plump brown trout darted out from under the bank and attacked my fly.
To make your dry fly irresistible, cast it as tight
Free it
Finally, keep your dry fly free of drag.
Drag happens when the center of your fly line moves through the current more quickly than your fly does. This results in your fly line pulling or dragging your fly through the current. As a result, your fly will resemble a water skier. It will leave a cool-looking wake.
But is not cool if you’re trying to catch trout!
The trick is to create a bend in your line do that the center of the line on the water is upstream from your fly. In other words, you want the fly to lead the rest of the line. You can do this either by mending your line (flipping the center section upstream after it lands) or by quickly “writing” the letter “C” with your rod tip shortly before your fly lands on the surface.
If the current is moving from right to left, you’ll “write” a backwards “C.” If it’s moving from left, you’ll write a normal “C.” This gets the center of the line upstream from your fly.
Drag will not make your dry fly irresistible!
Dry Fly Irresistible
I came across a beautiful undercut bank and made a perfect cast. My dry fly was riding high a couple inches from the bank, and there was no drag. It was the perfect presentation, and then … nothing happened.
The lesson is that you can do everything perfectly and still fail to get a trout to rise. There are no guarantees when it comes to dry fly fishing. But using one or more of these tactics just might make your dry fly irresistible to that big rainbow around the next bend.
Getting ready to fly fish is slower for some than it is for others. Some of you jump out of the truck, don your waders in an instant, rig up, and are on your way. Others are more methodical (read: slow) as they get ready to fly fish. Steve is slow. Dave is slow but not quite as slow as Steve. In this episode on “Getting Ready to Fly Fish,” we describe some of our habits before we step into the river.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What are your habits as you get ready to fly fish? How to you make the transition from the truck to the river? We’d like to hear about your disciplines and quirks!
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We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
If I had to fish with a single dry fly pattern, I’d definitely choose the Parachute Adams. It’s worked well for me on rivers ranging from Oregon to Michigan. Last weekend, I did well with it on the Little Jordan, a small creek in southeastern Minnesota.
I suspect I’ve caught more trout on the Parachute Adams than on any other dry fly pattern, though the Elk Hair Caddis is a close second. Here is a profile of this remarkably effective pattern:
1. How it originated
The Parachute Adams is a modification of the Adams.
According to Paul Schullery, the Adams originated in 1922 in Michigan. Leonard Halladay developed it as a general mayfly imitation, and his friend, Charles Adams, used it successfully on the Boardman River near Traverse City, Michigan. As a result, Halladay decided to name it after his friend.
The Adams is a relatively simply pattern to tie. It consists of dark gray dubbing for the body, brown and grizzly hackle, grizzly hackle tips for the wings, and a mixture of brown and grizzly hackle fibers for the tail.
Bud Lilly observed that the Adams grew lighter when it went east. But when it went west, fly tiers used extra hackle—presumably to keep it floating longer in the swift currents of western rivers.
2. How it has been modified
The Parachute Adams uses the same hackle, dubbing, and tail as the Adams.
However, the modification comes in the hackle (front) section of the fly. An Adams pattern wraps the hackle around the hook vertically—up and down. However, the Parachute Adams contains a vertical post of white calf hair at the front or head of the fly. Then, hackle gets wrapped horizontally around the base of the post. Tiers refer to this as “parachute style”—hence the name Parachute Adams.
There is no wing added as in the traditional Adams pattern.
The Catch and the Hatch has produced a helpful instructional video for tying this pattern. Even if you are not a fly tier, it’s worth watching so you can see what makes this fly work.
One of the more recent modifications to the Parachute Adams is the Purple Haze. This is the exact same pattern with a purple body instead of a dark gray one. It gives trout a bit different look, and I’ve had success with it.
However, I keep reverting back to the time-tested Parachute Adams — especially on rivers where the Purple Haze has become a craze so that trout are seeing nothing but purple.
3. Why it works
Like the standard Adams pattern, the Parachute Adams works well because it is a general mayfly imitation. It is versatile enough to serve as an attractor pattern when nothing specific is happening on the surface. Yet I have done quite well with it during specific hatches like Blue-Winged Olive (BWO) hatch. Some fly fishers even swear by it as an option for the Caddis hatch.
Perhaps it works well, too, because it is a low-riding fly. This gives trout a good look at it as it remains suspended in the surface film where mayflies typically emerge.
One of the most important factors in its success is its visibility to fly fishers. I can see its white post, or parachute, even in low light.
4. When to use it
You can use the Parachute Adams, well, whenever you want to catch trout on a dry fly. I’ve caught trout on it in every season of the year—even in the winter when a size #18 or #20 can imitate a midge cluster.
Unless I suspect that trout are keying in on Pale Morning Duns (PMDs) or on Caddis flies, I’ll tie on a Parachute Adams when I see rising trout. Typically, I like a size #18 or even a size #20 when a hatch is on.
I’ll tie it on, too, when no hatch is happening and I’m trying to coax a trout to the surface. In these cases, I typically use a bit larger size—either a size #14 or #16.
The Parachute Adams is a terrific choice for your number one go-to fly. Don’t leave home without it.
Fly fishing culture is what you experience every time you walk into a fly shop. The shop monkey speaks a different language – mending, nymphs, attractors, hare’s ear, streamers, mid-flex, and thousands of other strange words. Fly fishing culture also creates a wonderful esprit de corp among others who have taken up the sport. In this episode, we interview Matthew Lourdeau, a fly fishing blogger, who writes Casting Across, a delightful blog that takes a wide perspective at the sport, all the stuff on the periphery that adds to the experience of getting after the fish.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What is your connection to the fly fishing culture? How did the culture help you grow in the sport? What did you read? What media helped you most? Also, what funny stories can you tell of learning to become a fly fisher?
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Fly fishing creeks – that’s what I plan to do this weekend. My podcast partner, Dave, and I will make a five-hour drive and spend a couple of days on the water. But where will we go? A five-hour drive to the northwest will take us to several creeks loaded with 8-14 inch browns. A five hour drive to the northeast will take us to a river where we have a chance of landing 18-22 inch browns.
I hear the creek calling.
Why am I so fond of fly fishing creeks — or “cricks” as my friends and family in both Montana and Pennsylvania call them? I have been pondering that question the past few days:
Nostalgia
One of the first places I learned to fish for trout was on Cole Grove Brook near Smethport, Pennsylvania.
I was eight years old, and my Uncle Ivan taught me the art of dropping a worm in this tiny, brush-lined creek to catch brookies. A few years later, I threw Mepps spinners in the Big Thompson River (trust me, it’s a small creek) in Rocky Mountain National Park. That’s also where I got my first taste of fly fishing and caught my first brookie.
Then there is the little creek near Orville National Forest campground in the Black Hills of South Dakota.
I was in high school when my brother and I stumbled across some kind of mayfly hatch (I’m guessing) one evening and pulled out trout after trout on a Royal Coachman. There is also the mystique of Elk Creek near Augusta, Montana. During our college years, Dave and I had some terrific days on a little stretch of this creek not far from where if flowed out of the Scapegoat Wilderness area.
Whenever I’m on a small stream, I get nostalgic. I revisit these creeks and spend some time on them in my mind.
Into the Wild
Fishing creeks tends to get me into more wild places than fishing the larger rivers. That’s not always the case. My favorite stretch of the Madison River in Montana is in the Beartrap Canyon, and my favorite stretch of the Yellowstone River is in a remote place in Yellowstone National Park. They are big rivers. But they are the exceptions.
It seems like more often than not, fishing creeks gets me off the beaten paths and deeper into the timber or further into the mountains.
I remember running into a coyote in the thick forest surrounding Cole Grove Brook in northern Pennsylvania. I also remember catching a 12-inch brookie out of a beaver pond in the Bondurant National Forest south of Jackson, Wyoming, while a cow moose grazed about 75 yards away.
When Dave and I fish a creek in the Driftless region of southeastern Minnesota this weekend, we’ll fish until we come to a rock cliff where the creek flows out of the mouth of a cave.
If you like wild places, make the creeks your destination.
Less Pressure
This is a corollary to the previous point.
Wild places can mean less pressure.
One July day, when the drift boats seemed to be bumper-to-bumper on the Yellowstone River in Montana’s Paradise Valley, I drove up the West Fork of Mill Creek — several miles above where main Mill Creek emptied into the Yellowstone. I fished a stretch in the Absarokee-Beartooth Wilderness Area a couple hundred yards from where I shot my first bull elk. I used a Red Humpy, and every cast resulted in a fierce strike by a plump 8-10 inch Yellowstone cutthroat trout.
I doubt that anyone had fished this stretch of creek in years. It was a couple hundred yards down a steep ravine off of the trail.
As a general rule, expect that bigger rivers that hold bigger fish will attract bigger crowds. The streams that flow into them will receive a lot less pressure. So head to the creek to get away from the crowd.
More Action
Generally, smaller creeks mean smaller fish but more action.
Last summer, I fished the Fall River in Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado. Don’t let the word “river” fool you. It’s a small stream that winds through a meadow after emerging from a canyon. It seemed like every cast resulted in a strike on the Elk Hair Caddis I was drifting along the undercut banks. I didn’t catch anything over eleven inches. But the two dozen trout I caught were all fighters.
Finesse
Part of the appeal of a creek is the finesse required to fish it.
Perhaps that comes from the days when I used an ultralight spinning rod and sneaked up through the weeds to peek into the hole where I was going to cast my offering (that sounds better than “cast my worm”).
As much as I love my nine-foot, six-weight rod, I find joy in taking my eight-and-a-half, four-weight rod and crawling up to a bank where I will make a short cast to fish an six-foot run along a bank. Fishing the small creeks require more stealth, smaller leaders, and softer landings on the surface. Even streamer fishing in a creek is more delicate. It’s not the same as lobbing a weighted Woolly Bugger on a mighty river.
I’ve lived a few minutes from the Yellowstone, the Madison, and the Missouri in Montana. I’ve had some terrific days on them. But, the creeks still call me. The “cricks” do too. I simply can’t resist their lure, and I hope that never changes.
Fly fishing alone may be the norm for many fly fishers. Not everyone has a buddy. And even if you do, you’ll want, on some days, to head to the river by yourself. In this episode, we discuss the solitude that goes with fly fishing alone, its benefits, and some of its challenges. Click now to listen to “The Art of Fly Fishing Alone
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Do you fish mostly by yourself? What do you like about fly fishing alone? What are its benefits? Any recommendations on what has helped you stay safe?
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Fly fishing is not an extreme sport. But it can be a dangerous one. Every year, fly fishers drown, break bones, and hook themselves. They get lost. Caught in storms. And stung by insects and bitten by snakes.
So the next time you head for the river, consider taking along some of all of these safety devices:
1. A first-aid kit
This is critical if you plan to fish very far up the river. I prefer a first-aid kit the size of a small fly box. You only need the basics—band-aids, antiseptic cream, pain reliever, and a couple larger bandages or gauze dressings.
You might include moleskin for blisters. In fact, this may be the most important element in your first aid kid.
2. Your smartphone
No, you don’t need your smartphone to check email or Twitter.
But you might be surprised at the places you have cell service — like on certain spots on the Yellowstone River in Yellowstone National Park. Well, I should say I do, but Dave (my podcast partner) doesn’t. We use different carriers.
I have a flashlight app on my phone that I’ve used when hiking in or out of my fishing spot in the dark. The GPS might allow someone to track you if you break a leg and simply can’t move.
3. Bear spray
This is an absolute must in grizzly country.
Last fall, a couple was scouting fishing spots on the Lamar River in Yellowstone National Park when they spotted a grizzly feeding on carcass. The bear was in no mood for competition, so it charged. It came within nine feet before their bear spray turned it away. It charged again, but retreated and ran away when it encountered the cloud of bear spray a second time.
Dave and I were fly fishing just a few miles away one week earlier, and we saw grizzly tracks along the river. Yes, we were carrying bear spray.
4. A wading staff
I’m a big believer in wading staffs. Their most obvious use is staying on your feet in the current. A wading can also help you walk if you sprain an ankle. And also serves as a means to ward off a rattlesnake.
5. Two-way radios
These are great for those spots where you don’t have cell phone service.
Dave, my podcast partner, and I regularly carry two-way radios when we’re fishing in the backcountry. Yes, we admit sharing fishing info (“Hey, they’re starting to take Caddis flies over here!”). But we take them along in case one of spots a bear or falls and twists an ankle. Even some of the places we fish in the Driftless (southeastern Minnesota and southwestern Wisconsin) have limited cell coverage.
Must Have vs Nice to Have
The five items above fall into the “must have” category. But there are some “nice to have” items you might want to consider:
A change of socks can help prevent blisters;
A rain jacket can provide warmth as well as protection if you get caught in a fierce rainstorm;
A fire-starter is an extra measure of caution if I’m hiking a few miles up river in the mountains of Wyoming or Montana. I’ll also thrown in a small lighter and some folded newspaper (in a plastic bag); and
Water purification tablets might even be must-have if your destination is a lake or stream a few miles from the trailhead.
The next time you hit the river, don’t forget the devices that can help you avoid or deal with dangers. And of course, you always need to carry a good amount of water.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What do you love about summer fly fishing? When have you had the most success during the summer? What tips would you offer summer fly fishing warriors to improve their time on the water?
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Summer. It’s the most wonderful time of the year for fly fishers. Well, it’s one of three. Spring and fall are great too. But it’s hard not to love the season of the year when the days are longer, when the warmth allows you to wet wade, and when the trout dart to the surface to take a terrestrial.
I’ve shared before about how to fly fish in the winter without losing everything from your sanity to your life. That may not seem to be an issue in the summer, but it is. Here are seven strategies to keep you safe and sane as you fly fish during the summer months.
1. Watch for lightening and venomous snakes.
Your chances of encountering both are higher during the summer months. Remember that a graphite fly rod makes an effective lightening rod. So don’t cast when you see lightening or hear thunder. Keep your eyes peeled for rattlers or copperheads or whatever venomous snakes inhabit your fly fishing spots. A wading staff can help you ward off a snake you surprise.
2. Dry fly action will typically not happen until mid-morning.
If you’re a beginner, this may not evident.
But if you hit the river at dawn, you’ll want to fish nymphs or streamers. Some of my favorite rivers for grasshoppers don’t see hopper action until 11 a.m. or so. It’s always a good idea to get intel from the guides at the fly shop. They can tell you what hatches happen on when they happen on the river you plan to fish.
3. Make sure your fly box has plenty of terrestrials.
Summer is a great time for ants, beetles, and grasshoppers—although trout generally don’t start taking hoppers consistently until August.
Make sure you have plenty of attractor patterns, too.
My brother, Dave, did well the other day on a stream near Morrison, Colorado, with a size #14 Royal Coachman. I like a Royal Wulff or a Red (or Yellow) Humpy pattern. Even an Elk Hair Caddis or a Spruce Moth seems to work well about any time in the summer when a fish will rise for something big and buggy.
4. Carry plenty of water.
You can get dehydrated any time of year. But it happens more quickly in the heat of the summer. So don’t forget to stuff a water bottle or two in your vest or satchel.
5. Hire a guide for new water.
I talked to a friend yesterday who returned from a trip to Arizona to visit family. Greg had only one day to fly fish in an area he had never fished before. Thankfully, he did the right thing and hired a guide.
She took Greg to a spot where he caught several Apache trout — one of the rarest, most endangered trout species in the world. There’s nothing like a day with a guide to help you figure out where to fish and how to fish when you’re dealing with new water.
6. Avoid the busy times and places.
Everyone loves summer.
So expect your favorite spots to be more crowded. If possible, fish during the middle of the week instead of the weekend. Plan to walk or hike a bit further to avoid the crowds. It’s better to walk an hour each way and fish a less-pressured stretch for two hours than to spend four hours on the great-looking spot beside the road where there are already four fly fishers in ahead of you.
7. Avoid unnecessary wading risks.
This is a polite way of saying, “Don’t be stupid.”
I don’t know about you, but I’m more inclined to push the safety margins in the summer. I know that I’m not going to get hypothermia if I fall into the Yellowstone River on a hot July afternoon. But that means I might wade into a deeper or swifter run than I might otherwise. I have to tell myself, “No!” It’s not worth it. Also, if you’re going to wet wade, don’t forget that the weather (especially in the intermountain west) can change in a heartbeat. So be prepared.
Have a great summer of fly fishing. The rivers in Montana and Wyoming are clearing and dropping to optimum levels. The hex hatch is about to happen on the rivers in northern Michigan. Anglers in Vermont are seeing trout key in on Caddis, Sulfers, and Drakes. Enjoy the summer. Make sure to do everything you can to stay safe and sane.
Fly casting is the first skill that newbies learn. Every Trout Unlimited chapter and every fly shop offers classes. Yet, until a fly fisher hits the river, it’s all academic. There it gets messy. There may be precious little room for one’s back cast or the only approach to the run is at an awkward angle. In this episode on fly casting, we scare up seven tips to help fly fishers improve their cast.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Do you have a quick tip to help aspiring and beginner fly fishers with their casting? We’d love to hear it. Please post your comments below.
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Learning to tie flies can be as bewildering as learning to fly fish. There are a lot of concepts to grasp and skills to master. New fly tyers might get ten different sets of answers if they asked ten veteran fly tyers to give them five helpful hints.
But here the first five tips that come to mind. I’ve found them quite helpful over the years as a fly tyer.
1. Beware of using too much material.
My fly tying mentor, Bob Granger, talked about this a lot. The temptation is to apply too many wraps of thread or to put the dubbing on too thick.
You can get away with this (sort of) when you’re tying larger flies. But with smaller flies, you’ll crowd the hook and have difficulty finding a place near the eye to tie off your thread when you’re finished. If you look at real Blue-Winged Olives or Caddis flies, you’ll notice how sparse they are. So there’s no reason to apply too much material unless you want your Caddis fly to look like it is on steroids.
2. Don’t misuse your sharp scissors.
Buy two pairs of scissors.
Spend a bit more on the one that you’ll use to trim deer or elk hair, thread, and tiny feathers. Use a cheaper pair to cut the stuff that can dull your more expensive pair. This includes the stem of larger feathers, copper wire, and elk or deer hide.
3. Tie larger sizes and easy patterns first.
It makes sense to begin learning to tie a San Juan Worm or a Woolly Bugger.
Even a size #18 (tiny!) nymph like a beadhead brassie is a good “starter” pattern. While it’s small, it’s ridiculously simple to tie. Wait to try your hand at tying an Elk Hair Caddis or a Royal Wulff or a Muddler Minnow.
You can learn to use a hair stacker, to work with calf hair, and to spin and stack hair after you’ve mastered some of the easier patterns.
4. Watch online videos for help.
I wish these were available when I started tying.
You can search YouTube for about any pattern you want to tie and find some terrific videos. Fly shop websites often produce their own. Major brands like Orvis also have excellent instructional videos, including some on fly tying. Here are just three:
Your fly does not have to look catalog-ready to be effective.
What appears sloppy to you may appear “buggy” to a trout. So don’t worry about uneven hackle or a piece of hair or sticks out a bit longer than the others. Your fledgling attempt may not catch fly fishers like a commercially tied fly does. But it will do just as well at catching fish. And that’s what matters!
Fathers and a love for the outdoors – a few of us had fathers who opened our eyes to the big world of the outdoors. In this episode, we recall the role our fathers played in giving us a love for fly fishing and hunting. Steve’s father, who has been gone for many years, instilled in Steve the drive to give the outdoors a “full pursuit.” Dave’s dad is alive and well at 83-years-old, and plans to hunt deer this fall in North Dakota. We think you’ll enjoy this episode on Fly Fishing, Fathers and a Love for the Outdoors.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Did you have a Dad who gave you a love for the outdoors? If not, and if you have any children, how are you instilling in them a love for the outdoors? And have you mentored anyone – a niece or nephew or friend?
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
We have assembled ten questions you can ask your fly fishing friends. You can use these as conversation starters. Or, simply post them on Facebook to see if they go viral. Here are the questions as well as our answers.
We’d love to have you post your answers in the “comments” section below:
1. What is your “go to” fly rod—the one you use most?
DAVE: Now that I live in the Midwest, it’s my eight-and-a-half, four-weight Redington. When I’m on bigger rivers, it is my Sage One nine foot six weight.
STEVE: My “go to” is a Winston Boron II-X. It’s a nine-foot, six-weight that’s made in Montana. If I’m on a smaller creek, I’ll switch to my Orvis eight-and-a-half-foot, four weight.
2. What river that you’ve never fished is at the top of your bucket list?
DAVE: There are so many rivers that I’d like to fish – the many in Oregon (including the McKenzie River), Washington State, and British Columbia. I’d love to fish as many rivers as I could in Alaska. I don’t have a yearning to fish a particular one – just all that I haven’t fished. Plus, I’d love to fish all the great rivers in the northeastern United States. Basically, every river I haven’t fished is one I want to fish.
STEVE: I suppose it would be the Bighorn River in Montana. I’ve fished all the other major rivers in Montana. But since I had so many other superb rivers to fish when I lived in the Bozeman, Montana, area, I never ventured east to experience it.
3. What is the oldest piece of gear you use when fly fishing?
DAVE: A pair of Dan Bailey Waders. They are going on 10 years.
STEVE: I have an Orvis fly vest that is twenty-years old. It has a ripped pocket. But it’s like an old friend! I plan to keep using it until it falls apart.
4. What is the newest piece of gear you use when fly fishing?
DAVE: I just bought a pair of Patagonia Foot Tractors (wading boots). It was time. I wore a pair of Simms boots for way too long. The soles were worn, and last fall on the Gardner in Yellowstone National Park, I struggled to wade more than up to my knees.
STEVE: A Fishpond Nomad Emerger net. A friend gave it to me as a gift. It has a slightly longer handle than my Brodin hand net, but it’s not too bulky when it’s clipped on my vest and I’m hiking in a couple of miles to fish. The composite material makes it light, as well as strong.
5. What is the dumbest thing you’ve ever done on the river?
DAVE: I locked my car keys in the trunk of my 1971 Chevy Nova. Steve and I had to wait for a rancher to drive by. We were on a road that dead-ended at the trail head of a wilderness area. We used the rancher’s hammer and screwdriver to punch a hole through the lock. Sure enough, I had left the keys in my fly fishing vest.
STEVE: I dropped the top two pieces of my four-piece Orvis eight-and-a-half, four-weight rod into the Owyhee River in eastern Oregon. The pieces floated away. Thankfully, the good folks at Orvis treated it like a broken rod and replaced the two missing pieces. Actually, they gave me a new rod.
6. Which brother do you most resemble in the movie A River Runs Through It – Norman or Paul?
DAVE: Definitely Paul. I was not quite the hell-raiser that he was but I always saw myself as a kind of rebel against the system (whatever that meant – authority, status quo, etc.). I was a rebel without a cause, in many ways. Fortunately, I had to grow up (finally and reluctantly). I’m not perfect like Steve!
STEVE: Definitely Norman! I’m the oldest child who is more serious-minded than free-spirit. I’ve worked hard to be a good fly fisher, but I’m not a natural like Paul was.
7. What was your most satisfying moment on the river?
DAVE: Probably last fall catching browns, cutts, and rainbows on the Gardner River in Yellowstone National Park. It was an unbelievable two days of unlimited catching (and releasing). The second best may be the year previously on 16 Mile Creek in Montana when Steve and I had a banner day fishing hoppers.
STEVE: It was either catching rainbows on the Yellowstone with an elk hair caddis fly I tied with elk hair from a bull elk I shot during archer season or else watching my boys land trout after trout one spring day on Montana’s Madison River.
8. What is your most embarrassing moment on the river?
DAVE: Snapping a rod while on a guided fishing trip down the Lower Madison. I had just grabbed the guide’s rod to give it a try. It was an Orvis H2 (an expensive rod!). I had hooked a large rainbow, and it darted under the boat because of my poor ability to reel it in.
STEVE: It’s probably the time when a friend told me to be ready to fish a great run as we floated by it in his drift boat. He emphasized that I’d only get one chance, so I needed to make a solid cast. Well, I promptly cast my fly into a bush on the bank above the run. He just shook his head.
9. What is your favorite book about fly fishing (besides A River Runs Through It and The Fly Fisher’s Book of Lists)?
DAVE: Probably Gary Borger’s book Nymphing which I picked up in the 1990s.
STEVE: This one is easy for me. It’s Bud Lilly’s Guide to Fly Fishing the New West by Bud Lilly and Paul Schullery. It has great stories and a lot of helpful information.
10. Who convinced you to take up fly fishing?
DAVE: It was Steve, back when we were 18. Another friend inspired me to try nymph fishing and that took my fly fishing to an entirely different level.
STEVE: It was Jerry Williams, a seasonal Ranger-Naturalist in Rocky Mountain National Park. I was in high school at the time, and he led a weekly fly fishing demonstration in Moraine Park. He was an enthusiastic teacher who had a knack for simplifying and teaching what can be a complex sport.
Alright, it’s your turn to answer these questions! Ask your fly fishing friends to do the same.
It has been two years. We’re now at 104 fly fishing podcast episodes. In this 104th episode, the finale of our second year, we reflect on the past year and tease out some insights and lessons from the journey. This is not our day job. It’s our avocation, and we are looking forward to another year of podcasting. We think the best is yet to come.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What have you learned from fly fishing the past year? And which topics would you like us to address in Season Three?
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Several years ago, I spent a day on the South Fork of the Snake River in eastern Idaho. I floated it on a September day with a friend from Idaho Falls. We had a fine day, catching cutthroats and browns.
But the South Fork is a Yellowstone cutthroat fishery, and lately the brown trout population seems to be increasing. So Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologists have been shocking fish in the river and taking the brown trout back to a lab to analyze the contents of their stomachs. What these biologists hope to find is whether or not these browns are eating the natives.
What they found in these brown trout bellies matters to fly fishers. It’s the next best thing to an interview with the trout themselves to find out what they feed on. When you know what they feed on, you know what flies to use.
For starters, you do not need to develop a long streamer that resembles a young cutthroat.
Hatch Magazine published an article on May 4, 2017, which revealed the findings of the Idaho biologists. As it turns out, the biologists found only two cutthroat trout in the 75 brown trout bellies they dissected. The good news, then, is that browns are ostensibly not decimating the cutthroat population.
However, it’s apparent that brown trout are butting in front of cutthroat trout in the feeding lanes. So what did they find in these brown trout bellies? Why does it matter to fly fishers like you and me?
Fill Your Fly Box with Stone Flies
One significant find is that more than half of the browns were digesting stone flies. This is not a stunning development or a shocking surprise. But it’s a good reminder to keep your fly box full of stonefly patterns. Last fall, Dave (my podcast partner) and I had a lot of success catching brown trout on stonefly patterns in the Gardner River in the northern part of Yellowstone National Park.
Stonefly patterns are legion.
One of my favorite, go-to patterns is a brown Pat’s Rubberleg Stonefly. As the name suggests, it has a brown body with brown rubber legs. Size will depend on the particular river you are fishing. But I like these in a size 8-10. Other long-time favorites of fly fishers include Girdle Bug (black with white legs) and the Bitch Creek (black body with orange yarn woven into it plus white or brown rubber legs).
Don’t Forget Caddis Patterns
Another important find by the Idaho biologists is that out of the 998 items found in the 75 brown trout bellies, 444 (just less than half) were Caddis flies.
In fact, one brown had 140 Caddis flies in its gut!
Again, this is hardly a surprise. But it’s a timely reminder for fly fishers to keep Caddis flies in their box all summer along — at least in the American West. A good friend has done well over the years fishing the Madison River (just inside Yellowstone National Park) on summer evenings when the trout are rising to Caddis flies.
Streamers Are a Sure Bet
In other expected news, the Idaho biologists found sculpins and snails, along with mayflies, and some whitefish.
As the Hatch Magzine article pointed out, brown trout are river sharks. So wise fly fishers will keep their fly boxes stocked with streamers – particularly Woolly Buggers. I’m grateful for the work of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game biologists. They have disputed what we feared and have confirmed what we already know.
The question now is, what’s in your fly box? The proper answer, if you’re fishing for browns, is an ample supply of Stone flies, Caddis flies, and Streamers.
Fly fishing lies are everywhere. Well, maybe not downright lies. Maybe half truths. And maybe they’re not everywhere. In this episode, we identify five fly fishing lies (or half truths) and then wax eloquently about what we think the real truth is. One of the fly fishing categories that we discuss is “Biggest Gear Lie.” Another is “Biggest Fly Pattern Lie.” This is a fun episode. Click on this link to listen now!
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What are some of the fly fishing lies or half truths that you’ve identified? We’d love to hear them! Please post your comments below.
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
The next time the trout ignore your nymphs, try another adjustment before switching patterns. Go deeper. The trout may not be ignoring the Zebra Midge or Hare’s Ear. Rather, the nymph may be ignoring the trout. It might be drifting several inches above them.
Trout will dart upwards to track down an emerger. They will make a trip to the surface for a big attractor pattern or a hopper. But they normally will not expend energy to snatch a tiny meal with a small amount of calories unless it is in their zone. If your fly is not deep enough to drift by their noses, the trout may ignore it.
So how do you get your fly deeper? Here are five strategies.
1. Add a split shot.
This is the most obvious solution.
Yet it’s easy to be too lazy to reach into the pocket of your fly vest to put on another split shot. So don’t be lazy!
I usually start with one split shot. Then, if I’m not bumping the bottom, I’ll add a second one. I carry both size “B” and the slightly larger “BB” split shot.
Also, I prefer removable split shot which have the little “ears” you can squeeze to remove it quickly if you’re getting snagged too often on the bottom or if you decide to switch to a dry fly. I also use something environmentally friendly (non-lead). Water Gremlin’s tin sinkers work well for both purposes.
2. Use beadhead patterns.
Ninety percent of the nymphs I buy and tie are beadheads.
I use non-beadhead patterns only when I want my fly to stay in the film just beneath the surface. The beadhead patterns do not make split shot expendable, but they do add a bit of weight.
They also give the nymph some action as it drifts or tumbles through the current.
3. Start your drift earlier.
Dave, my podcast partner, and I have talked about this before on our podcast. Casting a few yards further upstream will give your nymph(s) a few more yards to sink as they drift down the stream or river. This worked well last fall on the Gardner River in the northern part of Yellowstone National Park. Starting the drift about ten feet earlier enabled the nymphs to drop low enough to where the trout were located in the “hot zone.”
Conversely, if you are fly fishing from a drift boat, you may not need as much weight. You might go with two “B” size split shot or only one “BB” size since a long drift gives your nymphs a lot of time to sink.
4. Move your strike indicator.
This is not an issue if you put your strike indicator at the top of your leader. But often, on small creeks, I place it only five feet or so above my fly. This is ideal for runs where the depth is only a foot or two.
However, I’ve had to remind myself to move my strike indicator closer to the top of my leader when I come to deeper runs. Remember that the placement of your strike indicator determines the length of leader that will actually sink. A couple of split shot will not come close to pulling your strike indicator under the water to take your nymph(s) deeper. So you might need a longer length of leader to get to the bottom of some runs.
5. Switch to a sink-tip line.
I rarely use a sink-tip line when nymph fishing.
However, there are some stretches on Montana’s Missouri River where this might be advisable. Usually, adding more split shot will do. I typically use sink-tip line for stripping streamers. But some fly fishers like them for nymph fishing larger rivers.
So the next time your nymphs do not produce strikes, figure out a way to get your nymphs down to the level of the trout. Try that before you switch patterns.
I don’t always fish with nymphs. But when I do, I go deeper.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What are some of the best lessons you’ve learned from hiring fly fishing guides? Please post your comments below. We’d love to hear from you!
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
The “hot zone” is an expression that refers to the exact spot or stretch in the run where trout will hit your nymph. It’s a common-enough phrase, but I began using it after a wade trip with a guide on the edge of Yellowstone National Park. If you locate the hot zone, you’ve discovered the Holy Grail.
We all know that fish have lies.
They hang in opportunistic or safe places in the river, such as prime lies, feeding lies, and/or sheltering lies. But on a more practical level, many runs, especially the deeper ones, seem to hold large pods of trout. Especially in the spring (rainbows) or fall (browns), fish stack up in some of the deeper pools. Some are spawning, others chase the spawners upriver and feed off the eggs.
Here are several quasi-truths of the so-called hot zone:
1. The hot zone is a narrow window.
Last fall, Steve (my podcast partner) and I fished a river with several deep runs. Near the end of the day, we walked back to a run that Steve had fished earlier in the day. I had not yet fished it. Steve started casting and immediately began catching fish.
It took me a good 15 minutes of casting, even with Steve’s instructions, to begin catching fish. Hitting the hot zone is easier to write about than to do in real time.
2. It’s easy to miss the hot zone entirely.
If you’re fishing a new stretch of river, it’s quite possible that you will miss the hot zone on any given run, especially if you’re moving too fast upriver.
Just a caveat: Too often new fly fishers will camp on one good run and cast for hours in the same place. I’m not advocating that. But if you’re fishing new waters, then patiently working the run is important to cover the possible lies of the fish.
Steve and I have a honey hole on the Lower Madison River that often gets passed by. It’s a ways up the trail into the back country from the access point. The more persistent fly fishers hike upriver, however, and often wade through our honey hole, but they never seem to linger. My guess is that they may catch one brown on the way through but have never had the kinds of afternoons that Steve and I have had.
3. Subtle takes can prevent you from identifying the hot zone.
This is the challenge of all nymph fishing, but reading what is a “take” and what is simply your nymph catching rocks or debris on the bottom of the river is not as easy as ordering black coffee at Starbucks: “I’ll have a grande Pike, please.”
The rule of thumb is to pay close attention to your indicator and then strike at every possible sign. What does it hurt if you strike and nothing is there? Nada. Just let your indicator continue to drift downstream. It’s better to react too often than to wait until you’re certain you have a real take.
4. Fly depth may be the biggest issue when searching for the hot zone.
Whether a smaller creek or bigger river, the depth of the runs change from run to run. So if you’re not adding split shot – or lengthening your indicator – you may not be deep enough.
The bigger issue, though, may be that you are not casting far enough upriver, giving your nymph time to bounce along the bottom in the hot zone. This is especially true in deeper pools. The right depth is key to the hot zone. While the typical solution is to add split shot to your rig, the better solution may be to cast farther upriver (if you can), so the nymph can sink to the perfect depth in the hot zone. The nymph should be at the right depth before it enters the hot zone.
5. After all your persistence and finesse, there may not be a hot zone.
Or there may be one, but the fish are not in the mood. So how do you really know?
If you’ve had one of those days where you’ve caught more than several fish from one run, then you obviously have hit the hot zone. You know it when you hit it. Keep searching!
Two-fly combos are a staple for many fly fishers. Whether fishing nymphs or dries, rigging up with two flies (the top fly and the dropper or trailer) often increases the odds of success. This is especially true when fishing nymphs in the spring or fall spawning season. We often will tie on an egg pattern as our top fly and then drop a nymph, such as a beadhead Copper John or beadhead pheasant tail. Click now to listen to “Our Favorite Two Fly Combos”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What are your two-fly combos? Obviously, everything depends on when and where you’re fishing, but what are some of your go-to rigs?
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Until a decade ago, I never took a fly fishing trip. It wasn’t necessary. I lived in the northern reaches of Montana’s Gallatin Valley. My favorite spot on the East Gallatin River was a half mile from my house. My favorite spots on the Yellowstone and Madison Rivers were less than an hour away.
Then I moved to the north suburbs of Chicago. Suddenly, the East Gallatin was 1,450 miles from my house. Even the spring creeks in the Driftless – southwest Wisconsin and southeast Minnesota – take three to six hours to reach. So now I do trips—from two to five days.
Over the past decade, I’ve learned what it takes to have a fantastic experience. Here are four best practices for making the most of your next fly fishing trip.
1. Plan for Prime Time
If your schedule allows, plan your trips during “prime time.”
In the Driftless, this is April and May. The creeks are full of water, and the dry fly fishing can be terrific. When I plan for a trip to Montana or Wyoming, I set my sights on April (when the rainbows are spawning), August (when trout feed on hoppers), or on October (when the browns are spawning).
I love July. But so does everybody else.
Also, as much as possible, I like to fish during the week rather than the weekend. This requires me to use some vacation days. But this allows me to avoid the weekends when the rivers get pounded.
2. Hire a Guide for a Day
Go ahead and splurge. Find ways to set aside the cash you need to make this happen.
My podcast partner, Dave, and I split the cost to make it more affordable. The benefits really outweigh the cost. You’ll sharpen your fly fishing skills, but you’ll also gain “intel.” We’ve often returned a couple days later to wade stretches we’ve floated or waded with a guide. Last fall, we hired a guide to take us on a small river in Wyoming we had never fished. Dave and I each caught twenty plus fish in a half a day. Two days later, we went back on our own and each caught thirty plus fish in the same amount of time.
Besides, unless you have access to a drift boat (and have the skills needed to row one), it’s the only way to float some of the notable stretches of the blue ribbon waters in the western states.
3. Build in Margins
I learned this one the hard way. On some of my early trips, I treated every day like the remaining drops of a chocolate milkshake. I needed to suck out and savor every last bit. But the more I tried to squeeze the most out of every day, the more I felt drained by day four or five.
Now, I’ll plan for a lighter day after a long day of driving and/or hiking. Whenever Dave and I make a six-mile round trip to a remote spot of the Yellowstone River, we try to get a later start the following day. Or we will quit earlier.
The point is, take time for a nice meal, or an afternoon nap, or browsing in a fly shop, or a visit to a historic site. Sometimes, fishing a little bit less results in more satisfaction.
4. Create Backup Options
The windows for superb fishing open and close without much advance notice. You can have great fishing one day, and then the barometric pressure drops overnight or the river rises or a heavy spring storm dumps a foot of snow.
You never know when you need another option.
Last fall, we weren’t sure we were going to be able to fish a fine river in Wyoming. The river had been a bit off-color. But it was crystal clear the day we wanted to fly fish. Still, we had a backup plan — a high mountain lake nearby that had been fishing well. We were ready to go with “Plan B” if our original plans were thwarted by weather or crowded conditions.
We love fly fishing in the area, because there seems to be less pressure on the creeks than there is in southwestern Wisconsin, which is also part of what is called the Driftless. We live in the Chicago area, so it’s a bit of a drive to Canfield Creek (5 hours), but recently we took a two-day trip to southeastern Minnesota.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Have you had a great day recently on the river? We’d love to hear about it! Please post the highlights of your day below.
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Every stream or river has its bottomless pit. Or so it seems. After fishing in a foot or two of water, you suddenly come to a hole that looks to be six feet in depth. Maybe you can’t even see the bottom. Maybe the hole is actually a long run.
These deep holes or runs used to frustrate me as much as they tantalized me. I knew large trout lurked in the depths. But I had a hard time catching them.
Lately, I’ve been more successful whenever I encounter a deep stretch of river or stream. I still get skunked occasionally, but I practice some tactics that increase my chances to catch deep trout.
Here are five tactics, one of which or a combination of a couple, may work for you:
1. Start your drift sooner.
If you’re fishing nymphs or even streamers, casting your fly an extra five or ten yards upstream may make all the difference. That will give your fly some extra time to sink to the depth of the trout you’re trying to catch.
I had success with this tactic last fall on a deep run in the Gardner River in Yellowstone National Park. I was catching fall browns at the tail end of a deep pool. But the ones in the prime lie in the middle of the run ignored my stone fly.
At the suggestion of a friend, I lengthened my cast. Suddenly, the fish in the middle of the run started hitting my fly because the longer drift gave it more time to sink to their level.
2. Add more weight.
This is obvious, of course, but needs to said.
I’ve sometimes been too stubborn or lazy to find the packet of split shot in my fly vest and add another one to my leader. But if the run is deep enough, it is imperative to add more weight. Starting your drift sooner is still a good idea, but it may not be enough.
If you are fishing a large river, you might even consider switching to a spool with sink-tip line when you come to a run that is considerably deeper than the ones you’ve been fly fishing. Yes, it takes time to make the switch. But it might make a difference.
3. Switch to a streamer.
I learned this tactic on Montana’s Gallatin River. It was early in the fall, and the water levels were low.
My friend Jerry insisted that we go from big hole to big hole with a streamer. We had a great afternoon landing one trout after another. These holes or short runs did not provide the opportunity to get a long drift with a nymph. All we could do was cast a weighted streamer into the center of the pool, let it sink, and then retrieve it.
This can work with nymphs provided you have enough weight. Let them sink to the bottom, and then retrieve them to imitate an emerger.
4. Dangle instead of cast.
There is a time to retrieve your bait-fishing skills, assuming you grew up dunking worms to catch panfish or even trout.
Some deep holes are in tight places.
I remember one in a log jam on a superb little creek last spring in southeast Minnesota. Casting was going to be impossible. So I snuck up on the hole, dangled my Woolly Bugger over it like a bait fisherman, and then dropped in the bugger. On my second strip, a large trout attacked my fly. I ended up losing the fish, but not before I enjoyed the thrill of the battle.
5. Go with a big attractor.
This is a bit counter-intuitive.
I’ve suggested going deep where the big fish lurk. But at certain times of the year, you might be able to coax a big trout from its lair. I’m thinking of a hatch or a sunny August day when hoppers are hopping along the shore.
A couple weeks ago, I fished nymphs in a small spring creek when I saw a large trout dart out of the deep to grab a mayfly struggling on the surface. It reminded me of my success in deep pools with a Spruce Moth, a Red Humpy, or an Elk Hair Caddis pattern. It doesn’t work in every deep run. But it works in some of them.
So don’t let the deep runs or holes intimidate you. Vary your approach and try a different tactic.
Trying to net your son’s first big brown – and causing him to lose the fish – may require psychotherapy for him later in life. We all have a fly fishing net, and we probably use it more or less, depending on the size of fish or where we fish. In this episode on how and when to use a fly fishing net, Steve confesses how his patchy netting skills ruined a father-son moment on the river.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
How often do you use a net when you fly fish? And what kind of net do you use? We’d love to hear about your gear and why you chose your fly fishing net.
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
A couple weeks ago, I fished Montana’s Madison River three days in a row. The first day was stellar. The second day was not. The third day was a combination of fantastic and frustrating. All of this was due to the weather and water conditions. Such conditions force fly fishers to make adjustments.
Here are five weather-and-water conditions that affect fly fishing:
1. Water Level and Color
My first day on the Madison consisted of only two-and-a-half hours in the afternoon.
I spent the prime fly fishing hours on a Delta flight to Bozeman. Yet I still caught eight healthy rainbows (and lost several more). The next day, after some good rainbow fishing at dawn on the Missouri River near Helena, I drove back to the same spot I fished on the Madison the previous day. I arrived during a prime time window.
But I noticed that the water level was slightly higher and that the color was a bit murkier. As I feared, the fishing was slow. I caught nothing the first two hours even though I tried different patterns and presentations. The adjustments eventually yielded a couple small rainbows. But nothing like the previous day.
Sometimes, no adjustment with my rig makes a difference on days with higher water levels and more color. Sometimes, though, switching to a San Juan Worm or throwing a big streamer gives me a better chance.
2. Sky
If you’re new to fly fishing, you might be surprised to know that the sky has as much effect on fly fishing as the water conditions.
An old John Denver song says, “Sunshine on the water looks so lovely.” Yes, but not to a fly fisher. A cloudy, gloomy day will often trigger insect hatches, which in turn give trout something to feed on. So whenever I see grey skies, I expect to have some decent dry fly fishing. I look for Blue-Winged Olives or whatever else might be hatching at that time of year on that particular stretch of river.
When the sun shines bright in a cloudless sky, I anticipate nymph fishing. This is exactly what I did on the Madison on day one. I saw a few mayflies on the surface, but there were no trout rising. The trout were happy to take nymphs.
However, dry fly fishing can be productive on a sunny day later in the summer when hoppers are active. A hopper pattern — or even a big attractor like a Red Humpy or a Spruce Moth — may coax a large trout from its lair.
3. Moisture
Related to the sky is the moisture in the air.
The most ideal conditions for fly fishing are not the most ideal conditions for fly fishers. Rain and snow trigger insect hatches. I had light rain throughout my third day on the Madison, and the trout were quite active.
The only adjustment to make here is to invest in a good rain jacket. If you’re new to fly fishing, never quit because it’s a rainy or snowy day! That’s a prime condition for catching trout.
4. Water Temperature
Water temperature matters, too. I used to carry a thermometer in my fly vest to check the temperature of the rivers I fished.
Honestly, it was more interesting than helpful.
But I’m keenly aware that trout are more active in colder water and more sluggish in warmer water. A guide in a fly shop in Ennis told me that the Upper Madison had incredible dry fly fishing the previous year because most of the water released from Hebgen Dam was through the pipeline at the bottom of the dam. The water at the bottom is, of course, colder than the water closer to the surface.
The stretch of the Madison I fished on day one tends to be good in the spring but one to avoid in the summer. Or, if I fish it in the summer, I fish it in the cool of the early morning — before the warmer temperatures make the trout more sluggish (and susceptible to danger if played too long).
Besides, the warmer summer days trigger the “inner tube hatch” (dozens and dozens of people and their coolers floating down the river)!
5. Wind
I can put up with moisture (which makes the fly fishing better). But nothing frustrates me more than a day where the wind whips like it does on Mount Everest. I hate wind.
My third and final day on the Madison was almost thwarted by wind. I was floating the Upper Madison with a couple of buddies, and the oarsman (a veteran rower) struggled to keep us from slamming into the bank.
Still, the fishing was fantastic — between the gusts.
Some adjustments made the difference. While I saw rising fish (due to the clouds and moisture I already mentioned), the wind made it impossible to keep a dry fly from plowing through the surface film. So I switched to nymphs. I also shortened my casts and waited to make them between gusts of wind.
Weather and water conditions are unpredictable. But that’s why it’s called “fishing”!
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
How many days do you fly fish each year? How many would you like to fly fish? How does fly fishing fit into the larger purpose of your life? Have we gone whacko with this episode?
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We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Whenever I fish Montana’s Madison River in the spring, I use a tiny red nymph as a dropper. It may be a Copper John or a Dave’s Emerger (a pattern developed by Montana fly fisher Dave McKee). But the body always has red wire. I insist on it because I have had great success with tiny red nymphs. But does color really matter?
Does red work any better than black or copper? Or is it simply, uh, a pigment of my imagination?
The truth is, the color may attract me — the fly fisher — more than it does the trout. Here are a few insights about color:
1. Trout see colors, yet water changes their perception.
Gary Borger observes that “water absorbs and scatters light.” In fresh water, red is absorbed completely by six feet down. Trout see it as a shade of gray. Perhaps the red wire on my nymphs makes a subtle difference since I’m typically fishing it one to two feet below the surface on my favorite runs in the Madison.
According to Borger, orange, yellow, and green get to ten feet before turning to gray. Blue only makes it to four feet.
2. Fluorescent materials retain their colors as long as there is light.
Borger makes this point and adds that “black is always black, and flash is always flash.” Surprisingly, black may be the most “visible” color due to its contrast. Perhaps that explains why a black Copper John or a Zebra Midge can work so well.
3. Trout are more perceptive to the violet side of the color spectrum.
Kirk Deeter made this point in a recent issue of TROUT magazine. Now I know why I’m seeing a rise (no pun intended) in purple Beadhead Prince Nymphs and in the Purple Haze patterns (essentially a Parachute Adams with a purple body) in the bins in fly shops.
4. Use something bright or translucent in your attractor patterns on the surface.
It’s always good to match the hatch. As Kirk Deeter says, go “as natural as possible.” But when you are using an attractor pattern on the river’s surface, red or orange will appear bright. It’s why I like a Red Humpy or the trusted Royal Wulff (with its band of red).
5. The amount of variables determining the way trout see color can make a fly fisher crazy.
The way trout see color depends on several variables – the clarity of the water, the light conditions (cloudy vs. sunny, evening light vs. mid-day light), and the depth of the fly.
So, the best advice may be to keep it simple: The size of your fly and the pattern may matter more than color.
Dangerous moments are not always recognized fully in the moment. Several years ago while we fished the Wyoming Bighorn, the temperature dropped 25 degrees in a two-hour period. We drifted the Bighorn while stopping to wet-wade periodically. At the mid-point of the drift, however, we were shivering, unprepared for precipitous drop in temperature. In addition to the rain and wind was lightning, and we had to get out of the drift boat to wait out the weather. Fortunately, the squall passed, and we took out an hour or so later. We lived to fish another day. Some moments on the river are more dangerous than you realize at the time.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
We’d love to hear at least one story from your “most dangerous moments on the river” archive. Please post your most-dangerous-moments story below!
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When I was a boy, I caught trout with a bobber and a worm. I gave up bait fishing long ago. Now I use a fly rod. But I still catch a lot of trout with a bobber and a worm.
The bobber is a strike indicator. Yes, I like the little round plastic bobbers because they never get water-logged like the indicators I’ve tied with strands of nylon.
The worm is a San Juan Worm — a controversial “fly pattern.” Some fly fishers scoff at it. When they do, I simply smile, nod, and go back to catching fish. Here is the scoop on this beloved and maligned non-fly fly.
1. How it originated
There are as many accounts of this pattern’s origin as there are variations of it in the fly bins at your local fly flop.
What we know for sure (I think) is that a fly fisher developed this fly to imitate the red worms in the silt-coated channels of New Mexico’s San Juan River. The fly fisher is unknown to us, although I’ve heard several suggested names. The time period was likely the late 1960s or early 1970s.
The pattern is so simple that it is silly. It consists of a two-inch length of red chenille tied onto a scud hook — that is, a hook with a curved shank. That’s all. It’s the easiest fly in the world to tie. So it’s a great place for beginners to start.
2. How it has been modified
You might get dizzy when you think about all the colors and styles of chenille with which the San Juan worm has been tied.
I even experimented (at the suggestion of a friend) with putting a beadhead in the middle of the hook’s shank and then tying a one-inch piece of chenille on the front and then a one-inch piece of chenille on the back. This takes a lot of extra time and effort. It looks impressive, but I haven’t found it any more effective.
In the last six weeks, I’ve caught several trout in both Wisconsin and Montana on an odd assortment of San Juan Worm patterns. I’ve meant to tie some new ones, but I didn’t get to it. So I ended up using the left over patterns in my fly box — that is, some of the ugly ones I tied when I was experimenting with different sizes and colors (red, crimson, tan). The good news is that all of them worked.
There’s no need, then, to get hung up on size or color. Whatever you use will likely be “the only thing that’s working on the river today.”
3. Why it works
You don’t need a PhD in zoology to figure out why the San Juan Worm is so trusty. It imitates a worm — the kind which resides in a silty river bottom. Enough said.
4. When to use it
The San Juan Worm is a great go-to pattern in most conditions.
But it works especially well after it rains or when a river rises a bit. This results in churn that can loosen up the earth along a bank or the silt at the bottom. Worms get displaced by this churn. It’s hard for a trout to pass up such a large dose of protein for the little effort it takes to grab the worm as it drifts through the current or bobs along the bottom.
If a purist asks you later what you were using, tell him or her you were simply matching the hatch — imitating the aquatic life below the surface. You’ll be telling the truth.
Fly fishing proverbs are everywhere. In conversations at the fly shop. In stories after a big day on the river. And in books from our sport’s great fly fishing legends. In this fun episode, we lift ten fly fishing proverbs from the sayings of some of our great fly fishers and regale each other with stories about their truths. Proverbs are aphorisms, short statements packed with wisdom and, sometimes, humor. Steve even adds one of his own fly fishing proverbs at the end of the episode for the cherry on top!
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
We’d love to hear fly fishing proverbs that makes you smile – or groan. Have you heard any great proverbs recently? Please share your sayings below.
Related Fly Fishing Proverbs Episodes and Articles
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We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Recently I was invited to a retreat of executives. The facilitator ask us to introduce ourselves, and I was one of the first to do so. We were mostly in our 50s, with a few in their 60s. I ended my introduction with “And the great joy in my life is fly fishing.”
The woman next to me introduced herself and then concluded by saying her great joy was golf.
The next person, however, said that only grandchildren could bring joy to his life. Then every person in the room with a grandchild or two said, definitively, “Grandchildren.” Once grandchildren were mentioned, the two losers (who had mentioned fly fishing and golf) shrunk back in their chairs in shame.
With no grandchildren, I have no idea whether they bring joy. Steve, my podcast partner, has seven. He says grandchildren bring joy. I’ll have to take him at his word. My laconic and grumpy 16-year-old teenager did not bring me large amounts of joy when I dropped him off at school this morning.
I’ve decided I need a better word or phrase to express how I feel about fly fishing. I’ve come up with “holy distraction.” Fly fishing is not so much my great joy as it is my holy distraction.
Fly Fishing Holiness
I had just started my second business when the Great Recession hit. Within a year it was clear the business would not succeed, and it took another five years before I finally was able to unwind and unload it – for about 25 cents on the dollar. Then the recession began to drag down what I had taken for granted – my other stable business.
Never before had I felt such acute fear for such a prolonged period of time. Almost two years.
One year during the latter part of the Great Recession, Steve and I took two trips to Montana, when both of us could barely afford one. I don’t remember how I justified two fly fishing trips or how I paid for them. Or why my wife Jana didn’t put her foot down. Steve and I did both trips on the cheap, like we always do, but it was still a chunk of money in a year when my family’s financial future was in flux.
Upon reflection, I can see that the two fly fishing trips (in addition to our regular trips to the Driftless) helped refocus me during the worst days of those years. The discipline of fly fishing, even in one of the most stress-filled stretches of my life, distracted me just enough to refresh me. Fly fishing was a holy distraction.
I’ve poached the word holy from my faith tradition. The word actually means “to set apart” or “sacred.” I definitely don’t want to be a lightning rod, so I need to be careful what I call sacred.
Fly fishing, however, was the chance to set apart some time from the grind of life, a distraction from the unsolvable parts of my life. Fly fishing offered me long stretches on the river with nary a thought, only the futile struggle to cast between gusts of wind or to warm my fingers while tying on an egg pattern in an early April snowstorm.
If only for a few hours at a time, I was liberated from my mind’s machinations, which had ground me to exhaustion.
I can’t explain it. Something transformative happened to me during the rhythms of casting and mending. It wasn’t like I returned home after a week in Montana with my life and business back to normal. I always returned to uncertainty, and it took several years for my business to stabilize fully.
Somehow, though, the time set apart for fly fishing was a kind of holiness, even sacred.
I haven’t yet had the courage to use the phrase holy distraction yet in a public setting. Maybe I’ll keep using the word joy. For sure I don’t want any grandchildren joy while my oldest is still in college!
Casting upstream is the default mode for newer fly fishers. It’s how we are taught: stand in the river or on the bank near the bottom of the run, and cast upstream. And then mend your line as it drifts in the current. That’s certainly one approach. But there are other ways to catch fish than just casting upstream.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Do you default to casting upstream when you fly fish? What are some situations in which you like to cast downstream?
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A few months ago I introduced my brother-in-law to the Owyhee River in eastern Oregon. We had a summer afternoon to fly fish. I warned him that we might run into a couple of other anglers in my favorite spot.
I was wrong. The number was much higher. I counted seven pairs of waders—filled with bodies — in the run I like to fly fish (pictured above). So what is a fly fisher to do?
Here are seven tips for fly fishing crowded waters.
1. Remain calm.
When I’m feeling annoyed, I have to remind myself that other anglers have every bit as much right to fish in my spot as I do. I am as responsible for the crowded conditions as they are. My kids’ advice is good in these moments: “Take a chill pill.”
What ruins a good day are not the fly fishers who beat me to my spot. It’s my response. If I relax, I can usually figure out a solution.
In fact, one of the best days I’ve ever had on Montana’s Madison River (I landed 25 browns on the last day of March) was the result of finding every one of my favorite spots on the Gallatin River filled with fly fishers. I’m glad I calmed down enough to formulate Plan B and drive to the Madison.
2. Arrive early (or late).
I’m fishing with a friend in a few days on the Missouri River near Helena, Montana. My friend has a favorite spot where he catches large rainbows in the spring. But he gets there at dawn.
Last week, he landed seven big trout in an hour and a half of fishing. Then he left as the crowds started rolling in about 9 a.m. The evening can be productive, too. I’ve found great solitude (and fishing!) on the Yellowstone River in Montana’s Paradise Valley in the spring and summer after 5 p.m.
3. Avoid the weekend.
Yes, I know that you may only have weekends to fly fish. But if you have any flexibility in your schedule, try Tuesday or Wednesday, and then work on Saturday. Or leave work early if you live near a river.
Dave, my podcast partner, and I like to fly from Chicago to Bozeman, Montana, on Sunday night or Monday morning. Then, we fly home on Friday as the weekend frenzy begins. It’s worth our vacation days to fish mid week.
4. Wait for your spot.
Don’t crowd the fly fishers in the run you want to fish. That is simply bad fly fishing etiquette.
But you can hover (at a distance) in the run below them. You’ll find out soon if they are moving or planning on staying put. The twenty minutes you think you are wasting, waiting for them, might turn out to be a good investment of time. You may be using a different pattern or approach, so don’t assume that the run needs to rest for two hours before you fish it.
5. Look for an opening.
Sometime we give up too quickly and assume the river is too crowded when there are spots open.
My youngest son, Luke, is working in Madison, Wisconsin, at the moment. He had day off on a Friday, so I suggested he try the Blue River about an hour west of him. I told him to get there early, and he did. But he saw cars parked in both access spots. So he called me and asked where else he could fish. I told him to try to find an open spot on the river (well, it’s really a small spring creek). It turned out that a couple guys were leaving, and there was a long stretch of open stream to fish. He ended up catching several nice brown trout.
6. Walk the extra mile.
Dave and I have talked about this before. If you’re willing to walk farther than the other fly fishers on the river, you might get into some fine fishing. I realize this doesn’t work everywhere. You may walk a ways only to come to another fishing access with more fly fishers! I had this happen last year on the Provo River in Utah. But if you keep walking, you may find a golden spot.
7. Research other options.
If you keep encountering crowds on your favorite stretch of river, start exploring some other options.
A couple years ago, we noticed more fly fishers on a lesser known stream in southwest Wisconsin. So Dave did some research and found a beautiful creek a couple hours west in southeast Minnesota. We rarely see crowds (as long as we avoid weekends), and it fishes well. It reminded me that there are other fine waters out there waiting to be discovered.
Fishing emergers during a hatch is not the first thing to come to mind for newer fly fishers. Yet, it can be productive. In this episode, we discuss four reasons to throw on an emerger pattern when a hatch is in full swing.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What have you discovered when fishing emergers during a hatch? What do you recommend for the best results?
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
A little mistake cost me a big fish. I was fishing Montana’s Madison River several years ago when I hooked into a large trout. It began running down the river, and I could not get it to stop. So I started running after it — well, as much as one can run in knee-deep water.
About one-hundred yards downriver, the trout circled around a large boulder near the river’s edge. Suddenly, the line went limp. I felt disgusted. I had seen how big the trout was when it leaped out of the water before it started its escape route. I had made a few mistakes trying to land the trout. But one costly little mistake was failing to set the drag properly on my reel.
How many fish are lost as the result of reel-related mistakes?
It’s hard to say, but I suspect it is more than we think. A reel is not simply an apparatus for line storage. It is an integral tool for fighting fish. If you are new to fly fishing, here are four ideas to help you use your reel more effectively so that you land fish rather than losing them.
1. Retrieve the slack line so the fish is pulling against your reel.
The first tip has to do with that awkward moment right after the trout takes your fly. The thrill of setting the hook is replaced by the realization that you have a wad of line at your feet — or on the surface of the water. The loops of line you need to retrieve may add up to as much as twenty feet! So you have to retrieve it so that fish is pulling against your reel.
It sounds simple. But it is not. How do you multi-task and retrieve the line while fighting the fish? Very carefully.
While reeling in the slack line, use the index finger of the hand holding your rod to keep the right tension on the line. You can tighten the tension as the line runs through the groove in your index finger by pressing the line against your rod handle or by simply tightening the crease in your finger. Too little pressure means the fish can throw the hook or run into a place you don’t want it to go (usually there is brush involved). Too much pressure means the fish can snap your tippet when it surges.
I have even figured out how to use the little finger on my rod hand to guide the slack line and create the right amount of tension as it is being retrieved. Yes, I can do that even as my index finger on the same hand is controlling the section of line against which the fish is fighting.
Eventually, all things merge into one, and the slack is gone.
2. Adjust the drag as needed.
Once the slack is gone and the fish is pulling line from your reel, it’s time to think about the drag. This is the amount of pressure a fish must exert to pull the line out of the reel. Your fly reel has an adjustable drag—a lever or a dial which will adjust the tension.
The basic rule is to set the drag on the light side. If it’s too tight, a sudden surge by the fish will snap the tippet. But if it’s too light, the fish will invariably run for cover and snag or snap your line on a submerged branch or other obstruction.
You may even need to tighten and lighten your drag as you retrieve your fish. With a larger fish, I will typically tighten my drag as the fish tires.
3. Alternate between reeling in your line and letting the trout take it out.
There is a lot of give and take when you fight a trout. You want to land it as quickly as possible to enable the fish to survive. So retrieve the line when the trout takes a break. But when it wants to run, let it do so within reason.
Some fly fishers like to fight trout by palming the reel. That is, they press their cupped hand into the side of spool where the little handle is spinning around. This stops or slows down the spool from releasing line. It looks fun, and it can work with smaller fish. But expect a bruised palm if you try to do it with larger fish.
4. Develop the feel for your reel.
Some experts will give you formulas for how many pounds of tension to use when setting your drag. Newer fly lines even change in color to help you gauge how many feet of line you have in the water. But I still think you have to get a feel for this rather than relying on a particular formula or guideline.
Taking great fly fishing photos is much easier in an age of Instagram and Snapchat. No matter the apps and technology, though, there are a few principles that can help you up your game. We are not professional photographers, for sure, but in this episode, we offer nine commandments for better fly fishing photos. Through the years, we’ve collected some basic skills that have improved our fly fishing photos. In the pic below, while being mauled by a grizzly, Steve demonstrates for us the proper use of bear spray.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What elementary principles for taking pictures have we missed? Please post your additions to our podcast below.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
There is no such thing as a grasshopper hatch, of course. Grasshoppers live and die in the riparian zones along rivers and streams. They’re not mayflies, which roll around as nymphs underwater for a year or two only to emerge as adults for a few minutes or hours. And then die. Did you know that the mayfly with the shortest lifespan lives less than five minutes as an adult? And my teenager thinks his life is hard!
The life of a hopper is, too, quite short, of course, but that’s where the similarities between mayflies and hoppers end. Soon enough, it will be that time of year (mid to late summer) to fish hoppers.
Here are a few tips to help beginners enjoy what is one of my favorite seasons of fly fishing:
1. Let the river warm up.
Several years ago, Steve (my podcast partner) and I fished a gorgeous stream on private property in southwestern Montana in late July. We arrived at the creek about 8:30 or 9 AM, and we rigged up with hoppers. Nothing rose to our casts. I became a bit grumpy.
A Trico hatch was on, but I didn’t have the patience to fish a size #20 Trico imitation. I switched to nymphs for an hour or so, and then I walked upriver where Steve was hauling in his second or third brown on a hopper imitation.
It was like the bell rang some time between 10 and 11 AM, and the trout started feeding on hoppers. It was nonstop until late afternoon. Often, the trout won’t start hitting hoppers until mid to late morning, when the vegatation along the banks warms up.
2. Big is not bad.
I learned to fly fish in Montana and Colorado, but in recent years, I’ve spent more days on smaller creeks than I have the big rivers of the West. My spring-creek-to-western-river ratio is probably four or five days on a spring creek to one day on a western river.
I’ve grown acclimated to the spring-creek requirements of finer tackle and smaller flies. Consequently, I also reach for smaller grasshopper imitations. But if you’re fishing out West, select a bigger hopper just because you can. Go for a size #4 or #6. Make sure you have 3X or 4X tippet to handle the bigger bug.
And then see what happens.
3. Don’t forget the relaxed sip.
I love the aggressive strikes that hoppers provoke. But not all hopper strikes are aggressive. Some fish prefer to mouth or toy with the hopper. Crazy, I know. I’ve caught some large cutthroat in Yellowstone National Park simply by being more patient with my hook set. In general, fly fishers, especially those new to the sport, tend to rip the hook out of the mouth of fish. Certainly, trout love to slash at grasshoppers, but there are often more subtle takes as well.
That means being vigilant when you feel or see a take. Some fly fishers repeat a mantra or phrase when they feel a take, such as “God save the Queen” or “The Cubs finally won a World Series,” depending on your country of origin – and then they set the hook.
4. Give it some action.
Real grasshoppers don’t float passively on the water, unless they are already dead.
If the wind has blown a hopper into the water, then likely it is kicking for shore. If you’re fishing a swift-moving river like the Yellowstone, then you may not need to twitch or skate the hopper. But in more flat stretches, you may want to give the hopper some action by twitching it or skating it across the surface.
5. Drop another terrestrial.
Several years ago while fishing in Yellowstone Park, I dropped a fat foam flying ant off my top hopper pattern, and I caught more cuttthroat off the ant than I did the hopper. I tied the foam ant about nine to twelve inches below the grasshopper, and it worked beautifully.
The Yellowstone River was swift, and with the current, the ant seemed to float just beneath the film. Several times, I watched the shadow of a cutthroat appear from the depths of the river and grab the ant.
6. Pay attention to color.
When I was young, I used to catch grasshoppers and stick them on a naked hook and cast them into the streams. There’s nothing like the action of a real grasshopper in the throes of death on the water. I learned, though, that not all grasshoppers are the same (other than they all seem to have the dark liquid that squirts of their abdomen when you insert the hook). There are a million variety of hoppers, and a host of different earth-tone hues from green to yellow and to brown.
I’ve made the mistake of buying hoppers from a fly shop in Montana and wondering why they don’t work as well in the spring creeks of the Driftless (southwestern Wisconsin, for example). Dumb, I know, but I can be a little slow.
You’ll want to do a little research at your local fly shop. Size and color are important, and every fly is local.
7. Throw one on when nothing is rising.
It always strikes me as odd that when there is nothing rising, I can throw on a hopper in late summer, and an aggressive trout takes the imitation.
Through the years, I can’t remember a time when I’ve noticed trout rising to hoppers, and then decided to throw on a hopper. It’s just that time a year. The creeks runs through a meadow. There are hoppers. And I decide to throw on a hopper. And voila! I catch trout on hoppers. Again, there is no hatch, where you can see the trout rising to mayflies.
Hoppers promise a gob of calories, and during mid to late summer, trout want the gob.
8. Start with foam.
Most hopper patterns come in three styles: foam, natural, and parachute. I tend to start with foam, though I will use more natural patterns when fishing slower water. The parachute hopper always is a win in riffles – I can see it!
Grasshopper season is like the Christmas season. It comes once a year. And if you can have even one great day fly fishing grasshoppers, you’ve received the best present of the year.
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What trout feeding behavior have you observed? Any nuance or exceptions you’d add to the conversation?
Here are other articles or podcasts that we’ve published that are related to this topic:
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A River Runs Through It premiered on October 9, 1992 – more than 25 years ago. Based on the novella by Norman Maclean, “A River Runs Through It” launched the career of Brad Pitt and boosted interest in fly fishing. Even as it celebrates its 25-year anniversary, the movie continues to captivate viewers who resonate with its story of tragedy, family, the American West, and fishing.
The movie is set in Missoula, Montana, though most fans know that it was filmed 200-plus miles east of Missoula in Livingston, Montana. Livingston served as Missoula, and the Gallatin River served as the Big Blackfoot River.
But there are some fun facts about its filming which you won’t find in most reviews or articles. This information comes from two primary sources. First, I lived in the very area where the filming took place. I could take you to the exact spots on the Gallatin and Boulder Rivers (and Mill Creek in Paradise Valley) where the scenes were shot.
Second, my podcast partner, Dave, and I had an extensive conversation with Gary Borger about his role as a consultant. Even Gary’s son Jason was part of the movie.
So if you’re curious about some of the details, keep reading.
The House
The “Maclean house” is across the road from the Springhill Presbyterian church, fourteen miles north of downtown Bozeman, Montana. The porch was built specifically for the scene where the Maclean brothers climb out of their bedroom window.
Then, when they drive away in the dark with their cronies, the church is visible, and it looks as much like a schoolhouse as it does a church.
Fly “Pole”
In the scene where the father teaches his young sons the art of fly casting, Tom Skerritt (the actor who played the role of Rev. Maclean) originally said: “Go get the fly poles.”
This happened to be Gary Borger’s first day on the set, and he told the line producer that a fly fisher never would have referred to a fly rod as a “fly pole.” So the line producer got producer Robert Redford’s attention.
“Go get the book,” Redford said.
He found the passage that says that “it is always supposed to be called a rod” — not a pole. And rod it was.
Fly Casting
Most of the fly fishing scenes were filmed on the Gallatin River in the Gallatin Canyon south of Bozeman.
In these scenes, Gary Borger’s son, Jason, did almost all the fly casting for the actors in the movie. This includes the memorable “shadow-casting” that Paul Maclean performed while standing on a big rock in the middle of the river. When Jason did that particular cast, an elderly, long-time friend of the Maclean brothers was on the set. After the scene was filmed, he approached Jason and said, “You are Paul.” The friend was stunned that Jason had captured the essence of Paul’s artistry with a fly rod.
While Jason did most of the fly casting in the movie, the actors picked it up rather quickly. Tom Skerritt (the elder Maclean) had done some fly fishing previously. Both Craig Sheffer (Norman) and Brad Pitt (Paul) were quite athletic. Jason made sure that Skerritt and Sheffer used the traditional forearm style, while Pitt used the more open freearm style that Paul Maclean would have used.
Fighting Trout
The “trout” the Maclean brothers hooked into and fought were mostly non-fish.
In several scenes, the fish on the end of their line was actually a half gallon milk jug with rocks in it. In the scene where Paul fights a fish hidden from view behind a large boulder, the fish is actually John Bailey of Dan Bailey’s Fly Shop in Livingston, Montana. John was behind the rock, pulling on the line!
In the final scene of “A River Runs Through It,” when Paul is fighting a monster trout, the producers filmed the water flying off of his fly reel in a city park rather than in the river. The city park was Lindley Park in Livingston, Montana, and the producers created this effect by dipping the fly reel in a bucket of water. Then, after an actor lifted it out of the bucket, someone on the end of the line immediately started pulling it to get the spool spinning and flinging off beads of water.
Riding the Rails
The scene where Norman’s girlfriend, Jesse, pulls her car onto the railroad tracks and drives through a tunnel was filmed on the CA Ranch forty miles or so north of Bozeman. The exact location is the Eagle’s Nest tunnel on an old railroad grade that the Ringling brothers used to haul their circus equipment to Ringling, Montana, for off-season storage. The railroad trestle leading into the tunnel towers over Sixteen Mile Creek. There is a brief view of the creek in the movie.
My podcast partner, Dave, and I have both caught trout underneath that trestle (pictured above – Dave, in fact, took the picture). In the movie, Jesse and Norman actually enter and exit the same end of the tunnel. Today, there are no railroad tracks; it’s a one-lane gravel-and-dirt road.
A Final Thought
Sometimes, knowing insider information on how a movie was filmed can spoil it. But both the cinematography and the story itself prevent his from happening. If you’ve never watched the move “A River Runs Through It,” you simply must. Even if you watched it years ago, it’s worth revisiting. I’m convinced that after watching it, you, too, will be haunted by waters. And haunted by one of the underlying themes: sometimes it’s the ones you love most that are hardest to understand.
A new fly fishing season brings new expenses. It may be finally time to buy a new pair of waders. Or a new duffle bag or a pair of wading sandals. Too bad you didn’t purchase them last fall when some gear went on sale! In this episode, we discuss the new fly fishing season and the new gear that we hope to purchase. Listen to “Gearing Up for a New Fly Fishing Season.”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What gear do you plan to purchase this year? New waders? Wading boots? A new fly rod? Please post your comments below.
Here are some other episodes on fly fishing gear that we’ve published:
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If you want to get more hits, you need to work on your swing. This truism is just as true in fly fishing as it is in baseball. It is particularly critical for fishing streamers, although it can also work for nymphs.
The “swing” is that moment when the current begins to drag (swing) your fly back across the stream so that it suspends in the current directly downstream from you. At this point, you will begin to strip in your streamer (or pick up your nymph).
I have had a lot of trout hit my streamer or nymph as it swings across the current, so it pays to perfect the art of your swing. What initiates the swing is drag. Ordinarily, drag is the kiss of death. This is always true for dry fly fishing, and it’s true for nymph fishing – until you reach the end of the run.
Here are couple different approaches.
The Drift and Swing
Four years ago, I landed ten rainbows and a Dolly Varden — all fifteen to twenty inches—in Clear Creek, upstream a hundred yards or so from where it empties into Alaska’s Talkeetna River. I caught all but one on the swing.
My approach was to drift my streamer, a Dalai Lama pattern, down the run like a nymph. Then, when it reached the area where I knew the trout were waiting, I let the line go taut. This tightening of the line resulted in the current dragging the fly so it swung downriver from me. I quickly realized I needed to be ready for a strike as soon as the fly started to swing.
After I caught several trout, I decided to tie on a big attractor dry fly pattern. I had no action on the first two casts. But on the third, my fly got water-logged and disappeared beneath the surface. When the fly reached the end of the drift, I prepared to haul it in to dry it. But as soon as the submerged fly started to swing, an eighteen-inch rainbow attacked it.
I used this same technique whenever I fished nymphs in Montana’s Gallatin River south of Four Corners. I found a couple long runs, and invariably, I caught the most trout when my nymph reached the end of my drift and started to swing across the current. That’s not the norm for nymph fishing. But in certain situations, it works.
So be ready when your nymph reaches the end of the drift.
The Cast and Swing
The most common technique is to bypass the drift and simply cast downstream at a forty-five degree (or so) angle. Veteran angler Gary Borger likes this tactic in smaller streams where he can cast his fly as tight as possible to the other bank. It might take a strip or two to pull it into the current. But be ready when the swing begins! Trout on the opposite bank will chase it to keep it from escaping. If it makes it across the current and into the slower water along your bank, be ready for trout to dart out and grab it — even before you begin stripping it.
In a larger river, like the Missouri, I will even cast streamers straight ahead or slightly upriver. As soon as the fly hits the water, I will wait a couple seconds to allow it to sink. Then, I start stripping it. This results in a long, sustained swing.
Gary Borger also reminds fly fishers to give their streamers plenty of time to swing across the current. He even suggests letting the fly hang in the current for a few seconds before beginning the strip or picking it up to cast again.
Work on perfecting your swing so you can get more hits. Yes, it’s just as true in fly fishing as it is in baseball.
The Wisconsin Driftless region is known for its small spring creeks and bucolic, dairy-cows-and-old-barns setting. Recently, we escaped from the Chicago ‘burbs for a day to fish one of those creeks called the Blue River, a small stream just west of Madison, Wisconsin. Technically, it was winter, but it felt like spring. The day couldn’t have been better, except, perhaps, for the overly friendly dairy cows. Click now to listen to “One Fine Day on the Blue River.”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Have you recently had a fine day on the river? What made it exceptional? Any funny moments? Please post your comments below!
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Henry David Thoreau once said, “Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.”
So true. Sure, I go to the river to catch trout—and hopefully lots of them. But I go to relax. I go to experience the great outdoors. I go to get lost in my thoughts.
I also go for the conversations.
Words and Silence
My podcast partner, Dave, and I are close friends. That might even be an understatement. When I think of Dave, there’s a proverb in the Bible that says, “There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” So when we are together, we engage in a lot of conversation. We debunk the stereotype of men who simply grunt at each other. Real men do more than grunt. They talk.
Now this doesn’t mean our time on the river is a constant barrage of words. We do our share of grunting. But the sound of silence is frequent. There can be long stretches of hiking or fishing or even driving with no words.
When we do talk, though, the conversations seem to run much deeper than they do when we are eating lunch in a café in one of the towns where we live. Certainly the longer stretch of time we spend on the river or on the road to the river (compared to a booth in a café) makes this possible. But I suspect that the environment has something to do with it too.
Conversational Themes
So what do we talk about?
Well, fly fishing, of course.
We talk about the day ahead and what we hope it will be. We talk strategy, and we trade information on patterns that might work in the stretch of river we’re going to fish. We discuss the pros and cons of the gear we want to purchase. I suppose all the talk about fly fishing is a diversion from the stress points of life.
But I like to think it is a parallel challenge which keeps our minds sharp and our spirits refreshed.
We also talk about people — how they fascinate us, frustrate us, and inspire us. We talk about our wives and how we both married up. We’re grateful for how supportive they are of our friendship and our fly fishing habit.
We trade stories about our children — their challenges, their futures, and their dreams. We talk about our friend, Dennis, and the journey he and his wife are taking into the darkness as her memory loss becomes an increasing reality. We talk about Marty, a college friend, who has shockingly been diagnosed with congestive heart failure. We talk about the career of Don Henley, the drummer and co-lead singer for the Eagles. We talk as well about fly fishing guides and shop owners we know.
Then, we gossip about ideas.
That’s preferable to gossiping about people. We talk business strategy and political philosophy, though we quickly tire of politics. We discuss the big ideas we encounter in literature. On our last fly fishing day trip, we talked about some great lines from Wallace Stegner’s novels. Dave shared a quote from Remembering Laughter, while I brought up a poignant statement in Crossing to Safety.
Our faith is always a topic of conversation. Our worldview springs from this and provides our lives with ballast. Occasionally, we’ll circle back to the how the river is such a key metaphor in the Bible. Rivers figure prominently in both its opening and closing chapters. But lest you think our conversation is always deep and reflective, we spend a lot of time laughing (often at each other) and debating whether we should find a steakhouse or a pizza place for dinner.
On a recent fly fishing trip, we drove out of our way on the way home to eat at a supper club, only to wind up disappointed with the Friday night fish fare. We left the establishment graciously but chuckled about the third-rate experience on the drive home.
Laugh Kills Lonesome
When I lived in Helena, Montana, I would frequently go to the Montana Historical Society so I could gaze at C. M. Russell’s painting, “Laugh Kills Lonesome.” He actually painted himself in this picture. He is standing by a prairie campfire with a group of his cowboy friends. The scene evokes solitude. Yet, as the title of his oil-on-canvas suggests, the laughter effectively killed the loneliness.
I suspect that Charlie Russell liked riding the range for some of the same reasons I love to fly fish — the solitude, the scenery, the feel of freedom, the wind in his face, and the scent of sage. But he also loved the conversations and the laughter. That’s a side of fly fishing I treasure. I’m after more than trout when I pick up my fly rod and head to the river. I’m after some rich conversations.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What tips would you add to our preparations? What are we missing? Here are some related podcasts and articles on planning your next fly fishing trip:
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Not everyone likes the Royal Coachman. According to Paul Schullery, one angler called it “an act of aesthetic vandalism, a grotesque violence perpetrated on a fly box.”
But I am rather fond of this fly. Actually, I am rather fond of couple of its modifications — the Royal Wulff and the Royal Trude. The following profile will help you appreciate this dry fly pattern and use it more effectively:
1. How it originated
Paul Schullery’s essay, “Royal Coachman and Friends” (found in his book, Royal Coachman: The Lore and Legends of Fly-Fishing), tells the story of this magnificent pattern. John Haily, a professional fly tyer in New York, first tied this pattern in 1878. He simply created a more flashy version of an older British pattern, the Coachman. He added some red silk in the middle and a little sprig of wood duck feathers for a tail. Then, he mailed his sample fly to L.C. Orvis, the brother of Charles Orvis, who founded The Orvis Company.
Yes, the Orvis rod or waders or vest you may use comes from that company.
The rest is history.
2. How it has been modified
Legendary fly fisher Lee Wulff famously modified the Royal Coachman in the 1930s by replacing its wings and tail with white calf hair. Dan Bailey promoted this fly to western anglers in his fly shop in Livingston, Montana, and through his mail-order business. He gets the credit for suggesting the name “Royal Wulff.” The calf hair makes this fly float well in rough water of western rivers.
According to The Orvis Company, the Royal Trude originated even earlier in Island Park, Idaho (near Henry’s Fork of the Snake River). Apparently an angler in the early 1900s tied it as a joke. But it turned into a serious pattern.
The Royal Trude has a long wing of white calf hair which runs the length of the fly. A friend swears by this pattern on the Yellowstone River. He is a one-fly kind of guy, and he has used it successfully during the salmon fly hatch and during hopper season.
3. Why it works
Who knows?
It is definitely an attractor pattern. Paul Schullery notes that fly fishers “want to believe it looks like something — a dragonfly, a moth, a crippled hummingbird, a lightening bug; there is a desperation in these efforts to label the fly. And it’s unnecessary. Trout take flies for lots of reason we know and for some we’ll never understand.”
4. When to use it
The Royal Wulff or Royal Trude is a great pattern to use when you are trying to coax a trout to the surface when there is no obvious hatch in play.
For awhile I stopped using The Royal Coachman and its derivatives because they were so popular. I feared the trout would get tired of seeing them. So I gravitated more towards Humpy patterns and even an Elk Hair Caddis for those times when I wanted an attractor pattern that would stay afloat in choppy water.
But I have a hunch that the “Royals” have a lot of life left in them. Trout may see fewer Royals these days due to the myriad of other patterns available. So I’m predicting they will make a comeback as they give new generations of trout a fresh look.
I do hope the comeback happens. After all, as Schullery points out, “the Royal Coachman is the first great American fly pattern.”
Fly fishing physics are always at work if you’re at work on the river. From casting to striking to reeling to mending – the laws of physics won’t be denied. And the better you understand fly fishing physics, the more fish you might catch. Click now to listen to “Fly Fishing Physics 101.”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Which laws of fly fishing physics do you violate most often? Which laws did we miss? Please post your comments below.
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In 2015, an estimated 4.5 million folks over the age of 16 fly fished at least once during the year. That’s slightly more than one percent of the population of the United States. The industry growth roughly tracks the net population growth of the U.S. Though not exploding in popularity, the fly fishing community is growing. And it’s important that new fly fishers carry on the great traditions of our sport.
One legacy is what can only be described as the generosity mindset, illustrated by the catch-and-release movement of the last fifty years, stream restoration efforts, the advocacy for public lands, and the extensive volunteerism of Trout Unlimited chapter members.
Another layer of this generosity mindset is the sport’s streamside etiquette. To oversimplify for a moment: There are takers in this world, and there are givers. The fly fishing community is a “giver community,” and I’ve assembled seven streamside habits that characterize the highly generous fly fisher:
1. They defer to others on the river.
This seems patently obvious, but it needs to be said again and again. This is a way of thinking more than anything. It is not a sign of weakness. In fact, it’s a sign of strength. This mindset believes there’s always better fishing elsewhere, if something or someone is blocking access to his or her favorite spot.
Just to be practical for a moment: If you’re not first to your spot on the river, you’re not the first. Move on. Defer to the person who got there first. Find another run. Move to another river.
By the way, this also applies to fly fishing guides. Just because someone paid you for a great day of fly fishing doesn’t mean the generosity mindset doesn’t apply to you. If you can’t be a generous fly fishing guide to others (those who not your clients), then get out of the business and into a different sport.
2. They give others a wide berth.
This is a corollary to the first point, of course, but we’ve all had days when we’ve come around the bend to see another fly fisher stalled on our favorite run. My first thought is often a prayer: I sure hope she is on her way upriver. My next is, “I sure hope there’s not another fly fisher ahead of her.”
The highly generous fly fisher doesn’t just go up to the next run. He or she goes up two or three runs farther – or another mile. Or leaves to find a different river.
Back to the initial point: There’s always more, not less.
3. They dole out information freely.
I love running into a fly fisher who says, “I switched to a size 18 BWO pattern this afternoon, and I finally started catching a few.” Or, “I fished an olive woolly bugger for a couple hours, but when I switched to nymphs, it was game on.”
No, I don’t think you have to tell someone your secret run. At least I won’t. But the highly generous fly fisher sees the next fly fisher not so much as a competitor but as a colleague.
I once invited a friend to hunt with my family in North Dakota. Once. I never invited him again. He was so obsessed with shooting pheasants, he wanted to hunt the ditches on the way to the cornfield we planned for the hunt – 15 minutes before the 10 AM opener! He was so fiercely competitive, he annoyed the rest of us the entire day.
4. They slow down to teach young fly fishers.
Young does not mean young in age, necessarily. Young means “new to the sport.” I have found so much joy in helping my twenty-something nephew get started in the sport. When he initially engaged me, I had a fleeting thought that I might not be able to fish much, because I’d be so focused on helping him tie on flies, untangle knots, and identify the best runs to fish.
Instead, the common interest created a nascent friendship, and it won’t be long and he’ll be much better than I. I can’t wait.
What I love most about helping younger fly fishers is that they ask questions. They want my opinion. Yea! No one wants my opinion on anything these days (not my wife, not my kids, and not even my dog!).
5. They keep their dogs in the truck or at home.
Speaking of dogs, I don’t believe they belong on the river. I’ve hunted with dogs my entire life, and even the best hunting dogs go AWOL some days. If you are in the wilderness and sure you’re ten miles from the nearest fly fisher, then yes, take along your dog.
But the highly generous fly fisher would never spoil the day of another fly fisher by allowing his or her unleashed dog to walk through runs or startle the fly fisher coming up the river. It’s crazy that this even needs to be mentioned.
If you want a dog with you, go back to the suburbs and walk your dog around the neighborhood.
By the way, did you know that the fly fisher moving up the river has priority over the fly fisher moving downstream? The person moving upstream has the right of way. So if you’re walking downstream with your dog, and it lopes ahead of you in the stream, you are in the wrong.
6. They slough off the slights.
Several years ago, an intense fly fisher (who looked like a Navy Seal) stomped past Steve and me (we don’t look like Navy Seals) while we were hiking a narrow trail to a stretch of river in Yellowstone National Park. He brushed past us with not so much as a grunt. It was clear he had a spot in mind. And he got it.
We were a little miffed. And after we said some unflattering things about him to each other, we laughed it off, spied him on the river later, and moved ahead of him about a mile. We never saw him again.
If you fly fish long enough, you’ll have the chance to be annoyed at someone. Just walk away. No need to get in the last word.
7. They share their gear.
A few years ago, Steve, my podcast partner, arrived at his favorite run on the Madison River to find another fly fisher sitting along the bank. The guy had broken his rod. After catching a couple rainbows, Steve handed his rod to the other fly fisher fisher and told him to give the run a try.
In case, you think Steve is the most generous guy on the planet, you should know that Steve was acquainted with this guy. They had worked together in the past.
That said, however, I’ve broken my rod several times while fly fishing with Steve and he has never offered me his rod. Maybe that’s because one day on the Yellowstone, with a broken rod tip, I outfished him. My eight-and-a-half foot five weight rod became an eight-foot rod when I snapped off the last guide about three miles into the backcountry. Fortunately, the runs were right along the bank, and I could sling the hopper pattern with a modicum of precision.
But wouldn’t it be great to make this a habit if the opportunity arises?
Generosity begins with the idea that there is more, not less – more river, more opportunity, more fish. And so there is no need to horde. No need to compete. No need to be a grump. Just move on and find the more.
Organizing your fly box is generally not a top priority until you’re on the river, scrounging for a size #20 BWO in your fly box, and realize you lost the last one on the previous trip. There are several ways to organize your fly box, depending on the number of flies you have, the different kinds of rivers you fish, and even the number of days you fish a year. Click now to listen to “Organizing Your Fly Box.” Hats off to Quinn, a faithful listener and great fly fisher who recommended this topic – this one’s for you!
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
How do you organize your fly box? How many flies do you think you have? How many days a year do you fly fish? Please post your comments below!
Here are some related podcasts and articles on fly fishing gear:
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
Baby, it’s cold outside!” This celebrated song title popped into my head when my podcast partner, Dave, texted me about fly fishing on a recent January day. For better or worse, I had work commitments that kept me from spending a few hours mid-day on the Blue River in Wisconsin.
The truth is, I have mixed feelings about fly fishing north of the Mason-Dixon line in January or even February. I’ve spent enough January days on the Madison and Gallatin Rivers in Montana to form an opinion.
What I Hate
Let’s get this side of the relationship out of the way. To be frank, I hate the cold, the ice, and the slow. Yes, the slow. I don’t mind snow. It often helps the fishing. But the slow is a different story.
First, what is there not to hate about the cold? I don’t mind mid-30s and above. But fly fishing ceases to be fun when the chill stings my fingers. Nimble fingers turn into fumble fingers. Tying a fly onto my tippet becomes nearly impossible. Any moisture at all makes it worse.
The ice is also a problem. It clings to the guides on my fly rod and seems to freeze (pun intended) my casts. Then there is the ice at the river’s edge. Do I walk on it or not? Even if it is solid, it can be slick.
Then there is the slow. The trout move and feed more slowly, so the action on most days is predictably slow. I’ve caught a few trout in January, but I have never even come close to a banner day.
What I Love
But lest I come across as a grumpy old man, I want to affirm what I love about fishing the northern rivers on January days. I love the solitude, the rhythm, and the moments of success.
What is there not to love about having the river all to yourself? I love solitude, and I don’t have to hike very far to find it on a typical January day. It’s usually as close as the river’s edge a few steps from my parking spot at a fishing access. I rarely encounter other fly fishers on a January day.
Then there is the rhythm of casting and mending and stripping line. It feels good to pick up on rod again after the holiday season and weeks without fly fishing. Even if the fishing is slow (see above), there is something hopeful about getting back into the rhythm of fly fishing. January will soon give way to February. Then February — the shortest month of the year — will give way to March and the glories of fly fishing in the spring.
Finally, there are occasional moments of success. Hooking into a nice rainbow makes my day. In July, landing only one rainbow may disappoint me. But in January, it makes me ecstatic.
A Final Thought
Occasionally, the Chinook winds along the eastern slopes of the Rockies will warm January temperatures into the 50s and 60s.
For the most part, though, the temperatures will rise at most to the mid or high 30s. I hate those kind of conditions for fly fishing. But my love of fly fishing usually trumps my desire to stay warm and comfortable. So I venture out into the cold. My fingers may get numb, but at least the hot chocolate in my thermos tastes better than ever.
Fly fishing spring creeks is a snap for those of you who cut your fly fishing teeth on the gorgeous eastern or midwestern creeks of the United States. We didn’t. We learned to fly fish on the freestone rivers in the West. You can imagine the shock to our system when we started fly fishing spring creeks. In this episode, we offer four hard-earned lessons from our learning curve to catch trout in spring creeks.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What kinds of rivers do you fish most often? Did you learn to fly fish on spring creeks? What did we miss in this episode? We’d love to hear from you.
Here are some related podcasts and articles that we’ve published on fishing the wild places:
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Fly fishers and baseball players share a common struggle. They sometimes find themselves in a prolonged slump. Anglers whiff on strikes just like batters, and one frustrating day without landing a fish can lead to another. Especially, if you’re a beginner fly fisher – and you have a string of days on the river with no stories to tell – you may wonder if the sport is for you.
So if you ended last season on a frustrating note, you may want to take heart from some of these lessons from baseball:
1. Just keep fishing
Often, this is all it takes.
Follow the lead of baseball players who hit their way out of a slump. Sometimes they can’t explain why they are struggling. They just keep taking good swings, and invariably their luck begins to change. Hard-hit balls start to go between fielders rather than to them.
Sometimes, the best solution is to keep casting, mending, and floating your fly down the foam line. Eventually, you will start catching fish. When the slump is over, you may not be able to explain “why,” and that’s okay.
2. Work with a coach
Mechanics can make a difference. Baseball players know this, and they turn to their batting coaches — as well as hours of video—to help them find a flaw in their swing. Fly fishers can do the same. Okay, you probably do not have video of the casts on your latest trip to the river. But you can engage a coach.
Where can you find a fly fishing coach?
Hire a guide for a day. Or simply invite a friend who is ridiculously good at fly fishing. Even a friend at your skill level may be able to identify a bad casting habit or the fact that you are not properly mending your line.
3. Go back to school
Maybe a fly casting seminar or a fly tying class will re-energize you. Perhaps you’re not doing anything wrong. But learning a new cast or a new dry fly pattern might give you an edge. At least it will keep you engaged with fly fishing until the trout stop boycotting your flies. Even something as reading a good fly fishing book or watching a good instructional video might lead to an adjustment which makes a difference.
4. Try something new
After all, baseball players try new bats when they are slumping. Now this is not a fool-proof way to fix your fly fishing flaws. But a little adjustment might change your luck.
Fish new water. Experiment with flies you do not ordinarily use. You might even try a different fly rod. I may just start a slump simply to buy a new fly rod!
Fishing the wild places is one of the great thrills of the sport. Yes, it’s a lollipop if you are well off enough to fly fish Patagonia, Russia, and New Zealand, but there are many wild places near where you fly fish. Something about the chance of fishing the wild places gives us hope. There is more river in front of you. There’s more opportunity. There’s experiencing nature in its most pristine form. Click now to listen to “Fishing the Wild Places.”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What experiences have you had fly fishing the wild places? Have you had a fly fishing encounter with “wild”? We’d love to hear from you. Please post your comments below.
Here are some related podcasts and articles that we’ve published on fishing the wild places:
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A few years ago I caught a 12-pound salmon while fly fishing a few minutes from an NBA arena. The tree-lined river gave no hint of its urban surroundings. You might be surprised at some of the unlikely places where you can catch trout on your fly rod. Here are five places you might not want to overlook.
1. In town
The salmon I landed on a Woolly Bugger a few years ago was within the city limits of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I was fly fishing the Milwaukee River in Estabrook Park—about nine minutes north of the Bradley Center where the Milwaukee Bucks play basketball.
Recently, I was eating in a little restaurant in downtown Estes Park, Colorado. One of my sons and I were seated on a patio a few yards from the Fall River. As we ate, we watched a rainbow rise to the surface to to take a fly. Later, I chatted with a fly shop owner who confirmed that there is decent fishing in town. The reason is not surprising. Nobody fishes it. Don’t ignore the city limits if a river runs through it.
2. In shallow water
This will come as no surprise to veteran fly fishers. Trout will make their way into shallow waters to sip flies. But I shake my head when I think of how many times I’ve overlooked the shallows.
Once I was sneaking up to a small run in the West Gallatin River not far from my home near Manhattan, Montana. The run was about six feet from the bank. As I approached, I suddenly saw a nice trout cruising the shallows. The sight startled me, and I froze. About thirty seconds later, I tossed my streamer just beyond it. On the second strip, I hooked it. The fish turned out to be an 18-inch brown.
On another occasion, I was concentrating on a long run in the Owyhee River and turned to the side to wade a few yards up river. As I turned, I happened to see a couple feeding trout in extremely shallow water near the bank. I never expected to see trout feeding at that spot. My son ended up catching one of them — a 15-inch rainbow — on a size #18 Pale Morning Dun.
So pay attention to what is going on in shallow water before you neglect it or wade through it.
3. Near a fishing access
It seems like a waste of time to fish within a hundred yards or so of a fishing access because everybody else does. But the truth is, they don’t. They assume everyone else has fished these spots. So no one does.
Plus, the fly fishers in the drift boats are putting away their gear or getting it ready. This means the fifty yards up or down the river might be a prime place to cast your fly.
4. Where someone else has just fished
I like to fish untouched water. If someone else has fished a run a few minutes before, I’m tempted to skip it. But I know a few runs which are so good that they are worth fishing shortly after the previous fly fisher leaves them.
Even if you’re not as skilled as the fly fisher who preceded you, the different look you provide might turn out to be the right magic. Perhaps the fly pattern you use or the different depth at which you fish will coax a trout to take your offering.
Keep in mind that your chances increase with the size of the river. If someone else has fished a run on a small stream, the trout will generally need more time to get back into their feeding patterns. The disturbance factor is simply greater than in a run on a large river.
5. In the grass
Yes, this works – but only if we’re talking about a side channel that runs through the grass. Admittedly, this venue can be frustrating. These channels are narrow, and the blades of grass that flank them love to grab your fly if you don’t get it exactly in the center of the channel.
I’ve caught some big brookies, though, in these grass channels in meadows where rivers flow. Beaver dams often create this phenomenon, but so does high water.
Keep your options open
I’m not ready to abandon the wild places. A trip to downtown Milwaukee is not at the top of my list of trips for this next year. Nor am I planning a trip to fish all the great fishing accesses on Montana’s Yellowstone River.
Quite frankly, my favorite places to fly fish are the most likely ones. But there is a thrill of catching a trout in an irrigation ditch or in a run right along the highway. I’ve learned to keep my options open.
More money, more vacations, more fly fishing – who doesn’t want more of the good life? In this episode, we deconstruct the fly fishing myths of more – more days on the water, more fish, and more bigger fish. Don’t get us wrong: we both want to fly fish more this year. But the mindset of “more” is something that can steal the joy and satisfaction from the fly fishing life that you currently have. Click now to listen to “The Fly Fishing Myths of More.”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What “fly fishing myths of more” did we miss? Do you agree with our basic thesis that more is not always better? We’d love to hear from you. Please post your comments below.
Here are some related podcasts and articles that we’ve published on fly fishing satisfaction:
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My buddy Nolan pointed over the starboard bow of our drift boat: “Do you see those fish rising near the bank about forty yards away?”
We were floating the Yellowstone River in Paradise Valley, south of Livingston Montana. It took me a few moments to spot the three trout whose noses kept poking up from the surface. But I didn’t see any tiny mayflies in their dun stage. I thought Nolan was arrogant to make such a claim.
How could he have the 30x vision of a spotting scope?
After I scoffed at him, Nolan explained that he couldn’t see those insects any more than I could. Rather, he made the call by watching how the trout were feeding. While it is not an exact science, you can generally figure out what trout are feeding on by watching their behavior.
1. Noses mean duns
If you see noses poking through the surface, the trout are feeding on mayflies in their dun stage. Sometimes, these trout appear to be standing on their fins, up to their eyeballs in water.
The dun stage is the first of two adult stages of mayflies. A Parachute Adams may work fine. But in some cases — slow, clear water or a specific hatch — it might pay to use a Comparadun or Sparkle Dun pattern. Some kind of cripple pattern may work, too, given that most aquatic insects do not make the transition from nymph to adult stage and remain stuck in the surface film.
2. Fins mean nymphs
If you see only a dorsal fin or tail (and not the trout’s nose), then the trout is feeding on something just below the surface.
This is a good time to use unweighted nymph, which floats just beneath the surface. Or, you can use an emerger pattern which sits low and protrudes into the film beneath it. A pattern which rides high, like a Parachute Adams, will not work well unless it gets water-logged and disappears from your sight.
3. Dimples mean midges or spinners
If you see a small dimple in the water, chances are are the trout are feeding on midges or spent mayfly spinners. You may or may not see the trout’s nose. Sometimes you will even see the trout gently roll through the surface with the grace of a dolphin.
Aside from specific midge patterns, a size #20 Parachute Adams works well for midges. Mayfly spinner patterns have light bodies and wings which lay out to the side (like airplane wings) rather than shooting up from the body at a forty-five degree angle.
4. Splashes mean caddis
If you see rising trout making splashes, they are likely feeding on caddis flies. The reason for the splash is that these flies are fluttering on the surface, and the trout go into attack mode. Some kind of elk hair caddis pattern will do the trick.
Final Thought
Of course, watching surface behavior is only one part of your knowledge base. Knowing which hatches happen in the river you’re fishing at particular times of the year and even specific times of the day is critical to making the correct visual assessment. As always, talk to the experts at your local fly shop or read their reports online. Then keep your eyes open to watch what is happening on the river’s surface.
Nymph fishing tactics can confound beginner fly fishers. If you’re just starting out, you may ask: How many split shot should I use? How far up should the strike indicator be? Why am I snagging on the bottom all the time? Click on “Nymph Fishing Tactics for Beginners and listen to our episode for beginner fly fishers now.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
If you’re a veteran fly fisher, what tactics would you add to our episode? And if you’re a new fly fisher, what questions do you still have about nymph fishing?
Here are some other podcasts and articles that we’ve publishing on nymph fishing:
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
Movies tend to romanticize the fly fishing experience. The natural beauty, the sound of the rushing river, and the rhythmic motion of the cast – all conspire to create an image of tranquility. The entire experience appears to be one speed: slow motion. But when you’re at the river’s edge, it’s not slow motion.
The reality, though, is that there are at least three speeds to fly fishing: go, slow, and stop. In the spirit of the stoplight, green means go, yellow means slow, and red means stop! In this post, I identify nine fly fishing moments that require one or more of these three speeds.
1. Before you step into the river to flyfish – RED
As you approach the river, stop a few yards before the river’s edge. Observe. Even if you’re wading into the river at a public access area, don’t simply traipse into the water and move upstream (or downstream). Wait a few minutes. Do you see any fish rising? Is the stream or river lower? Higher? Do you see any insects in the air or on the water?
Start your fly fishing with a modicum of observation.
2. After you fish for 15 minutes – GREEN
Beginner fly fishers tend to find a decent run and cast in the same spot for hours. Unless you are working a steelhead run in a larger river, most likely you need to move to the next run more quickly than you are.
After ten to fifteen minutes, move to the next run. Truly. Don’t keep flailing the pool or run. Just move on. If there is another fly fisher in the run in front of you, go around him or her – perhaps to a stretch of river that is several runs ahead of him or her. There are exceptions to every rule, but in general, green means go when you are fly fishing in smaller streams and rivers.
3. Approaching your next run – YELLOW
This is a corollary to #1 and #2. Most stretches of rivers do not have unlimited runs – ergo, places where the trout lie. Treat each run like the treasure that it is. Don’t just step into the river and begin slinging.
Slow down to look for rising trout. Check to see if you are casting a shadow over the run you’re trying to fish. Don’t waste the opportunity that is in front of you. Be methodical as you fish. Act as if every run is the last run of the day.
4. Tying knots – YELLOW
It’s tempting to cave in to your excitement (or anxiety) to get back to fly fishing after you have snapped off your fly. Don’t. Slow down and tie a good knot. Make sure you haven’t weakened the monofilament when you tightened the knot.
5. Reeling in fish – GREEN and YELLOW
This requires two speeds. The time you hook the fish to the time you release it is crucial to its survival. Never should you “play” the fish. It’s green all the way. The goal is always to release the fish as fast as you can.
However, if you hook a large fish, you will suddenly realize the impossibility of simply cranking in the fish. You’ll need to slow down to work your drag, pull the fish from side to side to wear it out, and move downstream to a shallow part of the river to net it.
If you want to catch a large brown trout on your three-pound tippet, you’ll need to slow down.
6. Wading – YELLOW
Nothing good comes from trying to move through the river quickly, even in slower moving streams. Speed increases your risk of falling. Slow down to enjoy the experience and to preserve your life.
7. After you see lightning or hear thunder – RED and GREEN
This is patently obvious, but you’ll want to stop (“red”) fly fishing and run (“green”) to find a low spot (not under a tree!). Make sure you leave your fly rod in a safe place but a good many yards away from you. Or your Winston rod may become a lightning rod!
8. When you encounter a bison or moose or grizzly – RED
It’s never a good idea to saunter up to any wild animal or even to run away from a startling encounter. Stop. Maybe even curl up into the fetal position if the wild encounter is a grizzly bear. Hopefully, you have a canister of bear spray around your waist. Some say it works on even on other wild animals.
9. After a great day on the river – GREEN
Green means go to the nearest supper club or rib and chop house. Go with a cold beverage, and go with the largest rib-eye on the menu.
Fly fishing expectations for the new year are in the air (or they should be!). We’re ready to make this next year our best ever, as we seek to find ways to get more days on the water. We’re not professional fly fishers or guides, so our days fly fishing will not be legion (we have day jobs), but we hope to claw and scratch for as many fly fishing days as we can. Click now to listen to our episode on fly fishing expectations for the new year.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Any plans for the new year? Do you hope to get more days on the water? Any plans for a bigger fly fishing trip? Any books you plan to read or skills you hope to acquire? Please post your comments below!
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Humility is not something I necessarily seek out. But this past year, I had three moments while fly fishing that put me in my place. I don’t fancy myself an expert. Far from it. But I have fly fished for a lot of years. Doesn’t that count for something? Apparently not.
Here are my three most humbling moments while fly fishing this past year.
1. Nymph fishing with a guide in Yellowstone National Park
This past year, we (Steve, my podcast partner, and I) hired a guide for a half day. We needed some intel on the Gardner River. We didn’t want to waste an entire day exploring the two- or three-mile stretch of river that we had planned to fish.
The guide (as most are) was terrific. Young. Energetic. Specific in his instructions. And dead right.
About mid morning, we hit the trail, moving from a spectacular run to another upriver. While on the trail, he said, “Let’s stop and hit this little run for a few minutes.” The run was against the far side of the bank and flowed towards us at a quirky angle. I had to cast my two-nymph rig from left to right, almost an over-the-shoulder toss. And to hit the hot zone required a modicum of precision.
I tried six or seven times. Nope. Couldn’t make the cast. I even moved closer to the run, almost on top of the spawning browns. It wasn’t more than a 15-foot cast. Not even close. The one time I hit the general vicinity of the hot zone, I couldn’t get a decent dead drift to save my life.
Finally, in disgust, the guide said, “Let’s just move on.” I felt the sting of his non-verbal rebuke the rest of the day.
2.Mentoring a newbie fly fisher at 12,000 feet
I took a friend on a long day hike into the Colorado’s Collegiate Wilderness. We hiked four miles into the lake, the last mile a lung-bursting climb.
This was his first time fly fishing. I had coached him in buying his first rod, reel, and the rest of the paraphernalia. As soon as we arrived at the high mountain lake, just several hundred yards from the Continental Divide, I began setting up his rod and reel. I tried out his new rig first, made a cast or two, and immediately caught a rising cutthroat.
I handed him the rod, made a few suggestions, and within minutes he had caught a nice cutthroat. And then another. And another.
He was one of those natural athletes. I saw no difference between how far out I was able to cast (and I had just purchased a new Sage rod!) and how far he was able to cast. At the end of the day, we caught about the same number of cutts. I was reminded that for some, fly fishing isn’t all that challenging. At least not for him. On his first day. I truly felt excited for him.
I had, though, a simultaneous emotion – a touch of grumpiness. I wanted to warn him that fly fishing can only go downhill from here, that this kind of day was an aberration. But I didn’t. I swallowed my sense of importance as the veteran fly fisher and cheered him on.
3. Hiking (er, sliding) down an avalanche chute
It was stupid when I was 34. And irresponsible at 54 years old.
On the way back from the high mountain lake mentioned in the previous point, I called an audible that could have been a disaster. I remembered that there was shortcut down the mountain, an old avalanche chute now overgrown with brush and young (25-year-old) pine trees.
I had taken the shortcut twenty years earlier and forgot (or had suppressed) how steep it was.
As soon as we began to wind down the chute, sliding a few steps and then stopping, often by grabbing small trees, I felt the fear that registers deep in your soul. I snaked my way down slowly and deliberately, occasionally glancing over my shoulder to make sure my friend was making progress. About an hour later, emotionally and physically exhausted, we arrived at the bottom of the chute. We still had another couple hours of hiking left before we reached our truck.
Nothing is more humbling than stupidity in midlife. Maybe the male brain never fully matures.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What fly fishing lessons did you learn (or relearn) this past year? What made the year great (or a challenge)?
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Winter fly flshing is not my favorite. But there is a mystique to fishing the big rivers of Montana or the spring creeks in Minnesota a few days before Christmas or a couple weeks into the new year.
If you fly fish in winter, be careful to do so without losing it. I’m using the pronoun “it” to refer to everything from your sanity to the feeling in your fingers to life itself. The frustration and the dangers intensify in the winter.
Here are seven strategies for keeping your sanity and your life intact:
1. Lower your expectations
Don’t expect a twenty-fish day. Trout feed, but not as aggressively as they will when winter gives way to spring. Don’t expect that your hands will stay warm. Don’t expect the guides on your fly rod to remain ice-free.
2. Wait for mid-day and early afternoon
Trout respond better in these brief periods of warmth. You may, too. So sleep in and quit early. While we’re on the topic of warmth, wait for a warmer day. Tie flies or read a fly fishing book when the weather is in the teens.
3. Focus on shallow water, not deep pools
Bud Lilly, one of the deans of western fly fishing, assumes the fish in deep pools are not feeding as actively as fish in shallow riffles. Deep pools do not get enough sunlight, while the sun can trigger insect activity or even the metabolism of a sluggish trout in a shallow riffle.
4. Try nymphs first
I’ve had some good midge fishing in January on Montana’s Madison River. But unless you get into rising fish, nymphs may be your best bet. Trout do not chase streamers as aggressively (if they chase them at all) as they will when the water temperatures get warmer.
5. Avoid wading in deep water
Slipping and falling into the river on a thirty degree day is much different than on an eighty degree day in July. In July, a bath might cost you your dignity. In January, it might cost you your life.
6. Go with a buddy
This is always the safest approach to fly fishing, but it’s even more critical in the winter. A sprained knee a quarter mile from your vehicle could be a disaster in cold temperatures if you are alone.
7. Dress for warmth
It goes without saying, but pile on those layers. Put on waterproof gloves. Cover your face with a neck gator or a face mask. Double up on socks, too. Wear a wool or fur or polyester fleece hat. The folks at Harvard Medical School say that without a hat you can lose up to fifty percent of your body heat in certain cold-weather conditions even if the rest of your body is bundled up.
Final Thought
Alright, I promised seven strategies, so I won’t add an eighth one about bringing a thermos of hot chocolate or coffee. Also, the jury is out on whether you want clouds or sun. A friend and veteran fly fisher in Montana used to say, “The worst day for fly fishing is a sunny day in February.” My experience suggests he is right. Yet, as noted earlier, Bud Lilly observes that sunlight can trigger certain insect hatches, particularly the big “snowflies” that appear on many big rivers beginning in February.
For now, I’d suggest worrying less about the presence or absence of cloud cover than whether or not you remembered to bring that thermos filled with warm liquid.
Willow Creek is a gorgeous tailwater stream that flows out of Harrison Reservoir about an hour west of Bozeman, Montana. The willow-thick creek makes its way to the Jefferson River, which eventually flows in the Missouri. This fall, we spent a day fishing streamers on Willow Creek, and it became one of several highlights of our fly fishing year. Click on One Fine Day on Willow Creek now to listen to the podcast in your browser.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Describe a recent fine day on the water? What make it a terrific day? What made the experience more than simply a day of catching lots of fish?
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Proverbs are little sayings that condense a volume of insight into a pithy sentence. A few years ago, I picked up a book of Haitian proverbs in a bookstore in Port-au-Prince. One of my favorites is: “Pretty teeth are not the heart.” I am also fond of Savvy Sayin’s, a little book of proverbs from the old west. One of the gems it contains is: “Never approach a bull from the front, a horse from the rear, or a fool from any direction.”
I’m a big fan of proverbs and aphorisms. By far, my favorite collection is in the Book of Proverbs (in the Bible). One of its well-known aphorisms is: “A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger” (15.1) Another blunt-but-true proverb is “If you find honey, eat just enough – too much of it, and you will vomit” (25:16).
Fishing One Liners for the Ages
So far, I haven’t found a book of fly fishing proverbs. But I’ve discovered some great one-liners as I’ve read fly fishing books and listened to wise fly fishers. Here are some of my favorites. These sayings drip with wisdom. They challenge me, stop me in my tracks, and make me think. You might find a few of these useful, too:
You don’t learn fly fishing as much as you survive it. [Tom Davis]
There are lots of ways to catch a trout. Maybe that’s why there are so many experts. [Bud Lilly]
There’s no taking trout with dry breeches. [Miguel de Cervantes, about 400 years ago]
The more you fly fish, the less flies you will use. [Bob Granger]
Rivers and their inhabitants are made for the wise to contemplate and for fools to pass by without consideration. [Izaak Walton]
The deepest satisfaction comes from letting go. [Tom Davis, on catch-and-release fishing]
There is no greater fan of fly fishing than the worm. [Patrick McManus]
Creeps and idiots cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip. [John Gierach]
No hatch is good enough for you to risk waving a nine-foot graphite rod around during a lightning storm. [Bud Lilly]
There’s a fine line between fly fishing and waving your rod like an idiot. [adapted from a proverb by Steven Wright]
Accepting advice makes you no less a fisherman. [Peter Kaminsky]
What a tourist terms a plague of insects, the fly fisher calls a great hatch. [Patrick McManus]
Many go fishing all their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after. [Henry David Thoreau]
These pearls are words to live by as well as to fish by. Here’s one last fly fishing proverb:
Blessed is the fly fisher who has nothing to say and doesn’t say it.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What is the biggest fish you’ve caught? Did you “hunt” the fish? What did you catch it on? A streamer, dry fly, nymph?
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If Hollywood made a fly fishing movie about you, what title would they choose?
Since A River Runs Through It has already been taken, I’d adapt the title of a recent Clint Eastwood film. At least I’d do this if I was honest. The movie is Trouble with the Curve. It’s the story of a baseball scout with the Atlanta Braves (played by Clint Eastwood) who tells the front office not to draft a particular prospect. The kid looks like a future star, but he has trouble hitting a curve ball.
If Hollywood made a fly fishing movie about me, a fitting title would be Trouble with the Cast. At least, that would fit the early decade of my fly fishing career. But with the help of my fly fishing friends, I’ve been able to overcome some of the struggles that are common to novice fly fishers.
Are you a candidate for a lead role in Trouble with the Cast?
Here are five common struggles and a couple solutions for each one:
1. Your casts lack distance.
There are two quick fixes if your casts come up short of your target.
First, flick your wrist. Practice this before you pick up your fly rod. Make a handgun out of your casting hand (index finger extended, thumb up, bottom three fingers pointing back at you). Now snap forward, then back, then forward, then back. That’s the action you want when casting your rod.
Too many fly fishers try to be graceful and end up waving their arms forward and backward. But a graceful cast is the product of snapping the wrists (like a baseball pitcher throwing that curve which troubles hitters).
The second quick fix is to make sure that your rod is parallel with the ground on your final forward cast.
I’ve watched a lot of fly fishers keep their rods pointing up at a 45-degree angle as their line shoots towards its target. But as legendary fly fisher Gary Borger observes, this creates “all sorts of shoot-shortening friction.” He even suggests lifting the rod butt as a way of keeping your rod parallel to the surface of the ground (or water).
2. Your casts lack accuracy.
Here are two solutions to inaccurate casting. They seem too simple to be true.
First, keep your eyes on the target. Yes, some folks have better hand-eye coordination than others. But it is remarkable how this simple tip enhances accuracy.
Second, point your tip at the target. It seems silly to make such an obvious point. But I’m often surprised how my casts go astray when I get lazy about this. As soon as I make a conscious effort to point the eye of my rod tip towards the spot where I want my fly to land (even as my rod is parallel to the ground as discussed in #1 above), my accuracy improves.
3. Your casts result in tangled line.
Once again, here are two adjustments you can make. First, stop false casting so much. The more you false cast, the more opportunity you give your line to tangle.
Second, make sure you allow your backcast to unfurl. A lot of tangles happen because fly fishers hurry from backcast to forward cast. This is a recipe for either snapping off the fly (the bullwhip effect) or for tangling line that has not had time to unfurl.
4. Your casts spook the fish.
One problem is that the shadow of your fly line spooks the fish. This is an easy fix. Stop false casting so much! That’s all.
If the problem is that you’re slapping the line on the water, then there is a simple trick to help your line land softly.
The trick is to pull your rod tip up at the last moment. Ideally, your rod tip is pointed at your target (#2) and that your rod is parallel to the ground (#3). At the last moment, make a slight upward pull on your rod. I like to think of it as a gentle hiccup. What this does is to stop the forward momentum of the line. It goes limp and falls gently to the surface of the water. This takes some practice, but it really does work.
5. Your casts get wrecked by the wind.
I have a sure-fire solution for this problem. Quit. Yes, just quit. Call it a day. Head for the truck and drive to your favorite restaurant. I’ve had some days on Montana’s Lower Madison where this has been the best option.
But there are some other alternatives to quitting for the day:
First, stop false casting. Yes, that’s a solution to a lot of problems, including wind.
Second, move in closer and shorten up your casts. If the wind is howling enough to make casting difficult, it’s also creating ripples on the surface which will keep trout from seeing your movements.
Third, a guide once told me to make a strong backcast and a softer forward cast. That’s the opposite of my instincts, so it takes some practice. But it really does work.
Now, when Hollywood shows up to make a fly fishing movie about you, your prowess at casting might lead them to title it Star Casts: The Force Awakens. At least you’ll put yourself in a better position to catch more fish.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What are the markers of true fly fishing satisfaction? Please post your ideas below!
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Communicating with my teenage boys was no small challenge. But fly fishing provided a language that made it easier. Last weekend, I hung out with my 29-year-old son, Ben. I left amazed at all the wisdom I picked up from him. He offered insights about financial planning and about my workout regimen (which needs to be ramped up a bit).
This weekend, my wife and I will travel to Grand Forks, North Dakota to watch the University of North Dakota Fighting Hawks play their first ever football playoff game since moving up to Division 1 (FCS) a decade ago. They are ranked 8th nationally. Our 23-year old son, Luke, is a senior tight end and a team captain. He has blossomed into a fine leader and is heavily involved in community service in Grand Forks.
I am grateful for the way my sons have emerged from those challenging teen years. This is due primarily to the grace of God. Seriously. It covered a multitude of my parenting blunders. But I also have to give credit to one of God’s gifts which enabled communication during the tough patches.
That gift is fly fishing.
The Language of Life
My boys and I laugh about some tense moments during their teen years. A lot of them involved over-reactions on the part of their dad. Uh, that would be me. We laugh, for example, about scathing note I left for Ben when he didn’t make it home from gopher hunting in time to go with us to his sister’s high school graduation. My purple prose expressed bitter disappointment in Ben and outlined a long list of consequences. I was still seething when I reached the front of the high school auditorium and saw Ben waiting for us. He had his friend drop him off so he wouldn’t be late.
So how did we manage to communicate through the teen years? Fly fishing provided a language which made it possible. We found our voice in the laughter that fly fishers share. Conversation flowed like the river itself, moodiness evaporated like the morning fog. In this setting, my sons were quite willing to listen to my advice — at least about fly fishing. Fly fishing together even created a bond which led to some rather deep conversations about life.
Something else happened too. The conversations we began on the river followed us home. So did the ease with which we communicated. It seemed like our shared experiences on the river nurtured conversations marked by transparency, respect, honesty, and kindness.
By the way, both of my boys still love to fly fish — especially when we can do it together.
Fly fishing is not a magic pill that solves problems between parents and their teens. But time together on the river may yield much more than fish. It may provide a common language, which takes communication to a more productive level.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Do you have a fly fishing buddy? Or do you prefer to fish alone? Would love to hear your thoughts.
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Fishing streamers is one of the most consistent ways to catch bigger fish. Trout that gobble up bait fish and larger aquatic insects like helgrammites get more bang for their caloric buck. More calories with less effort. A sure way to gain some heft. Pretty much how I would love to live my life, though I can’t because I’m a middle-aged guy with a slight paunch already. Some would say not so slight.
Steve, my podcast partner and I, recently fished streamers on two different-sized rivers in Montana. One day we each caught twenty browns and rainbows on a smaller stream called Willow Creek, ranging from 12 to 18 inches. Two days later, we each caught one big rainbow on the Missouri River just below Hauser Dam, after four hours of slinging.
Two days of fishing streamers. Two completely different rivers. I realize this may be patently obvious, but it needs to be said: Fishing streamers in smaller trout streams is simply different than slinging a rig in larger waters like the Missouri. Here are three adjustments that fly fishers need to make when fishing streamers on smaller creeks:
Cast Downstream When Fishing Streamers
For starters, you tend to get only one or two shots at the pocket of water in a smaller stream, so your cast needs to be precise. Most likely you’re not going to rip out four or five fish from one small run.
On Willow Creek, with the stream as low as it was this year, more often than not I got above the run, cast downstream, and then made three or four strips. Sometimes, I crawled to the bank near the middle of the run and then cast downstream and then stripped back the streamer.
On the Mighty Mo (Missouri), I cast as far as I could sling the streamer, slightly upstream, with a nine foot, eight weight fly rod. I mended my line once after the cast and then let the streamer drift until it began to swing. Then I stripped back the line. There were three of us fly fishing, and we cycled through about a 200-yard stretch of river.
Big river, big open spaces, big casts.
Quicker Retrieves
In the smaller creek, of course, there isn’t a lot of time to retrieve the line. Casts are shorter, and the distance from the end of the swing back to your fly rod is short. Sometimes, shorter, one- to three-inch strips seem to work best. Other times, six-inch strips seem to work.
In tight spaces, you may get only three or four strips, and then it’s time to cast again. On the Missouri, stripping the line was less frenetic. I had lots of time to retrieve the streamer.
There’s a rule of thumb that I am not sure works all the time. It goes something like this: If you’re fishing slower water, then make your strips faster, and if the river is faster, make your strips slower.
The more precise rule of thumb is: Try several ways to retrieve your line, and go with one that works.
Weight Forward Works Well When Fly Fishing Streamers
Our day on Willow Creek, I used my nine foot, six weight fly rod with weight forward line. No sink tip line. The runs were not that deep, maybe mid-thigh at most. Occasionally deeper, especially in the beaver ponds. But the runs were short and shallow.
However, on the Might Mo, I switch to a nine foot, eight weight rod. With sink tip line. Later in the morning, after I had caught a fat rainbow, I switched to my six weight rod with weight forward line. I simply couldn’t get the streamer down fast enough and deep enough. I gave up trying to streamer fish without a sink tip line and switched to nymphs.
The point is that it’s okay to use a weight forward line on smaller creeks, but on the larger rivers, its essential to have a spare reel with sink tip line in your truck.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What kind of fly fishing gear do you need next? How do you budget for new gear throughout the year?
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Here are some notes on knots to give you some knot know-how.
The only thing trickier than reading that sentence is trying to tie a tiny tippet (the size of a human hair) to the eye of a tiny hook. If you’re new to fly fishing, tying your tippet to your fly or (worse) tying your tippet to a leader can seem daunting. And time-consuming. And frustrating.
Here a few notes that will simplify the process and get you fly fishing.
1. Try this at home
Don’t wait until you’re on the bank of the Lochsa or the Hoosic for your inaugural attempt at securing your fly to a tippet with a knot. Try this at home.
If you’re trying to learn a brand new knot, use a small rope or piece of yarn or string. Tie the knot onto a key ring or an eye bolt. Then, you can graduate to tying actual monofilament (which has a mind of its own) onto an actual eye of a hook.
Practice may not make perfect, but practice does make progress.
2. Learn two or three basic knots.
There is a downside to buying a booklet of fly fishing knots. The sheer number of knots you can tie will overwhelm and discourage you. But relax. You can get away with two knots—one for tying your fly to your tippet, and the other for tying tippet to your leader.
The first knot to learn is the improved clinch knot. You will use this to tie your tippet (or the end of your leader) to your fly. This is a tried and true pattern which I use whether the hook size is a #20 (tiny) or a #6 (large). I will not drive you crazy by trying to describe how to tie it. Instead, watch this video. For the record, I prefer eight turns rather than five—especially if I’m using small (in diameter) tippet.
That’s really the only knot you ever need to tie a fly to a tippet or leader. But here’s another one I started using a few years ago because it is so simple. It’s the surgeon’s loop. It’s quicker to tie than an improved clinch knot, so it’s a bit easier when your hands are cold. You’ll waste a bit more tippet material, but that’s really the only drawback. I’ve used this with small flies and large flies. Here’s a video to show you how it is done.
Finally, to tie a piece of tippet to a leader, I recommend the double surgeon’s knot. It’s easy to tie after a few practice times. Just watch this video and learn it!.
Yes, there are other knots. But you can’t go wrong with these. I’ve used them for years and have landed a lot of large trout on small flies and tiny tippets. So I know these work.
3. Use the river as background.
One of the frustrations you’ll face when you try to tie a knot is seeing the tiny loop(s) you’ve created and seeing the tiny tag end you’re trying to push through the loop(s). I tried all kinds of background — my waders, the sky, green leaves. Then a friend pointed out the obvious. Use the river as a backdrop. It works surprisingly well.
4. Moisten your knot.
Last, but not least, moisten your knot with a bit of saliva. When monofilament is tightened, the friction generates enough heat to weaken the monofilament. That’s why you want to wet your knot. If you forget, the next big trout you hook might snap off.
Alright, you now have the know-how you need to tie knots without being fit to be tied (sorry!).
The Gardner River gave us two days of memorable fly fishing last month. During our second day on the river, we had even a better day than the first, and we learned more about the art of nymph fishing. Every time we spend a couple days on the river, we are either reminded about something we forgot or learn something new. Click now to listen to this episode.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Have you ever had two straight days of unbelievable fly fishing on the same stretch of river? We’d love to hear your stories.
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I am three weeks removed from my last fly fishing trip. Winter looms. I may not pick up my fly rod again until spring. Now the coping begins. It wasn’t always this way.
When I lived in Montana, I fished into November. Then, I ventured out at least once a month in December, January, and February. This satisfied my fly fishing urge until a new season began in March.
But how do you cope if you live in the city or the suburbs? How do you manage if you live far away from prime trout fisheries? I’ve figured out a few coping strategies since I moved a decade ago to the north suburbs of Chicago.
1. Go through the photos of your last trip.
Thumb through the photos on your cell phone. This brings back good memories and helps you re-live the best moments. Warning: Your photos might result in you laughing out loud or shouting “Yes!”
2. Make a list of the year’s best memories.
After you’ve thumbed through your photos, write down your favorite memories from the last year of fly fishing. For me, the list from last year includes:
Catching browns at dusk in Rocky Mountain National Park;
Hauling in fish after fish on streamers in Willow Creek (near Three Forks, Montana);
Landing a big rainbow on the Missouri River (near Helena, Montana); and
Catching a ridiculous number of browns in October on the Gardner River (in Yellowstone National Park).
Making a list will preserve your memories and maybe even remind you of a detail you had forgotten.
3. Take inventory of your gear.
This is an act of hope. It’s a reminder that you will fly fish again. Besides, it really does prepare you for your next trip.
4. Shop for something new.
This is the benefit—or liability—of the previous strategy. When you take inventory of your gear, you may discover your need for a new reel, new gloves, a new fly box, or a new net. This sends you on a mission to research options and prices. It keeps your mind off the reality that you are not able to fish.
5. Visit the trout at your local Bass Pro Shop.
A couple times during the winter, I visit our local Bass Pro Shop (nine miles from my house) and stand on a little bridge and look wistfully at the twenty-inch rainbows that swim in the little creek on the edge of the aisle with coffee mugs and pocket knives. Seriously!
Now I’m trying to muster the courage to ask the store manager if I can fly fish the stream since I’m a catch-and-release fly fisher. Seeing me catch these rainbows might get more people interested in fly fishing, and then they would spend more money at Bass Pro.
It’s a win-win, right?
6. Watch fly fishing videos.
The internet is loaded with videos of fly fishers catching trout. Start with websites like Orvis or Winston. Then, go to YouTube and search for about any river or species of trout which piques your interest.
7. Tie a few flies.
This only works if you are a fly tyer. If you’re not, the off-season is a good time to take your first class.
8. Read a good fly fishing book.
Read about the areas you want to fly fish. For example, if you’re headed to Montana or Wyoming, get a copy of Bud Lilly’s Guide to Fly Fishing the West. It’s an entertaining read with humor and history woven into it.
Read for skill-development. Gary Borger’s “Fly Fishing” series is ideal for this. His fourth book in the series, The Angler as Predator, helped me a lot.
You might even educate yourself on the flies you’re trying to imitate with a book like Pocketguide to Western Hatches by Dave Hughes or Matching Major Eastern Hatches: New Patterns for Selective Trout by Henry Ramsay.
Don’t forget to read through the lists you compiled from previous years (see #2 above).
9. Plan your next trip.
There’s nothing like planning your next trip to get the juices flowing! The off-season is a great time to do some research on new places or to plan for a visit to some good old places.
10. Watch “A River Runs Through It.”
You owe it to yourself to watch this at least once a year. The cinematography alone makes it worthwhile. The story is gripping, too. Real men might even shed a tear or two at the last scene.
Alright, something in the above list is guaranteed to help you cope with the fly fishing off-season. If not, watch college football and college basketball. Go hunting. Remodel your kitchen.
Oh yes, you might even consider a few hours on the water in the dead of winter if you’re within a day’s drive of a river or stream. Whatever you do to pass the time, winter will lift and the rivers will come to life in the spring.
The Gardner River near the north entrance of Yellowstone National Park is a gorgeous fishery – with the added bonus of deer, bison, elk, and grizzly bears. In this episode, the first of a two-part series, we describe in detail one of the best days we’ve had fly fishing. We caught lots of fish (browns, mostly), got freaked out by a grizzly track along the trail, and was reminded of several key nymph fishing tactics. Click now to listen to this episode.
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
We’d love to hear your stories of a fine day this past year on the river. Please post your stories below.
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I enjoy solitude when I fly fish. Yet I rarely fly fish alone. I like to fly fish with a buddy, if only because there’s someone to take pics of my big fish (or buffalo bone).
The truth is, it is better to fly fish with a buddy or a brother or a sister or a spouse. In the past year of fly fishing, I have been on the water eighteen days (I know, it doesn’t seem like enough). On every one of those days, I have fished with someone else — either my podcast partner Dave, my brother, my sons, or another close friend.
Why is a fishing partner such a big deal? Here are four benefits of fly fishing with a buddy or someone else.
Safety
This is at top of the list for a reason. Your life might depend on it.
Four years ago, my sons I and hiked into a high mountain lake in Rocky Mountain National Park. The trail took us up the side of a waterfall. On our way back from fly fishing the lake, we came across a hiker who had broken her ankle. She was in a group, and one of them had hiked out to find a park ranger. By the time we made it down the waterfall, we heard and saw the helicopter that came to rescue her.
The buddy system results in a timely rescue.
A couple weeks ago, I slipped at the edge of a small stream I was fishing and fell forward in some shallow water. The only casualty was a cracked fly box. But I reflected later on how I could have hit my head on a nearby boulder and passed out. If I had been alone, that could have been disastrous even in shallow water. I was glad that my podcast partner, Dave, was only thirty yards away. It was a win-win situation.
Since I wasn’t hurt, he got a good laugh. But had I been hurt, he was there to help.
Dave and I regularly fish in grizzly bear country, so having two fly fishers — each armed with bear spray — is critical. Sometimes a bear can attack you so fast that there is no time to unleash the contents of your canister. But a friend can. One of my bow-hunting partners saved the life of his friend a few years when a grizzly attacked faster than his friend could get to his bear spray. Then, he was able to help his friend back to their SUV before the bear returned and before his friend bled to death. The recovery required a couple surgeries. But the attack might have led to death if my friend’s friend had been hunting alone.
Problem-Solving
Another benefit of fly fishing with a buddy is having another brain.
Recently, Dave and I were fishing for fall browns in the Gardner River in Yellowstone National Park. We took turns drifting our nymphs through the same run. We were catching fish, but Dave pointed out to me that I was missing some strikes. He suggested that the almost imperceptible hesitation of my strike indicator was a subtle strike. So I started setting the hook every time my strike indicator made a slight bump. Every time, taking Dave’s suggestion resulted in hooking a fish.
Later in the day, I returned the favor on another run that I had fished a couple days before. After watching Dave’s casts, I suggested that he cast about 10 feet further upstream so the nymphs he was using would be deeper when they reached the hot zone. It worked. Sometimes it takes a friend to spot the obvious or not-so-obvious solution to those times when the fish are not biting.
Sharing the Joy
There’s something satisfying about sharing the moment with someone else. When Dave and I catch fish, we whoop it up together. I can honestly say I enjoy watching Dave catch big trout (okay, as long as I’m catching them too!). Then there are the hilarious moments. I was glad Dave witnessed the 20-inch buffalo bone (the picture above) I landed when we fished the Gardner together!
Like any other joy in life, fly fishing is meant to be shared. This goes beyond catching trout, though. It extends to seeing the sun flood a beautiful meadow, watching a couple of wolves saunter along the bank of the Yellowstone River, or hearing the piercing bugle of a bull elk on a September morning.
Remembering
As much as I try to slow down in the moment and take in the experience, I find that I forget certain aspects of a day on the river. That’s why I force myself to share dinner at the end of the day with my fly fishing buddies. Well, okay, I really don’t have to force myself to do this! Dinner is the capstone of a great day. Often, the dinner conversation I have with Dave or my brother or one of my sons will remind me of moments or experiences I had forgotten.
Sometimes, even years later, I’ll be talking about a certain trip with one of them, and they will remind me of some moment or experience that had vanished from my memory.
As a wise writer once said, “Two is better than one. . . . if either of them falls down, one can help the other up. . . . Though they may be overpowered, two can defend themselves” (Eccl. 4:9-10, 12). While that applies to all of live, it certainly relates directly to your next fly fishing adventure.
Fly fishing mentoring is a lot of work. For starters, it takes patience. A lot of patience. And many of us are not wired to watch someone else fly fish. In this episode, we discuss the importance of fly fishing mentoring and discuss some basic ideas to keep both parties sane, especially if one party is your spouse. Or your brother-in-law. Click here to learn more about the art of fly fishing mentoring.
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Have you ever mentored someone in fly fishing? What did you learn about yourself when you did? What went well? What was most frustrating? Any recommendations for those who want to help teach others?
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A year ago, I bought a wading staff for use on the big rivers of the American West — particularly the Yellowstone and the Missouri. I had visions of strapping it to my side only for use in thigh-deep or even waist-deep water. But last week, I discovered that it’s worth wearing on small streams when I’m only wading ankle-deep water.
Dave, my podcast partner, and I were getting ready to fish Willow Creek south of Three Forks, Montana, with a good friend. I was mildly surprised to see our friend strap on his collapsible wading staff. But when he explained to me why he always wears it, I decided to take mine out of my duffel bag and give it a try.
Now I’m a believer. Here are the reasons why it makes sense to use a wading staff even when you’re on a small stream in shallow water.
1. Traction
This is one of the two reasons my friend cited. Even with state-of-the-art wading boots (we both wore Patagonia Foot Tractor boots that day), moss-covered rocks can be slick. I was pleased how my wading staff helped me stay upright when one of my boots slipped.
2. Stability
I’m in reasonably good shape at 54. But my legs are not as strong as they were at 44 or at 34. I found that a “third leg” gave me more stability when I walked on the rock banks as well as the boulders in shallow water.
3. Stamina
I was also surprised how my “third leg” took pressure off of my two legs. We fished three miles up Willow Creek in a canyon which lacked any trails or gentle banks. Then we walked three miles down in and along the creek. My legs were not nearly as tired as I expected after the six-mile trek.
4. Snakes
This is the second reason my friend always carries his wading staff. We were in rattlesnake country, and even though it was mid-October, some fishing buddies of his encountered a rattler a few days before on the stretch of creek we were fishing. I’m no advocate of killing snakes. But I like the idea of packing something that can ward off a rattler when a surprise encounter happens.
5. Climbing
Again, I’m writing as a 54-year old. I found that my wading staff made it easier to scramble up steep banks and rocky inclines. Now I understand why another friend of mine raved about the walking staff he carried in the Swiss Alps a few months ago.
If you’re in the market for a wading staff, check out the ones made by Simms and Orvis. I tried them both, and I give the nod to the Orvis model because it snaps into place almost instantly. Both of these staffs are collapsible, although I kept mine assembled most of the day. It didn’t get in my way when I let it drag behind me (the staff was connected to its sheath via a retractor).
There are more affordable alternatives, too. I know fly fishers who use an old ski pole or even a mountaineer’s staff.
When King David composed the twenty-third psalm, he was not referring to a fly rod nor a wading staff when he wrote, “Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.” But still, I find comfort in taking both a rod and staff with me – even when I walk through quiet waters.
Fly fishing passion can ebb and flow throughout life. If you’re in your twenties, with no or few family obligations, then your days on the river may be unlimited. As your life accumulates obligations, it’s more difficult to sustain your fly fishing passion. But often life opens up again for some in their fifties and sixties. In this episode, we take the long view and advocate for ways to sustain your fly fishing passion
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
How do you sustain your passion for the sport? Has there been a time when it waned? What were the circumstances? Please post your comments below.
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Steve does. I don’t. I do not tie my own flies. In this post, I make a case for why some fly fishers should not tie their own flies.
Steve, the other half of “2 Guys and a River” and I are life-long friends. In college, we hung out so much the haters called us “Bo and Luke” after the lead characters on the silly TV show “Dukes of Hazard.” We even went on double dates together, though neither of us married our dates, much to the appreciation (on some days) of our wives.
But Steve and I could not be more different.
Steve is a first child. I am not. Steve is so much of a first child that when we take fly fishing trips, Steve will make the bed every morning at the place we’re staying, even if it’s the last day we’re there. Yes, he makes the bed. Let’s just say that I don’t make my bed (though I will pull off the dirty sheets on the morning I leave).
We also differ on many aspects of fly fishing. We use different rods. We wear different waders. How we think about fly fishing brands, even, is so different. I tend to be practical and cheap; he is more brand conscious.
And we also differ on the topic of tying flies. Steve does. I don’t. There are consequences to my decision, such as not having the ability to tie a pattern at the river’s edge and feel the surge of emotion as I hook a brown with a woolly bugger that I tied. I don’t get to feel one with nature because I caught a fish with something I created.
However, I’d rather buy than tie, and here’s why:
1. We had too many kids.
We ended up with four, and with all their sports and school activities, I can barely get out on the river as it is. A lousy excuse, I know. But given the dizzying number of places to buy flies, I’d rather watch my sons play football or my daughters play soccer or attend one of my sons’ wrestling meets.
I can’t do it all, so I’ve made the choice to eliminate, among other things, tying flies.
2. I also love to hunt.
I’ve limited my sports to two – fly fishing and hunting. I’d rather fly fish and hunt upland game and waterfowl than spend time in a damp basement under a bright lamp with tiny hooks and peacock herl. Just sayin’.
Obviously, when I hunt is not generally in the evenings and in the winter, but even so, life is a series of trade-offs. And I’ve traded tying my own flies for other opportunities.
3. I’d rather write than tie.
In my free time, outside of fly fishing and hunting, I like to write. I’ve written two books, with another on fly fishing (with Steve, my podcast partner). I’ve written thousands of blog posts, it seems, and another hundred or so articles.
Writing is another choice I’ve made.
4. I’d rather work more than tie.
I’ve started a couple small businesses, so I’d probably rather throw my shoulder into landing one more client than spend an evening staring at a vise.
Again, it’s another choice. It’s probably more like a kind of illness, but I enjoy throwing my shoulder into what I feel I’ve been called to do.
5. The patterns on the market are legion.
I’m grateful for all those who tie flies, and the artistry that I can purchase amazes me.
Yes, I may be paying more per fly than I should, but you can’t have it all in this world. I’m happy to pay for flies. I just am. And I’m thankful for the talent that ties the flies that I can buy.
6. We have too much clutter in our house.
Until the kids all leave (and it looks like it will be a while, even though the two oldest are in college), we need every square inch of our house for kid stuff. I don’t have space for a bench and a corner for more boxes.
7. I can live with the ambiguity of who ties my flies.
Someone recently taunted me for my decision by saying that I’m contributing to slave labor, that most flies are tied in China (or Thailand) in a sweat factory, and that it is the dirty little secret of the fly fishing industry.
Whewda!
Just for starters, none of the flies I purchase are from big box retail stores. I generally buy from local fly shops. I know for a fact that at least some of the fly shops where Steve and I fish regularly purchase flies from local tiers. For example, one fly shop in Montana has this on their web site: “We stock only flies & gear useful within fifty miles of our door, we designed and/or tie around half the flies we stock …”
However, no doubt that many of the ties sold in both fly shops and big box retail stores are tied by, as a fly shop monkey said to me the other day, “a little old lady in Thailand.”
So do individuals who tie flies in bulk for that fly shop make a live-able wage for their work?
I have no idea.
Do the folks at the factory who make your nets and leaders and tippet and vests make enough money to live on? I don’t know.
Are the mutual funds that you invest in for your retirement comprised only of investments in companies with vetted labor practices? Do you know how your investments are used?
I have no angst about who ties my flies. I just don’t.
8. I still catch fish.
Steve and I have fished together for years and years. I will admit that he is a much better fly fisher than I am – for a variety of reasons.
But somehow, I still seem to catch fish. I’ve never had a day where I think, “Man, if I just had some hand-crafted flies, I’d catch more fish.” Just today, Steve and I each caught 20 browns before 10:30 AM. We fished different runs. We each caught a 20-incher. I guess he did catch two whitefish, and I caught none. So, there again, he is the better fly fisher!
Has there ever been a moment when I thought, “I sure wish I could run back to my truck and tie a fly that matches the hatch?”
In 35 years of fly fishing, maybe a handful of moments. And given what I am able to do because of my other choices, I am more than happy to concede the moment to another fly fisher who can.
Wild trout – those two words together make no sense. Aren’t all trout wild? We all know the story of hatchery trout, but what about wild and native trout? What are the differences between the two? Understanding the category of trout that you catch may not necessarily help you catch more of them. But it will round out your fly fishing acumen, and give you a better grasp of what’s at stake in the rivers you fish. Listen to our episode now.
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Anything you would add to our discussion on native vs. wild trout? What is your favorite kind of fish to catch?
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Tie your own flies – that idea might seem far-fetched to a beginner fly fisher. If you’re new to the sport, you might wonder if fly tying is something to pursue.
To tie or not to tie? That is the question. To help you answer the question, here are a few more questions to consider:
Can I tie flies even if I’m not an artistic type?
Absolutely! I am living proof of this.
I do not have an artistic bone in my body. Or perhaps I do, and it is badly broken. While I can color between the lines, I cannot draw anything more complex than a stick figure. Yet I can tie the basic patterns and catch trout on them.
If your goal is to win a “most beautiful fly” contests, then a lack of artistic talent is an issue. If your goal is to catch trout, then being artistically challenged is not a concern. To tie your own flies has little to do with your artistic gene.
How do I learn?
The best approach is to sign up for a fly-tying class at your local fly shop. I learned to tie flies two decades ago in an eight-week class that met Saturday mornings at a fly shop in Bozeman, Montana.
The second best approach is to watch fly-tying videos. There are some great instructional videos that you can access for free. I like the “Beginner Fly Fishing Tips” series on YouTube by scflytying. You might also check the videos by Tightline Productions that Orvis shares on its website.
In my experience, books have limited value. I need to watch someone tying a fly in order to make sense of it. I simply can’t visualize the process when reading a book — even if it contains clear instructions and sharp diagrams. Having a live person to help you figure out what you’re doing wrong is the best way to learn.
What do I need to get started?
To tie your own flies, you need tools and materials.
The first tool you need is a vise. Any fly vise that holds a hook tight will do. Don’t overthink this.
Next, you need fly tying scissors. I recommend two pairs. Spend more on one that you reserve for hair and thread. Buy a cheaper pair to cut thicker items, which tend to dull the scissor blades more quickly. You’ll also need a bobbin (for your spool of thread) and a pair of hackle pliers. Neither item will break the bank.
I’d suggest two or three bobbins so you don’t have to re-thread your bobbin every time you switch spools of thread. Finally, get a whip finisher. Save yourself the hassle of a cheaper one and buy the one sold by Orvis.
The materials you need depend on what flies you plan to tie. Typically, the minimum materials include hackle capes, thread, dubbing material, head cement, and wire. A good fly shop or an online video can help you figure out exactly what you need for the flies you plan to tie.
Will the first fly I tie be worth fishing?
Yes! Sometimes, a clumsy looking fly might look a bit more “buggy” to the trout than something that looks perfect.
Besides, I suspect that a lot of flies are designed to catch fly fishers rather than fish. I’ve caught trout on some gnarly looking patterns. Of course, I’ve gotten better over the years. But trout key in on size and color more than on perfect proportions (though the exceptions increase as the fly size gets smaller!).
Sure, some patterns require more precision than others. But if your first fly is a San Juan Worm or a Brassie or a Woolly Bugger, it does not need to be perfect. To tie your own flies does not require flawless wonders.
What is the financial payoff for learning to tie flies?
The expected answer is, “You will save money.” After all, the materials for a $2 fly may amount to 20 cents.
But that math is too simplistic.
The initial investment in tools will likely reach $100. Then there are the materials themselves. A good hackle cape or neck may cost $50. Even the inexpensive materials – spools of thread, various kinds of feathers, peacock herl, etc – add up. You may not begin saving money until you tie your three-hundredth fly!
So, unless you tie a high volume of flies, it might be as cost effective to buy flies at your local fly shop.
In my opinion, the real benefit of fly tying is becoming a better fly fisher. When I started tying, I learned a lot about the feeding habits of trout, which insects my flies were trying to imitate, and when certain patterns worked (and when they didn’t).
It’s Your Decision
If you decide not to tie your own flies, fine. There are other ways to accomplish what fly tying will do for you.
My podcast partner, Dave, is proof of this. He doesn’t tie his flies. Contrary to my ribbing, he is every bit as good a fly fisher as I am.
But if you’re leaning towards trying, go for it. Like playing the saxophone, fly tying is easy to do poorly. But even a poor imitation can catch a trout.
Fly fishing trip preparations are necessary to make the outing memorable. But a little planning also creates anticipation, which is part of the entire experience. We are about to take our yearly trip to Montana for several days on the Missouri, Yellowstone, and several smaller creeks. We selected mid fall because we wanted to see if we could catch a few browns as they move up river to spawn. Click to listen to our episode on fly fishing trip preparations, and we hope you find some nuggets to help you plan your next trip.
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What did we miss in our fly fishing trip preparations? How do you prepare for your fly fishing trips?
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I’m a river guy. That should be obvious from the name of our podcast. Yes, I love fly fishing rivers and streams. I find moving water fascinating and energizing. But I’m captivated too by the lakes I fly fish. In this post, I offer several tactical ideas for more success when fly fishing a lake:
While I’m not ready to rename our podcast “2 Guys and a Lake,” I am always happy to match wits with the trout in a high mountain lake. If you’re new to fly fishing lakes, here are few insights to help you succeed:
Do your homework
Yeah, yeah – this seems so obvious. But unlike most rivers and unlike all small streams, you can’t see the bottom of a lake when you get there. This means you can’t figure out where the fish will lie in wait for food to drift by.
You can sight-read a river you’ve never seen before. But it doesn’t work so well for lakes.
So read a book or a blog to discover where the deepest sections might be. Talk to someone at a local fly shop to find out if there are any shelves – that is, places where a lake suddenly drops in depth. The trout often hang out near these drop-offs There might even be other obstacles, particularly if you are fly fishing a reservoir. Large rocks or trees or even the original stream bed might be places where trout are located.
Also, you need to know what patterns work best at different times during the year. Can you count on any insect hatches that will send trout to feed off of the surface? Do certain sizes or colors or patterns work better than others?
Just recently Dave, my podcast partner, trekked four miles in to a high mountain lake in Colorado. He had called and then visited the local fly shop, purchasing some stone fly attractor patterns that the shop monkey recommended. But when he got to the lake, Dave saw some midges and tried fishing on the surface with a dry fly that was small and black. No luck. He immediately put on a size #14 attractor pattern, which he had just purchased, and for the next three hours was in cutthroat heaven.
It pays to do a little homework.
Bring the right gear and tackle
The right gear is important. Make sure you bring your lake split shot, lake waders, lake fly vest, and lake wading boots. No, no. Just kidding!
You’ll use most of the same gear you use on the river. Seriously, though, there are a few differences.
The key is to think long. You will want a nine-foot fly rod. Some experts even go with a ten-foot rod. Honestly, I’ve never felt the need to go that long. But I definitely want a nine-foot rod rather than an eight-and-a-half foot rod. The extra length helps you handle more line so you can make longer casts. Longer leaders are often important, too. A nine-foot leader may be fine, but I’ll sometimes go with a leader as long as twelve feet.
There is also a lot of overlap when it comes to fly selection. The same dry fly patterns I use on a river will often work on a lake, and that same is true for streamer patterns. I will even use some nymphs—particularly those which imitate emerging insects. But I tend to use streamers unless there is action on the surface. So toss in more streamers than usual and go a little lighter on nymphs.
Start at the shore
Lakes can be so intimidating because the “good water” seems to be out fifty to a hundred feet.
But what is true of the current along the river’s edge is true about the water along the lake shore. It can be a prime place to catch trout. At certain times of day, trout will cruise the shallow water along the bank. Or, some lakes have a deep drop-off just a few feet from the shore line. Sky Pond in Rocky Mountain National Park has a shelf like this. I’ve often caught trout by casting my fly a couple feet beyond the shelf—that is, the place where there is a sudden, steep drop-off.
In some lakes, you can wade out far enough to cast into some deeper water. But don’t let the lack of current give you a sense of false confidence so that you get out too deep.
Go deep
If nothing is happening on the surface, and if nothing is happening in the shallow water near the shoreline, you need to go deep. If the fish are twenty feet below the surface, it will do you no good to fish ten feel below it. There are two considerations here.
First, you’ll need to put on extra split shot or use a heavily weighted fly. A beadhead or conehead pattern can give you extra weight.
If you are going to fish lakes regularly, I encourage you to invest in a sink-tip line. This is the best way to get your fly down to the trout. You will need to purchase an additional spool for your reel in addition to the line and the sink tip. The folks at a fly shop can connect you to the right sink-tip for the kind of lakes you will be fishing. Basically, these sink-tips drop a certain number of feet per second so that you can count out the seconds until your fly has reached the desire depth. Then, you’ll begin retrieving it.
Second, if the deep water is in the middle of the lake or further out than you can wade, you’ll need a means to get there. A simple, inexpensive way to do this is a float tube. That’s a discussion for another time. But most fly fishers I know who are serious about lake fishing end up with a float tube. Of course, access to a canoe or raft or boat can solve the distance problem too.
Head for the entrance and exit
Finally, don’t forget to check out the inlet and the outlet to the lake you’re fly fishing. Trout often congregate near an inlet because the current brings food. It can work the same way with the outlet. Sometimes, the best fishing may be in the inlet or outlet itself.
I’m still a river guy at heart. But I’ll never pass up the opportunity to fly fish for trout in lake. There are too many big trout waiting to nab the fly you strip by their noses.
Fly fishing solitude is not something you’ll find during vacation season and most weekends. In today’s climate, with growing pressure on the rivers, it takes some work to find a stretch with no other fly fishers. Yet, it is still doable. Click here to listen to how you can discover more fly fishing solitude.
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What do you do to get away from the fly fishing crowds? Post your ideas below!
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The only things you want to leave behind when you fly fish are the trout you caught. The only things you want to take with you are photos. In this post, I offer seven ways to improve your fly fishing photos.
With social media, particularly Instagram and its filters, any photo can be touched up, altered, and manipulated. If you follow fly fishing guides, outfitters, or other fly fishers on Instagram, you know the deep colors and tints and shadows used to re-do photos. In addition to those on Instagram, there are many photo filter apps, such as Snapseed and Prism.
But engaging photos begin with, well, taking a great photo. Filters can only do so much. Most fly fishers will opt for a cell phone camera rather than, say, a Nikon single-lens-reflex camera with a zoom lens. Today’s phones take great photos, if you pay attention to these seven basic tips:
Keep the sun out of the background.
If the sun is behind the fly fisher you intend to photograph, your camera lens will do the same thing your eye does when it looks into the sun. It will squint. This allows less light into the picture, making it dark. So keep the sun beside you or behind you. If you’re taking a photo at high noon, this will not be an issue.
Similarly, if your subject is in the shade, make sure that the background is not lit up by the sun. Shade can be your friend because it lessens the shadows that hide your subject’s face. But a sunlit patch behind the shade will turn your photo dark.
Put a red hat or bandana on your fly fisher.
A red hat or bandana or shirt might spook a trout. But it sure adds a lot to your photo! Red provides a vivid, pleasing contrast to all the earthtones — the greens, browns, and blues.
Get some close up shots.
Skilled photographers move in close. If you’re photographing a fish, fill the frame. Similarly, zoom in on your fly fisher friend. Or take a couple steps closer. Yes, there is a place for a shot in the distance. But close-up shots are more interesting and generally exude more life.
Photograph scenery in the early morning and early evening.
Look at the scenery shots on your favorite calendar or book cover.
The reason for the vivid colors is not the $2000 lens (although that does not hurt). It’s all about time of day. The light in the early morning and early evening brings scenery to life. The shadows add a striking contrast that flattens out during mid-day.
Include an object the foreground.
This gives depth to your photos and can even provide a kind of frame which accents them.
A tree branch or a bush or a rock in the foreground can do wonders to the picture you are trying to compose. You can also use the bottom half of your fly rod with the reel.
Think in thirds.
If you’re photographing a stretch of river with the sky in the background, it’s easy to get the horizontal dividing line (between land and sky) in the middle of the photo. This breaks the photo into equal halves — an upper and lower section. Don’t do this. It results in a bland photo.
Instead, devote either the top third or the top two-thirds to the sky. This disproportion makes your photo more arresting.
Also, when you include a fly fisher in a landscape-shaped photo, keep them out of the middle.
Again, this is boring. The photography police may issue a warrant for your arrest. Instead, imagine that your landscape-shaped photo has been divided into three vertical panels. Put the fly fisher in either the panel to the left or the panel to the right. If your fly fisher is facing left, place her in the right panel. If your fly fisher is facing right, place him in the left panel. Why, you say? Take a photo which breaks this rule and you’ll see how silly it looks.
Keep your camera (cell phone) in a zip-lock bag.
You can’t take photos if your cell phone or camera is water-logged. So make sure you have some zip-lock bags. You never know when you’ll drop your phone into the river. Or you might slip and soak the section of your fly vest with the pouch containing your phone.
Catching fish is not merely about pure skill. Many fishers buy their fly fishing experiences with guides and outfitters. With the latest fly fishing gear, access to a drift boat, and a great guide, any person can catch trout. But for the rank-and-file fly fisher, the one who can’t always buy a fly fishing experience and wants to grow in the art and skill of the sport, there are some problem-solving skills to acquire when not catching fish. In this episode, we discuss seven reasons you’re not catching fish – and what to do differently.
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What have we missed? And where do you disagree with us? We’d love your comments to this episode!
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Over the years, I have learned three truths about fly rods. These truths have become mantras. I stand by them and share them with new fly fishers. I also insist that these three truths are half-truths. Each has its exceptions:
You get what you pay for.
My family tires of my repeating this little proverb. I say it about everything from shoes to soap to SUVs: “You get what you pay for.” It’s true for fly rods as well. You generally get a higher quality and performance from an $800 rod than from a $400 rod. You can also feel the difference in quality between a $150 fly rod and a $400 rod.
Usually.
There are exceptions. Sometimes the feel of a rod when you cast it trumps the difference in quality. A cheaper-but-quality rod may work as well or better for you than one which costs a couple more Benjamin Franklin bills. I may be hard-pressed to tell the difference between a $350 rod and a $600 rod if I did a double-blind test.
Also, there are cases when the extra $200 gets you a particular brand name and not necessarily more quality.
You don’t need more than one fly rod.
For trout, give me a nine-foot, six-weight rod, and I feel confident in just about any situation on the river. I’ve used my nine-foot, six-weight to catch selective rainbows in Nelson’s Spring Creek (in Montana’s Paradise Valley) on size 20 flies.
My son, Luke, even out-fished me a time or two on a small spring creek in Timber Coulee (in Wisconsin’s Driftless area) with a nine-foot, six-weight while I used the more appropriate eight-foot, four weight.
Yet there are times when you need more than one fly rod.
An eight-foot, four-weight might give you the only chance you have at the delicate cast required for a wary trout. Besides, this lighter weight rod makes a sixteen-inch rainbow feel like a twenty-inch rainbow.
Then there is the King salmon I hooked while fly fishing with a nine-foot, six-weight on the Willow River near Wasilla, Alaska. I thought I might defy conventional wisdom and have a chance at hauling in this monster. But I soon realized that I would break my rod if I tried to net it. I needed my eight weight to have a fighting chance.
Sure, you only need one rod. But there are times when you really do need to go a size up or down to get either distance or delicacy — not to mention the strength you need to haul in one of the big ones.
You don’t need to worry about breakage when your rod has a generous replacement policy
My two Orvis rods have 25-year guarantees. Orvis “will repair or replace it no matter what the reason. . . . Step on it, close the door on it, run over it with the car-it doesn’t matter, we’ll fix it.”
This is no lie. I’ve had my two rods fixed twice and replaced once. I stepped on one in the dark and broke a tip off of it a couple years later. Orvis even replaced another rod after I dropped the tip section in the Owyhee River and it drifted away!
My Winston rod has a lifetime guarantee, although it does not cover “lost rod sections, intentional breakage, misuse,” etc. But when accidents happen, you don’t have to kiss your $800 investment goodbye.
No need to worry, right?
Not so fast. You will be without your rod for a few weeks. Also, there is some money out of pocket. With Orvis, there is “a nominal handling charge,” which is now $60.
And you really should take care of your fly rod even if the manufacturer has a generous replacement policy. But then again, slamming your car door on it is not the end of the world when sixty bucks gets the world back to spinning happily on its axis.
Fly fishing with streamers is no doubt the single best way to catch bigger fish. For the fly fisher just starting out, slinging bigger flies requires some adjustments. Fly fishing with streamers may mean a bigger rod and it definitely means making adjustments in leader size. In this episode, we discuss some of the basics of streamers.
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
For those of you who are experts in streamer fishing, what would you add? Any additional techniques?
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Fly fishing wit and wisdom – you need both to truly enjoy the sport. If you’re planning on fly fishing in the western United States, do yourself a favor and find a copy of Bud Lilly’s Guide to Fly Fishing the New West. Read it. Then read it again.
This volume, co-authored with Paul Schullery, was published in 2000. But it’s still relevant a decade and a half into the new millennium. You’ll want to read and re-read it for two reasons: its wit and wisdom. Lilly’s dry sense of humor and his story-telling skills will keep you entertained.
But he will teach you a lot about fly fishing in the land where the buffalo once roamed and the deer and the antelope still play. Here is a sample of what Lilly has to offer.
Time of Day
Lilly says that the cool nights in the west mean you do not have to get up as early to fish as you do when you’re fishing lower-elevation waters on either coast. Nor can you count on the evening rise when fishing the big rivers in the western mountain valleys.
Lilly writes: “Over the years, lots of my clients said ‘We really want to get the best fishing of the day, and so we’ll meet you here at the shop at 6:00 tomorrow morning.’ And I’d say, ‘Well fine, I’ll put the coffee on tonight, and I’ll be over about 8:00.’ It’s just too cold at the hour for much to be happening. Only in the hottest dog days of August do you have an advantage in fishing really early and late.”
Streamers
Bud Lilly is a big fan of streamers. Large streamers. He fishes them any time of year and argues they give you the best chance to catch really large trout.
Lilly writes: “A study a few years ago in Yellowstone Park showed that large cutthroat trout tended to prey most heavily on fish that were 25-30 percent of their size. Twenty-inch trout commonly ate chubs of five or six inches.”
Rain
According to Lilly, rain can be your friend: “Many times a nice rain in the middle of the day has brought a stream to life for me or my clients. It can drop the water temperature just enough to cool the water and trigger a hatch or get the fish into a more active mood. A hard enough cloudburst can loosen bank materials, including worms and insects, also getting fish out on the prowl.”
I’ve experienced this myself. Recently, a ten-minute rain shower on the Boulder River (south of Big Timber, Montana) brought a sleepy run to life. I landed two sixteen inch rainbows on back-to-back casts in the same run where nothing was happening before it rained.
But let the fly fisher beware: “No hatch is good enough for you to risk waving a nine-foot graphite rod around during a lightning storm.”
Sunk Hoppers
If my hopper gets waterlogged and sinks, I tend to pull it out and dry it.
However, Lilly challenges that practice: “If your hopper sinks, don’t immediately yank it out of the water; hoppers drown, and fish take them just as avidly then. The fish are often looking for the drowned ones.”
Relax
Understandably, you’ll want to make the most of your fly fishing trip to the west. It might be the trip of a lifetime.
So listen close to this next pearl of wisdom from Bud Lilly: “If I could offer the visiting fisherman only one piece of advice it would be this: relax. You’re out here to have fun. You wouldn’t fish 16 hours a day back home, and you don’t have to do it here.”
By the way, if you don’t heed Lilly’s advice, he won’t be offended. He readily admits: “There are lots of ways to catch a trout. Maybe that’s why there are so many experts.”
The Yellowstone River closure late last month confirmed once again how fragile our rivers are. In one week, about 4,000 fish (mostly whitefish) died due to a parasite. Some sections that were closed have been reopened, but jury is still out on the source of the parasite. In this episode, we tell our stories of the rivers we love and how the Yellowstone River closure makes us appreciate each moment on the river.
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What rivers hold a special place for you? How do the lessons the Yellowstone River closure apply to the rivers you fish?
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I retired in my late thirties. I left a job with no upward mobility and started a business. I told myself, “Retirement is doing what I want to do.” It was harder than I ever imagined. About the time I gave notice to the company, my wife told me she was pregnant with our third child. Since then, we added a fourth.
And no, I am not on a trust fund.
The first three years was a white-knuckling affair. It took about a thousand days before I knew whether the business was viable. More than 20 years later, I’m still retired (working 60-hour weeks).
Part of my retirement plan was fly fishing. I decided that I didn’t want to wait until that magical day at 65 (or, now, 68 or 70). I wanted to fly fish and work, not fly fish after I stop working. I’ve had to debunk several fly fishing retirement myths in my mind as I’ve struggled to sustain a small business and integrate fly fishing into my schedule:
“I am not going to die.”
Up until my 40s, I was blinded by the thick veil of permanence. I thought I’d live forever. Now that a few of my friends are gone, the veil is slowly lifting. I’ve also been involved in two car crashes, both of which could have taken my life. In one, I was hit from behind by a semi-tractor trailer (the big kind).
Maybe there is no other way to escape this world other than by dying.
No one says this out loud, of course, but we often live as if we have forever to do what we love. We don’t.
“I will be healthy enough to fly fish when I retire.”
Maybe. Depends somewhat on my genes (my grandmother lived until she was 103); my father and mother are now in their mid-eighties. And somewhat on my eating and exercise habits. Oh, no!
No matter what, though, you won’t be able to wade as deep when you’re 65 as you could when you were 35. For sure. You won’t be able to scramble up the steep incline that takes you to the best fly fishing run. You won’t want to hike four miles to fish for cutthroat for three hours and then turn around and head back down the mountain before dark.
You just won’t. I know you’re a great athlete (in your mind), but your days are numbered. This is one of the most pernicious fly fishing retirement myths, simply because we all assume good health.
“I will, finally, have more money to fly fish.”
No. All the research indicates that Americans will be working longer than they expect. So if you have no money now to fly fish, most likely you’ll have no money to fly fish at retirement.
Figure out a way to create a line item for fly fishing (along with college tuition savings).
“I will have more time.”
Another big no. I don’t know a single person who is retired after a life of work and who sits at home watching Fox News or ESPN all day every day. There may be few folks like that, but most I know seem to be as busy as they were before. This is another of the fly fishing retirement myths.
If you have no time to fly fish now, most likely you won’t make time for it after you retire. Make time to fly fish now. Retire now. That doesn’t mean quitting your job. It means doing what you love.
And since fly fishing is what I love, I am fully retired.
Fly fishing gear is like candy. Or better than candy. There’s no joy like the permission one gives himself or herself to buy a new fly rod or reel, or purchase a new pair of waders. Click now to listen to “Fly Fishing Gear We Use.” In this episode, we discuss our fly rods, waders, vests, and nets.
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What fly fishing gear do you recommend? What have you found works best for the rivers you fish?
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Recently, it occurred to me that fly fishing has taught me a few life lessons. That shouldn’t surprise me, I suppose. But because I pursue fly fishing for the love and joy of it, I guess I had overlooked its lessons. Here are five life lessons I’ve learned over four decades of fly fishing.
1. You have to schedule time for what you love most.
I always thought I’d have to guard against fly fishing too much when I became an adult.
To my surprise, I found that I had to guard against not fly fishing enough. There are always meetings, chores, and scheduling conflicts that crowd out my time on the river. So I have to be intentional to make myself do what I love. That’s the way it is with life. It keeps you so busy with the day-to-day responsibilities of life that you have to make time for the people and pursuits you love most.
2. You only get lucky when you work hard.
Do you ever drool over the Facebook photos of friends cradling a monster rainbow trout?
Those lucky dogs, you think.
But they are lucky because they’ve made time to get out on the river, because they’ve taken “one more cast,” and because they’ve done their homework (which flies to use). Show me a “lucky” fly fisher, and I’ll show you a persistent, hardworking fly fisher. Luck is a result of hard work. That’s true with everything from product development to real estate sales to getting published.
3. Skill is most often made, not born.
Yes, some people have a knack for fly fishing. They remind me of my younger brother, Kevin, who got up on water skis on his first attempt — while the boat was still idling!
But there is no substitute for skill development. Read. Listen. Observe. Practice. Practice again. And again. Skill will only take you so far in fly fishing — and in basketball, in marketing, in web design, and in dentistry.
4. Don’t be afraid to ask for help.
This is an especially hard lesson for the male species.
I once spent fifteen minutes looking for powdered sugar in a grocery store because I didn’t feel like asking a sales associate for help. But after years of picking the brains of folks behind the counter in a fly shop or fly fishing guides or friends who practice the craft with more skill than I do, I finally figured out that it’s less painful to ask for help than it is to keep bumbling along while making no progress.
Thanks to my fly fishing experiences, I’m more likely to ask for help with software, building a deck, and even locating the aisle with powdered sugar.
5. There is always someone better than you.
If you’re obsessed with being the best, you’re going to be a frustrated fly fisher. Or a frustrated basketball player. Or a frustrated heart surgeon. Or a frustrated writer.
Some folks operate on a different level. My brother, Dave, is like that. He has regularly out-fished me at a pace of about two fish for every one I catch. That has been the case ever since I was six and he was four. Once I made peace with that, it was a whole lot more enjoyable for me and everyone else around me. I can now take joy in the success of others, as well as in my own.
The tag line of our podcast says it all: “for the love of fly fishing.” Yes, that’s why I fly fish. I love it, and it brings me joy. But it’s taught me a lot about life, too. I’m grateful for that, and so are the others in my life.
Fall fly fishing – is there a better time of year to fish? The crowds are thinner. Many summer fly fishers replace their fly rods with bows, shotguns, and rifles. They become hunters. Yea! Fall fly fishing promises warm days and cool nights. Listen to Fall Fly Fishing now and expect great things this fall!
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Where are you planning to go for fall fly fishing? What do you love most about fly fishing in the fall?
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A killer was on the loose near one of my favorite stretches of the Yellowstone River. Its name is Ursus arctos horribilis. Every time I venture into the back country in Yellowstone National Park to fly fish the ‘Stone (below), I ready my hand to swipe the trigger guard off the bear spray holstered at my side. I’ve even practiced aiming from the hip; I might not have time to pull the canister from its holster if faced with a charging grizzly.
Recently, however, there was another killer on the loose in the Yellowstone River. It too has a Latin name.
But you won’t see it lumbering alongside the river. Even if you’re a few feet or a few inches away, you still won’t see it. The name of this killer is Tetracalsula bryosalmonae. It is a microscopic parasite that causes kidney disease in fish. Within a week, it recently wiped out 4000 fish (whitefish and trout). Apparently, it poses no health threat to other animals or to human beings.
The situation was so serious that the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks (FWP) closed a 183-mile stretch of the ‘Stone from the northern border of Yellowstone National Park near Gardiner, Montana, to the city of Laurel, Montana.
Parasite with a Vengeance
First discovered in Europe, the parasite was detected in some Idaho fish hatcheries as early as 1980. But it wasn’t until 2012 that the parasite was found in the Upper Snake River. Now it has attacked fish in the Yellowstone River with a vengeance.
Fisheries experts do not know if the parasite transferred via a human being or an animal. FWP biologists will study the situation and determine a strategy for managing and containing the parasite. Damage control is a more likely outcome than is eradication.
In the meantime, I am reminded of the importance of cleaning and drying our waders and boots before moving from one river to another. If you’re new to fly fishing, here are a few suggestions.
Use a garden hose and vegetable brush to remove mud.
Let the sun and heat dry out your waders.
Don’t forget to turn up the gravel guards during the drying process to dry the underside of your waders.
Use a blow dryer on felt soles and inside your wading boot.
Felt can hold moisture for a few days. Experts often recommend waiting between five to seven days before using a pair of boots with felt soles on another river. A few minutes with a blow dryer can, obviously, speed up the drying process.
Perhaps the move away from felt soles — which began five years ago but lost some steam – will emerge again. Maybe conscientious anglers will buy multiple pairs of boots, keeping a set for the Yellowstone, a set for the Madison, and so on. It’s too early to tell. Hopefully, biologists will figure out some strategies for anglers and other outdoor recreationists to avoid transporting the parasite.
Let’s do our best to pay attention to the problem and search for the best counter measures.
Fly fishing etiquette – yes, there is such a thing. There are unwritten rules about how a fly fisher should behave while on the river. Listen now to our podcast on fly fishing etiquette and how the community views such things as bringing along your dog to fly fish and how to create space for the next fly fisher on the river.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What have we missed? What other rules of fly fishing etiquette should make the list. Please post your ideas below.
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Fly fishing hacks – they are legion. In this short post I offer seven. A few years ago, I was struggling to thread a tiny (6x) tippet through the tiny eye of a tiny (#20) dry fly. My fly fishing friend — and I honestly can’t remember which friend— said, “Here’s a little trick I’ve learned. Use the river as a backdrop. This makes it a lot easier to see what you’re doing.” Presto! I had tried using the sky, the green grass, and even a light-colored branch as a backdrop. I had not considered the river.
It worked, and it’s been life-changing. Okay, it has not been life-changing. But it has certainly made it easier to tie tiny tippets to tiny flies.
Here are a few other fly fishing hacks I’ve learned over the years that have made my time on the river bit easier or a bit more effective:
Use a candle to wax your rod ferules
This prevents the end-of-the-day frustration of having sections of your rod stuck together. When this happens, the danger of breaking your rod increases as you try to pull it apart.
Keep a piece of carpet handy to stand on when you put on your waders
Make sure you always have a small piece in the back of your vehicle. It’s more comfortable to step on carpet instead of gravel when you are standing on the stocking feet of your waders. It’s even more helpful when there is mud or snow on the ground.
Wet your leader knots before you tighten them
If you don’t do this, you risk weakening the knot you’ve tied. When you pull it tight, the friction causes heat, which weakens monofilament. Yes, a little bit of saliva might be the difference between landing an 18-inch rainbow and losing it.
Stand at the river’s edge for a minute before you cast or set foot in it
Okay, this might not be so much a fly fishing hack as it is common sense. There might be a feeding fish right in front of you. Or, you might spot one feeding at a place you did not intend to fish.
On bigger rivers, take the time to fly fish up from where people take out
Fly fishers in a drift boat will often ignore the final hundred yards before they get out. They have rods to put away and gear to stow. So fish upstream to see if there is a run or two which has not been fished.
Use a larger dry fly as a strike indicator for a tiny dry fly
Do you have difficulty seeing size #20 PMD or BWO pattern?
Join the club.
One remedy is to carry a pair of binoculars. Just kidding. What works great is to tie on a larger fly first—something you can see like a size 12 or 14 tan elk hair caddis or Royal Trude (which has a tuft of white in it). Then, tie on about 10-12 inches of tippet and then the fly you’re going to fish. When the larger fly takes a nose dive into the water, you have a strike.
When fighting fish, pull them from side to side rather than up
Pulling fish to the side makes them use muscles which will tire them more quickly. This enables you to release them before they are too tired and stressed out to recover easily.
Colorado fly fishing is legendary. It takes a little more effort to get away from the crowds in Colorado than, say, Montana, but Colorado fly fishing is amazing. We took separate trips to Colorado this summer, and in this episode we tell stories of catching cutthroat trout at 12,000 feet, and brookies and browns in Rocky Mountain National Park.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Post a story from your most recent fly fishing trip. Where did you go? What was your best memory? What did you learn?
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You’re standing at the river’s edge. The guys or gals at the fly shop have said that the dry fly fishing has been fabulous. So you’ve tied on the size #14 elk hair caddis they recommended. But where should you cast your fly?
If you are new to fly fishing, here are the best spots to cast your dry fly:
Where the trout are rising
This tip is not meant to insult your intelligence.
Rather, it reflects how easy it is to miss rising fish. Sure, the ones that jump halfway out of the water are obvious. But the largest trout often make the smallest ripple. Their snouts barely break the surface.
Spend a minute or two scanning the surface for the subtle rises that are easy to miss.
Where you are about to wade
Fly fishing legend Gary Borger says, “Fish it before you wade it.”
This is good advice. The trout are not always where you think they should be. The best spot might be the water through which you need to wade to get to the next best spot.
Where the drift boats fish
Fly fishers in drift boats do not cast to the middle of the river.
They typically cast to the banks — right where you are standing. If you’re fishing a large river, think of the first eight to ten feet from the bank as a small stream. You probably don’t need to make a twenty-yard cast. You’ve hit the jackpot if you see deeper water along the bank. This is where trout find shelter from predators and easy access to food.
The head of a pool or run
This is where fast moving water (a riffle) rushes into a slower, deeper section of current.
Sometimes, the riffle empties into a pool. I remember an afternoon on the Yellowstone River south of Livingston, Montana where I fished nothing but a riffle. That’s where the rainbows were feeding on blue-winged olives.
In the foam line of a run
Sometimes, the trout are below the riffle in the current itself. These runs can be short or long. Watch for a moving foam and bubbles. This is the food line! I especially rely on the foam line when fishing in slower moving rivers like the East Gallatin in Montana or the Owyhee in eastern Oregon.
The shallow water at the side or the tail end of run
You won’t always find trout in these places, because they offer minimal protection from predators.
But these are great feeding spots for trout when the insect hatches are in full force. Often, the more gentle side of a “seam” (the imaginary dividing line between fast moving current and slow water) is a great place to cast a dry fly. Trout will sip flies there, knowing they can quickly retreat to a riffle if they see the shadow of a bird swooping down on them.
Near a rock
Some rivers – or stretches of rivers — do not have pronounced runs.
Rather, they have a steady flow and depth from one bank to another. If this is the case, look for big rocks. I’ve caught trout in front of, behind, and beside big rocks. Some of these rocks stick above the surface, others do not. One of my favorite stretches on the Gallatin River south of Big Sky, Montana, works like this.
When I find a decent-sized rock, I know I’ll find trout.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
How have you made time to fly fish? If you don’t live nearby blue-ribbon trout streams, how often do you get out? How many days do you fish a year?
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My point in the post was that if you’ve already had a great day catching trout and you’re expected home at a reasonable time (a time determined in consultation with your spouse and/or children), then peel yourself away from the river. Head home. There’s no reason to be greedy and fish until dark to catch a few more.
However, you need to resist the urge to quit before “dark thirty” if the best fishing of the day typically occurs when the sun goes down and darkness prevails.
A few days ago, I fly fished with my son, Luke, and my brother, Dave, on the Big Thompson River in Rocky Mountain National Park. Unfortunately, my flight to Denver was delayed, so we could not start fishing the first day until 7:00 p.m.
I figured we’d stop about 8:15 p.m. as the darkness began to settle in and head to the town of Estes Park to eat. But the brown trout in the Big Thompson convinced us otherwise. At about 8:15 p.m., they started rising. My brother Dave (pictured above) suggested that we keep fishing. Luke insisted on it. So we ended up fishing until 9:00 p.m. — well after dark. We caught trout after trout on a size #18 parachute Adams. Luke used a size #18 tan elk hair caddis with a black body and out-fished us all. We went back two more evenings, fished from 8:15 to 9:00 p.m., and caught quite a few nice-sized browns.
This experience provided some good reminders and a few lessons.
1. Browns like to feed in darkness.
This is common knowledge, but a good reminder: Brown trout come to life when the day is dying in the west.
Recently, I talked to the guides at the Old Au Sable Fly Shop in Grayling, Michigan, about booking a trip. They told me that their “day trips” in June and early July start at about 7:00 p.m. Then, they fish until midnight. That’s when the big browns come of their lairs to feed on the surface.
2. The white post on a tiny parachute Adams makes it stand out even in low light
If you’re afraid of not being able to see these tiny (size #18 or #20) flies, don’t be. You can see the white post easily enough as long as there is a little bit of light in the sky. The tan wing of an elk hair caddis is easy to spot too in waning light.
3. Assume that any rise in the vicinity of your fly is a strike.
Even after it was too dark to spot our flies as the floated down the current, we caught brown after brown simply by setting the hook any time we saw a fish rise where we thought our fly might be. I don’t have the scientific data to prove it, but I think we had fish on about three-quarters of the time we guessed and set the hook.
4. Go with shorter casts.
For one thing, it’s easier to see your fly and to control your line as the darkness takes over. Also, it will keep you from snagging a rock or a branch on the other side of the bank. The last thing you want to do is to tie a tiny fly onto your teeny tippet when it’s dark.
5. A flashlight can save the day, er, the night.
Some fly fishers will not have the common sense to practice my previous point. Uh, that would be me.
I saw a fish rise about an inch from the opposite bank. There was a branch a few inches above it, but I couldn’t resist. Unfortunately, I snagged my fly on the branch and ended up losing it. Trying to thread a 6x tippet through the eyelet of a size #18 hook was nearly impossible. Neither the river nor the sky provided enough backlight.
Thankfully, the flashlight on my cell phone saved the night! It was a clumsy process, but I tied on a new fly in the darkness and ended up catching two more nice browns before we quit.
6. You can’t fish at night (or in the day time) if you forget your fly reel.
Yes, on our second night, I left my reel in another small pack I had used earlier in the day when we hiked to a high mountain lake. So I was relegated to spectator status. My fly fishing companions mumbled something about giving me a turn to use their fly rods if the fishing was good. But I guess it was too dark for them to see that they were catching a lot of trout. Or perhaps they thought it was too dark to risk transferring their fly rods from their hand to mine.
Time to fly fish is a snap if you’re living in the American West or near some great streams. And if you have no other responsibilities in life. If you are not a fly fishing professional (and we’re not), you probably have a job. You may have a spouse. You may have kids. If so, then it’s not a slam dunk to find time to fly fish at will. In “Time to Fly Fish Amid the Busyness of Life,” we discuss the challenges of getting out on the river in the various stretches of life. And we provide some practical ways to focus your time.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
How have you made time to fly fish? If you don’t live nearby blue-ribbon trout streams, how often do you get out? How many days do you fish a year?
Other Articles and Podcasts on the Topic of “Time to Fly Fish”
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We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
Once in a while, my podcast partner, Dave, says something profound. A few years ago, he made this observation over lunch: “You cannot fully experience a present moment; but when you think back on it you experience the moment in full.”
That’s as true about your fly fishing adventures as it is about any other life experience. I spend a lot of time on the Yellowstone and Madison Rivers in my mind, experiencing some tremendous fly fishing days to the full.
The problem is, the details of past experiences fade with time. They also blur together in your mind.
Was that day when the snow turned into rain and the rainbows went into a feeding frenzy in April or September?
Did I catch them on a size #18 parachute Adams, or did I have to use a size #20?
Did it happen on the East Gallatin River or on the main Gallatin?
How many rainbows did I land that afternoon?
One solution is to keep track of your fly fishing adventures. Here are a three simple ideas that may help you do this. I list them from less ambitious to more ambitious.
1. Take plenty of photos
This is the easiest way to keep a record, and thanks to smart phones, you can now take photos or videos and post them to Instagram or YouTube. It’s also the most vivid record you can keep. The cliche is true: a picture is worth a thousand words.
Make sure to carry a Ziploc plastic bag to keep your cell phone dry. Make sure, too, that you take pictures of more than the fish you catch. Take photos of the landscape, the best runs you fish, and the grace (or clumsiness) of the casts that your fly fishing partner makes.
2. Keep a fly fishing journal
Sometimes, though, a word is worth a thousand pictures. So consider a fly fishing journal. Buy a cheap notebook or a moleskin notebook that you can throw into your fly fishing bag. Or, simply devote a Microsoft Word file (or Evernote or OneNote or …) to your fly fishing adventures. You can be as literary or as clinical as you want to be. Fly fishers may simply want to record the basics:
How many fish I caught,
What patterns and their sizes I used, and
What the weather was like.
Or, you may want to write a more elaborate, literary account of your trip. That’s especially true if you are a writer. I don’t mean a published author. I mean a writer. There is a big difference. A writer-friend of mine in northwest Montana recently tweeted: “You write because there’s fire in your bones. You’ve got to do this whether anybody ever reads it or not.”
If you feel the urge, write about your fly fishing adventures. It’s a great way to re-live them.
3. Create a blog or a Facebook page
This is not for everybody. But a blog or a Facebook page devoted to your fly fishing adventures will allow you to organize your data — photos and writing — and even to share it with others.
Several of our “2 Guys” listeners and readers have shared their webs sites with us, and we have both enjoyed perusing their photos and the articles. Dave and I keep talking about how much we learn from the guides at the fly shops we visit. But we’re also learning a lot from the blogs that some of you maintain. If you’re doing this, keep up the good work. If you’re interested in trying this, go for it. If it’s not for you, you’ll know soon enough.
Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, and Instagram are free, of course, and many hosted blogs like Word Press are also free.
I’m glad I kept a journal.
Now I can go back and get enough details to jog my memory and spend some time in my mind on the East Gallatin River on that September day when I caught a half dozen 16-inch rainbows out of one run. The rainbows went into a feeding frenzy on blue winged olives, and I caught them on a size #18 parachute Adams.
I’m also glad I remembered Dave’s observation about what it means to live in the moment. I found it in my journal as I was looking for the journal entry about that day on the East Gallatin when the snow turned into rain.
Fly fishing made simple is big promise. If you’re just starting out, learning how to cast, read water, and grasp a modicum of entomology can feel overwhelming. We’ve wanted to publish an episode on keeping fly fishing simple, and a recent post by a listener pushed us to make it happen. In this episode, we discuss fly fishing made simple by identifying four ways to reduce its complexity and help you enjoy the sport.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
How have you kept fly fishing simple – and enjoyable? Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
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Like most fly fishers, I frequently find usable flies along the river’s edge. I spot most of them dangling from leaders wrapped around tree branches. A few are stuck in the tree branches themselves. Years of finding fly after fly along the river’s edge have provided me with a few fly fishing secrets.
Rather than turn these into a best-selling book and making a million bucks, I now share them with you in hopes these deep truths will improve your fly fishing experience:
1. Tree branches are the earth’s strongest magnetic force.
For years, I thought I was simply careless and not paying enough attention. “Rookie mistake,” I thought, after yet another errant back cast. But after seeing so many leaders wrapped around branches, it dawned on me that tree branches must have a Magnetic Force.
I am in need of a technology to de-magnetize my flies.
2. The Beadhead Prince Nymph is the fisher’s secret weapon.
Three out of every four flies I find at the river’s edge are Beadhead Prince Nymphs.
I can conclude only that this is the most superior pattern to use and perhaps the only one I will ever need. At first, I wondered if this was a reasonable conclusion. Why trust the fly selection of a slacker who loses his fly in a Ponderosa Pine?
But then I remembered the Magnetic Force. The fly fishers who lost these flies were likely skilled, knowledgeable veterans who simply underestimated the dark Magnetic Force of the branches behind them.
3. Buying or tying flies is a waste of time.
No more twenty dollar bills devoted to buying a dozen flies! No more money spent on dubbing material, hooks, beadheads, biots, peacock herl, head cement, the latest vise, and a host of other gadgets.
Now I’m saving so much cash that I’m planning on buying another high end fly rod.
The only downside is that I spend more time inspecting tree branches than I do fly fishing. Hopefully, that will change as I build up my supply. But I keep losing these flies that I find due to those darn magnetic tree branches. I may have to invest a metal detector to locate lost flies before I buy another fly rod.
Oh yes, there is another downside to my decision to stop buying flies and using only what I find at the river’s edge.
Three-fourths of the flies in my box are now beadhead prince nymphs. They work great, but at times I long for a caddis fly — particularly when fishing the Mother’s Day Caddis hatch on the Yellowstone River in Montana. I lost my last caddis fly pattern a couple years ago. Actually, I found one earlier this year, but I lost it a week later. It’s lodged somewhere on a magnetic branch.
I wish all those fly fishers using beadhead prince nymphs would switch to caddis flies for awhile.
Montana’s Madison River is one of our favorite western rivers. There’s both the Upper Madison River and the Lower Madison River, two distinct sections. In this episode, we go into story-telling mode, narrating a terrific day of fishing while floating the Lower Madison in late summer.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
Do you have a great memory of a day on the river? We’d love to hear about it! Post your story in the comments section.
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Are you as confused as I am? In this post, I provide four questions to help you sort through the brand confusion when purchasing your next pair of waders.
I recently Googled the word “waders.” Sponsored ads from Cabela’s appeared at the top of the page with Hodgman waders for $14.99.
Seriously. Waders for $14.99.
I should have Googled “fly fishing waders.”
So I did.
More Cabela’s waders and a few others. The lowest price in this next set of ads was $59.99 (another pair from Cabela’s) and the most expensive was a pair from Orvis ($169).
I refreshed my browser and another pair from Orvis for $398 appeared.
Fly Fishing Waders Galore
A few days later I was trolling for gear and hit upon the Simms web site. I clicked on the “waders” link, and this is what I pulled up:
My head was spinning. And that’s not even the entire list of brands. (I apologize for all those I missed.)
How does an average fly fisher make a rational decision about which pair of waders to purchase?
My (Former) Approach to Decision-Making
Here’s how I purchased my current pair of waders.
I was on a fly fishing trip to Montana with Steve, my podcast partner.
It was springtime. And my aging waders sprung a leak. I got cold while standing in the Madison River, with snow and gusts of 20 mph wind.
We decided to fish the Yellowstone the next day.
On the way over to Paradise Valley, we stopped in Livingston, Montana, and I walked into the Dan Bailey fly shop on the main drag through town.
I said to the sales person, “I need a pair of waders.”
“Here’s a pair of Dan Bailey waders on sale.”
“Are they good waders?”
“Yes they are.”
“Okay, I’ll take them.”
I paid about $250 or so, plus or minus. And walked out with new waders.
(Note: I had these waders for almost ten years. I recently purchased a pair of Ultralight waders from Orvis for around $298.)
My Randomness Is Not a Strategy
Am I a shill for Dan Bailey or Orvis waders? Absolutely not.
Is Dan Bailey or Orvis sponsoring our podcast or blog? No. (This is a question that you should ask of every writer who mentions a brand in a post.)
My point has three parts:
1. I made a random, arbitrary decision with the durability of my Dan Bailey waders.
2. I probably got lucky.
3. The unending options of fly fishing waders confuses me about which to purchase next.
Am I saying you should be as random as I was?
Of course not.
4 Questions to Select the Right Waders
So here are four questions that I think you should consider:
1. How many days a year do I fly fish?
Steve and I calculated that we fish between 10 and 20 days a year. That’s not as many as we would like. But we live with 10 million of our closest friends in the Chicago area. We both lived in the West before moving to Chicago, but now it takes a bit more thought and effort to get out on the rivers.
If you are a newbie fly fisher and plan to fish only once or twice while on a summer vacation, you do not need waders, unless you are fishing in an area with lots of ticks. I rarely wear waders in the summertime, except if I’m in rattlesnake country. I wear my wading boots and wading socks, or a pair of wading sandals, and dri-fit shorts or pants.
If you fly fish fewer days a year than Steve and I do, then I would recommend a middle-of-the-road, workhorse brand of waders.
If you fly fish 40 or more days a year or are a professional guide – by all means – purchase the “best,” however you define the word. My guess is you own multiple pairs of fly fishing waders.
2. Will this be my only pair of waders?
I generally keep only one pair of waders in play. I keep it simple. I don’t use wading pants, though I do own a pair of waist waders. I often will use them in winter when I know I won’t be wading with the exception of crossing small spring creeks here and there.
Obviously, I’m not a fly fishing professional. Nor do I fly fish 40 days a year or more.
If you fly fish quite a few days in late fall, winter, and early spring, you may want to purchase a pair of insulated waders. However, I fish maybe two or three days a year in freezing temps, and if I wear layers under my breathable waders, I am fine (though you need to remember I grew up in North Dakota, so cold is my friend!)
Another consideration is the depth and speed of the river. If you are fly fishing shallow creeks in the summer, you definitely don’t need waders.
3. How brand conscious am I?
I am tend to be brand agnostic. At least when it comes to fly fishing waders.
With fly rods and wading boots – I am more persnickety. A fly rod affects how I cast. And wading boots could save my life.
But waders?
Some of you may need to look good on the water. You need to wear the most expensive brand because of how doing so makes you feel about yourself.
Bully for you. Buy. And be blessed. A $700 pair of waders may make perfect sense in your mind, even if you fly fish only once every couple years.
4. What is my budget?
With waders, I tend to be budget conscious, and, as I mentioned, brand agnostic.
I’d rather save a couple hundred bucks and add that to one more fly fishing trip this calendar year. I don’t have unlimited money for fly fishing. I also hunt upland game and waterfowl in North Dakota every fall with my extended family, so fly fishing doesn’t get all my resources for the outdoors.
I paid $298 for my recent pair of Orvis Ultralight waders. I made a conscious decision not to purchase a discount brand. I’ve been down that road, and the saying that you pay for cheap three times is pretty much gospel.
Instead, I try to see value – a durable pair of waders at a reasonable price.
I don’t need my waders to have the latest technology or include wi-fi or sing “You are so beautiful” to me. And since no fly fishing catalog will likely be asking me to model outdoor clothing anytime soon, I simply need the waders to be up for the kind of rugged fishing I do. Yes, the fly zipper would be nice, but I couldn’t justify the extra $200 or so for the convenience.
Waders should last me five to seven years, given how hard I use them and my number of days on the water.
One last comment: I definitely recommend purchasing stockingfoot waders (not waders with boots). That means you’ll need to purchase wading boots, a topic for another time.
The wild places are not a kind and gentle world where Bambi lives in perfect harmony with nature. One reason I love fishing in the America West is that I often come face to face with fly fishing’s wild side.
I grew up on the windy and barren plains of the Dakotas, lived in the West during much of my twenties, and then settled in the Chicago suburbs to raise a family.
So much of how my suburb is organized paints over the harsher reality of the true nature of life. Fly fishing gets me into the outdoors where I encounter a different reality.
In the suburbs, my 15-year-old can’t shoot his bow or pellet gun in our backyard. He can’t take out the raccoon in our attic or the skunk under our deck. The neighbors might see him and call the police.
Instead, we must call “wildlife control” and pay $200 to solve our wildlife problem. I love fly fishing because it takes me back to what I remember growing up in the wilder places of America. A recent fly fishing trip reminded me how the cycle of life actually works.
Mama’s Not Happy
Last summer, Steve, another friend, and I were fly fishing on a remote Montana stream. We divided up among us about a half mile of the creek: Steve went upstream, and the other friend and I headed downstream.
A half hour into the day, while I was kneeling on the bank to tie on a fly, a duck burst out of the brush beside me, complaining loudly as she flew away. I thought the duck was mad at me. I suspected she had a nest nearby. After swallowing hard to get my heart back into my chest, I went back to the tedious task at hand. I wasn’t catching anything on a hopper. I decided to switch to nymphs.
A minute or so later, I heard some rustling behind me. I turned to see a mink dragging a baby duck backwards into the brush. The duck looked to be a couple months old and almost the same size as the mink. The mink had the little one by the neck, the duckling’s wings still flapping as it died.
The mink had raided the nest. I wondered if my sudden presence on the stream a few moments earlier had distracted Mama Duck, and the mink took advantage by stealing her young one.
Mother’s Darker Side
The picture above is up close with the mink and the duck. I wish the photo had turned out better. I was a bit rattled. I should have tried the video, but didn’t think to do so. The lighting against the bush was poor, and the mink kept backing up farther and farther into the brush.
The mink was less than five feet away when I first turned around.
It appeared unafraid, fiercely determined not to let go of brunch.
I fumbled to click a picture, followed the mink as it backed up into the brush behind me, slowly. Belligerent, it refused to let go of the baby duck and escape, even though I had an iPhone in its face.
It was one of the great moments of fly fishing in one of the most gorgeous remote valleys of Montana. The enounter was a bracing reminder that Mother Nature is not at all benevolent, not all love and cuddles, something I can easily forget living the good life in my Chicago suburb. Mother Nature is no a protector of wildlife. In fact Mother Nature is not really like a mother at all.
At least not like my mother.
I love the offbeat lessons of life from fly fishing. The sport adds color to my white-picket-fence view of the world.
The successful fly fisher – what does success really mean? At minimum, success requires a persistence to stay at it during the slow and frustrating days. Like any pursuit, fly fishing demands a certain mindset of those committed to the sport for the long haul. In this fifth episode of Season 2, we identify the five mindsets of the successful fly fisher.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
What mindset did we miss? Which mindset helps you catch the most fish?
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I love fishing beneath the surface of the river because of the challenge. It’s an ongoing set of problems to solve. Here are nymph fishing’s seven nagging questions for those who are still slinging nymphs with a strike indicator.
Do I have enough weight?
Maybe.
Often fishers will add split shot above their top fly. The purpose is to get the nymph down to where it belongs – rolling along the bottom of the run.
The more weight, of course, the more tricky it is to sling your fly.
How much weight to use is a judgment call. I use a couple split shot to start – and add or subtract based on what is happening in real time.
Of course, if you are using the technique called “euro nymphing,” then you are not as worried about weight. Your nymphs are weighted and meant to sink to the bottom of the run. You do not have split shot above your flies.
Is my top fly at the right depth?
Probably not.
If you are quickly moving from run to run, then most likely each run is different in degree from the previous one. Plus, each run moves at varying speeds as your flies move up and down the water column.
I make continual adjustments to my strike indicator when I’m at work on the river. That means moving it up or down, depending on whether I’m getting snagged.
If I never snag on the bottom, then I need to move the strike indicator up some, thereby forcing my top fly down to the bottom of the run.
Should I use a dropper or trailer fly?
Maybe.
If you’re just starting out, I’d recommend getting comfortable fishing with a single fly. Some folks fish with three flies. I generally use two. There are a couple ways to tie on multiple flies. Find one that works for you.
Am I mending well enough?
No. This is the chronic challenge of fishing nymphs. Keep at it!
Is the twitch a strike?
Yes.
Newbie fly fishers tend to be slow to strike (or “set the hook”) when the strike indicator twitches or dips below the surface. So are veteran fly fishers.
Should I change my fly?
Wait.
Work on your mend. Pay attention to the depth of your flies. Move to the next run.
Okay, now you can change your flies.
What should I change to?
Is there a hatch on? If so, then try an emerger. Then try a slightly different color emerger (if you have one).
Other options: Go smaller. If you’re fishing a #14 beadhead pheasant tail, drop to a size #16.
Our top nymph and wet fly patterns are probably not the same as yours. Every fly fisher has an opinion. Each river is unique. Yet there remain some common attractor nymph and wet fly patterns that seem to work when there is no obvious hatch in play. In this week’s episode, Our Top Nymph and Wet Fly Patterns, we each offer our five favorites. There is lots of overlap, but a few surprises as well.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
What are your top nymph and wet fly attractor patterns? And why?
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Here is a riddle: what is big, ugly, and sends trout into attack mode? Hint: it’s not your wading boots.
Answer: it’s a grasshopper.
Trout love to eat hoppers and will go into a feeding frenzy when hoppers are readily available. That’s usually mid-July to mid-August, depending on where you’re fly fishing.
Attack Worthy
If you are new to fly fishing, you’ll find that a hopper pattern is your best friend during the dog days of summer. You’ll learn to love hoppers because the trout attack them. I remember fly fishing the Yellowstone River a few years ago with my two sons on a hot afternoon in late July. It was a clear, sunny day—usually not the best conditions for fly fishing. Yet, all three of us had strikes on almost every cast.
Our hopper patterns were irresistible to the Yellowstone Cutthroats.
High Visibility
Something else which newbies and veterans appreciate about fishing hoppers is their visibility.
A size #6 Dave’s Hopper is much easier to see floating down the river than a size #18 parachute Adams. It’s like the difference between watching a strawberry and a single Cheerio floating in the current.
Fly fishers also love hoppers because they seem to float forever without getting waterlogged—especially the hopper patterns ties with foam.
Yes, hoppers are generally “easy-schmeasy” to fish. But here a few tips that will help you if you are a beginner.
1. Be ready!
You’ll often get a hit as soon as the hopper hits the water.
The first time it happens, you may be left with your mouth gaping, wondering why you didn’t set the hook! So expect a strike as soon as your hopper hits the water. Even if it floats for a few seconds before a trout attacks it, the strike will come unexpectedly and demand a quick set (that is, a firm, slight lift of your rod tip).
2. Size and color matters.
It generally doesn’t matter how your hopper imitations are made.
As noted above, foam patterns tend to float longer than those tied with hair. Otherwise, a certain style of legs or the shape of the body matters little. I’ve even caught plenty of trout on large caddis flies and spruce moths during hopper season.
What does matter is size and color.
Now most trout aren’t going to snub a size #8 and only take a size #10 or vice versa. But at the beginning of a season, trout might pass up a size #6 and only take a size #12 because the hoppers they are seeing are smaller. Likewise, if most of the hoppers are green, fish might not key in as well on yellow.
I realize that trout process color differently than humans do. But there are times when color seems to matter.
So, do your homework. Get on the website of a fly shop near the river you plan to fish. Better yet, pick up your phone and call one of their guides.
3. Use a smaller fly as a dropper.
I rarely fish a hopper by itself.
I’ll typically tie on a foot-long piece of tippet material to the bend of the hook of my hopper. Then, I’ll tie on another terrestrial, such as an ant or beetle pattern, to the end of the tippet. This additional fly is called the “dropper” or “trailing fly.” Sometimes, I’ll use an attractor pattern like a Red Humpy or a Royal Wulff as my dropper. Interestingly, there are days when two out of every three trout hit the dropper, not the hopper.
Other days it’s the opposite.
4. Slap ‘em and twitch ‘em.
You don’t need delicate casts with hoppers. You can let the terrestrial hit the water a bit harder than usual. You’re trying to imitate a hopper falling into the river, not a hopper making a smooth, stealth landing.
So don’t worry if your fly makes a small splash. Obviously, I’m not saying slap your line on the water. Slap the hopper on the water.
If your hopper is floating down a riffle or a fairly swift stretch of current, let it float. But if you are in a slower, smoother section, twitch or “skate” your hopper a bit. This imitates a hopper that has fallen into the river and is trying to escape. Caution: when you do this, be ready for a violent strike!
5. Aim for the prime time of day.
Prime time is usually mid or late morning to early afternoon. It takes the warmth of the sun to get hoppers hopping — and a little wind will blow them into the river. If you’re fishing early morning (especially) or late afternoon, you may need to try another kind of fly.
Last summer, I fished a creek in Montana that had a reputation as hopper heaven. I got on the water about 9:30 a.m. and immediately started using hopper patterns.
Forty-five minutes later, I felt a bit discouraged and considered tying on something else. Then I had a vicious strike. Then another, and another. The trout devoured hoppers the rest of the morning and into the afternoon. Then, about four o’clock, it was as if every trout had received the memo that it was time to stop feeding on hoppers. The action simply shut down.
So join the fun. Whatever else you do this summer, schedule a day or two on a river where hoppers live along the bank. Hopper fishing is downright addicting!
The basics of nymphing are never as basic as they seem. It takes time to learn the language of this aspect of fly fishing, and it takes a lifetime to become proficient at it. However, it’s worth the effort for most fly fishers. It’s said that 85% of a trout’s diet comes from beneath the surface of the river. As you master the basics of nymphing, you will likely catch more fish.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
Are you a veteran fly fisher with advice for those just starting out? We’d love for you to post your recommendations on the basics of nymphing.
What would you add?
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The fly fishing community is a rather diverse group. Some fly fishers are plumbers, others are professors. Some are Supreme Court Justices (think Sandra Day O’Connor), others are leftover hippies. Some are college basketball coaches, others are musicians.
What you get from such a varied group of fly fishing enthusiasts is a lot of great stories.
Thankfully, a few fly fishers have written them down for the rest of us to enjoy.
Shortly after I moved to Helena, Montana in 1987, I was browsing in a bookstore in Last Chance Gulch (downtown Helena), and I purchased a little book written by a retired English professor at the University of Chicago. He had reached his seventies before his two children finally convinced him to write down some of the stories he had told them when they were young. The opening paragraph of his little book captivated me, and the story he told touched me deeply. The book begins:
In our family, there was no clear line between religion and fly fishing. We lived at the junction of great trout waters in western Montana, and our father was a Presbyterian minister and a fly fisherman who tied his own flies and taught others. He told us about Christ’s disciples being fishermen, and we were left to assume, as my brother and I did, that all first-class fishermen on the Sea of Galilee were fly fishermen and that John, the favorite, was a dry-fly fisherman.
By now you probably recognize the book and its author: A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean.
The Angler’s Soul
In this book, fly fishing is simply a window into life. Two themes stand out to me:
The first comes from the final sentence of the book: “I am haunted by waters.”
These words emerge from a deep place in an angler’s soul while fly fishing a river in the cool of the day at twilight. It’s what the Oxford scholar, C. S. Lewis, calls “the inconsolable longing.” In his essay, “The Weight of Glory,” he talks about how certain experiences provide the “scent of a flower I have not found, the echo of a tune I have not heard, the news from a country I have never yet visited.”
I remember a poignant moment like that one April evening on the Yellowstone River in Montana’s Paradise Valley. I was fly fishing alone, fighting 16-inch rainbows in the setting sun. As I looked at the red
glow on the snow-covered Absaroka-Beartooths to the east, I thought of bow-hunting elk with my dad in those mountains before cancer took his life. I thought of my grandparents who were buried in a little settlers cemetery on a ridge beneath those peaks.
The rhythm of standing in the river at twilight with fly rod in hand stirred up in me that inconsolable longing. For a few moments, I, too, was haunted by waters.
Fly Fisher’s Inconsolable Longing
A second theme is the book’s big idea, which surfaces a few times right near the end of the story.
After Norman finds out about the death of his brother, Paul, he drives to his parents’ home to tell them the tragic news. Norman says about his mother: “She was never to ask me a question about the man she loved most and understood least. Perhaps she knew enough to know that for her it was enough to have loved him.”
Later, his father wants to know if Norman has told him everything about Paul’s death. Norman says, “Everything.” His father replies, “It’s not much, is it?”
To which Norman replies, “No, but you can love completely without complete understanding.”
His father says, “That I have known and preached.”
I think about that conversation when I reflect on the life of a buddy in Helena, Montana, with whom I often fly fished. He was one of the happiest guys I’ve ever met. Or so I thought.
A couple years ago, his wife notified me that my friend had taken his life. It turns out that he battled depression for years. I was his pastor and his friend, yet I did not realize the emotional anguish that cut deeply into his soul.
I thought I understood him, but I didn’t. As the elder Maclean said, “It is those we live with and love and should know who elude us.”
News of a Distant Country
Fly fishing has a unique way of forcing me to think deeply about life. I fly fish for joy of catching trout. But some evenings on the river stir something deep within me. I think about those whom I love yet fail to understand. And the poignant ache, or inconsolable longing, gives me the news of a country I have never visited.
Fly fishing bucket lists make us happy. There’s nothing better than to listen to someone yammer on about great days on the water in places they’ve always longed to fly fish. In this episode, we provide our fly fishing bucket lists. Listen to the second episode of our second season now.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
Do you have a fly fishing bucket list? Where would you like to fish next? We’d love to hear from you. Post your ideas below or email us at Steve and Dave
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Why I fly fish – it’s pretty simple to explain. I often get asked, “Why do you fly fish? What do you like about it?” This question typically comes from folks who are dabbling in it or thinking about trying the sport. If that is your question, let me try to answer it.
Several years ago, I tried to improve my golf game so that I could spend more time with a friend. I soon realized that I didn’t love golf. In fact, I found it frustrating. I remember golfing on the Cottonwood Hills Public Golf Course just west of Bozeman, Montana, and looking down the hill at the Gallatin River. I longed to be fly fishing. My friend didn’t fly fish. So I found other ways to connect with him. We both loved to play softball. But I decided that day I was done trying to do things I didn’t enjoy.
But exactly why do I love fly fishing for trout (and salmon at times)?
Engaged with the Outdoors
Fly fishing allows me to experience the great outdoors in an interactive kind of way. I love mountains and the clear rivers or streams that flow through or below them.
Obviously, there are other ways to experience my favorite parts of nature. I’ve done outdoor photography, backpacking, hiking, and a bit of non-technical mountain climbing. I even reached the summit of Long’s Peak in Colorado (14,259 feet) twice. All these were great experiences. But unless I’m photographing my fishing trip or heading to a high mountain lake or stream, neither photography or backpacking does it for me. There’s something about standing in thigh-deep water as the snow softly falls or sneaking up on rising fish that allows me to interact with nature in a way that other pursuits do not.
This is not a knock on outdoor photography or hiking or anything else. It’s just a reflection of how I’m wired. Pursue whatever lets you engage with nature most fully and brings joy.
Addicted to the Riser
I’m also addicted to seeing a trout rise to take a dry fly and to the fight that follows. What else can I say? Fly fishing gives me an adrenaline rush and a sense of satisfaction that most other outdoor sports do not.
One exception is calling in bull elk during the rut in archery season. But nothing else quite compares with fly fishing.
Connected to the Art and Skill
Years ago, I fished with a spinning rod and a box full of Mepps spinners.
That brought me a lot of joy at the time. But I love the aesthetic side of fly fishing. There is a grace to casting (when done well). There are also endless ways of improving my craft – reading waters, identifying insect hatches, tying flies, maneuvering a drift boat, and casting.
Fly fishing gives me the chance to be part of something that I can never fully master. It offers a lifetime of learning. Even the literature of fly fishing is rich and often reflective.
I should add that fly fishing is more doable at this point in my life than other outdoor sports that bring me joy.
As I mentioned, I also love bow-hunting for elk. The crisp September mornings, the bright yellow aspen leaves, and the echo of an elk bugle across a canyon make me happy. But this is where reality kicks in. I no longer live ten minutes from good elk hunting.
A decade ago, I moved to the Chicago area.
The time and cost of hunting elk in Montana as a non-resident are simply prohibitive. It’s the cost, mostly. So out of my two outdoor passions, I’m grateful I can still pursue one of them. Fly fishing for trout is generally less expensive. I can afford to go to Montana at least once or twice a year to fly fish. Besides, I can find great fly fishing three seasons of the year (spring, summer, and fall) as opposed to a three weeks of the year (for bow-hunting elk). I’m hoping to bow-hunt for elk again one of these days with my brother in Colorado. But until then, I’m content to fly fish.
If fly fishing appeals to you, give it a try. The sheer thrill of landing a trout on a fly rod might turn out to be something that brings you as much joy as it brings to me.
A satisfying day on the river – what makes one fly fishing day better than another? In this first episode of Season 2, we narrate the key moments of a satisfying day on the river while fishing in the Minnesota Driftless. The amount of trout we caught was average, but the overall experience was one of the best in recent years. Listen to the first episode of our second season now!
We’d love to hear one of your stories about a satisfying day on the river.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
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In the (supposed) good old days, there was a wall between church and state. There was advertising. And there was content. And the lines between the two were clear.
An ad was an ad. And a rod review was a rod review.
You could trust that the opinion of the writer wasn’t tainted by the fact that he or she was being paid by the product under review.
When buying fly fishing products today, however, it’s hard to know which is church (helpful and truthful content) and which is state (ads or sponsorships). The lines are blurred, thanks to an explosion of fly fishing brands, and, of course, the Internet.
Whom can you trust when buying fly fishing products?
Just recently I saw two rod reviews in the Trout Unlimited magazine. One was for a Sage rod, the other was a rod-reel combination from Cabela’s.
I wondered, “Why those two rods? Why not a Loomis or a Winston or an Orvis? Does TU have a promotion agreement with Sage and Cabela’s?”
Granted, a print magazine has limited space, so TU can’t possibly publish reviews of all the rods in one edition. But when you read a review of a rod in an online magazine or web site, can you really trust that the reviewer is not being paid by the rod manufacturer? Or receiving a cut from all sales tracked from the review (affiliate sales)?
In today’s cluttered world of unlimited fly fishing products, it’s hard to trust that the information you are getting is authentic and truly unbiased. Of course, that begs the question, “What does it mean to be unbiased?” Nothing is truly free from bias. I know that.
But we fly fishers want truly helpful advice when buying fly fishing products. Consider who I think are the only three people you can trust:
The Gals/Guys at the Local Fly Shop
This includes, of course, the guides at the shop. Yes, if you are flying into an area that you have never fished before and you don’t know the fly shop personnel, then you may need to be more wary. I hate to admit this, but the more “corporate” the fly shop, the less I trust the advice from its staff.
But I love buying at local fly shops. They deserve our business. They are the experts in local waters. And it’s hard to go wrong when you get advice from the folks at the shop.
With rare exception, I’ve found the guides and owners at local fly shops to be a trusted source for product recommendations.
Of course, each shop carries certain brands and may be, for example, the exclusive Orvis or Patagonia dealer in the area. That’s especially true in a place like Bozeman, Montana, with a seemingly endless number of fly shops. So it makes sense that fly shop owners and guides will push their brands. But I’ve generally been impressed at their objectivity. Actually, I’m looking less for objectivity and more for someone who will say, “Given your level of experience, I recommend this. And for this reason.”
Last year, I was looking at a new pair of waders. I was discussing my options with a fly shop owner, and he steered me towards a better brand that was on sale – and that was less than the brand I was looking at.
Of course, my trust-o-meter just went up 10 points.
Your Fly Fishing Buddy
Referrals are how I buy most big ticket items in my life, including cars, fly rods, waders, and shotguns.
I am not like my brother-in-law, who makes my eyes bleed when I think about how much time he spends researching his future purchases. I don’t have the patience. When he conducted a thorough investigation of mini-vans back in 2004 – and purchased a Honda Odyssey – I purchased one as well a few years later.
Why re-invent the research wheel?
It seems next to impossible to conduct a thorough investigation of every product. There’s too many products in the market. Take fly rods, example. Unless you have a year-and-a-half to fish a full day with each rod, how could you possibly select the right rod that works for you?
And even if I were to fly fish one day with every possible rod, I would never be able to make a fully informed, rational selection, much less remember how the first rod felt after trying out the other twenty rods.
If you fly fish with some folks, then ask for their recommendations. See if they will let you try out one of their rods (a risky request, I realize). At minimum, you should try out the rod you plan to purchase at the local fly shop. However, I have not found taking only a few casts at a fly shop all that helpful. I really need to fish with the rod for a couple hours.
That’s not always possible, though.
You. Yourself. Yes, You.
Don’t get caught up in the branding hype of fly fishing brands. Just because a piece of equipment or tackle is not the “top of the line” (as declared by some fly fishing personality or brand) doesn’t mean it’s not the best for you. The stories that brands tell about their products are silly. It’s just a product. It won’t save your soul or help you catch bigger fish. Truly.
The question is, “So does it truly work for you with the budget you have?”
I tend to buy higher-end fly fishing products when it comes to wading boots and fly rods. I start with more expensive products.
But not other gear. For other gear, I tend to look for value – best quality at the lowest price.
I recently selected a Sage One fly rod because the line was being discontinued, and the price was right. I like a good sale. I have now fly fished with the rod for several months, and I feel great about my decision. Somehow, I still seem to catch fish, even though I don’t have one of the more expensive brands.
Buying Fly Fishing Products
No person has unlimited time to research and try out every brand when purchasing equipment. And if you do, you truly have too much time on your hands. I’d rather spend my time fly fishing. You may have the personality for eternally investigating products, but I don’t.
In the final analysis, if you are agonizing between this brand of waders or the next, give it a rest. Ask around, take into account your budget, and then just buy the waders!
This completes a year of weekly episodes from 2 Guys and a River. In Episode 52: Fly Fishing Observations from a Year of Podcasting, we discuss what we’ve learned from the weekly task of putting together each episode. The size of the fly fishing industry, the complexity of fly fishing for beginners, the importance of public access – these and other themes are part of the fly fishing observations from the past year. And yes, we plan to take on another year of podcasting!
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
Do you have any ideas for podcasts for our second year? We’d love to hear from you. You can send your ideas to stevedave[@]2guysandariver.com.
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We call our podcast “2 Guys and a River” for a reason. Both Dave, my podcast partner, and I are fond of rivers and streams. We like to fly fishing moving water. But neither he nor I are “anti-lake” kind of guys.
Dave has had some fantastic days catching cutthroat trout on dry flies on lakes in Colorado’s Collegiate Wilderness area. Some of the largest trout I’ve caught on streamers have come out of Henry’s Lake in southeastern Idaho. We have fly-fished lakes all over the Western states and have had slow days and terrific days. It’s just like our experiences fly fishing rivers.
If you are new to lake fishing, here are five tips that will give you a better chance of catching the trout when fly fishing lakes:
1. Do your homework
This seems obvious, but I’m surprised how many fly fishers don’t take the time to learn anything about the lakes they intend to fly fish. I’ve been there, done that. But over the years, I’ve done much better when I’ve taken the time to read a guide book or check a fly shop website or talk to a guide at a fly shop about the lake I intend to fish.
When my friend, Jerry, introduced me to Hyalite Reservoir in the mountains above Bozeman, Montana, he pointed out certain places where the fish seemed to concentrate more than others. He knew spots where the lake was deeper or where the trout had a favorite hang-out by a drop-off or shelf.
I remember the advice I received from a fly shop owner in Estes Park, Colorado on how to fish Spruce and Loomis Lakes in Rocky Mountain National Park. I would have wasted a lot of time wondering where to fish and what flies to try without his expertise.
2. Don’t ignore the shoreline
Lakes resemble rivers in at least one way: some of the best fishing is right along the bank. Now this is not true for every lake. But I’ve caught my share of rainbows (years ago) and Greenback cutthroat (more recently) in Spruce Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park by casting to feeding fish along the shore. This technique also worked well in Upper Two Medicine Lake in Glacier National Park.
Personally, I’ve found that early morning or early evening is a perfect time to find feeding fish along the shoreline of a lake.
3. Go deep
When the fish are not feeding on the lake’s surface, it’s time to fish streamers. But you’re going to have to go deeper than usual. Again, the right guide book or fly shop website or the guide behind the counter will tell you how deep to fish.
Going deeper may be as simple as using more split shot. But if you spend much time fishing lakes, you’ll be wise to invest in a sink-tip line. I carry an extra spool with a sink-tip line for these situations.
I suggest buying a sink-tip line at a fly shop so a guide can explain the different sink rates and which one might serve you best. For example, sink-tip lines are rated (often as Type I, II, III, etc.) for their sink rate. This rate can be anywhere from two inches per second to eight inches per second. If you need to get down eight or ten feet, you can do the math and figure out how long to let your line sink after you cast it before you begin the retrieve.
Also, keep your line tip in the water when you strip in your line. This prevents slack, enabling you to control your line more effectively as you retrieve it.
4. Try a float tube
This is a convenient, inexpensive way to make your way around a small lake. It takes a bit of practice, but after you do it a couple times, you’ll get the hang of it. You’ll want a nine-foot rod (rather than something shorter), because you are a lot closer to the surface.
It’s like casting when you are sitting down rather than standing up.
Safety is critical. I don’t recommend float-tubing alone. Also, you really do need to wear a life-jacket.
Yes, a float tube has at least two air compartments so that the entire tube will not deflate in case of a leak or puncture. But I never fish in a float tube without a life-jacket. Proceed with caution if you are new to float-tubing.
5. Fish the outlet and inlet if you can
This tip is not simply based on my love for moving water. The outlets and inlets can sometimes provide some fantastic fishing. They can get overlooked by fly fishers, yet the trout will sometimes congregate in these places because the food line is rich.
I’ve had days where I’ve done much better in the outlet of Upper Two Medicine Lake than in the lake itself. When I hike beyond Mills Lake in Rocky Mountain National Park to fish The Loch Vale or Sky Pond, I typically do better in the outlets and inlets than in the lakes themselves. In fact, one of my sons asked me the other day when we can go back to this glacial gorge just to fish the outlets to these lakes.
Two Guys and a Lake?
Dave and I still love our rivers. Neither one of us thinks we’ll change the name of our podcast any time in the future. But there is some great fly fishing on lakes. We look forward to our next opportunity to cast a fly on one of them.
Tie your own flies? Some might say you can’t be a real fly fisher unless you do. Well, we differ on the matter. Steve ties his own, and Dave doesn’t. In this episode, using a point-counterpoint approach, we discuss the age-old question of whether you should tie your own flies.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
Do you tie your own flies? If so, do you ever buy flies? If not, why not?
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I fly fish for one reason: to catch fish. Of course, I love the opportunity to be outdoors and experience nature. But I could accomplish that without fly fishing. I could simply hike or camp or take up outdoor photography.
I fly fish because I love the thrill of catching trout.
However, this does not mean that I’m unappreciative of the side benefits that come with fly fishing. One of them is the opportunity to do some time travel. Yes, the fly rod in your hand also serves as a time machine, transporting you to some places in the past.
Brookies on the Au Sable
Recently, my son, Luke, and I drove to Grayling, Michigan, to fish for trout on the Au Sable River. We spent a day on the North Branch of the Au Sable and caught our share of brookies.
What stands out to me most, though, was the opportunity to drift the river in an Au Sauble River boat. These beauties look and feel much different than the drift boats from which I’ve fished the Yellowstone and Madison Rivers in Montana. They typically run 23- or 24-feet long and only two-and-a-half feet wide, resembling the shape of a dugout canoe.
The Au Sable River boat has been used on the Au Sable and Manistee Rivers in northern Michigan since the early 1870s. Lumber companies used this flat-bottomed craft to move tools and supplies to their logging camps. Loggers used them to maneuver between the logs as they floated down the rivers and to separate the inevitable log jams.
In the early 1880s, someone got the idea to modify the design a bit to use this craft for fishing.
Drifting the North Branch of the Au Sable with my son, Luke (pictured above to the left), and our guide, Justin, took me back in time to the days when the Grayling thrived in these rivers and the camp cooks used these boats to shuttle staples to their camps to feed hungry lumberjacks.
Fly Rod under the Trestle
I had a similar feeling of nostalgia last summer when I fished 16 Mile Creek in the north reaches of Montana’s Gallatin Valley. I caught a couple of nice browns under a railroad trestle on an old railroad grade used by the Ringling Brothers. Every off-season, they used to ship their circus equipment to their ranch.
More recently, a scene from A River Runs Through It was filmed on the same trestle—the scene where Jessie Burns drives wide-eyed Norman Maclean onto the tracks, over the trestle, and into a tunnel. What struck me was how this remote mountain valley had remained untouched and undeveloped. There were no power lines, roads, or highway sounds to remind me that I was fishing in the twenty-first century.
More than a decade ago, I remember the chill I felt when fishing the East Gallatin River about a mile from my where my house. I had read enough of Lewis and Clark’s journals to know that Captain William Clark and his Indian guide, Sacagawea, walked somewhere nearby the spot where I fished as they traveled east from the Three Forks of the Missouri to meet up with the Yellowstone River.
More recently, local resident Jim Doig was killed when thrown from his saddle horse in a pasture adjacent to the stretch of the East Gallatin I fished. His nephew, Ivan, tells the story in his memoir, This House of Sky.
Something stirs me about the history that swirls around the places I fish. To be sure, it cannot make up for a lack of catching fish. But when the fish are sipping my flies off the surface, the historical dimension of the waters I fly fish enriches my experience.
So what happened a hundred years ago in and around the rivers you are fly fishing?
Knowing the history may not make a bad day on the river good. But it is sure to make a good day even more meaningful.
Unlikely places to catch trout are good places to drift your fly. We’ve caught fish in shallow riffles, drainage ditches, grassy side channels, and trickles of water that could be barely be classified as a stream. Listen to “Unlikely Places to Catch Trout” and then post on our blog about the most strange places you’ve caught fish.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
What are some unlikely places you’ve caught trout?
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So you want to teach your son or daughter to fly fish. How can you make that happen? The truth is, you can lead a child to water, but you can’t make them fly fish.
I have a few suggestions, though, to help along the way:
Get them on the river early and often
I still remember the first time my dad took me to the Kilchis River near Tillamook, Oregon. He was fishing for steelhead. I was four years old, mesmerized by the smell of the river — as well as by the smell of the fish. The experience was formative, creating in me a love for rivers.
Last summer, our family stayed in some cabins on Montana’s Boulder River. I watched my two sons-in-law fly fish while toting their little kids in backpacks. Now my sons-in-law were not wading, nor were they near deep water. So my 3-month old grandson and my one-year old granddaughter were safe! I was proud of the guys for getting their young children into the great outdoors at the river’s edge.
The time to introduce your kids (or grandkids) to the river is even before they are old enough to fish.
Get them hooked on brookies
When we lived in Helena, Montana, in the early 1990s, we occasionally made the 40-mile trip over MacDonald Pass and then up the Little Blackfoot River to a national forest campground. We fished the river—not much more than a little stream at that point—and caught quite a few brook trout.
My technique was to get a brookie on the line, hand them the rod, wait a couple seconds, and then say, “Hey, I think you’ve gone one!” Later, when they were old enough to go solo, I taught them to fish with a spinning rod and drown a worm. They eventually graduated to fly fishing.
Brook trout are a beginner’s best friend. They can be wily at times, but they are often forgiving of sloppy casts. If you do not live near a trout stream, even blue gills or sunfish will do. It’s important that your youngsters catch some fish.
Get them started on nymphing
Once your kids are ready to handle a fly rod, nymphing is a great way to get them started. Their casts do not have to be as precise as in dry fly fishing, and it’s easy to teach your kids to watch the strike indicator (I like the small plastic bubble) as it floats down a run.
About the only thing your kids need to learn is to mend their line. I’m surprised how early my boys caught on to this technique. Both of them caught some nice rainbows in the Madison River with nymphs. Later, when they became more proficient, they graduated to dry flies.
Make it fun, not too technical
Most six-year-olds are not going to respond well to a lecture on tippet size or your instructions for tying an improved clinch knot. Nor will they care much about the difference between a copper john and a prince nymph. Just let them fish.
This is also not the time to refine their casting. Be patient, and be prepared to take some deep breaths—and to spend time untangling lines and leaders.
Give them a break and let them explore
Don’t be upset if your child loses interest in a hurry and wants to explore. Encourage it. My youngest son, Luke, would often stop fishing after a few minutes—even if he was catching trout!—so that he could look for frogs and garter snakes. It’s all part of the outdoor experience. Your child’s love for fly fishing may develop later, after they first become enamored with all the cool things they find along the river’s edge.
There are no guarantees, but if you teach your kids to fly fish, they may continue it or even pick it up again later in life.
A funny thing happened last summer when we were camped out on the Boulder River. My sons-in-law taught my daughters how to fly fish. My daughters remembered the days we spent catching brookies on the Little Blackfoot about 25 years earlier and decided it was time to try fly fishing.
Meanwhile, my older son taught his wife to fly fish. Then, in the biggest surprise of all, my youngest son taught his mother (my wife). He was there when she caught her first trout on a fly rod. At first, he felt bad that he didn’t let me teach her how to fish. Both my wife and I reassured him that it was for the best. He was more patient with his mom than I would have been!
Later, as we watched the sun set from the porch of our cabin, we realized that we were seeing the results of a commitment to teach the kids to fly fish.
Give your kids a video game, and you’ll make them happy for a few hours. Teach them to fly fish, and you’ll make them happy for a lifetime.
Which leaders and tippet work best with a size #8 beadhead woolly bugger? No matter how many articles an aspiring fly fisher reads, he or she has to learn the hard way. It’s nearly impossible to sling a big streamer with a 6x tippet. You really need at least a 3x or 4x tippet before you can cast Mr. Woolly Bugger with any kind of accuracy and confidence. In this episode, we lay out the basics of leaders and tippet.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
When it comes to leaders and tippet, any hacks that you’ve discovered for matching tippet to fly?
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There is a gift every fly fisher needs in order to experience success.
I’m grateful for a couple of folks who have provided it for me over the years. One is a farmer near Coon Valley, Wisconsin, and I don’t even know his name. The other is a well-known media mogul and philanthropist — Ted Turner. Both have allowed me to fly fish on their property.
It’s not that I’m well connected with friends in high places. Both Turner and the unknown farmer offer this gift to all fly fishers. It’s the gift of public access.
Technically, public access is not a gift.
Some say it’s a right. I don’t know about that. No doubt I pay for public access through license fees. The landowner sometimes benefits too. But I’m grateful that the Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks (FWP) in Montana and Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources (DNR) have provided a generous amount of access points for fly fishers on some fine rivers and streams.
One of my favorite stretches on Montana’s Gallatin River is Ted Turner’s property south of Bozeman. I understand that he is responsible for the ample parking area at Williams Bridge. It’s a gift to park there and then walk up or down the river to some fine runs.
Here are a few tips for protecting and making the most of the gift of public access.
1. Don’t trash these sites!
There should be no need to say this.
But there are always a handful of folks who are too lazy to pick up their trash—water bottles, beer cans, cookie containers, candy wrappers, leader packets, etc. We can help protect this gift if we make the effort to pick up after others. And pick up after ourselves, including used leaders and tippet.
2. Leave the gates as you found them
If you’ve been around farms or ranches, this is rather obvious. Shut the gates you open so you don’t let the cows out! Or, if a gate is open, it’s open for a reason. There’s no need to try to be polite and close it.
3. Give livestock a wide berth
Again, this is common sense.
Dave, my podcast partner, and I often fly fish in a spring creek where the Coon Valley farmer (mentioned above) runs some cattle. We have nothing to worry about, because there are no bulls in the herd. Still there’s no need to agitate the cattle by getting too close to them.
Our unknown friend would not appreciate it. Besides, we don’t want to push the herd through the stream before we fish it!
4. Know your legal rights and limits
The Montana FWP website says:
Under the Montana Stream Access Law, the public may use rivers and streams for recreational purposes up to the ordinary high-water mark. Although the law gives recreationists the right to use rivers and streams for water-related recreation, it does not allow them to enter posted lands bordering those streams or to cross private lands to gain access to streams.
I’ve rarely run into any problems, but I’ve had a couple occasions on the Boulder River in the mountains south of Big Timber, Montana, where landowners have tried (unsuccessfully) to get me to stop fishing the river as it ran through their property. On both occasions, I had entered the river at a legal access and stayed below the high-water mark.
Knowing the law kept the discussion civil and brief. I respected the landowners, and they ended up respecting my rights.
5. Know how to find access sites
Thankfully, this is not difficult. They are well-marked — at least in Montana and in Wisconsin — by highway and streamside signs. You can also purchase maps that show the location of these sites, but I’ve never needed to buy one.
6. Walk farther than anyone else
For Dave and me, this has become our mantra. If the run just around the bend from the access site looks terrific to you, then it looks terrific to every other fly fisher who spots it. So keep walking. Go an extra mile or two, if possible.
The farther you walk, the more you’ll enjoy less-fished water where the trout have not seen every kind of beadhead prince nymph known to fly fishers.
7. Don’t forget the water near the access point
No, I did not have a brain freeze after #6.
I’m talking here about access points on rivers which fly fishers commonly float. Most folks in a drift boat are getting ready to take out (when they are up river from the access point) or are still getting adjusted the first hundred yards or so into the float. My parents lived about a hundred yards from a fishing access site on the Yellowstone River in Montana’s Paradise Valley. I used to cross their fence to the access and then walk up about a hundred yards and fish under a bridge along a pylon, and I caught a number trout there over the years.
So thanks, Ted. Thanks, Coon Valley farmer. Thanks, Wisconsin DNR. Thanks, Montana FWP. Thanks for the gift of access to the charming spring creeks and stunning rivers. And thanks to all of you who buy fishing licenses and use these access sites with respect.
Fly fishing brands are everywhere: Sage, Winston, Orvis, Patagonia, Temple Fork Outfitters, Fishpond, Simms, Loomis, and many more. It’s a noisy, cluttered marketplace. It’s hard to make a rational decision. When selecting a fly fishing rod or waders or a sling pack, how do you make the best decision for you? In this episode, we help fly fishers understand how fly fishing brands position their gear and how to make better decisions on your next purchase.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
When it comes time to buy new gear, how do you go about making your decision? Which brands do you prefer – and why?
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My podcast partner, Dave, and I have had some fantastic days on big rivers. One spring we both had 20-inch rainbows on at the same time in the Madison River.
We’ve both landed big browns in the Lower Madison, and we’ve had a blast catching cutthroats feasting on hoppers in the Yellowstone River.
But it is the small creeks that we find irresistible.
Even on our trips to Montana or Wyoming, we always devote at least one day to fly fishing a small creek. Here are five reasons why we find small creeks so charming—and why you may want to make them part of your fly fishing experience as well.
Small creeks get less pressure
I wonder how many times I have seen the Yellowstone River in Montana’s Paradise Valley look like rush hour in Chicagoland, with all the drift boats making their way down the river.
Yet the little creeks — such as Pine Creek, Mill Creek, and Big Creek — are abandoned.
Recently, Dave and I fished the Driftless in southeast Minnesota. We had plenty of company on the South Fork of the Root River, but we spend most of our time on a little creek that emptied into the river. Canfield Creek turned out to be a gem. We had it all to ourselves, and the browns were happy to rise to our elk hair caddis flies.
Small creeks bring out the hunter in us
Small creeks require us to go into stealth mode.
When I fish my favorite runs in the Yellowstone or Madison Rivers, I rarely need to sneak up to the bank on my hands and knees. But that’s what it takes to fly fish a small creek. The run you want to fish in a small creek is only a couple feet away from where you’re kneeling rather than a dozen feet away as is often the case in a bigger river.
These runs in small creek are typically more shallow than the ones in a river, so a fly fisher is simply more visible to the fish. Maybe all this sneaking through the brush reminds me of bow-hunting elk.
Whatever the case, operating in stealth mode is part of the fun.
Small creeks require more precision
To be honest, this is a reason to hate fly fishing small creeks as well as to love it.
It’s not that big rivers allow you to make sloppy casts. But they are more forgiving.
A river may give you a foot-wide window for placing your fly. But in a small creek, that window often closes to a couple of inches. Short, gentle, target-specific casts are the order of the day when fly fishing a small creek. The challenge is usually fun, although some days it will drive you crazy.
Small creeks are easier to wade
This is the middle-aged man in me speaking.
A day of wade-fishing the Yellowstone leaves me weary. It’s a combination of fighting the swift current while trying to keep from slipping as I step from one slick rock to another.
Recently when Dave and I fished a couple small creeks, the pedometer on his cell phone indicated that we walked about seven miles (full disclosure: some of those steps were to and from a great little café in Preston, Minnesota). I was surprised we had walked that far because my legs and feet were hardly tired at all. That’s the benefit of a day of ankle-deep and calf-deep wading.
Small creeks are home to some large trout
For the most part, the trout are smaller in small creeks, and neither Dave nor I mind a bit.
I get as much joy landing a ten-inch rainbow in a small creek as I do a twenty-inch rainbow in a large river.
Last week I caught an eleven-inch brown on a dry fly in a small creek, and it made my day. But occasionally, you’ll catch a monster in a small creek. Recently, I fly fished the Boulder River in Montana in a mountainous stretch where the “river” is really a small creek. For several years, I had caught mainly eight- to twelve-inch fish. But one afternoon, when it began to rain lightly and the trout went into a feeding frenzy, I caught a fifteen-inch rainbow and then a sixteen-inch rainbow on consecutive casts.
Then the rain stopped, and so did the fishing. This experience reminded me that bigger trout lurk in these small streams. They are harder to catch, but everyone once in a while you’ll hook into one of them.
Enjoy your next trip to a big river. But don’t overlook the smaller streams that flow into it. Your best day of the trip might be on a creek that everyone else has neglected.
The fly presentation – it is the most challenging aspect of fly fishing. Especially when dry fly fishing or nymphing, perfecting the dead drift demands a mindset of continual learning and a ruthless critique of each cast. Improving your fly presentation is the art and skill of fly fishing. Listen to Episode 47 now!
We’ve introduced a feature to our podcast called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners,” which we publish at the end of each episode.
We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
Do you have any techniques for dry fly casting or nymphing? What have you found helpful in improving your fly presentation.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
I am haunted by a trout that got away. It happened on a spring day on Montana’s Madison River.
I had recently purchased a new fly rod—my first high quality rod. On my third cast of the day, my strike indicator disappeared, and a battle began. For a few seconds, the trout darted back and forth in the current. Then, it decided to run down river. The screeching sound mesmerized me as the fleeing fish stripped line off the reel.
“This is cool,” I thought.
But it wasn’t cool. I simply couldn’t slow down the fleeing fish. I pulled back on my rod, but the fish didn’t slow down. So I began to chase it. I held my rod high and ran down the river—well, as fast as a fly fisher wearing chest waders can safely “run” in knee deep water.
Then it happened. Suddenly the trout darted around a big boulder near the river’s edge, and my fly rod stopped quivering. The fly line went limp. The trout was gone, and so was my adrenaline rush. When I saw that the last two feet of my leader were missing, I realized that it had snapped off on the boulder as the trout swam around it.
Normally, I don’t brood over fish I lose. But I haven’t been able to erase this one from my memory.
One reason is the fish’s size. I never saw it, but it felt like the 20-inch rainbows I caught in this same stretch in the following years. Also, it would have been the first large fish I landed using my new fly rod.
Yet the main reason I am still haunted by this trout that got away is due to the beginner fly fisher mistakes I made that day with my fly rod. To be sure, the drag on my reel wasn’t set properly. And I’m sure I made other mistakes. But the two that cost me a better chance at landing the trout were related to the way I handled my rod.
Both are common mistakes made by beginners when trying to land a fish.
Mistake #1 – Pointing the rod straight up
I know where I got the idea to point my rod tip to the sky, straight up in the air at a ninety degree angle to the water’s surface. I learned it from the artwork of fly fishers landing fish. In each print, the fly fishers had their fly rods pointing to the sky so they could get the fish close to their nets. They had sufficiently tired the fish, making it ready for landing.
However, this technique does not work for fighting a fish. In fact, it might result in a broken rod tip.
Holding a rod straight up in the air when fighting a fish puts the pressure on the tip section. You do this only if you want to ease up on the tension against which the fish is fighting or to get it close to your landing net. Otherwise, you lower your tip at about a 45-degree angle with the ground during the battle. This transfers the pressure to the middle of the rod. It makes the fish work harder and tire more quickly as it pulls against the rod’s strong mid-section.
But there was a second mistake I made that day.
Mistake #2 – Pulling the fish up instead of sideways
Along with making the fish fight against the mid-section of your fly rod, you want to use side pressure. That is, you want to pull the fish from side to side rather than directly towards you. It is the side to side pressure which works against a fish’s muscles and tires it out.
Now your tippet must be heavy enough, and your knots tied correctly. But if you meet both conditions, you can wrestle aggressively with the largest trout and tire it out quickly enough for the fish to remain healthy when released.
If I had avoided these two beginner fly fisher mistakes on the Madison River that day, I might have landed a big trout rather than trying to chase after it.
But there’s something cathartic about confession.
Now that I’ve detailed my blunder, maybe I can forget about my mistakes. It’s better to be haunted by waters (a la Norman Maclean) rather than by the one that got away.
Ever have a magical day on the river? Of course you have. But such days tend to be less common than we imagine. In this episode, we recount a magical day on the river that we know will never be repeated. Three of us fly fished a stretch of water on a warm August day when the trout feasted on hoppers and the runs seemed endless. May the memory never dim.
We’ve recently introduced a feature to our podcast – “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.”
At the end of each episode, we read a few of the comments from the blog or from Facebook. We appreciate your advice, wisdom, and experience. Please add your ideas to the creative mix.
Do you have a day on the river to remember? We’d love to hear your stories.
Also, don’t forget to visit Casting Across, a blog we mention in the podcast.
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One of the more fabled insect hatches on the great western rivers is the Mother’s Day caddis hatch.
I’ve been fortunate enough to experience it on both the Yellowstone and Madison Rivers in Montana. There have been some magical moments. At times, the water seemed to boil with rising trout, and they were eager to attack the elk hair caddis fly I was casting. Yet I’ve had some frustrating moments, too.
Here are three things you need to know about the Mother’s Day Caddis hatch if you’re hoping to fish it with success:
1. Mother’s Day will be too late.
Don’t circle Mother’s Day on your calendar and expect to have a banner day. Most years, you will be better off taking your mom to dinner because you’ll be a couple weeks too late.
The problem is not a lack of bugs.
I remember an evening in early May when our family was sitting outside on my parents’ lawn, about two hundred yards from the bank of the Yellowstone River. We had to go inside because the air was so thick with caddis flies that we could hardly open our mouths for fear of ingesting them. But there was no reason to grab my fly rod and head for the river. The spring runoff was in full force. The Yellowstone had turned into an angry torrent of chocolate milk.
Some years, the runoff begins before the caddis hatch in full force and the fishing is stellar. Honestly, the best you can usually hope for is a about a five- to seven-day window in late April. As fun as it is to fish the Mother’s Day caddis hatch, I would not recommend planning a trip to Montana in late April, unless you are prepared to fish the spring creeks. All it takes is a warm day or two to get the snow melting and the river churning.
2. You will have a hard time seeing your fly.
It’s a thrill to see so many caddis on the water and the trout going crazy. But it’s frustrating, too.
Your offering is just one of a smorgasbord of options. Even if a trout rises to your fly, how will you know it? It can be maddening to try to identify your fly as it floats float down a run where dozens of other caddis are fluttering on the surface.
One solution: If you tie your own flies, tie a strip of colorful fiber on the top of your elk hair caddis fly. Lay it on top of the elk hair. Personally, I like to use a strip of red Antron body wool. If you don’t tie flies, you might find a fly tyer who will do this for you — even to flies that have already been tied. I’ve even thought about applying some model paint to the top of the elk hair. I have no idea, though, how this experiment would work.
There is another option, and that’s the third thing you need to know.
3. You may have better success under the surface.
Fishing beneath the surface works before the hatch is going hard, and it’s effective even when the hatch is at its peak. Before the hatch starts in earnest, I like to use a beadhead red fox squirrel nymph and then add a beadhead caddis pupa as a dropper.
A few years ago, I picked up several 16-inch rainbows in the Yellowstone River in Paradise Valley on beadhead fox squirrel nymphs about a week before the hatch kicked into gear. When the hatch is at its peak, I will fish with an elk hair caddis on the surface and then drop a LaFontaine’s Emergent Sparkle Pupa which will float in the film, just below the surface.
You’ll be surprised how many trout you will catch on the dropper.
It’s a small window every year when the caddis are on the water and the water conditions are right for fly fishing. Some years, the window doesn’t open at all. But when it does, you can have quite a day. You’ll have caddis crawling all over your clothes and your glasses. You might even coax some trout to take your imitation.
There is no joy like the joy of fly fishing with hoppers. Period. It’s a little like learning how to play the guitar. Every newbie guitar player begins by learning how to play Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.” And every aspiring fly fisher should begin by fly fishing with hoppers. It’s crazy fun. The flies are big and sit high on the water and are easy to cast. And when the trout are rockin’ grasshoppers, there is no greater thrill. Listen to Episode 45: The Joy of Fly Fishing with Hoppers now.
We’ve recently introduced a feature to our podcast – “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” At the end of each episode, we read a few of the comments from the blog or from Facebook. We love the idea of adding your ideas to the creative mix.
Do you like fly fishing with hoppers? Any tips you can add to our podcast? Please post your ideas below.
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If you’re new to fly fishing, purchasing your first fly rod can be as bewildering as buying a car. There are so many variables to consider.
Besides, if you ask five friends for advice, you may get eight different opinions. It’s easy to get frustrated. Or even to feel stupid. Don’t. Selecting a fly rod should not resemble choosing a health care plan.
This should be fun!
Making some key decisions before you start shopping, though, will help you make an informed, confident purchase. It will also keep the fun in the process. So here are the decisions you need to make.
Price Range
How much do you want to spend?
If you’ve never fly fished before, a starter rod in the $100-150 range will serve you well. Less is more.
If you’ve fly fished enough to know that you really want to pursue this, then I’d suggest spending a bit more — perhaps in the $300-600 range. Buy a fly rod you will still enjoy using in two or three decades.
I purchased a Winston rod (see below) a few years ago, intending to use it for life. I paid good money for it (although the price I paid then looks quite reasonable now). I don’t regret the decision. At some point, you’ll want to buy your “fly rod for life” (unless, of course, there is a significant breakthrough in technology). If you’re ready to do so, then get a higher-end rod which fits your budget. But if you’re still experimenting, spend less.
Note: The mid- to high-end rods typically have a 25-year or lifetime guarantee. This means you can get your rod repaired for about 10% of its cost if you step on it in the dark and snap it in two (which I’ve done).
Brand Preference
I apologize in advance for leaving out some fine manufacturers. But here are some options:
On the lower end of the price range, some good options include Redington, Temple Fork Outfitters (TFO), St. Croix, and Cabela’s. For mid-range to high-end rods (in quality and price), I’m a big fan of Orvis. Sage makes a fine rod, too, and I was all set to purchase one until I picked up a Winston Boron IIx which was made in Montana. Loomis is another fine choice, as is Scott.
Don’t fret over the difference between a high-end Orvis or Sage or Winston. Choose the one that feels right.
Rod Size
If you’re fly fishing for trout in the big western rivers like the Yellowstone or Bighorn, a nine-foot, six-weight will be a good all-around rod. It’s big enough to handle streamers and make long casts in windy conditions. Some swear by a nine-foot, five-weight. That’s fine.
To me, it’s like the difference between using a 30.06 or a .280 Remington for deer. Either will do the job. If you’re fly fishing the spring creeks of Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, an eight and a half foot, four weight will be more appropriate. It’s a bit lighter and more delicate for those smaller streams which require more gentle casts.
Some fly fishers swear by an eight-foot rod for smaller stream fishing. One question to ask is, “Where will I be fishing most often?” If “smaller spring creeks” is the answer, then go with a smaller rod size.
Type of Action
A mid-flex or a medium action is the place to start.
This designation means that the rod flexes or bends in the middle when you cast your line. This makes it versatile (good in most conditions) and forgiving (not too temperamental). A tip-flex or fast action rod bends closer to the tip. The stiffness of this action gives you more power — especially on windy days. It is better for longer casts, but beginners sometimes struggle to get a feel for it. A full flex, or slow action rod, is easy to cast. But it’s better for short distances. You’ll have to work harder to get the line out on long casts. It’s like pedaling in gear 3 on a ten-speed bike as opposed to gear 9.
The pedaling is easier, but it takes a lot more effort.
If you can make (or at least think about) these decisions ahead of time, you’ll be in a better position to make a choice when you enter your local fly shop.
Yes, unless you’re an expert, buy your rod at a local shop.
You can often try casting different rods to see which one works best — and you’ll get a little bit of help with your casting, too. The guys and gals at your local fly shop will also help you choose the right reel and the right line to go with your rod (yes, more decisions).
Whatever you do, make sure you enjoy the purchase. I guarantee that buying your first fly rod will be more fun than buying a garbage disposal or a pair of dress shoes.
The ability to identify trout lies in the river or stream may be the single biggest predictor of your success. This is as basic for an aspiring fly fisher to learn as casting. Not all places in a stream or river hold trout. Spotting a trout lie, especially when fish are not rising, is a skill that a fly fisher uses every time out on the river. Listen to Episode 44: Identifying Trout Lies as you prepare for your next fly fishing trip. If there are trout in the river, there are trout lies, and understanding even a little bit about how fish survive (and thrive) goes a long way towards great days on the water.
We’ve recently introduced a feature to our podcast – “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” At the end of each episode, we read a few of the comments from the blog or from Facebook. We love the idea of adding your ideas to the creative mix.
What kind of trout lies do you fish most? Post your stories about how you read a river or stream.
In this episode, we mention Gary Borger’s book, Reading Waters. You can find Reading Waters and other books in “Fly Fishing, the Book Series” at www.garyborger.com.
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The dangers fly fishers face are well publicized. Drowning. Lightning. Bear attacks. Rattlesnake bites. But little gets said about one of greatest dangers to your well-being when you plan your next fly fishing trip. It’s the most overlooked fly fishing danger.
It’s the same one facing hunters and airline passengers.
This danger comes from the vehicles you drive or pass on the way to your favorite river or hunting spot or airport. Statistically, the drive to the airport poses more danger to you than the airline flight you will board.
So it is with fly fishing:
1. Animal Encounters
It’s not enough to keep your eyes peeled for the rattlesnake on the trail to your favorite run. It’s the bison or the deer or cattle on the highway that can mess up you, your truck, and your trip. (Okay, the likelihood of hitting a bison is small unless you’re mindlessly driving in Yellowstone Park.)
One fall morning, my friend, Harry, and I left before dawn from Montana’s Gallatin Valley to drive to Henry’s Lake. What turned out to be a good trip (several nice trout on streamers) was almost sabotaged by a whitetail buck that jumped between Harry’s pick-up and boat trailer as we were driving down the highway.
Harry was alert for deer, and so he saw the buck getting ready to cross the road. He slowed down enough that there was no damage to the deer or trailer wiring.
A more serious situation occurred a couple summers ago involving Bobby Knight, the legendary college basketball coach.
A day before Dave, my podcast partner, and I fly fished the Wyoming Bighorn near Thermopolis, WY, Bobby Knight fished the same water and drove away in a Ford Expedition. It was dark, and he was driving in an open range area. Suddenly, cattle appeared on the road. He hit one of them and totaled his vehicle.
Fortunately, he escaped without injury. If you’ve ever driven remote highways in Montana or Wyoming at night, you know that this can happen to anyone.
2. Errant Drivers
When I was in high school, my brother, Dave, and I were fishing a little stream near Hallowell Park in Rocky Mountain National Park. The stream was below the mountain highway leading up to Bear Lake area. It took us about forty-five minutes to fish upstream to a natural stopping point.
On the way back down, there was a brand new car nose down in the creek—exactly where we had been standing about fifteen minutes earlier!
We learned that an elderly gentleman had fallen asleep because of some medication. He was okay, but we shuddered to think that what would have happened to us if we had been fishing there when the car took a nose dive over the bank.
I rarely fish streams or rivers right off the road. But when I do, I try not to linger too long at spots where errant drivers might land. I know how quickly these kind of accidents can happen—like the time I slid off an icy road and landed upside down in small stream near my home in Montana.
That’s a story for another time.
3. Drifting Vehicles
One day I was fly fishing the Yellowstone River in Paradise Valley within sight of my parent’s home. I had walked down to a fishing access that was downriver from the Mill Creek Bridge. Suddenly, I saw a red car floating down the river! I didn’t see anyone in it, so I ran up to my folks house and called the county sheriff. They had already been notified. It turned out that a fly fisher had parked on an incline near the bridge and forgot to set his parking brake.
I now remember to set my parking brake whenever I’m parked on a slope of any kind.
Many are the ways to depart this world while doing what you love. Stay alert. And drive carefully!
Fly fishing is no extreme sport. Just look at us. We couldn’t extreme anything. But fly fishing offers a few ways to die (drowning, the most obvious), and many ways to ruin a day on the river. Listen to Episode 43: 5 Fly Fishing Dangers as we identify a few fly fishing dangers. We also make several recommendations so that your next trip isn’t your last.
We’ve recently introduced a feature to our podcast – “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” At the end of each episode, we read a few of the great comments from the blog or from Facebook. We love the idea of adding your ideas to the creative mix.
What dangers did we miss? Do you have any great stories to tell? We’d love to hear from you.
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Sometimes you need the right dry fly pattern to catch selective trout. A couple years, ago, my son, Luke, and I were fly fishing the Owyhee River in eastern Oregon during a Pale Morning Dun (PMD) hatch. The brown trout would only rise to a PMD pattern. Nothing else.
But when there is no apparent insect hatch, it’s time to pull out an attractor pattern from your fly box if you insist on dry fly fishing. The strategy is to coax the fish to the surface rather than to match the insects on which they are feeding. It’s attraction rather than imitation.
And which dry fly attractor patterns do you want in your fly box?
If you are new to fly fishing, I have some suggestions, but let me first offer a few disclaimers.
First, this is not the definitive list. Another fly fisher’s list will be different, and that’s fine.
Second, don’t be fooled by claims of “the only fly that works” or the “best fly” for this river or that river. It’s all a matter of preference.
Third, size matters, though this post is focusing mainly on patterns. My default size is a #14 for an attractor pattern, though I’ll go smaller at times (see below).
Fourth, I realize that I’m blurring the definition between an attractor and an imitation with a couple of these patterns. So if you’re a veteran fly fisher, there’s no need to get your waders in a bunch. I realize that an elk hair caddis, for example, is an imitation. Yet I will use it as an attractor when there are no caddis flies on the water. Finally, I do most of my fly fishing in the west (Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon). However, most of these patterns have worked for me in the Midwest, and I know fly fishers who have success with them on the east coast.
Alright, here is my list.
1. Parachute Adams
I’m sure this will land near the top of any fly fisher’s list of favorite attractors. I’ve used this greyish beauty in standard sizes, but a size #18 is my favorite. It can imitate midges or blue-winged olives or mosquitos. The white post, or parachute, is for you (the fly fisher), not for the fish. It makes a tiny size #18 visible to middle-aged anglers like me.
2. Elk Hair Caddis
If I had to select only two dry flies, it would be a Parachute Adams and an Elk Hair Caddis. This tan fly (and also comes in a black version) simply looks “buggy.” In a pinch, it can imitate a small hopper or a March Brown. I am fond of it because it takes longer to get water-logged than an Adams. So it works great in faster, choppy water.
3. Red or Yellow Humpy
The elk hair hump and the generous brown hackle at the front of the fly make this float forever—well, longer than a lot of flies which get soggy after getting dunked by a riffle. The red or yellow (or green or purple) underbelly makes it stand out as a trout gets closer to it.
4. Royal Wulff
There is a whole family of “Royal” flies, beginning with the Royal Coachman — America’s first great fly pattern according to Paul Schullery who wrote an entire book on it!
The “Royal” flies have a bright red silk floss middle flanked by two bands of peacock herl. Sounds stunning, right? It is. The Royal Coachman has white wings, while the Royal Wulff uses white calf hair which, in my opinion, makes it float a bit better. The white calf hair tufts protrude from the brown hackle at the front of the fly. Anyway, the Royal Wulff has been a standard pattern for years, and so it sometimes gets forgotten. But it’s still a great option.
Another variation is a Royal Trude — tied on a longer hook with a long white tuft of calf hair extending from the front to back of the fly. A friend, John, uses it almost exclusively on the Yellowstone River in Montana and always catches fish whether spring, summer, or fall.
5. Renegade
My last two flies are more debatable choices. I’ve included the Renegade because it’s the first dry fly I ever used and because it still works. It is an unusual looking fly with white hackle at the front and brown hackle at the rear. Some fly fishers actually fish it as a wet fly (beneath the surface). My friend Arlen swears by this fly when fishing the Boulder River north of Yellowstone National Park. After setting it aside for several years in favor of the attractor patterns I mentioned previously, I’m going to start using it again.
6. Spruce Moth
I fished with this pattern last summer for the first time at the recommendation of a friend.
Technically, this fly is also an imitation. The spruce moth, or Western budworm, returned to the spruce and fir forests of the West in the early 2000s. Even when there are no spruce moths on the water, I like this pattern as an attractor because it is big (easy to see) and has plenty of hackle (not easily water-logged). My podcast partner, Dave, and I did well with this fly last year on the Yellowstone, the Boulder, and on some smaller streams in the Bozeman, Montana, area.
These are my favorites, although I could have easily swapped out numbers 5 and 6 for a Stimulator, a Goofus Bug, or a Madam X with its rubber legs.
But I like to recall an observation which Bud Lilly made several years ago when he owned the fly shop in West Yellowstone, Montana, which bears his name.
During a typical day, he chatted with fifty or more fly fishers who talked about how selective the trout had been on the river that day. When Lilly asked them what they were using, they would say: “The only thing that worked was this little beauty.” Lilly said that by the end of the day, he had seen about fifty different “only things.” So you’ll be fine if you keep your fly box stocked with a few basic attractor patterns.
Unless there’s a hatch of PMDs or BWOs or Tricos, a standard attractor pattern just might coax a big trout from its lair.
Spring fly fishing is filled with the promise of warmer days and blue skies, rain and snow, and spawners and browns. It feels so good to be back along and in the river. Listen to Episode 42: Spring Fly Fishing Success as you make ready for your next wonderful day in the great outdoors.
We’ve introduced a new feature to our podcast – “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” At the end of each episode, we read your great comments, adding your ideas to the creative mix.
Post your ideas for spring fly fishing success; we’d love to hear from you.
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Catching trout is not easy today. You are batting .000. Maybe the fish are simply not biting. Or maybe you’re not catching trout because of one or more of these 11 reasons:
1. It’s a bright sunny day.
Not always, but I’ve often had better luck on overcast days, especially for BWOs (blue winged olives), which is a common hatch during the spring. Catching trout on cloudy days tends to be pattern for me.
2. Your fly is too big.
Whether you’re nymphing or on the surface, drop a size or two. Go smaller. Make sure you have multiple sizes of the same fly in your fly box.
3. You cast like your mama.
Unless your mama wears wading boots. Figure out a way to false cast less. Precision casting is supposed to be hard. It’s even harder on smaller streams with trees and brush. Catching trout is tied to how well you cast.
4. Your dead drift looks like a rubber ducky with spasms.
Your presentation is almost always the problem. Your fly simply doesn’t look like an insect, dead or alive. Try harder.
5. You scared ‘em.
You should not have walked up to the run like a drunk Abominable Snowman. Crawl next time. On your hands and knees.
6. The run was just fished.
Find a smaller stream with no crowds. Stop fishing the popular rivers during vacation season or on weekends.
7. It’s too early.
Yes, if you want huge browns, then maybe fishing at 4:30 in the morning is a good idea. But if you are fishing hoppers in mid August, for example, sometimes the action doesn’t heat up until late morning.
8. You haven’t moved in 30 minutes.
Remember, fly fishing isn’t bass fishing from shore. Keep moving. After a handful of casts, move on. Find the next run.
9. The river is blown out.
If the river is muddy, why are you fly fishing? Some color may be okay, but if the stream is like chocolate milk, head back to your truck, jump on your phone, and watch Netflix.
10. You’re not deep enough.
Add some split shot to your nymphing rig. Or add some tippet length to your dropper. How often are you bumping the bottom? Every so often is about right.
11. You have the wrong fly.
This should not be your go-to move when you are not catching trout. But if there is a Trico hatch going on and you’re throwing a size #14 parachute Adams, you’ll swear a lot before noon. Know your hatches and patterns.
Give these tips a try, and perhaps your luck will change. You might even impress your mama.
Funny outdoor moments – we’ve all had a few. Where would fly fishing be without the stories? In this episode, we regale each other with some of our better fly fishing, hunting, and camping stories. This won’t be our only episode of funny outdoor stories. We hope to publish a new edition every six to 12 months.
We know you have a story or two to tell. We’d love to read one of them! Please post your funniest outdoor story below! And we may even use the story on a future podcast!
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Many years ago, Eugene helped his dad build a cabin on the edge of a melted glacier.
Eugene’s family lived in Kalispell, Montana. When his dad’s butcher shop prospered after WWII, his dad purchased two acres on a low rock cliff on the west shore of Flathead Lake. The view of the Mission Range to the east is spectacular as a few of the alpine peaks shoot up to ten thousand feet. The cabin became a family home, and it still sits on this rocky perch.
Eugene eventually moved to New York City and later to Baltimore for graduate work. He ended up serving as a pastor for nearly three decades near Baltimore. Then he worked as a professor in Vancouver, B.C. I got to know Eugene later in his life, but he says he never really left his two acre homestead overlooking Flathead Lake. He explains:
I have lived sixty years of my adult life in cities and suburbs in other places, but most of those years I returned for at least a month, sometimes more, once for twelve months — an entire sabbatical year—to clarify and deepen my pastoral vocation on this sacred ground. And even when I was not here physically, the internalized space grounded me.
I can relate.
Since moving from Montana to a Chicago suburb a decade ago, I often return to the places that keep me grounded. For me, these are two mighty rivers of the West and their tributaries – the Yellowstone and the Madison. I have been able to return and fly fish them at least once a year since I moved to Illinois. But even when I’m not able to walk along the banks of the Madison or to float down the Yellowstone, I spend a lot of time there in my mind.
What Makes a River Sacred
At the end of his novella, A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean says, “I am haunted by waters.” In my case, I am grounded by waters. These rivers inspire me. They awaken a longing within me. They stir up thoughts and ideas and dreams about the future.
Dave, my podcast partner, and I have made the three or four mile hike (it gets longer every time we talk about it) up the Yellowstone River below Tower Fall a dozen or so times in the last few years. Sometimes, we talk. Often, we’re lost in our thoughts. It’s during these times of silence when my mind solves problems or generates new ideas.
These rivers bring healing, too.
When I’m catching trout, or trying to catch trout, I’m in the moment. But sooner or later, I’ll look around and get caught up in the surroundings. It’s then that I experience what novelist Leif Enger describes as “peace like a river.” After a stressful stretch of days or weeks, there is nothing like standing in the Madison River casting a size #18 parachute Adams to rising rainbows while the snow falls softly and melts into the river’s film.
Stress has a way of evaporating in those conditions.
The beauty of sacred ground is that you do not need to own it or live on it. It’s a unique gift if you do. But all it takes is an annual pilgrimage or (better yet) two for those rivers to ground you as they bring fresh perspective, clarity, and energy to your life.
If you don’t have a place like this, you will, as long as you keep fly fishing.
Your sacred ground — or river — may or may not be the stretch where you’ve landed the most rainbow trout.
But it will be the stretch which seems to breathe new energy into you like no other place. Keep fly fishing, and you’ll find it.
In one sense, it’s every river into which you wade and cast. Yet there will be places that stir your more than others. When you find one, keep returning. Look around at the landscape. Experience it in morning light and dusk. Fly fish it in the spring and the fall.
And during those cold winter days in an office cubicle or warehouse, spend some time there in your mind.
We’ve not met a lot of slobs on the river, but every so often we run into one. Would love to hear your definition of “inconsiderate” and any encounters on the river.
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Commandments of wading are many, and for good reason. A couple years ago, I decided to cross a side channel in the Yellowstone River to an island which would give me access to a superb run. Dave, my podcast partner, and I were fly fishing in Yellowstone National Park. The side channel was only about 25 yards wide. But the current turned out to be stronger than I anticipated. The side channel was deeper than it looked.
I made it halfway across before I decided to turn around. Even then, I wasn’t sure if I would make it back safe and dry. But I did, thanks to obeying a handful of the “10 commandments of wading” which I was tempted to break that day.
The lawgiver who delivered these to me was not Moses, but Duane Dunham – a veteran fly fisher and friend who used to teach fly fishing at a community college in Oregon. Dave and I have obeyed (most of) these commands over the years because we have no interest in drowning or taking a bath on a 40-degree day in March.
Or, if that unwelcome bath happens (it hasn’t yet), we want to survive it.
1. The faster the river is flowing, the lower the depth level you can wade.
This means wading only mid-thigh in swift water. I’ll go deeper than that in some slower stretches of the Lower Madison or the Wyoming Bighorn. But I stick to shallow stretches when I’m on a stretch of raging river.
2. Keep your strides short.
Panic leads to larger strides which can result in getting “stuck” in the current with your feet about a yard apart. This makes balance difficult. Besides, when you try to take a step, the current assaults the one leg on which you are standing and raises the odds that you will end up making a splash.
3. Make sure you have the right soles.
Felt soles, though controversial, are still the best, especially in fast-moving rivers with smooth-rock bottoms, like the Yellowstone River. They are controversial because for years, it was thought that fly fishers who didn’t fully dry out their soles and then fished in a different stream contributed to the spread of invasive species.
If you take the time to wash your felt soles and to let them dry before going to another river, you eliminate almost any chance of spreading an invasive species. Metal studs work well too – either as an alternative to or (better) in addition to your felt soles.
4. Use a wading staff.
For years, I’ve simply used whatever stout branches I could find along the river’s edge. Finally, last fall, I purchased an Orvis wading staff. Simms make a good wading staff, too. But you can assemble the Orvis in much less time.
5. Angle downstream when crossing a river.
This enables you to work with the current, not against it. The current will actually push you along. Remember command #2 and take short strides.
6. Don’t try to turn around in fast current!
This is where a lot of anglers get into trouble. Either use a sidestep. Or back up carefully. Remember to take short strides and to angle downstream as you back up towards the bank.
7. Wear a wading belt with your chest waders.
Seatbelts save lives (like the time I rolled my truck and landed upside down in a small creek). So do wading belts. They keep your chest waders from filling up with water if you slip and take an unexpected bath.
If you forget your wading belt, forget about wading for the day. I’m serious!
8. If you fall in, don’t try to stand up too quickly.
And keep your feet down river. Stay in a sitting position and wait until you reach knee deep water before you try to stand up.
9. Let your fly rod go.
If you need to use your hands to stroke to shore, give it up. Better to lose your fly rod than your life. You might even recover your fly rod downstream. If not, you now have an excuse to buy the latest and best fly rod you’ve been drooling over in your local fly shop.
10. Don’t wade fish alone!
It’s not worth the risk. At least avoid certain rivers or stretches or runs.
If you’ve rolled your eyes at any of the ten commandments of wading, let me I remind you how shocked your body will be by the cold temperatures of the big freestone rivers in the West.
Let me remind you, too, that one slip can lead to a broken arm or (worse) a head injury that can limit or incapacitate you. So when you break these commandments, you put yourself at risk. Keeping them will protect your life.
Wade fishing vs floating – it’s not either-or, of course. There is a time for each. But if you plan to take a fly fishing trip to the American West or some other area with bigger rivers, you’ll have a choice to make: should I use one or all of my days on a drift boat? Listen to this podcast, in which we help newbie fly fishers with the pluses and minuses of wade fishing vs floating. We also have thrown in some recommendations for your next float trip.
How often do you float the big rivers? What do you prefer? Let us know your thoughts on this episode by posting your comments below.
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In the final scene of the movie “A River Runs Through It,” the narrator, Norman Maclean, is alone on the river, trying to tie a knot. He is old now. His brother Paul has been gone for five decades. His wife, gone. Most of his friends, gone.
The narrator says:
Now nearly all those I loved and did not understand in my youth are dead, even Jesse. But I still reach out to them.
Of course now I’m too old to be much of a fisherman. And now I usually fish the big waters alone, although some friends think I shouldn’t. But when I’m alone in the half light of the canyon, all existence seems to fade to a being with my soul and memories. And the sounds of the Big Blackfoot River and a four count rhythm. And a hope that a fish will rise.
Only the river, which has flowed since the beginning of time, remains. It is the one constant in a full life, one of joy as well as tragedy and loss.
The Old Man and His Browning
Norman MacLean’s end of days are a lot like those of my father, whose hunting and fishing friends are now mostly all gone. My father turned 87 this year.
I think of Walter, who hunted upland game and waterfowl with us for 30 years until his wife Laurine died. Dad, my brother Matt, and I struggled to forgive him for putting away his Browning for good after she passed. He said he quit hunting because he had no one to clean his birds. That sounded so sexist to my post-modern ears, but it was Walter’s old world attempt to describe his sorrow.
Walter was only in his early 80s when Laurine died. He passed away in a nursing home about a decade later at 93, his lightweight 20 gauge (made in Belgium) never to be fired again. Physically, he could have hunted for most of the rest of his eighties. Dad and I stopped by the nursing home for a few minutes about a year before he died. He towered over us in his hunting years, but now was diminished in the wheelchair. The TV blared as we regaled him with stories from the last hunt. He said he was looking forward to seeing Laurine.
His Browning now rusts in its case with a son who doesn’t hunt.
Walter’s brother Albert also lived into his nineties – and hunted with us until his late eighties. He called it quits when he said the geese flying over him appeared as shadows, his eyesight failing. We didn’t argue with him, though he still had no problem knocking down birds. But it was time.
He lived for another five years after he stopped hunting.
Right before he died, he told his son, who was 70 at the time, “When you turn 80, start another business. You’ll have more than enough time to watch TV when you’re my age and can’t leave the nursing home.”
Albert and his son inspired me through the years to pursue my entrepreneurial calling. Walter and Albert are now gone, as are most of my father’s friends.
My father scans the newspaper obituaries every day, something those who are left behind often do. I spent a two-week sabbatical with him and my mother in North Dakota several years ago. Several times during the two weeks, he would look up from the paper and say, “Do you remember _______? He just died.”
If you get to live long enough, those you love pass on one after another until one day you discover that you are alone, in the half light of the canyon, astonished at the brevity of life. You have to decide whether to fly fish when only the river beckons, and the voices of others have gone silent.
Giddy at 80
About a year and a half ago, I got a call from my Dad. He had been out deer hunting, alone.
He said the November Dakota wind was howling up to 50 miles an hour, the temperature plummeting thirty degrees in a couple hours. On his way home from the hunt, a large flock of mostly snow geese was circling a harvested field along the gravel road, trying to land against the wind. My father stopped the truck, grabbed his Browning and three shells, crawled and walked in the ditch for about 50 yards, crossed the road, shot three times, and knocked down eight geese. Alone.
He had just turned 80 several months earlier.
On the call with me not long after, he was giddy, emotional, like a boy who just had shot his first goose.
There is much to be said about the fellowship of hunting, the late mornings after the hunt in the coffee shop, the Ole and Lena jokes that make you groan, the story-telling while picking up the decoys after a slow morning.
But there’s joy in the hunt itself, in the act of netting a 17-inch brown in late fall. Norman Maclean may be alone on the river near the end of his days, but there’s no place for sadness.
Big Flies and Fly Fishing Joy at River’s Edge
I watched “A River Runs Through It” again not long ago, and the final scene, like always, slayed me. I fired off an email to my fly fishing partner of forty years saying we need to promise each other that whoever remains on earth last will continue to carry on our fly fishing tradition, until like Albert and his failing eyesight, the trout become only shadows.
“I don’t see myself ever stopping,” Steve replied. “We will just have to fish big flies! And stay near the trail head. Wouldn’t it be cool to fish together in our 80s if God grants us both that much time?”
Yes it would.
But if for some reason I am granted days greater in number than those of my friends, and my kids are too busy to meet me at the river, I will walk the edges of the river alone.
What remains when the only companion left is the river itself is the joy of fly fishing that comes with the hope of a rising fish.
Fly fishing hacks – every fly fisher has them. The word hack has so many meanings today, but for our purposes, we’re defining the term loosely to mean shortcuts or quick solutions to regular problems that we fly fishers face. In this podcast, we offer a few of our better fly fishing hacks.
How about some of yours? We’d love to compile a long list of hacks that make our lives easier and, of course, help us catch more trout.
Post your hacks below!
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Fly fishing is a gadget-intensive hobby. The stuff you need to land fish, to wade safely, to meaure water temperature, to tie on a size #20 fly, to waterproof that fly, and to weight your line seems to multiply at an alarming rate. Since I don’t want my fly vest to weigh as much as a WWII flak jacket (about 22 pounds), I regularly go through it and take out items I don’t need.
But in the interest of safety, there are five fly fishing safety devices that I never leave at home or in the truck. These devices are, ultimately, more important than split shot or forceps or fly floatant.
1. Bear Spray.
You must carry this with you whenever you fish in grizzly bear country.
Dave, my podcast partner, and I prefer UDAP (http://www.udap.com/), the spray developed by Mark Matheny of Bozeman, Montana. The spray canister is designed to fit into a hip holster so that you can shoot from the hip. There may not be time to remove the canister from the holster to spray a charging grizzly.
Why am I so insistent on carrying bear spray?
Several years ago, a friend and I bow-hunted in the Taylor Fork drainage northwest of Yellowstone National Park. The next fall, my friend took a business partner to the same spot. They were charged by a grizzly, and my friend’s business partner ended up with some broken bones and needed surgery. But my friend unloaded his canister of UDAP at the grizzly, and it fled before inflicting any more serious damage.
Keep in mind that a canister of bear spray does no good buried in a pouch somewhere in your fly vest. So you need to hang it from your wading belt (and that is the next device!).
2. Wading Belt.
This is not a luxury item, yet some beginner fly fishers forget to scrounge through their duffel bag in order to find it.
Ideally, you shouldn’t need to search your duffel bag. Keep the belt looped through the single belt loop in the back of your waders. You can’t afford to leave it behind. Without a wading belt, your waders can fill up with water if you fall or get swept into water over your chest. That means you will sink instead of float to the surface.
3. First Aid Kit.
A friend of ours got a hook deeply embedded in his finger while releasing a trout last summer. After Dave, my podcast partner, removed it, we were glad to have some Neosporin and a band-aid. Besides, you never know when you’ll get blister or sprain an ankle. I could keep listing the injuries which a first aid kit will treat. But hopefully you get the point.
4. Communication Device.
In some cases, a cell phone works great. Honestly, I get better cell reception at certain spots in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park and Rocky Mountain National Park than I do in my office in the northern suburbs of Chicago.
Seriously!
Apparently, the team of Verizon workers who appear in those television commercials prefer the great outdoors to the ‘burbs. There are a few places, though, where Dave and I carry two-way radios. We’ve been known to swap information about what flies are working best or to brag about a trout we’ve just landed.
But we carry these to make sure we can call for help if needed.
5. Flashlight.
There’s no excuse to be without a flashlight. Twisted ankles happen. Or inclement weather slows down your return hike. Sometimes, even the most punctual fly fishers (if such persons exist) can’t resist the urge to keep fishing until Dark Thirty (or O Dark Thirty!).
One alternative is to load a flashlight app on your cell phone. However, this will drain your battery in a hurry. With so many compact, lightweight flashlights on the market, you’ll be better off keeping one of those in your fly vest.
If you hike in far enough to fly fish a mountain lake or a remote stretch of river, you might also consider fire starter (a butane lighter and a folded paper towel) and even a space blanket (a thin metal-coated sheet which folds up into a pouch the size of your wallet).
Water-purification tablets are advisable, too.
Even though you are anxious to get to the river, don’t forget the items that will help you avoid or at least cope with dangerous situations. Yes, you could lighten the load by removing the first aid kit that you’ve never used once in the last five years. You probably won’t need a flashlight, either, since you’re planning to get back to your vehicle before dark.
Chances are, though, that there’s going to be a fly fishing safety device that will help protect you during one of your fly fishing trips this year.
Why we fly fish is personal and subjective. Our reasons are probably not the same as yours. In this podcast, we get a bit more philosophical and reflective as we try to describe fly fishing’s strong pull on our lives. Why we fly fish is both simple and complex.
Why Do You Fly Fish?
What are the reasons you are a fly fisher? We’d love to hear from you. Please post your insights below!
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At the end of Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “Big Two-Hearted River,” Nick Adams has a decision to make.
He has had a fine day catching trout, and he has approached the place where the river enters a swamp. It is fast deep water, shaded by the big cedars which tower over it. Nick is inclined to avoid such a place. He fears wading in water up to his armpits. He also fears that it will be impossible to land big trout in such a place.
But therein lies the problem. There are big trout in this stretch of river. Nick is tempted. To keep going or to quit?. That is the question.
Should he go after the big trout or save them for another day?
Hemingway ends his novel like this: “Nick climbed the bank and cut up into the woods, toward the high ground. He was going back to camp. He looked back. The river just showed through the trees. There were plenty of days coming when he could fish the swamp.”
I wish I had a bit more of Nick’s instincts to leave some trout for another day. But I am greedy. Whether I’ve caught two or ten or 25 trout, I want to exploit a day on the river for all its worth.
Why end it too early? If it’s a great day, I might never get another one like it.
But over the years, I have learned the wisdom of quitting at a point of satisfaction, even though I could squeeze out another hour or two and add to my total of trout landed. There are a few reasons why this is wise, even if it’s hard to do:
Dark Thirty’s Rude Behavior
First, there is no need to make a habit out of arriving home later than I promised.
My wife recently bought a piece of decorative art at a Hobby Lobby store and put it on my desk. It reads: “GONE FISHING. BE BACK AT DARK THIRTY.” Been there, done that. Early in our marriage, we lived in Paradise Valley, south of Livingston, Montana. I had the day off from my job as a ranch hand, and I promised to take my wife to a concert in Bozeman that night. First, though, I planned a quick trip to fish the Yellowstone River. I told her I’d be back in plenty of time.
But I arrived home at Dark Thirty.
The good news is that we made it to the concert about one minute early. The bad news is that we were rushed, and the conversation on the drive over the Bozeman Pass was not as pleasant as the scenery. This resulted from my inability to resist the lure of one more cast, one more stretch of water, one more fish. Yet one led to another and another and another (casts, not necessarily fish).
If you can’t tear yourself away from the river, you’ll end up being rude to those you love.
Leaving with Your Story Intact
Furthermore, if you stay an extra hour, there’s no guarantee that a great day will stay great.
I remember a stellar afternoon on Madison River in the Bear Trap. I caught a lot of big rainbows. So when the afternoon shadows started to fall, I decided to keep fishing even though I’d have to rush home in the dark, wolf down my dinner, and make it to a meeting with no time to spare. I didn’t quit, but the trout did. During that last hour, I caught one.
Better to leave imagining that you left a dozen there than to leave frustrated.
The Urge to Fly Fish and Real Satisfaction
There’s an even deeper reason, though, to quit while you’re ahead.
Suppose that the extra hour on the river turns out to be an action-packed sequence of landing one trout after another. Will you leave more satisfied? The truth is, no. That’s right. You can never catch enough fish to be satisfied. You will always want to catch one more.
Last year, my podcast partner Dave Goetz and I fished a banner stretch of Sixteen Mile at the northern reach of Montana’s Gallatin Valley.
By 4 p.m., we had each landed a ridiculous amount of trout. The friend with whom we were fishing asked us if we wanted to keep fishing. In that moment, I finally mustered up the courage to say no. Part of it was because I was wrecked. Dave and I had hiked and fly fished in the back country of Yellowstone National park for two straight days. I was exhausted. That helped.
Part of it, though, was the sense that we should end a glorious day while we all felt good about it. I knew in that moment that my greedy desire to catch another dozen wouldn’t make me feel any better about the day. Besides, the fishing might slow down. And we were looking forward to a good meal at Sir Scott’s Oasis, the legendary steakhouse in Manhattan, Montana.
Like Nick Adams, Dave and pulled ourselves away from the creek. We decided to save some fishing success for another day. We didn’t fish until Dark-Thirty.
A fly fishing day trip takes more thought than cramming your gear into a vest or fanny pack – and then hitting the trail. There’s nothing worse than hiking two miles in to your favorite runs and reaching for your fly box that isn’t there or having to ration your water for the day. In this podcast, we offer nine tips for packing for your next fly fishing day trip. Each trip is unique, and the gear you need should fit the situation.
Your Tips for Packing for a Fly Fishing Day Trip
We’d love to hear from you! Post your tips for making a fly fishing day trip a success.
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My younger brother Dave did not get the memo that I was supposed to be the better fly fisher.
I grew up thinking that one of the perks of being an older brother should be out-performing my younger brother, Dave, who is two years younger than I. He always out-performed me when it came to hunting and fishing (and baseball and basketball, too, but that’s another story).
If I caught one trout, Dave caught three. If I caught a twelve-inch trout, he caught a sixteen-inch trout. The first whitetail deer I ever shot was a doe. A day later, my brother shot his first deer. It was also a doe. But Dave’s doe had six-inch antlers. Yes, a hormone defect caused it to grow spikes. The next year, I shot a six-point buck (eastern count) on the first day of deer season. Not to be outdone, Dave shot a 10-point buck a day later.
I eventually got over my frustration. I had no choice. Even if I prepared better or read more or raced to the best spot before my brother, he caught larger trout and more of them. On a rare day, I might outdo him. But the roles would quickly reverse themselves the next day. So I learned to cope. Over time, some insights began to dawn on me.
First, I realized that fly fishing is not a competition.
There’s no award for catching the most fish when you’re floating the North Platte or wade-fishing the Gallatin. Now that comes as news to a lot of guys. We are born competitors. We have the biggest ‘this’ and the biggest ‘that.’ We’ve hiked further, caught more fish, experienced worse weather, fished with the best guides, and tied more incredible flies than anyone else with whom we happen to be talking. If you’re not convinced of that, tell a fly-fishing story and listen for that guy who has a bigger and better story.
Of course, competition can be a good thing under certain conditions. But it’s foolish if it robs you of the joy you get from landing six nice rainbows on a size-18 Pale Morning Dun. Why does it matter if someone catches ten and they each run an inch longer than the trout you landed?
Second, it’s okay that some fly fishers have a knack for catching more fish.
I was fishing the Boulder River in Montana last summer with my friend, Brand Robinson. We walked up the river together, fishing opposite banks. Every time I had a strike, I looked over at Brand to smile and communicate, “I got another strike; how about you?” The funny thing was that every time I looked over, he had a fish on the line. It occurred to me that I was missing about fifty per cent of the trout that rose to my parachute Adams.
But Brand didn’t miss one. I’m a couple years younger, and I fly fish more than Brand does. But like my brother, Dave, he is an exceptional athlete. His hand-eye coordination is impeccable. So on most days, he’s going to catch more fish. I’m at peace with that. Some fly fishers are simply more gifted than I am. That’s how life works, and it need not diminish my joy over a fine day on the river.
Third, it’s easy to fly fish with people who are better than you are if they are humble. Those are the fly fishers with whom I choose to spend the day– Dave, my brother; Dave, my podcast partner; and Brand, my friend. We may kid each other about who catches more. But all of us are secure enough that we don’t have to out-fish each the other to validate our worth as men or fly fishers. I don’t have any interest in fly fishing with guys who are good and want me to know it.
They bore me. I enjoy fishing with friends who are better than me but don’t feel a need to remind me of that hourly.
Fourth, fishing with better fly fishers makes me better. That’s the silver lining in the proverbial cloud. Now sometimes, the reason why other fly fishers are better is due to their unexplainable knack for having more success. But often, I learn something from their casting or the way they drift their fly or even from their choice of fly. Watching them succeed makes me better.
The crazy thing is that these insights have caused me to cheer for my friends and take pride in their success. Now and then, the competitive spirit rises in me, and I will sulk (at least inwardly) when someone bests me on the river.
But I’ve gotten a lot better at coping with others who out-fish me. I’m especially at peace with it when I’m writing about it. Now I just have to practice what I preach the next time my brother or my friends catch more trout than I do.
Have you ever been in a fly fishing slump? One of the signs is, well, the same old, same old. You fly fish with the same results: you keep losing the bigger fish that you hook, you struggle to set the hook on smaller fish, or you go for days without a good stretch, what Steve calls a “banner day.” In this podcast, we discuss a few signs that you may be in a fly fishing slump and offer some simple practices to break out of the status quo.
Trapped in Fly Fishing Slump?
We’d love to hear from you if you’ve ever been in a slump – and then broke out of it! Post your stories below. We want to read about what you learned.
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When I was a 19-year old college student in Montana, I got addicted to Louis L’amour western novels. They were potato chips for the soul. I became fond of the Sackett brothers, mesmerized by a Texas Ranger named Chick Bowdrie, and enthralled by Kilkenny and the way he protected Nita Riordan. But one of my all-time favorite Louis L’amour characters was the kid at the crossing, a rugged western character who called himself Flint. In this post, I apply a principle from the life of Flint to my life as a fly fisher.
Flint didn’t do any fly fishing. Regrettably, none of L’amour’s characters did. But the novels are set in the post-Civil War West. A few characters caught trout with their bare hands or with a worm on a hook. But there were no fly fishers in the bunch. Still, I learned something from Flint that has helped me find new waters to fly fish.
Early in the novel which bears his name, Flint recalls his early days in New York City as James T. Kettleman. What he did to become a wealthy financier and speculator is something I’ve learned to do to become a better fly fisher. I’ve learned to listen.
Flint’s first job in New York City was driving a hansom cab—a horse-drawn carriage, which was the forerunner of a modern taxi cab. He discovered that business leaders often discussed their affairs as though the driver was deaf. One day, Flint overheard a discussion between two businessmen about a building they planned to put up and the way they intended to acquire the property for it. The next morning, Flint moved quickly and bought an option on an adjacent lot. He sold this lot two weeks later for a substantial profit.
Then, Flint spent a year working as a messenger for a brokerage house. He kept his mouth shut and his ears and eyes open. Using the information he gained, he made good investments and watched his net worth grow. Later, Flint developed an information service of office boys, messengers, waiters, and cleaning women. They listened for him and then reported back to them. The information helped him make a fortune.
The Flint Technique
I’ve applied this technique to finding new water to fly fish. Over the years, I’ve overheard many conversations in fly shops or a local café when I’ve pretended not to be listening. Usually, I just listen. Occasionally, I’ll ask a question. Sometimes, people volunteer information because they think the person who asked for it will not follow through and try their secret run. But I do. And find new water.
I have dozens of scraps of notes in a drawer near my fly tying bench. I’ve written names of streams and maps of stretches of river which might be productive. I don’t fish all of them. But I fish some of them, even years after I’ve scribbled the information on a business card or the back of a copy of fish and game regulations.
In the mid-1980s, I heard a couple guys talking about fishing Tower Creek and the Yellowstone upriver from Tower Fall in Yellowstone National Park. I filed away that information. A year later, I used it and hiked up from Tower Fall. I discovered some magnificent water there that I’ve fly fished over the years. I’ve landed dozens and dozens of cutthroats over the years as a result of listening closely to a single conversation.
Listen and Find New Waters
So do yourself a favor.
Listen closely when your fellow fly fishers start bragging or telling stories about a great day on the water. They might just mention a stretch of water that will be worth trying. And if you need any guidance on the art of gaining information from careful listening, pick up a copy of Louis L’Amour’s novel, Flint. But remember. Reading these novels is like eating potato chips. You can rarely stop at one.
Sooner or later, your favorite run will be overrun with fly fishers. Or the river will change, as it always does, and you’ll need to find new fly fishing waters. In this podcast we provide six tips to find new fly fishing waters. It all begins with a commitment not to grow complacent, a mindset to be on the constant hunt for that next best place.
How Do You Find New Fly Fishing Waters?
Post your ideas, tips, and ways to find new waters. Maybe even post a story on how you found your favorite run! You don’t have to give away your spot!
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Recently a friend who lives in the American West said he had heard of the great fly fishing in the Driftless (southeastern Minnesota, southwestern Wisconsin, and northeastern Iowa).
He wondered if he should put together a trip.
I paused.
He lives within an hour of the Madison, the Yellowstone, and the Gallatin, the big freestone rivers. He fishes three or four times a month. He has hit the Mother’s Day Caddis Hatch on the Yellowstone, he has hooked into the big spring rainbows on the Missouri, he has caught the running fall browns on the Madison, and he has had those late summer days when almost every other cast with a hopper pattern surfaces a gorgeous cutthroat.
Why should someone who lives near such waters fly fish the Driftless? In short, it will put every facet of his fly fishing game to the test.
Here are just three disciplines that forced me to up my game and begin to master the spring creeks of the Driftless:
Casting in and around Trees
It’s one thing to cast with a modicum of precision and distance when your backcast has no competition. You load your rod and let ‘er rip.
It’s quite another to drop a size-18 nymph with a one-foot dropper at the top of a run in a nine-foot wide stream with branches draped over you. When I started fly fishing the Driftless after twenty years of fishing in the West, I was shocked at how poorly I cast. No doubt, I wasn’t great in the West either, but in the Driftless, I was a genuine hack.
The Driftless forced me to learn how to cast with greater precision. There is still not much art or science to my casts, but at least I am more aware of my shortcomings. Fishing the Driftless forced me to pay attention to my cast and focus on placement in the run. I’ve learned the art of casting sideways in the presence of brush and low-hanging trees.
Crawling Up to a Run
Frankly, I had read Gary Borger’s book years ago, but the whole “stalking trout” concept was lost on me. It wasn’t until I started fishing the Driftless that I realized that much of my fishless afternoons and evenings was due in part to how I approached the runs.
Just recently, I watched a fly fisher trudge upright like a drunk Sasquatch into a beautiful Driftless run and begin to cast. He stood in the middle and toward the back of the run and cast upstream, in full view of the run, the sun casting his huge shadow across over the run. He cast for what seemed like 20 minutes, and then moved on. With his giant profile, my guess is that the trout spooked ten yards before he stepped into the water. I never saw a fish rise to anything he cast.
In the spring creeks of the Driftless, you cannot ape the Brad Pitt character in the movie “A River Runs Through It.” You just can’t. Fish are wary. The streams seem to be heavily fished. And to catch them requires stealth and strategy.
If you’re catching trout in a spring creek, most likely your knees (and maybe even your elbows) are muddy. You simple cannot stumble mindlessly from run to run.
Rather, you size up the run, see the next run above or below the one you are fishing, and figure out how to maintain a low profile throughout your casts. And as you move stealthily to the next bend in the stream.
Eliminating False Casts
I like to false cast, to be perfectly honest. It’s a third-rate fly-fisher’s go-to move to gain distance and accuracy. I’m no athletic god, and my fly fishing skills are simply one more confirmation of that patently obvious truth.
With false casting, the problem is, of course, that what may work (or at least have fewer consequences) in the West (when you’re standing in the Madison River and casting 40 to 50 feet) is a sure fire means in smaller spring creeks to chase away fish. They react to the movement, dart back under the rocks, and refuse to take anything you drift by them.
The trick is to fight the urge to revert to false casting when you need it most. To cast with a minimum of false casts requires endless amounts of practice before you can shoot the line out accurately (or lob it out awkwardly) while hunched over the edge of stream on your knees.
In the end, I recommended the Driftless to the person asking about it. But he may not be as great as he thinks he is. After a few days in the Driftless, though, he’ll be a better fly fisher than he is today.
Fly fishing the Wisconsin Driftless should be on every fly fisher’s bucket list. We, fortunately, live only about four hours from some of America’s best spring creek fishing. In this podcast, we give insight on where to go and what to expect when fly fishing the Wisconsin Driftless.
Have You Fished the Driftless?
We’d love for you to post your advice for anyone who wants to fly fish the Wisconsin Driftless, especially any creeks you recommend. Seriously.
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The art of fly tying – I may not be the best one to champion the art of anything.
Two decades ago, I learned to tie flies, and the flies I have tied over the years are truly wonders.
Now I’m not bragging.
My flies are mediocre at best. But they are wonders considering that I was born artistically challenged. And I still am. At age 54, I draw at about a 5-year old level. When our family holds its occasionally-annual gingerbread house competition, the mansion I construct ends up looking a shack in a third-world country.
I repeat, I am artistically challenged. So it’s a wonder that I’ve actually caught trout on the flies I have hand-tied.
Why in the world did I set out to tie flies, knowing that I have zero artistic talent?
Here are five reasons I learned the art of fly tying. You can figure out which ones are silly and which are serious. Maybe this will inspire you to learn to tie flies too. Here we go, starting with number five (drum roll, please).
5. It would help me learn to say “tying flies” rather than “flying ties.”
If you’ve never made that mistake, then you won’t understand. But it’s so easy to get tongue-tied and talk about flying ties (think about that image) rather than tying flies. I figured that if I was around a veteran tie flyer, whoops, I mean fly tyer, I would learn to say it right all the time.
Alas, I was wrong. So this really is not a good reason to become a fly tyer.
4. It would put hoarded stuff to good use.
I’m not a hoarder, even though it runs in my family. But like most folks, I have a garage full of old extension cords, balls of yarn, and peacock plumage. Yes, peacock plumage!
One of my neighbors in rural Montana had peacocks, and my kids used to pick up some of the long feathers and bring them home. As any fly tyer knows, peacock herl is used in a lot of fly patterns. The yarn turned out to be decent dubbing, and the old extension cords have provided me with a lifetime supply of copper wire. The downside of this is that I’ve become a magnet for stuff people want to discard.
I could buy the top-of-the-line Sage rod if I had a five-spot for every time a friend said, “Here, I thought you might want this for fly tying material.”
3. It would allow me to use the feathers and hides I collected from hunting trips.
One of my dreams has been to catch a trout on an elk hair caddis that I tied using the hair from a bull elk I would shoot with a bow. Believe it or not, that actually happened. However, my counsel is: if you want to tie flies from the fur and feathers of game you harvest, just stop. Those materials are harder to work with than the commercial elk hides or feathers you can buy for a handsome feel.
Here’s a bonus tip. If you’re stubborn and decide to use the fur and feathers from game you harvest, don’t tell anyone your intentions. Otherwise, you’ll have friends giving you deer hides, turkey feathers, pheasant feathers, and all kinds of other raw materials.
2. It would eliminate the need to shell out two bucks (and more!) for a hook with a bead and some wire.
Now we’re getting serious. There are some fly patterns which are more than worth the two bucks I pay for them. But tying a bead head brassie only requires me to put a bead head on the front of the hook, followed by a couple turns of peacock herl, and then a few turns of copper wire. Even I can do that relatively quickly.
San Juan worms are the same. If you can tie on a piece of chenille, and then use a lighter to cauterize both of the ends, that’s all it takes.
1. It would make me a better fly fisher.
This is the most important reason of all. When I learned to tie flies, I got more than I bargained for. I learned a lot about the feeding habits of trout, when certain flies worked (and when they didn’t), and how much of a trout’s diet comes from beneath the surface (something I needed to hear as a lover of dry fly fishing). Learning to tie flies is worth it for no other reason than becoming a better fly fisher.
Like playing the saxophone, fly tying is easy to do poorly. But even a poor imitation can catch trout. That’s the key. My theory is that a lot of flies are tied to catch fly fishers, not fish.
I’ve never interviewed a trout, but I’ve caught a lot of them on some of the rather clumsy looking patterns I’ve tied. So don’t be afraid to give the art of fly tying a try. If I can do it, you can do it, too.
Still not convinced? Then try something else. Perhaps tie flying.
Are you able to list your five favorite trout flies off the cuff? In this podcast, we discuss our five favorite trout flies. And then our next five as well. The number of fly patterns are legion. And growing. Yet we tend to revert back to a few basic flies – and we still seem to catch fish!
Post Your Five Favorite Trout Flies
We’d love for you to post your go-to flies. You don’t have to give away your secret sauce, if a couple of them are your own concoction.
Just post them below!
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Great days on the water are hard to remember. They just are. Last summer, Dave and I had one of our best days ever on the water. A friend invited us to fish a creek in a remote area of Montana. We fished a stretch that meandered through a large ranch, miles from any fishing access. In recent years, the ranch owners have allowed few people to fish on their property. They have saved it for veterans, particularly wounded warriors.
But thanks to our friend, Dave and I were invited to spend a day on the creek.
Slow to Crazy
The day began slow, with a trico hatch that, as Dave said, “I just didn’t have the energy to fish.” Tricos are so small, and we came prepared to fish terrestrials, the big bugs. This was one of the last days of July, and it was warm. The creek was small, but we wore waders, in case we stumbled across a sunning rattlesnake.
About mid morning, the trout began to rise to hoppers – and just about anything else that was big and floated. And they never stopped. By mid-afternoon, Dave and I had each landed over forty trout apiece. They were mostly browns and rainbows, most in the 14-16 inch range. We also landed a few brookies and a couple West Slope Cutthroat.
The crazy thing is that I can’t recall any particular fish I caught. That’s unusual. I usually remember the 17-inch brown that emerged from an undercut bank to attack my hopper pattern. Or the 16-inch rainbow that darted to the surface to snatch a Royal Trude as it drifted by a rock. However, I don’t remember anything like that. I have a couple photos of rainbows I caught. Both are striking fish with their crimson stripes against their dark bodies. But I don’t recall catching either one of them.
Great Days on the Water and Angler’s Amnesia
So why do I seem to have angler’s amnesia when it comes to those fish? I have some theories:
First, I think my inability to remember a particular fish was due in part to sensory overload. Catching 40+ fish is an exhilarating experience. I highly recommend it, and I would love to do it again. But the more fish you catch, the less any particular fish leaves an indelible mark on your memory. Maybe that’s the beauty of days when you catch only a half-dozen fish, and one of them is a plump nineteen-incher. I caught a rainbow trout like that a decade ago between Quake and Hebgen Lake. I fished all morning and only caught one other trout. Oddly enough, I remember that fish vividly, while 40+ trout I caught a few months ago have seemingly vanished from my memory.
Second, I think the surroundings had something to do with my case of angler’s amnesia.
I was more captivated by what I saw around me than I was by any particular fish. What I remember from that day is landing a trout right under the railroad trestle where a scene from “A River Runs Through It” was filmed, where Jessie drives her Model T through a tunnel with Norman hanging on for his life in the passenger seat. I also remember the sight of an old trapper’s cabin. And then there was the railroad bed over which the Ringling Brothers used to haul their circus equipment to their ranch for winter storage. The two railroad tunnels were stunning, too.
Third, I think the human imagination struggles to preserve sharp images of what moves us most, including our most poignant memories.
A few miles from the ranch where Dave and I had our banner day, the south fork of the little creek we fished curls by a knoll on which a sheepherder’s cabin is perched. Western writer extraordinaire, Ivan Doig, was in the cabin on his sixth birthday with his parents when his mother took her last breath.
Asthma claimed her life.
Doig writes about his struggle to remember the event in a haunting sentence near the beginning of his memoir, This House of Sky:
Through the time since, I reach back along my father’s tellings and around the urgings which have me face about and forget, to feel into those oldest shadows for the first sudden edge of it all.
Every momentous event in life is a bit like that for me. I try reach around the photos or the accounts of family members in an attempt to relive memories which are trying to elude me.
Beautiful Memory Loss
So the next time you have an unforgettable day but forget the details, be assured that you’re not experiencing memory loss. You might simply have sensory overload. Or maybe your day was full scenery or experiences more remarkable than the fish you caught. Or maybe it’s the common human struggle to recall vivid images of life’s most momentous events.
Whatever the case, your inability to remember the fish you caught adds to the mystique of your experience and makes it unforgettable.
The use of public access is assumed by most fly fishers. Several years ago, however, Montana’s stream access law was under fire, and the right of being able to wade up or down river up to the high water mark, even through private property, was suddenly in jeopardy. The laws for the use of public access for fly fishers may be different in each state. In this podcast we discuss public access and the importance of taking care of what many of us may take for granted.
Notable Public Access Links
Stream access laws vary from state to state. Here are just a few links to the laws that guide fly fishers’ access to wading streams and rivers:
My dad taught me three of the most important lessons I ever learned about fly fishing.
The irony is that he never fly fished. These three lessons my dad taught me came during the handful of times he took me trout fishing with a spinning rod or during the dozens of times he took me hunting for pheasants, white-tail deer, or elk:
1. Be patient with youngsters.
There should be a Chinese proverb which says, “Teach a child to fish and try not to go crazy in the process.”
I remember the time we were camping in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. I was nine, and my brother, Dave, was seven. We were trying to spin-fish in a little trout stream that came rushing down the mountainside over boulders. My dad took off his shoes, rolled up his pant legs, and spent the better part of the next two hours wading in ice-cold water, dislodging our Mepps #2 spinners from every rock and logjam in the creek.
I was excited when he told us that we were hooking into a lot of “bottom bass.”
It took me a couple of years to figure out what a “bottom bass” really was – a code word for a snag on a rock or whatever else lurked under the surface. It took me a few more years to appreciate the patience my dad had that afternoon. If he hadn’t been patient and helpful, my love for trout fishing might have been demolished or at least delayed.
I’ve tried to practice patience with my own children. My two adult sons love to fly fish, so I guess I didn’t ruin them with too many fits of impatience when they snagged a pine tree limb or my fly fishing vest with their back casts.
Of the three lessons my father taught me, practicing patience is the most obvious and the most difficult to do.
2. Invest in quality equipment.
When it came to firearms, my dad did his research.
He figured out that a .280 Remington (7mm Express) would be a great all-around caliber for both deer and elk. He worked up a hand-load with 150-grain bullets that had the flat-shooting of a .270 and the punch of a 30.06. Before Winchester and Remington produced a line of mountain rifles with synthetic stocks, he found a gunsmith in Belgrade, Montana who built a mountain rifle for him. He had learned about David Gentry from voraciously reading the major firearm magazines. Then, when I was in the market for a new hunting rifle, he encouraged me to consider a Ruger Model 77.
Also, my dad had no time for cheap scopes. He insisted that my brother, Dave, and I save our dollars for Leupold scopes so that our targets would be clear and illumined if we had a chance to shoot a few minutes after legal shooting light began or a few minutes before it ended.
I have followed this approach when purchasing fly fishing equipment. I’ve done my research and invested in rods made by Winston and Orvis, as well as in reels made by Orvis and Lamson. The right equipment can help with well-placed casts and with landing a big rainbow or brown trout.
3. Work together as a team.
When I hunted with my dad, there was usually another brother involved — either one of his or one of mine. We learned to make this work to our advantage. If we were hunting white-tails, we would often post somebody along a game trail, and then two of us would circle back and walk through the timber or coulee in hopes of pushing something along the game trail by the posted hunter. It worked on several occasions. If we were bow-hunting elk, we would put a caller (with an elk bugle or a cow call) about twenty yards behind the two guys in front who would get in position for a shot.
Our thinking was that an elk which came within 40 yards of the caller would get within 20 yards of one of the shooters. That strategy worked, too.
Of course, it works differently with fly fishing.
We’re obviously not trying to push trout to a waiting fly fisher! But when my fly fishing partner, Dave, and I are on a river, we find ways of working together. Sometimes, it is as simple as using different fly patterns to see which one works best. Occasionally, one of us will work the same holes or runs together — one fishing above the surface with a dry fly, and the other below the surface with a nymph or a streamer.
Most times we’re working together by alternating runs as we work up or down the river. Or one of us stops fishing to help take a photo or help with a tangle. We work together rather than compete against each other, though I like nothing more than to land the biggest fish of the day.
Yes, there’s something special about fly fishing with your dad or with your son or daughter. You can learn a lot and teach a lot in the process. These three lessons that my dad taught me are priceless.
Fly fishing strengthens families. But does it really? Do families that fly fish together stay together? The outdoors in general and fly fishing in particular seem to give parents and their children a chance to communicate about something other than homework, screen, time, and household chores. Whether camping or hunting or fly fishing, the outdoors help families connect around a common interest. In Episode 30, we interview fly fishing legend Gary Borger, who consulted on the movie “A River Runs Through It,” on how fly fishing strengthens families.
Fly Fishing Strengthens Families
Be sure to post your stories on how the outdoors has strengthened your family. We’d love to read your insights on what has worked for you.
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Many of us do not live within an hour of pristine trout waters. Steve and I live in the Chicago suburbs, and while the Driftless in southwestern Wisconsin and the streams of Michigan are in striking distance, we can’t simply hop in the truck for an afternoon of fly fishing and be back an hour after dark. We need to plan our trips and make the most of our time away from our families.
With some simple preparation and forethought, you can create a memorable fly fishing trip. Here are just six tips to make 2016 your best fly fishing year ever:
1. Try some new waters.
Steve and I often feel pressure to make the most of every moment on a trip. We often think “We have only a few days. We don’t want to waste an afternoon or evening trying something that is a long shot.”
Last summer, we took an afternoon off from fishing our standbys (the Yellowstone in the Park, for example) and fished Fan Creek, which is also in Yellowstone National Park. We had heard of it before but had never took the time to fish it. This time we did.
For the most part, it was a bust, if you measure success purely by the number you catch. I caught a couple smaller West Slope cutthroats (12 to 13 inches), but that was about it.
Would we do it again? Absolutely. The stream was gorgeous, and we could have fished for days, jumping from run to run and losing ourselves in the back country of Yellowstone Park.
We now have another place to go at another time. We will be back.
2. Avoid the Two Worst Seasons.
If you are fishing in the American West, and fishing the freestone rivers, you’ll want to keep in mind two seasons to avoid: Blown Out Season and the Tourist Season.
The Blown Out Season runs from late April to July (or earlier or later). This is when the rivers swell and bloat from all the snow melt. You won’t want to risk the trip, unless you like worm fishing.
Tourist Season runs from late July into the third week of August, some of the best days for hoppers. Steve and I often take a trip in mid August to the Bozeman, MT, area – we love floating the big bugs. But we never fish the Gallatin in July or early August. It is always elbow to elbow with fly fishers, all decked out with their latest gear and $1,000 fly rods purchased for the two or three days in Montana. And often the Lower Madison is too low (as well as packed with folks on float tubes, a whole ‘nuther kind of late summer “hatch”).
3. Fish the Spawning Season.
You’ll need to be extra careful catching and releasing the fish, but two great times in the West are spring rainbows before the rivers blow out and the big browns in October. There are no tourists, and hotel rates tend to be a bit less.
4. Stay Long Enough for a Banner Day.
Through the years, Steve and I have generally fished for three or four days at a shot. That’s a long time to be away from family, and since my wife and I hover over four kids, the trip puts stress on the family system.
But we often find that one out of the three or four days ends up being a banner day – a 15 (or more) fish day. The other two or three days tend to be more typical – three or four, if that.
5. Hire a Guide for One of the Days.
Just budget it for it – and do it. You’ll improve your skills, perhaps discover new water, and look back at the day as one of the highlights of the trip.
6. Build Flexibility into Your Plan.
There’s is nothing like a best laid fly fishing plan that goes sideways with the weather. Especially if you are fishing in early spring or mid to late fall. If the river colors overnight or a foot of snow makes your 2-mile hike impossible or the wind gusts make all kind of casts an Olympic feat – you’ll want options.
Several years ago, after a dump of overnight snow, Steve and I spent much of the next day hitting the coffee shops and restaurants, waiting for a break in the weather. We should have had another option – maybe a river 50 or more miles away, outside of the snow zone. Maybe have two options for each day on the trip.
There are a thousand other ideas for planning for a memorable fly fishing trip. What are yours?
It was beginning to look a lot like Christmas. From our picture window I could see a dozen or more houses decorated with Christmas lights. Our house was perched on a hill overlooking the north floor of Montana’s Gallatin Valley. The valley floor was dusted with an inch of snow.
Inside our house, the tree was decorated, and the sound of Karen Carpenter singing, “I’ll be home for Christmas,” filled our living room. Christmas was seven days away.
Shiver Me Timbers
But all I wanted to do was to go fly fishing.
It had been two months since the last time I had cast a fly on the water, and I was itching to spend some time on the river. Tomorrow was going to be in the high thirties, and I could take off work a couple hours early.
So away from the window I flew like a flash, tore open my duffel bag where my fly gear was stashed. I got everything ready for the next day. When I retired for the night and nestled all snug in my bed, visions of rainbow trout danced in my head.
The next afternoon, I left work early at two o’clock and arrived at the mouth of the Bear Trap Canyon an hour later. My plan was to park at the Warm Springs fishing access and walk up the Madison River about three-quarters of a mile to a run where some decent sized trout always seemed to lurk.
But the visions that danced in my head the night before had not included the gale force wind that I felt as I opened up my door. No wonder mine was the only vehicle in the parking lot. Every other fly fisher had the sense to stay home and tie flies. I was angry at the wind, but I was too stubborn to give in.
Fly Fishing Miracle
After I lost my zest for hiking three quarters of a mile, it occurred to me that I could fish the elbow of a bend in the river that jutted up against the parking lot.
I had never fished it before. That, too, was due to stubbornness. I refuse to fish water that is so accessible. But with the howling wind whipping around the falling snowflakes, I was in no mood to be true to my mantra: “Always walk at least a mile before you start fishing.” Besides no one in their right mind would have fished this elbow during the last few days of blustery weather.
I tied on a beadhead prince nymph and dropped a little copper behind it. For the next few minutes, I got into a consistent rhythm: cast, shiver, mend, shiver, retrieve, shiver, complain. Then, suddenly, I saw a happy sight for tear-stained eyes (from the cold wind).
My strike indicator disappeared.
For the next minute, I felt that old familiar feeling of a fish on the end of the line. It turned out to be a 14-inch rainbow, which looked surprisingly plump for the time of year. I wouldn’t call that catch a true Christmas miracle. But I would call it a small (and cold) fly fishing miracle on the Bear Trap a few days before Christmas.
After I released it the fish, my shivering increased.
It was bone-cold, the sun now below the mountain. I began the long walk back to my truck — all fifteen steps. When I returned home an hour later, I stood at our picture window and looked out over the Gallatin Valley. Beyond the houses dotted with Christmas lights, I could see faintly the gap in the distant hills where the Madison River emerged from the Bear Trap Canyon. It was almost dark, and I was thankful for the light and warmth of home.
But I was also thankful for those fifteen minutes on the river that lifted my spirits. Now I was ready for Christmas.
Tis the Season. Every fly fisher wants either a gift certificate or two in his or her stocking. Or some crisply wrapped stocking presents from a spouse who knows fly fishing gadgets. In this podcast, we banter a bit about our love of fly fishing gadgets. Steve is much more of a gadget junkie than is Dave. But in this podcast, we identify several fly fishing gadgets that make us happy.
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A guided fly fishing trip – you’ve been waiting for some time to make it happen. In the past month, you’ve sorted through your gear and thumbed through back issues of Fly Fisherman and Trout magazines. You even spent a few hours on You Tube watching fly casting videos by Lefty Kreh and Joan Wulff. But today you will embark on a guided trip. You are taking a guided trip on the Bighorn or the Au Sable or the Metolius River. You’re looking forward to a stellar day. What could go wrong?
Well, a lot. Here are six ways to spoil your guided fly fishing trip if you are so inclined:
1. Do not communicate your limitations or expectations.
After all, your goal is to impress your guide. You don’t want to embarrass yourself by admitting that you can’t cast your fly much farther than the end of your rod or that you don’t know the difference between a mayfly and a caddis.
It’s not worth learning more about the craft of fly fishing if you have to admit that your skill level is at a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10.
Just keep your mouth shut and pretend you know more than you really do.
2. Ignore your guide’s advice.
Never mind that you paid big bucks to spend this day with a guide. You know better than he or she does, right? Forget that your guide has fished this river dozens (or hundreds) of times. You are the real expert. Even if you’re not, why humble yourself to admit it?
Better to act like you’re right than to admit that your guide might know more than you do.
3. Expect the perfect day.
You are paying to catch a fish of a lifetime. Or at least you’re paying to catch 50% more fish than you usually do. Also, you have a right to expect that the weather conditions and water conditions will be perfect. That’s all part of the package, right? If these expectations are not met, you should ask your guide for your money back, because you deserve a perfect day for the money you’re paying.
4. Forget about your surroundings since you are on a mission to catch fish!
Do not take time to look at the snow-capped Beartooth-Absaroka mountains as you float the Yellowstone River through Paradise Valley south of Livingston, Montana. You can see those grand peaks from the highway later. Right now, you’re on a mission to catch fish. Don’t worry if you miss the five-point buck in the brush near the bank, or the bald eagles perched on the high branches of a Cottonwood tree.
You can look at pictures of these creatures later in a wildlife calendar or on the internet.
5. Assume your guide will have all the clothing you need.
The weather app on your cell phone predicts a 50-degree, sunny day. So there’s no need to take rain gear or an extra jacket. The weather never changes, and weather forecasts are always spot-on. Besides, the guide probably has extra rain gear and shirts and coats in your size. He or she probably has a nice cache of sunglasses, too.
6. Never ask a question of your guide.
Since you are the only bright one in the drift boat, there’s no need to be curious. No need to ask the next question. You’d hate to be perceived as someone who needs to grow in your knowledge or skills.
Okay, you get the point, right? To get the most out of your trip …
Do take advantage of your guide’s expertise. You’re paying for it.
Ask, ask, ask, and you will receive some great insights.
Be realistic, too. Your guide doesn’t have a deal with the trout. Some days just don’t fish as well. You could have Bob Jacklin and Joan Wulff and Bud Lilly and April Vokey and Joe Brooks in your drift boat (alright, that would be a bit much) and you still couldn’t catch fish if the conditions are not right.
Enjoy the day for what it is. That means taking in the scenery and whatever wildlife you encounter. Stop fishing every now and then just to take in the experience.
Take along extra clothing.
Consult with your guide ahead of time to set the right expectations.
And take plenty of pictures. Put your smartphone on airplane mode if you are tempted to fret over a work email just as you enter a great run.
You’ve paid good money for this guided trip. Let’s make it a great experience.
Your next guided fly fishing trip – how should you prepare for it? Hiring a fly fishing guide seems easy enough: just pay and fish, right? Yes, it’s an extra expense, of course, but we believe in regularly fishing with a guide because doing so ups our fly fishing game. In this podcast about your next guided fly fishing trip, we discuss why a guided trip makes sense and offer some keys to making your next guided fishing trip worth the expense. Fishing with a guide can improve your skills and identify new waters to fish.
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
How do you prepare for a guided fly fishing trip? Please post your ideas below.
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I’ve lost my share of big trout. There, I admitted it. I’m weeping as I write this. Okay, not really. But I remember feeling sick a few times when I let a monster trout get away. There was the day when my sixth-grade son hooked a monster brown on a size #18 red brassie. I urged him not to panic, but apparently I did. I hurried towards the fish with my net, and it made its escape by wrapping the leader around my leg and snapping off the fly from the tippet.
Thankfully, I have not let all the big ones get away. I’ve landed my share of large trout, too. Here are four tips for keeping monster trout on the line:
1. Moisturize the knot you are tying.
That’s a nice way saying, wet the knot with your spit. Saliva will not weaken your leader material. It will prevent it from losing its strength.
When you pull monofilament tight, the friction creates heat that can weaken the knot or the line around it. So put the knot it your mouth to moisten it before you pull it tight.
2. Keep your line tight.
A fly fishing friends signs off on his emails with “Tight lines.”
It took me a while to figure out why that’s such good advice. Slack in your line makes it easier for a hook to slip out of a trout’s mouth or for the trout to shake it free — whether you have a 22-inch rainbow or an eight-inch brookie.
The most vulnerable time, perhaps, is right after you hook a fish.
You want to reel in the extra line, and that’s important. But keep the line tight while you’re reeling in the extra line. Once you’ve done that, the fish will be working against your rod, and you can adjust the drag setting on your reel to allow for more or less tension.
So how do you keep the line tight while you are reeling in the excess? It’s not that difficult to do when you try it, but it’s maddening to try to explain with words!
So practice while someone is holding your line. Or tie it to your leader to a porch railing or your child’s tricycle (but not to your black lab’s collar unless you have a lot of backing!). You can figure it out from there.
3. Practice “home field advantage.”
Your home field is the run in which you’re fishing or the shallow water near the shore. The trout’s home field is an undercut bank, particularly if there is a log nearby. So don’t let the trout head to its lair. Pull it sideways to keep it in the area where you can handle it. If you can get it into the shallow water near the shore, that’s all the better.
4. Guide the trout into your net.
An old adage says that most accidents happen at or near home. That’s true for landing trout. It’s when you get the trout near your net that the danger of losing it increases. So don’t go stabbing at it with your net! Lift your rod and pull it into the net. Don’t bother swiping at the trout with your net.
Also, if at first you don’t succeed, try again. If the trout suddenly darts away from the net, just keep it in front of you and bring it in for another attempt at landing it.
Where would we be if we caught all the trout we hooked? There’d be no fishing stories. There’d be no (possibly apocryphal) stories of the one that got away. In this episode, we offer up practical help on landing bigger trout. We’ve caught our share of fat rainbows and thick browns, but if years ago we had taken some of the advice in this podcast, we’d probably have a lot more pictures and fewer stories.
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Whenever you set out for the river with fly rod in hand, don’t forget to bring along your conservation hat. It’s important to be think and act like a conservationist while fly fishing.
Here are five ways to be a conservationist while fly fishing:
1. Pick up after others (and yourself).
Not long ago, I fly fished the Owyhee River in eastern Oregon. It was a gorgeous October morning, with a light fog hanging over the surface of the river. I could see ducks gliding in the water as well as the glow of the morning sun trying to burn through the mist.
It was perfect, except for the crushed Miller Lite cans and the empty Oreo package along the river’s edge.
Before I left the area, I stuffed the aluminum cans and the plastic package into my fly vest. I don’t expect a conservation medal, but a thousand little acts like this (if we can all do this on a regular basis) can help beautify and protect the rivers in which we fish.
It goes without saying that you should pack out your own trash—wrappers, beverage containers, even the old leaders you’ve removed.
Don’t be that gal or that guy.
2. Land your fish quickly and release it slowly.
My friends complain that it takes me forever to get ready to fly fish. I suppose that’s true. There is a fly rod to assemble, waders to don, fly boxes to arrange, and so on. But when it comes to landing fish, I try to get down to business and haul them in as quickly as possible. The longer a fly fisher plays a fish, the less chance it has to survive. So make quick work of it.
But once you have the fish in your net or hand, slow down. Gently hold the fish in the water, letting it recover and get its bearings. Take whatever time is needed. When the fish is ready to go, you’ll know it!
3. Obey every fishing regulation.
Personally, I’m not big on barbless hooks. But when I’m in Yellowstone National Park, I follow the regulations which require me to use barbless hooks. The reason I carry a small pair of pliers to crimp the barbs on my hooks is not because I’m afraid of getting caught. It’s just that we can’t afford to have every angler doing what is right in their eyes.
So to be a conservationist while fly fishing, use lead-free flies and non-toxic split shot when the regulations require them. Don’t fish in closed areas. And read the regulations before you cast a line on the water.
4. Stay off the redds.
When you fish in the spring when the rainbows and cutthroats are spawning, keep off of the redds — that is, the spawning beds. The same is true for fall fishing when the brown trout are spawning. The females create these redds, or nests, by using their tails to turn over rocks. A typical nest is often the size of a couple throw rugs placed end to end. You’ll be able to spot a redd by its clean, shiny gravel.
I’m not opposed to fishing near a redd (although some fly fishers are). But I’m careful to avoid wading where I see or even suspect a spawn bed.
5. Give fish a break during low water and high temps.
This is typically an issue in the ‘dog days’ of August.
The combination of low water and high temperatures on rivers like the Lower Madison in Montana can make it stressful for trout. If you happen to land one in such conditions, you put its survival at great risk. So pay attention to river flows and water temperature. In some cases, it’s “safe” to fish early mornings as long as you’re off the water by 11 a.m. I use trusted fly shops as my source when I’m trying to decide whether or not to fish a particular river or stretch of it.
Conservation and fly fishing are like an old married couple. They’ve been together so long that it’s hard to remember their life before. Yet it’s critical to educate younger generations on the fragile ecosystems of our cold water fisheries. And there are simple, practical things fly fishers can do to step up and join the global conservation efforts. In this interview with Trout Unlimited’s Dave Kumlien, Steve and Dave explore the current state of fly fishing and conservation.
A chill surged through my body. I was standing on a high ridge in Montana’s Beartooth-Absaroka Wilderness area with a compound bow in one hand and an elk bugle in the other. Moments before, I tried my best to sound like a young bull elk as I blew on my bugle. The sound echoed off the peak to the north. Then silence.
“Turn around and look,” whispered Jeff.
I was hoping to see a six-point bull elk, but the sight that sent a chill through my body was a mountain lion sitting on its haunches. It was about 35 yards away. What struck me was how still it sat and how it blended in with its surroundings. I had seen mountain lions before while hunting, but it was only a glimpse as the big cats bounded away through the timber. This image was uncanny.
Jeff and I looked at each other, and I remember saying, “I think we should get out here!” I had an idea what to do if a grizzly bear showed up, but a mountain lion? Besides, I knew that shooting a mountain lion, even in self-defense, could land me in more trouble than if it attacked us.
Jeff and I began walking back down the game trail we had been following. So did the mountain lion. When we stopped, it stopped. This continued for about a quarter of a mile, and it was unnerving. Finally, the big cat seemed to vanish. That was even more unnerving. Was it circling us for a surprise attack?
But about thirty minutes later, we made it down the mountain to the trailhead.
I’ve thought a lot about that encounter over the years. Jeff and I figure that we got close to a den, and the mountain lion was making sure that we left the area. Whatever the case, I learned a bit more about the predator-prey relationship. The mountain lion saw us first. It blended in with its surroundings and didn’t make a sound.
Months later, it occurred to me that those same “predatory” behaviors work well for fly fishers. We improve our chances of catching trout when we see them first, blend into our surroundings, and move soundlessly.
Perhaps most impressive, though, was its patience. The big cat did not seem in a hurry to chase us out of its area or “confront” us, though if we had inadvertently walked on top of the den, its behavior may have changed dramatically. The mountain lion’s patient, non-anxious character is a trait to emulate.
There is a romantic notion tied to fly fishing. It conjures up images of fly fishers moving leisurely through the water making artistic casts.
If that’s what you’re thinking, stop it! At least if you want to catch more trout. The best fly fishers are predators. They move stealthily and purposefully, staying hidden and keeping quiet until they are ready to overtake their prey.
Stalking trout is not on the mind of the beginner fly fisher. It’s hard enough to sling the fly. But there are two sure-fire ways not to catch trout: Creating a drift with a wake that would make a water skier proud and fishing a run with spooked trout. Too often fly fishers ruin their chances by wading too far into the river or failing to sneak up on the fish. In The Art of Stalking Trout we discuss how to catch more trout by paying attention to how you approach the stream.
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
How do you apply Borger’s idea of stalking trout to the rivers where you fish? Is it necessary?
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Tower Fall in Yellowstone Park is one of my happy places. It’s a beautiful waterfall of Tower Creek that cascades into the Yellowstone River. Upstream from the confluence is a stretch of the Yellowstone River where Steve and I have caught so many cutthroat trout that we’ve dubbed it “Hopper Run.” During the peak of the terrestrial (grasshoppers, for example) season in August, we’ve had a handful of days through the years where for a few hours the frenzy of catching and releasing fish causes time to stand still.
Several years ago, though later in the season, we made our way upriver towards Hopper Run, alternating the best runs. It was about noon early fall, not long before the Park closed for the season. This year, we fished on a slightly overcast but warm September day, perhaps in the sixties. Days later, the landscape of Tower Fall would be dusted in snow.
Steve was thigh-deep in the river, dropping a fly around a boulder, and I was eating lunch, watching him cast. I saw movement across the river and said, “Hey Steve, look at that coyote over there.” The animal was making its way down from the higher elevation to the bank of the river, almost directly across from us.
“That’s no coyote,” Steve said. “It’s a wolf.”
Sure enough. It was almost twice the size of a coyote, lanky, and unafraid. Only forty yards wide, the river was impossible to cross, but the wolf’s curiosity was unnerving. It lay near the bank for about 20 minutes, ostensibly watching us, and then got up and ambled back to the ridge. No anxiety. No hurry.
Most likely, this wolf was a descendant of one of the Lamar Valley packs, introduced into Yellowstone Park in 1995, amid a cacophony of controversy. The Lamar Valley was the next drainage system directly to the east of us.
Harbinger of Grace
In the West, the wolf is either hated or worshiped.
Many western ranchers rue the day the wolves were introduced back into Yellowstone and elsewhere in Montana. Wiped out as fast as the bison in the nineteenth century, wolves often prey on exposed livestock. There is also likely an inverse correlation between the number of wolves and the number of deer and elk in an ecosystem. Other than environmentalists, few celebrated the return of the wolf to its native habitat. And in movies and literature, the wolf is often a symbol of evil, a harbinger of darkness.
But on this day, the wolf was a symbol of grace, a pause in the way the world operates. In all my years of fishing in the West and hunting in the Dakotas, I’ve had less than a handful of moments like this, where the fear between what is wild and what is domestic dissipates. Fear is replaced with curiosity, if only for a few seconds. It’s a “wolf lies down with the lamb” moment, which anticipates the New Heaven and New Earth. Perhaps, more specifically, it’s a “New Earth moment,” where the curtain is pulled back and I see the mystery of something that is perfectly wild.
Rick Bass, one of my favorite authors of the wild places, writes, “How we fall into grace. You can’t work or earn your way into it. You just fall. It lies below, it lies beyond. It comes to you, unbidden.”
On this day, an unbidden grace lay across the Yellowstone.
Fly fishing seems different in kind from other outdoor sports. There’s something healing about a day on the water. It’s hard to describe to someone who has never fly fished. It’s an escape from reality. Or maybe fly fishing is reality, and it’s a return to sanity. In this episode, we discuss The Healing Properties of Fly Fishing.
Some of the most encouraging words I ever read appeared on a little card I received back in 1996 when I purchased my first Orvis fly rod. The card simply said: “We will repair your broken rod for 25 full years, no matter how you broke it.”
Those are soothing words for the fly rod owner’s soul.
Of course, I didn’t realize that at the time. I thought, “That’s nice. But I won’t need it. All I need to do is be careful.”
After all, I grew up being careful with sporting goods.
When I was eight, my dad drilled it into my head that baseball players do not throw their baseball gloves. They oil them and otherwise keep them dry. But they do not slam them to the ground or fling them high into the air to free fall to the ground. When I was ten, my dad was emphatic that I take care of the 20 gauge shotgun he gave me for my birthday. If I handled it carefully, I would not break the stock if I fell, and I might not even scratch it. And I didn’t. I didn’t throw my baseball glove. It’s still in use forty-five years later. I also took good care of my 20 gauge shotgun. My sons both used it, and it’s ready for my grandsons to shoot when they get a little bit older.
So taking care of a fly rod would be no problem. I knew the old adage: “Most fly rods are broken getting in and out of a vehicle.” Or, they get stepped on when they are leaning in a closet or in the corner of a room. What kind of a fool lets that happen?
Uh, that would be me.
About a year after I purchased my first Orvis fly rod, I wandered into our mud room (what Montanans affectionately call a little room you enter from the side entrance of your house or from your garage). As its name suggests, a mud room is a place where you can take off your muddy boots or shoes. We had a coat rack in ours and some shelves where we stored canned goods. More importantly, at the far end, just beneath a window with a great view of the mountains to the north, I had a fly tying bench.
One night, I entered the dark room to grab a coat I had placed on my fly tying bench. When I stepped near my fly-tying bench, I heard a splintering, cracking sound. I felt sick, realizing that that I had just stepped on my fly rod. I remembered that it was leaning against my fly tying bench. I had placed it there to dry after a day of fishing in the rain. Now I had cracked it between the handle and the first guide.
Suddenly I remembered the words on the card: “We will repair your broken rod for 25 full years, no matter how you broke it.” Ah, what soothing words for the fly rod owner’s soul! A day later, I took my fractured rod to Fins and Feathers, the Orvis shop in Bozeman, Montana. I had to laugh when I signed the “Orvis Rod Repair Form.” Under the description of how the break occurred, the guy behind the counter simply wrote: “Stepped on it in the dark.”
If you’re going to invest in a fly rod, make sure you buy from a manufacturer that offers a rod-breakage guarantee — unless you’re buying a low-end rod and intend to upgrade. Most of the higher end rods come with generous replacement policies.
But don’t assume this.
Confirm it before you complete your purchase. You may think, “It won’t happen to me.” But it’s only a matter of time until it does. And when it does, you’ll want to hear or read those soothing words for the fly fisher’s soul: “We will repair your broken rod for 25 full years, no matter how you broke it.”
Choosing the right fly rod is important whether you are new to the sport or a veteran. In this podcast episode, Steve and Dave help aspiring fly fishers select their next trout rod.
Dave is adamant that new fly fishers should not buy the most expensive rods, unless they have an indiscriminate amount of money. Veteran fly fishers may want to purchase more specialized rods. Listen to Choosing the Right Fly Rod here.
In episode 21, we discussed the challenges of fly fishing lakes. When Steve was nineteen, he fulfilled a long-time dream to fish a lake where his father and grandfather had a stellar day of trout fishing years before. He expected to duplicate or exceed their success. In this piece, Steve muses about how great days on the water are not necessarily a harbinger of what will happen the next time you fish the same spot.
It was one of those magical days, and I dreamed about re-living it.
When I was seven, my dad and his dad hiked four miles from our campsite at Two Medicine Lake in Glacier National park to Upper Two Medicine Lake. U2, if I may call it that (with apologies to Bono), sits at timberline and is surrounded by cathedral mountains which shoot up to the clouds. It is simply stunning. All I remember is that when my dad and grandpa returned, they each had a creel full of brook trout. They laid them out in rows on the picnic table benches.
As I grew older, I often heard stories of that magical day. The Kodachrome slides of the experience burned it into my imagination. Here is the short version. My dad and grandpa set out with their fishing poles (neither were fly fishermen), a carton of night crawlers, and a box of spinners. The limit was around a dozen brook trout, and they had heard reports that the fishing in U2 was good. When they arrived at the lake, there was not another soul to be found. They quickly baited their hooks, made their first casts, and … nothing. Not a strike.
After a half hour of casts to the left, the right, and straight ahead, my dad decided to try a Mepps Spinner. The brookies went crazy. My dad said that he caught a fish on every cast. It only took a half hour or so for both my dad and grandpa to catch their limit. The brookies were all in the 10-12 inch range, and they were great eating. Every time I heard that story or saw pictures of it, I couldn’t wait for the day when I could make the trek to U2 and revel in that kind of fishing.
Great Unmet Expectations
I finally made it to U2 when I was nineteen. My parents and my brothers and I camped in the Two Medicine Lake Campground, and my dad and brothers and I hiked to U2 with great expectations. We had visions of brook trout leaping in our heads. By this time, my brother, Dave, and I were novice fly fishers. So we took our fly rods. My dad and my younger brothers, Mark and Kevin, brought spinning rods. The fishing started out like my dad and grandpa had experienced. Nothing. Eventually, we started catching fish, but not in large numbers. As I recall, we each caught a trout. But none of us caught more than two. However, each brook trout we caught was in the 15-17 inch range. I managed to catch a sixteen-incher off of the surface on a Royal Coachman.
I left with a strange sense of sadness and elation. I was thrilled to catch a sixteen-inch brookie on a fly rod. That’s a monster. But I was sad that I didn’t quite have the magical experience my dad and grandpa did twelve years before. Besides, it was tough going around U2. My dad said that the head-high underbrush we had to fight through along the shoreline was not that high when he and my grandpa had their exceptional day.
Over the years, I’ve learned to savor the magical moments. As much as I hope to duplicate them, it simply doesn’t work that way. Each new day on the same lake or same stretch of river you fished in the past will be different. It might be better, but it often does not live up to the expectations you brought to it. I had great expectations on Upper Two Medicine Lake, but they were flawed.
The experience changes like the river itself. The spring runoff changes the flow. Beavers leave their dams. Silt happens. Good holes disappear. Yet new ones emerge. And sometimes the trout get bigger. A lake may not yield a dozen foot-long brookies. But maybe it will give you a sixteen-incher. And that sixteen incher will become the stuff from which new dreams are made. Go ahead and dream big. But temper your great expectations with reality. Be grateful for whatever the river or lake gives you on any particular day.
There’s a reason this podcast is called “2 Guys and a River.” Our experience (such as it is) is largely fly fishing creeks and rivers. But fly fishing a lake has its own delights. Lake fishing is both the same as and different from fishing a river. Some principles apply in both settings. In How to Fly Fish a Lake, we give a simple overview of lake fishing and offer several ways to improve your results.
The kid dug into the batter’s box, checked the trademark on his bat, and got set for the pitch. It was the biggest moment of his life. At fifteen, this future fly fishing legend was the second baseman for a team of Montana farmers.
Staring at him from the pitcher’s mound was legendary pitcher, Satchel Paige. In the 1930s and 1940s, many of the Negro Leagues teams did a lot of barnstorming. They traveled through small towns all over the country and tried to schedule as many games as they could. It was a way to pick up a little money.
Satchel Paige was the star attraction wherever he went.
Crowds flocked to see him pitch. He had a larger-than-life personality to match his ability to throw a sweeping curve ball. Now peering at the fifteen-year old in the batter’s box, Satch wound up and threw a big roundhouse curve. The kid almost fell on his face trying to get out of the way of the pitch before it broke over the plate for a strike. But after toying with the kid, Satch game him a pitch to hit. That would play well with the home crowd. The kid hit a ground ball single. It was a moment he would never forget.
Reputation on the Rise
The kid’s name was Walen, and his reputation continued to rise.
His team kept winning against other teams in Montana and even against the barnstorming teams. One Sunday, two men showed up to see the team. Walen didn’t know it, but they were scouts from the Cincinnati Reds. Walen’s dad asked him to take them fishing the next day. By this time, Walen was as much a prodigy with a fly rod as he was with a baseball glove. These scouts were also fly fishermen, and they were more impressed with his fly fishing skills than his baseball playing. But two years later, just as World War II was starting, they came back and signed Walen to a contract with the Cincinnati Reds.
The Diverging Road
However, the war beckoned. When Walen returned from his military service, he had lost interest in baseball. He was a slick fielder, but he was a little gun-shy against the better pitchers. Walen ended up graduating from Montana State University and teaching high school science in a couple small Montana towns, Roundup and Deer Lodge.
One summer, a teacher-friend suggested that they supplement their teachers’ salaries by putting up a little car wash in West Yellowstone, Montana. They worked from dawn to dark and made good money. But then another opportunity presented itself. A local fly shop was on the market, and Walen scraped together the money to buy it.
The fly shop was more of a hobby at first. But when Walen retired from teaching at Bozeman Junior High School in 1970, the fly shop was primed to develop into a year-round business. And it did. The fly shop thrived, and so did Walen. He eventually sold the shop in 1982.
The Walen Legacy
A long-time advocate of catch-and-release, he spend countless hours on conservation efforts. He testified and lobbied frequently before state congressional committees in Helena. He even helped establish a fly fishing museum in West Yellowstone. It’s through the efforts of fly fishers like Walen that we have such tremendous fly fishing today. In an interview in July 2015, shortly before his ninetieth birthday, Walen said that he led the movement towards catch-and-release fishing because it simply made sense.
Yes, it did. And it still does.
It’s been years since Walen sold his fly shop in West Yellowstone. But if you drive through town, you can visit the shop which still bears his name. Keep in mind that nobody called him Walen. Since his birth, Walen Lilly Jr. has been affectionately known as Bud.
So look for Bud Lilly’s Trout Shop. And remember that Bud Lilly has had a lot to do with the good fishing you’re about to enjoy the next time you cast your fly upon the water.
Back in the day, Bob Granger was the fly fishing guide to the stars. He has owned a fly shop, tied a zillion flies, and guided celebrities, politicians, and America’s business leaders. In this interview, Bob regales us with his stories from the river and gives advice to aspiring fly fishers. Listen to the podcast here.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Who was your mentor in learning how to fly fishing? What makes a good mentor? Are you becoming a fly fishing sage?
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In episode 19, Steve and Dave talked about some of their favorite outdoor authors. Here are Steve’s reflections on a classic that is charming and full of wisdom:
A slender volume with a faded dust-jacket sits in my nightstand. It is slightly thicker than my cell phone. My wife wonders how I can read its small print. A friend who loves old books picked it up in England. He recently gave it to me with a note that read: “When I acquired this, I knew it wasn’t for me. I just wasn’t sure who it was for. Now I know.” I’m guessing he realized it was for me after hearing me talk for the umpteenth time about my love of fly fishing.
A fly fishing classic, my nightstand edition was published in England in 1950. But it’s a reprint of a book that was originally published in 1653 and brought to its current form in the fifth edition in 1676. It’s a classic by Izaak Walton, The Compleat Angler. This book expresses one man’s love for fly fishing. I suspect that like the Bible, it gets talked about more than it gets read. I have to admit that I have never read The Complete Angler by Izaak Walton until now.
Wisdom from the Fly Fishing Classic
One passage that particularly struck me was the first stanza of “The Angler’s Song.” So allow me to reflect briefly on that stanza. If you’ve not used to reading literature, let alone poetry, here is your chance to taste it.
As inward love breeds outward talk,
The hound some praise, and some the hawk:
Some better pleas’d with private sport,
Use tennis, some a mistress court:
But these delights I neither wish,
Nor envy, while I freely fish.
Pure wisdom. It’s an insight into people like me who would rather fly fish than do almost anything else. Even when I’m in Wrigley Field watching the Cubs take on my Cardinals, I find my mind wandering to fishing a high mountain lake in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. When I play with my grandsons and pretend to be Captain America (or whatever Super Hero they assign me to be), I love every minute of it. But in that moment there are wistful thoughts of helping my grandsons drift a fly down a favorite run on Montana’s Madison River.
The odd thing is that I never experience this sensation in reverse. When I’m fly fishing, I don’t wish I was at Wrigley Field or some other major league park watching baseball. If I’m fly fishing a mountain stream with my boys, I don’t wish we were playing football in the back yard. No, the one time I avoid any struggle with envy is when I’m fly fishing. There’s no other form of recreation in which I would rather engage. Alright, there is bow-hunting for elk. But I remember times when I was elk hunting and I’d cross a stream and wish I had my fly rod in hand.
I don’t envy my cousin who spends weeks in Florida alternating between sky diving and sitting on a beach with a drink in hand. I don’t envy the friend who spends a week at a posh resort and plays eighteen holes of golf every day. In fact, I feel a bit sorry for these folks. They probably feel that way about me. To each his own.
You can have Cancun or Hilton Head. I’ll take the Firehole in Yellowstone National Park. Enjoy that week on a cruise ship somewhere in the Caribbean. I’ll gladly spend my week in a drift boat on one of the great western rivers. You can have your 9-iron. I’ll take my 9-foot fly rod any day. Run that marathon, polish that ’68 Corvette. Head to a tailgate party before the big football game.
But these delights I neither wish,
Nor envy, while I freely fish.
There’s only one “A River Runs Through It,” the classic fly fishing novella by Norman Maclean. But there’s a host of great outdoor writers who capture the joy and emotion of life in the outdoors. In this episode, Steve and Dave discuss their favorite outdoor authors, including Wallace Stegner, Ivan Doig, and Rick Bass.
On more than one occasion, I’ve enjoyed watching my podcast partner, Dave, flail as he has started to head downstream at the speed of the river. Okay, I’ve done it too. Fortunately, neither of us has fallen into a deep, rushing section of river.
Several years ago, Duane Dunham, an outstanding fly fisher in Portland, Oregon, shared with me some tips for getting out when you fall into a river:
1. Don’t panic. Easy for me to say while I’m warm and dry. But even if you cannot swim, you can emerge safely from water over your head.
2. Don’t attempt to stand up too quickly. Wait until you are in knee deep water.
3. Never fight the current. Let it take you, but angle toward shore. Otherwise, you’ll get exhausted.
4. If the water is deep, you can take a breath and push off the bottom toward shore. Do this enough times, and you’ll get there.
5. Keep your feet down stream. If you are out of control and headed downstream, this will help you avoid hitting your head on a rock. Stay in a semi-sitting position. This may be the most important tip!
6. Don’t fish dangerous water alone. Okay, that’s not going to help you if you’ve already fallen into a rushing run. But it’s worth the reminder for strong-headed, stubborn fly fishers (which Dave and I can be at times!).
7. Let go of your fly rod. This allows you to use both hands to stroke towards shore. Obviously, this is not the first step you take. It’s for emergency situations. Better to lose your Sage rod than your life.
8. Learn to swim. Remember, though, cold water is extremely shocking to your body. An excellent swimmer will quickly tire, so don’t get cocky and take unnecessary risks. It doesn’t matter than you are an expert in a warm pool or lake.
Here’s one more that I didn’t learn from Duane Dunham:
Don’t laugh at your fly fishing partner when he’s floating down the river. I’m sure Dave would appreciate it if I worked on that one. Seriously, falling into a river is no laughing matter.
You haven’t fly fished if you haven’t slipped while waist high in a swift current. Who hasn’t felt the adrenaline surge as the icy water poured over the top of your waders? In this episode Steve and Dave discuss The Basics of Safe Wading, offering several principles for making sure you make it to your favorite restaurant after a day on the river.
Friends don’t small talk, friends talk fantasy. A recent NFL Fantasy Football commercial asked the question that, uh, was on everyone’s mind:
“Without NFL.com fantasy football, what would friends talk about?”
I can’t speak for the other gender, but at least for guys, the answer is, really, not much. We cheerily sit in silence like my 16-year-old, who is at complete peace not saying a word (other than “I’m hungry. Can we stop for Jimmy John’s?”) during our 15-hour trip from Chicago to North Dakota for our yearly hunting tradition.
When There is Nothing to Say
I’ve heard that some guys have no friends. I can’t relate. I’m close with my 82-year-old father; we talk every day, even though he lives three states away. He is my father. And a friend.
As an irrational teenager with a reptilian brain, I had no imagination for what our relationship is today. During those years, when we (er, I) struggled to talk without anger or overstatement, my father and I always had our yearly hunting tradition. We always had fishing, something that drew us together even in the sullen years when we had little to say.
When I was in my early twenties, I convinced my parents to let me drag my younger brother along on a week-long fly fishing trip to Montana. Just him and me. A week of fly fishing helped me see him as more than just an annoying younger brother. Today I would call him one of my friends. And he has now begun taking his children on fishing trips.
With my children (two sons and two daughters), fishing helped us transcend their (and my) snarky behavior. Just recently I took my youngest son on a fly fishing trip to the Driftless in southeast Minnesota. Before the trip, he was laconic and uncommunicative. During the trip, we had some of the best conversations yet as father and son.
After the trip, he returned to his laconic self, ostensibly with no memory of our time on the river.
Common Passion, Common Language
With Steve, my partner on 2 Guys and a River, fly fishing created a reason to stay in touch and thus rekindle a college friendship. After school, we went for years with little contact, while he began his family and I skipped through the odyssey years of my twenties. When it was my turn to settle down, we found a way to stay in touch through some common writing projects. I made several trips to Montana, where Steve served as a pastor, and we made it a point to hit the river every chance we could. In more recent years, we began a yearly tradition to Montana to fish the rivers in the Yellowstone ecosystem, sometimes in the spring, more recently in the summer, and occasionally in the fall.
A common passion created a common language. Fly fishing became a way for Steve and me to small talk and “large talk” – to discuss the deeper things of life – our dreams and fears for our children, the hardships of our lives, and our hope for the years ahead.
I realize that many folks would rather fly fish alone. I can appreciate that. But for me, fly fishing is a team sport.
In contrast to the NFL Fantasy Football commercial, friends actually small talk. While they fly fish. And they create a lifetime of laughter, great conversation, and apocryphal stories of 27-inch rainbow trout.
Fly fishing is a solitary act. Yet for us, it has also been the means for a long friendship. In this episode we tell how fly fishing has contributed to many years of laughter and conversation. Listen to Episode 17: Fly Fishing and Friendship here.
The worst days for fly fishers turn out to be the best days for fly fishing. The moisture in the air — whether in the form of rain or snow — triggers the insect hatches that often trout into a feeding frenzy. A few weeks ago, I witnessed a stretch of river come to life with leaping trout during a brief rain shower. I saw nothing feeding on the surface and caught nothing until the rain seemed to coax bugs and trout from their lairs.
But how do you cope with the various kinds of weather you’re going to face on the river? Here is my list:
STEVE’S GO-TO GEAR
Rain jacket. A few years ago, I bought a lightweight Simms rain jacket. Typically, my budget doesn’t let me splurge for the highest-end stuff (although somehow I ended up with a Winston fly rod!). But it was a purchase I don’t regret. Despite the obvious protection from the rain, the jacket also provides warmth on cool spring mornings and cool fall evenings even when the weather is dry. The jacket is small and light enough that I can roll it up and keep it in my fly vest.
Waders. This seem obvious. But waders also provide their share of warmth in cool weather. When we’re fishing the Driftless in Wisconsin, Dave and I rarely wade in water above our calves. Yet in the spring, we’ll wear our chest waders. It’s not because we’re worried about falling in the little spring creeks we fish. It’s just that the waders provide some warmth.
In the summer, though, you may prepare to wet-wade. I still shake my head when I think about the guy Dave and I saw wearing waders on a little creek in the Driftless on a sunny, eighty degree day!
Wool or waterproof gloves. I’m a wimp when it comes to keeping my hands warm. It’s been that way since I started deer hunting at age 10. So I’ve found that either wool or waterproof gloves work best. The gloves which expose one’s finger tips just don’t work for me. They make about as much sense for me as a screen door on a submarine. But whatever kind of gloves work for you, you’ll be thankful you’ve stashed a pair in your fly vest in the spring and fall. Snow happens. And early mornings and late afternoons can get cool.
Gore-Tex or wool hat. For years, I’ve worn a Woolrich hunting cap because it keeps the moisture off of my head whether it’s raining or snowing. A cotton baseball cap just doesn’t cut it. Recently, I bought a Simms Gore-text hat that I love (whoops, so much for my claim about not buying high end gear!). It’s lightweight, and it’s terrific for keeping my head dry on drizzly days.
Neck gator. This is the newest “gadget” I’ve been enjoying. I thought this would drive me crazy, because I don’t like stuff around my neck. But besides providing warmth, it’s great for protection from the sun. Dave took the above photo of me using the neck gator for sun protection when it was over eighty degrees on the Madison River. Even though I look like a threat to homeland security, the neck gator really works. The fabric is light enough that I never started sweating.
Layers with micro fiber. I’ve become a bit of a micro fiber fanatic. My kids think I must have a deal with Under Armour. But I wear Nike’s Dri-FIT too. This stuff keeps my either warm or cool, depending on the need of the day. Most importantly, it doesn’t soak up moisture. Having several layers of shirts or pants allows for easy adjustments. Besides, it means that you don’t have to bring a bulky coat.
At the end of the day, the goal is not to look like a model in a Simms or Cabela’s catalog. It’s to stay warm or cool, and always dry. Yes, the right gear can make or break your day on the river. Believe me, even a Winston doesn’t cast well when your hand is numb with cold or your body is shivering because you’re soaked with rain water.
At the end of each episode, we have a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What unpredictable weather have you encounter through the years? Tell us about your worst weather on the river but best fishing day ever?
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You fly fished for salmon where?” That’s a question an acquaintance asked me when I described my introduction to fly fishing for salmon in Wisconsin. A few months after moving from Montana to Illinois, my friend, Leon, took me to the Milwaukee River. It was a cool, damp day in October, and the King Salmon were moving into the river from Lake Michigan.
I brought a nine-foot, eight-weight Orvis rod, and I managed to land a couple of salmon which attacked my purple and pink woolly bugger. I also foul-hooked a couple of others. That was inevitable given the number of salmon moving up the river.
What struck me about the stretch of river we fished was its proximity to civilization.
We were fly fishing the Milwaukee River in Estabrook Park, a half mile east of a McDonald’s on East Capitol Drive in Milwaukee, just four miles north of downtown Milwaukee. It seemed odd to fly fish just minutes from the Bradley Center, home of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks. On a more macabre note, we were only five miles from the apartment complex where serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer murdered most of his victims. Then again, I’ve fly fished in Montana within sight of the spot where another serial killer murdered one of his victims. But that’s a story for another time.
Surprisingly, when I walked down the path from one of the parking lots in Estabrook Park to the Milwaukee River, it was if I had been transported to another world. Hardwood and softwood trees lined the river, their orange and yellow leaves fluttering in the breeze. When the morning fog lifted, the sun seemed to set them on fire. Other than an occasional siren, all I could hear was the sound of the river and the chirping of birds. Once I heard a dog bark. A few times, I heard Leon whoop when he hooked into a feisty salmon a few yards to my right. To be sure, the river did not run as clear as the Yellowstone in Montana. But I could easily see the pods of salmon darting their way up the river.
I’ve caught fish miles away from anywhere. But on this day, I caught fish blocks away from anything you might want — restaurants, a major university, a hospital, and even a professional sports venue and concert arena. No, it wasn’t the Yellowstone. But it didn’t need to be. Those urban salmon didn’t realize they were “city slickers.” They didn’t fight any more or less than the “rural” salmon I’ve hooked on the Wilson River in Alaska. Nor did they have more metropolitan tastes than the big browns on the Madison when it came to the flies I was using to catch them.
It was a good day on the river, and I had plenty of time to reflect on it as the rush-hour traffic slowed to a crawl when we drove out of downtown Milwaukee.
Fly fishing spring creeks is not like fly fishing the big freestone rivers of the American West. In this episode, we interview fly fishing legend Gary Borger on fishing in the Upper Midwest and, specifically, how to fish spring creeks.
At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
What adjustments have you made when fly fishing spring creeks?
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A lot of my fly fishing memories have more to do with the people I’ve met than the trout I’ve caught. One fly fisher I remember well is Nolan, a heli-logger from Plains, Montana. His job was to fell a tree and hook onto it a cable, which dangled from a helicopter. Then the helicopter would whisk away the tree. It’s an effective method for logging in remote areas, and it lessens the environmental impact. Nolan, the heli-logger, took me on a float and it changed how I approached the sport.
One September in the early 1990s, Nolan was working with a heli-logging crew up the Mill Creek drainage in Paradise Valley, just south of Livingston, Montana. At the time, my parents lived within sight of the Mill Creek Bridge which crossed the Yellowstone River. One day, Nolan showed up at my folks’ house and asked if he could park his travel trailer on the edge of their property.
It would be a lot closer to where he was logging than if he stayed at a campground further down the road.
Floating with the Heli-Logger
Meanwhile, my brother, Dave, and I showed up at my folks to spend three days bow-hunting elk in the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness area several miles up the Mill Creek drainage. It’s rugged country, and we were exhausted after two days with warm temperatures and few elk encounters. My dad suggested that we might float the Yellowstone with Nolan on the afternoon of day three. Hel-logger Nolan had brought an inflatable raft with him, and had caught quite a few trout when he floated a stretch of the Yellowstone a couple days before we arrived.
Dave and I thought floating the Yellowstone would be a nice break from traversing steep terrain. Besides, we would be doing Nolan a favor. We could share our insights with this newbie to our river, and it might help him catch more fish.
It turned out that Nolan did us a favor by taking us on the float. Nolan was a predator — and I mean that in the best sense of the word. He stalked and hunted trout. The guy had an eagle eye. Every few minutes of floating, he would say, “There! Do you see those heads popping up about fifty yards to the right?”
“Uh, no. Where are they?”
I thought Nolan was imagining things. But when we closed to within twenty yards, I could see trout heads breaking through the film to sip bugs off the surface. What struck me, too, was Nolan’s sense of anticipation. He seemed to know where we would see rising fish. The guy could read water. He had fished this stretch only once, and I had fished it a dozen times. Yet he knew the river like it was his backyard.
Nolan had done more than spend his entire life outdoors, whether working or fly fishing or hunting. He had learned to observe and see patterns and draw conclusions. One afternoon spent with him challenged me to work harder on reading the water I fished and to be more alert for rising trout. As skilled as Nolan was, he didn’t have a smidgen of arrogance. He was curious about bow-hunting. He hunted elk with a rifle, but he had never tried calling them in with a cow call or bugle to get a thirty-yard shot with a bow. But I still had a hunch that if I could take Nolan bow-hunting, he would teach me a thing or two.
I know that we caught some trout that day. But I don’t remember how big they were or how many we caught. What I remember is Nolan. I think that’s the way it should be. Fly fishing is not just about the fish. It’s also about the people you meet along the way.
Fly fishing personalities – they are everywhere. On the river. At fly fishing trade shows. In fly shops. And on the trail as you’ve hiking to your favorite stretch of river. We guess that you’ve met every one of the six in this podcast. Maybe you’re one of them. In this episode, we create a taxonomy of the wonderful, funny, and sometimes crazy personalities we’ve met through the years. And then we label each other. Steve is a bit ADD, and Dave is a Drama King. Listen to Episode 14: Fly Fishing Personalities You’ll Meet.
Any Fly Fishing Personalities that We Missed?
We bet that you’ve come across a few characters along the way. We’d love to hear about them. Come up with a label for the personality.
Please post your stories below! At some point, we’ll do another episode on the topic and roll out our next six.
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It is a late October afternoon, and rifle season has just begun. But the Montana weather is unseasonably warm. So my son, Luke, and I grab our fly rods instead of our rifles and head for the Beartrap Canyon in the Madison River. I’m looking forward to time on the river with Luke. I wish my oldest son, Ben, could be with us, but he is in college a thousand miles away.
Luke and I find spots about thirty yards apart on a favorite run in the Madison about a mile upriver from where it leaves the Beartrap. On his first cast, Luke apparently gets snagged on a rock. He turned twelve a couple months ago, and his fly fishing skills keep improving. But it looks like he’s going to need help from his dad. I see him pulling his rod this way and that way. But he cannot dislodge his fly from the rock.
Time is short today. I make my way upriver to help him.
“Here, why don’t we switch rods,” I offer. “Let me see if I can get your fly loose. I’ll probably have to snap it off, and I’ll re-tie everything. Just go down and fish the stretch where I was standing. I only made one cast.”
I take Luke’s rod and give it a tug or two. I can feel the rock which has snagged Luke’s fly move up the river about a foot. “Luke, you have a fish on the end of the line, and it’s a big one!”
Luke’s eyes light up, and he splashes his way back to me to grab his rod. “Go easy,” I tell him. Let’s see if you can pull him back towards shore out of this run.” For the next two minutes, Luke battles the monster at the other end of his line. Finally, we get it in shallow water, and the fish rolls over in the film.
“Oh wow,” I say to Luke. “It’s a big brown. Did you see that cream-colored body and those red spots? What a monster! Just go easy and I’ll get in position to net him.”
Whatever I do, I cannot lose this fish. So, I move into position, a few yards below Luke, and I get ready as he guides the fish my way. But I get too close too quickly. The big brown senses my presence and scoots around my leg, line and all. SNAP. The line breaks, and the trout is gone.
“Oh nooo! Luke, I’m so sorry.”
Luke turns his back on me. He is angry. “What were you doing?”
Now I feel my anger rise.
“Hey, I couldn’t help it,” I tell Luke. “I couldn’t wait forever to net him.”
Then I throw him a peace offering. “Here, take my rod and keep fishing and I’ll tie a new fly onto your line.” Luke’s back is still towards me as I hand him my rod. Now I see why. A couple tears slide down his left cheek. Oh great. I’ve ruined what should have been an incredible moment for him. My anger melts into a sick feeling.
“Don’t worry,” I say. “There are more fish where that came from.”
“Yeah, right,” Luke mumbles. Neither one of us is convinced there will be another fish, let alone one like that.
So I take seat on the bank and sigh. I root through a pocket in my vest and retrieve the box. As I open it to retrieve a new fly, I hear words that bring back the joy. “Dad, I’ve got one!”
“Alright, keep your line steady, but let him take it if he wants,” I say. Moments later, another large brown breaks the surface, whipping its head back and forth in an attempt to discard the fly caught in its lip. “Wow, Luke, that’s as big as the last one.” After a couple anxious minutes, I land this one securely in my net! I would have swam after it before letting it get away. What a fish! It doesn’t quite fit in the net because it turns out to be nineteen inches long!
Luke goes back to work. Two casts later, his strike indicator disappears and his rod almost doubles over.
“I don’t think I can land this one, Dad.”
“Yes, you can.”
After five minutes I don’t know who is more spent – Luke or the big brown. This one measures twenty-two inches. It is certainly the biggest fish Luke has ever caught on a fly rod. The next forty-five minutes yield four more fish for Luke. All are between nineteen and twenty inches. All but one are browns. The lone exception is a twenty-inch rainbow.
Luke’s arms are too tired to continue, so I put my net away and start fishing. In the next fifteen minutes, I land a couple more browns, both around twenty inches. Then, the catching stops as quickly as it started. The daylight begins to dim, so Luke and I head down the trail towards our truck and towards home. Our time on the water did not start well. But thanks to some big browns, the anger turned to joy.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
At what age did you introduce your kids to the great outdoors?
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Forrest Gump gets credit for the line “stupid is as stupid does.” But I suspect this aphorism originated with a fly fisher. After all, fly fishing brings out the best and the worst in a person’s behavior. I can imagine one fly fisher laughing at another who has just fallen face first into a stream while trying to move too rapidly over the slick boulders beneath its surface and then saying, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
In this post I offer a few of my more stupid fly fisher moments:
Stupid Fly Fisher Hiking
One of my “stupid” moments happened a few years ago at 10,000 feet above sea level in Rocky Mountain National Park. I was fishing with my brother, Dave, and my Uncle Ivan. Dave I and were in our teens. Our Uncle Ivan was old enough to know better. The plan was to take a short-cut to the upper reaches of a mountain stream which had a healthy supply of brook trout.
You can guess what happened. We got lost.
A half hour after realizing we were lost, my Uncle Ivan feared that our quest would not lead us to the little stream. I simply feared for my life. We had been following a faint game trail. This trail must have been made by Bighorn sheep because it took us over a ridge line onto a steep hillside. Before we knew it, we were hanging onto small Aspen trees to keep from sliding into the canyon below us.
A snowfield loomed ahead. How did we end up here? Stupid is as stupid does.
We finally found a flat spot where we could sit without the fear of sliding down the steep hillside. My Uncle Ivan decided to eat his lunch. I was too scared to eat. Just then, we heard a helicopter and saw it flying up the drainage in between our hillside and the opposite one. We all started waving and shouting, “We need help.” But it never changed direction or speed, and soon it was gone. What were we thinking? Was the helicopter pilot really going to see or hear us? If so, would the pilot really assume we were in trouble and begin some sort of rescue mission? Stupid is as stupid does.
Although my Uncle Ivan resembles a character right out of a Patrick McManus tale, he is an astute woodsman. He scanned the steep hillside and noticed another trail on a bench above us that would take us on a much gentler grade. It took some work to scramble safely up the hillside to that bench. But we did it. We hiked for another thirty minutes until we found the object of our pursuit.
For the next two hours, we caught so many brookies that we forgot about our peril. We fished far enough downstream to find a more substantial game trail, which led us to one of the trails maintained by the National Park Service.
The fishing success seemed to repress the memory of those scary moments on the side of the mountain.
I didn’t think much about it until a year later when I tried to take my younger brother, Kevin, around Upper Two Medicine Lake in Glacier National Park to get to the “better water” on the other side of lake. Before we knew it, the bank had ended and we were on a steep stone cliff with intermittent seeps of water. We ended up hanging onto scrub brush so that we would not slide down into the glacially cooled lake. I wondered what I had done. With one slip, my parents would lose two sons. Since I’m writing this, you know that I made it around the lake safely.
So did my brother. What else can I say, but … stupid is as stupid does.
Fly fishers can do stupid things when zeroed in on trout, steelhead, salmon, or whatever the fish. Some of it is hilarious, some of it (almost) deadly serious. In this episode, we recall some of our more stupid moments in the outdoors. Click now to listen to “The Stupid Things Fly Fishers Do”.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” We read a few of the comments from this blog or from our Facebook page. We enjoying hearing from our readers and listeners, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Any plans for the new year? Do you hope to get more days on the water? Any plans for a bigger fly fishing trip? Any books you plan to read or skills you hope to acquire? Please post your comments below!
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What lessons have you recently learned? Do you have any great stories to tell? We’d love to hear from you.
Download a Podcast App on Your Smartphone
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
Wounded warriors are the heroes among us. Yet so often, they suffer in silence. In Episode 10, we interviewed Dave Kumlien, Trout Unlimited’s Veterans Service Partnership Western Coordinator, about his involvement with the Warriors and Quiet Waters Project. Here is a first-hand account from Jessica B., wife of a wounded warrior, about the impact a couples’ fly fishing trip had on her husband.
I am grateful to Trout Unlimited Veterans Service Partnership for their work, their mission, and their devotion to helping Veterans and families like us. Thank you for recognizing that there is a need, and providing a relaxing and therapeutic aid through fly fishing, to help our service members find a peaceful distraction from whatever they may be facing. I have never felt so uplifted by a single group of people as I did when my husband and I were privileged to participate in a couple’s fly fishing trip to Silvertip Ranch [just north of Yellowstone National Park] through the Veterans Service Partnership
My husband, Damein, served in the Army nine years and endured three combat tours with the 82nd Airborne division. Being the leader that he is, he carried the burden from his deployments along with the demands of our family until it became too much to bear. I watched my husband slowly disengage from us, become distant, and wrestle with matters that left him sleepless and bothered. He was hurting.
As a spouse, it is hard to watch the person you love the most go through something you can’t fix. The more I tried to expose the problems, the longer the lengths he went to hide and dismiss them. He was trying to protect us. Damein was trying to figure out how to live with what happened, while I was trying to figure out how to deal with our newly delicate situation.
We moved back to our home state of South Carolina after Damein was medically discharged from the Army. I could tell that he was struggling with all of the free time that retirement had granted him. Luckily, Damein was introduced to a local Project Healing Waters program run by the Mountain Bridge Trout Unlimited Chapter in Greenville, South Carolina. These folks reintroduced him to fly fishing. As Damein got more involved, I could see that there was energy to his voice. For the first time in a long time, he was excited to talk to me about fly fishing.
He told me one night about the opportunity to go to Montana to do some fly fishing with Trout Unlimited Veterans Services Partnership. It was a couples’ trip. The first thing that came out of my mouth was, “Are you sure I can go?” The second thing I said was, “I’ve never cast a fly rod in my life!” Soon after that we left for Montana.
I watched Damein on that trip. I watched him casting in the water. I watched him bubble with pride when he caught his first cutthroat trout. I watched stress roll off his body, and something was very different, but so very familiar. I saw my husband return to who he was—before his life had been affected by his time in combat.
I understood the serenity, the focus, and the silent satisfaction that he found in fly fishing. He was enjoying life, he was enjoying people, and he was surrounded by the most beautiful landscape we had ever seen. It was a sight for my eyes to behold, and I witnessed there what a quiet river and a fly rod, could do for your soul. It was a time of reflecting and reconnecting for us, and I feel like we both had the opportunity to decompress, enjoy each other, and just breathe.
We shared an amazing week with couples who had felt, in one way or another, the same connection to the river that we did. In the evenings, we sat around a fire, we laughed and we cried, sharing stories about the past, stories about the present, and I fell in love with this program. I fell in love with the compassion and the heart behind the work that Trout Unlimited and their partners are doing for our Veterans and their families. I fell in love with the guides who devoted themselves to work with each Veterans’ sensitive needs. I fell in love with the comradery and the brotherhood among the Veterans. I fell in love with the way it brought spouses together, so we could share our husbands’ enjoyment and healing.
We left Montana with a renewed energy for our relationship and in turn, it has reflected beautifully on our family. I hope this program will continue to make a difference in the lives or our nation’s Veterans and their families.
What truly restores wounded warriors, the folks who have sacrificed so much for our country? In this episode, we interview Dave Kumlien, who is the Western Coordinator for the Veterans Service Partnership and Aquatic Invasive Species Coordinator at Trout Unlimited. Dave’s work with Warriors and Quiet Waters in Bozeman, MT, helps restore our country’s wounded veterans through fly fishing. Listen to Episode 10: How Fly Fishing Restores Wounded Warriors.
Do you have any friends who have been wounded while serving our country? Would any like to fly fish? We’d be happy to put them in contact with Dave Kumlien, who heads up the fly fishing program that restores wounded warriors.
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The exact arrival of the Mother’s Day caddis hatch on the Yellowstone River is unpredictable.
As its name suggests, the hatch often peaks around Mother’s Day. By then, warm temperatures have caused enough snow runoff so that the Yellowstone swells and looks like chocolate milk. But every so often, cooler temperatures delay the runoff, giving fly fishers a few days to fish during the fabled hatch.
On one of these late April days, I drive over the Bozeman Pass on Interstate 90 to fish a favorite section of the Yellowstone below the Pine Creek Bridge. As I walk down the river along its east bank, I enter a stretch where huge cliffs of dirt and rock loom over the river and obscure the view of the Absarokee-Beartooth Mountains. A deep, narrow run flows right beside the bank.
The caddis are fluttering all over the water. In fact, they are climbing on my hat and on the lens of my sunglasses. Every few minutes, these tan bugs seem to come off in waves. When this happens, the run beneath the bank comes to life. The water seems to boil as trout after trout rolls over and ingests one fly and then another.
My first cast is terrible. It is too short, so I decide to lift the line off the water and make another cast. But as I lift the tip of my fly rod, a 14-inch rainbow cruises to the surface and attacks my imitation caddis fly. I land the fish and try it again. My second cast is better. My fly floats a few feet, riding the roller-coaster current before another trout launches an attack. This time, it’s a 15-inch rainbow. For the next ten minutes, this scene repeats itself several times. Every cast gets a strike. I miss my share and even manage to land my flies in a tangle on my hat. You’d think I had never fly fished before. I hate to waste the five minutes it takes to untangle and re-tie my lead fly and dropper. But I have no choice.
For the next hour, I have at least four ten-minute stretches where the fishing is just phenomenal. Then the action subsides for a few minutes until another wave of caddis emerges from the deep.
But now the dreaded wind is picking up. It whips up dust from the dirt bank behind me, and my eyes cannot take it because I am wearing contact lenses behind my sunglasses. The wind also makes it impossible to cast. Even when I land my fly where it needs to be the wind forces it to plough through the water like a water-skier. It’s time to take a break. So, I hook my fly into the little hook near the cork handle on my fly rod. I cross my arms, and hold my rod to my chest. Then I close my eyes to wait it out.
Skills for the Caddis Craze
Suddenly, I feel my rod jerk. Something is trying to rip it out of my arms. I’m so startled that I almost fall into the water beneath my feet. I get a grip on my rod, open my eyes and can’t believe what I see. I am fighting a fish! I quickly realize that the wind had dislodged my fly from the hook on my rod and that the fly had been fluttering in the wind while my eyes were closed. It obviously touched down on the surface of the river. When it did, a trout made its move. After recovering from the shock, I start laughing as I land a 13-inch rainbow.
A few months later, I share this story with Bud Lilly and Paul Schullery. They are at the Magpie Bookstore in Three Forks, Montana to sign their book, Bud Lilly’s Guide to Fly Fishing the West. Bud and Paul both laugh, and Bud says: “Sounds like it didn’t take too much skill that day.”
Indeed, it did not.
Insect hatches on trout rivers are a crazy phenomena. They sometimes drive the trout crazy, and sometimes they make fly fishers go crazy when the trout go into a feeding frenzy but refuse to take an angler’s fly. Or sometimes they will attack your fly when you’re not even fishing! You never know what to expect.
Crazy happens. If you fly fish long enough, something wild, silly, stupid, or out of the blue will happen. Just does. In this episode, Steve and Dave recount the silly to the serious, the sometimes fun to the sometimes scary moments of fly fishing in the great outdoors. Listen to Episode 8: Crazy Stuff Happens While Fly Fishing.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
How did you make the transition to fly fishing on your own? What advice would you give someone who wants to start the learning curve to fish on his or her own?
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
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We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
If life was only about fly fishing, then the move was foolish. In May of 2006, I did something that makes no sense at all for a fly fisher. I moved my family from Montana’s Gallatin Valley to Libertyville, Illinois, a community thirty-eight miles north of downtown Chicago. In many respects, Libertyville reminds me of Bozeman, Montana. It is a wonderful community in which to live. But I had compelling reasons to make the move, and I haven’t regretted it. Still, though you can take the fly fisher out of the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, you can’t take the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem out of the fly fisher.
I return to fly fish the Yellowstone area once or twice every year since I’ve moved. Here are my top ten reasons to cancel all your other vacation plans and fly fish the Yellowstone ecosystem.
1. Your choice of blue-ribbon waters
There’s the Yellowstone, the Madison, and the Gallatin. In Yellowstone National Park (YNP), you have the Lamar, Slough Creek, and the Firehole (in addition to the Madison and the Yellowstone).
2. The meal at the end of the day.
You can wrap up your day with a tender cut of steak at Sir Scott’s Oasis in Manhattan or The Rib and Chop House in Livingston. Or, if you want to go with pizza, there’s Colombos in Bozeman.
3. The spectacular scenery.
Nothing compares with the majestic, snow-capped Absarokee-Beartooth Mountains that tower over the Yellowstone River as it flows through Paradise Valley.
4. Bio-diversity.
You can fly fish big rivers, small streams, spring creeks (in Paradise Valley), and even lakes (like Henry’s Lake or Yellowstone Lake in YNP).
5. Ample access.
Thanks to a good supply of public fishing accesses and Montana’s “streamside access law,” you can fish for miles on any of the big rivers without fear of being kicked off by a landowner or arrested by a game warden.
6. Three-season success.
The fishing can be superb in three out of the four seasons. Spring and fall can be as good or better than summer. I’ve caught fish in all twelve months of the year, but winter is slow.
7. The prolific hatches.
From the fabled Mother’s Day Caddis hatch to the sure and steady Blue Winged Olive (BWO) and Pale Morning Dun (PMD) hatches, the trout can become ravenous. Don’t forget hoppers in August.
8. Wildlife sightings.
You’ve got to be careful here, but you’ll have a chance to see everything from bald eagles to sandhill cranes to wolves to deer to grizzly bears. If you fish the Madison inside YNP in the fall, you may get to hear one of nature’s most stirring sounds … the bugle of a bull elk.
9. World class guides and fly shops.
The guides in the fly shops in Bozeman, Livingston, Gardiner, and West Yellowstone all know their stuff. You can get helpful tips and reliable information from them. Better yet, you can book a day float trip or a wade trip.
10. The chance to fish for Yellowstone Cutthroats.
It’s worth fishing the Yellowstone River inside Yellowstone National Park just to encounter these beautiful fish. Some of the bigger cutthroat I’ve caught in the Park have been as fat as footballs.
So what are you waiting for? I hope to see you soon on a river somewhere near Bozeman. Just don’t get too close. I like a little solitude. But please wave at me from across the river.
There are a million great places to fly fish. But the center of the fly fishing universe has to be the greater Yellowstone ecosystem. With the Yellowstone, the Madison, the Gallatin – and hundreds of smaller streams – the area is a fly-fishing paradise. In this podcast, Steve and Dave provide aspiring fly fishers an insider’s overview of the great waters near Bozeman, Montana.
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last portion of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoying hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experience.
Have you fly fished in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem? Post a comment on your best day ever on one of its great rivers or streams.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
I’ve hunted in North Dakota my entire life. Every fall, at least one of my sons and I make the almost 900-mile drive from Chicago to North Dakota for opening day of pheasant season.
The tradition started years ago, before I had kids, before I was married. Every fall, my brother and I figured out a way to truck back to our stomping grounds, even though that meant skipping classes while in college, graduate school, and, for my brother, even medical school.
Each October, we tromp the grasslands and cornfields of central and western North Dakota with our father and his aging friends. There are hundreds of crazy stories to tell, many of them apocryphal. We struggle to assign a specific year to a story. The years merge together like a hundred streams that flow into a single river.
The Great Grandma Excuse
When my oldest son was four, I buckled him to a car seat and endured 900 miles of potty stops and McDonald’s Happy Meals from Chicago to North Dakota for a few days of guy time. When we arrived, Grandma babysat Christian while my father, brother, and I cavorted with my father’s friends for four days in the Dakota outdoors. At 7 years old, Christian abandoned grandma and piled in the truck with the guys to hunt. He hung around the truck while we walked the fields. At 10, he tagged along with us up and down the corn rows and the draws and ravines. He was a great bird dog. At 11, he shot his first pheasant.
As the years went by, sports (more specifically, football) began to encroach on our tradition.
During Christian’s middle school years, we needed a good reason for him to miss almost a week of football, including a game. (We never fretted about missing school, though probably we should have.) Opening day of pheasant season was always the second Saturday of October – in the dead of football season. In Wheaton, there is god and one god only: football.
We needed an excuse. A really good excuse. So, starting when Christian was in sixth grade, I alerted his football coach a few days before we were to leave, “Christian’s great grandmother is dying, and we need to see her before she passes. This might be the last time he sees her alive.”
At the time, Christian’s great grandma was 94. No coach dared to say, “Well, do it and I’ll bench you.”
Was great grandma actually dying?
Well, not exactly.
Was she old? Yes.
Could she die? And could this be the last time Christian might see her? Absolutely.
Every year in middle school, there was a new coach. And every year, the excuse worked beautifully. It stopped working its magic for Christian during his freshman year in high school, however. When we returned from six memorable days in North Dakota, Christian got benched. And he never regained his position the rest of the season.
That was Christian’s last year in North Dakota for hunting. Football trumped our tradition. I wasn’t happy, but some things in life you simply can’t fight. By the way, the excuse still worked for my youngest son while he played football in middle school. He was never benched.
Great grandma, though, is still alive and now 102.
Now that Cory, my youngest son, will play football at Wheaton North as a freshman, we face another crack in the tradition. High school coaches show no quarter. We’re now considering changing the tradition, delaying the trip until the end of October, after football is over, though we still haven’t figured out what to do if his team makes the playoffs.
Sacred Outdoors Tradition
My oldest still plays in college, but it won’t be long until he’ll be back with us in North Dakota.
Football ends, our tradition lives on.
I’ve reminded my oldest that the disappointments and dreariness of football (getting hurt, not starting, getting benched, the quirky injuries, months of mindless drills and weight-lifting, and third-rate coaching from men who never grew up) are mostly preparation for the end of football. Some day, it will all be over. So accept the disappointment as a harbinger of how you will feel the last time you don your helmet for game day. For most players, football is mostly about learning to deal with the death of your over-blown expectations.
But our hunting tradition persists, even if next fall, only my brother and I and a couple of his kids make the trip. The tradition continues.
Grandpa and grandma are now 81. Great-grandma, as I mentioned, is 102.
My father rarely walks a field anymore, but drives the truck and still reaches for his wallet first to pay for gas and lunch. Last fall, my father walked a mile-long ravine with us one late morning in early October, determined not merely to be road support. It was a slow walk in thick grass and brush, but we kicked up a couple birds and guffawed when we all missed.
You’d think we’d be better shots after all these years.
Through the years, our tradition has created an outdoor space to laugh, to joke, to drink lukewarm coffee, to eat third-rate food at the Chat-n-Chew cafe, and to weather a couple years where we didn’t have much to say to each other, because how hurt we felt with how each of us had responded to a family conflict.
Autumn gave us reason to be together, even when we did not understand each other.
My brother and I fret about the day when the hunting party grows quiet, when the laughter of my dad and his friends no longer fills the early morning as we put out goose decoys in the dark and shiver by the rock pile waiting for the sun and the geese to arrive. It’s inevitable. Something wonderful is passing, and we can’t hold on to it.
We can only say thanks for autumn’s most holy tradition. And prepare to become the elders of our tribe, the guys who drive the truck and pay for our kids and grandkids’ lunch at the Chat-n-Chew.
My buddy slows his orange Volkswagen Vanagon to a crawl as we cross the Madison River. It is a March day in 1994. We are about twenty-eight miles west of Bozeman on Highway 84–what locals call the Norris Road. My friend looks over the bridge at the Madison River.
But I scan the high ridge on the west side of the highway where Madison County Sheriff Johnny France apprehended the infamous mountain men–Don and Dan Nichols–a little less than a decade ago. I recall the ordeal of a young Olympic bi-athlete, Kari Swenson. The father and son kidnapped her on July 15, 1984, while she was on a training run high above the Big Sky resort in the dark timber near Ulerys Lakes. A day later, two searchers heard a shot and a woman’s scream. When they rushed to the spot, they found Swenson chained to a tree and badly wounded.
Dan Nichols had accidentally shot her. In the ensuing confrontation, his father, Don, fatally shot one of Kari’s rescuers. His shot was no accident. Thankfully, Kari survived, but the Nichols duo escaped. They hid out for five months in the Spanish Peaks wilderness area before Johnny France captured them on the ridge above me on December 13, 1984.
I snap out of my dark thoughts when my friend Dave Hansen accelerates and crosses the bridge. The river beckons. I am about to get my first taste of fly fishing in the legendary Bear Trap section of the Madison.
Emergency Room Friendship
Ironically, what brought Dave and I together was another tragedy–a shooting in which the victim was a young Montana woman.
The shooting was accidental. The victim was a young wife and mom in her early twenties. I’ll call her Cindi. She was a member of the church where I served as pastor. Her parents were in the church where Dave was a pastor. Dave and I met in the emergency waiting room as the doctors fought valiantly to save Cindi’s life. But she didn’t make it, so Dave and I spent the next days and weeks and months walking with her family members through the valley of the shadow of death. Along the way, Dave and I developed a friendship and figured out that we both liked to fly fish.
So here we are a few months after the tragedy, hoping that our time on the river will be part of the healing process. As pastors, we have a unique relationship with pain. Obviously, we cannot feel the depths of grief that parents feel when they lose a daughter or that a husband feels when losing his young wife. But we do share in their pain.
This day on the river provides some solace from the harsh reality of Cindi’s death.
The snow is softly falling, and this triggers a Baetis hatch. The trout are feeding. Every couple of minutes, Dave or I land a rainbow, interrupting the silence as we stand lost in our thoughts. What is it about standing in thigh-deep water, rhythmically casting a fly over weed beds and between rocks, and watching the snowflakes disappear into the dark surface of the river that provides medicine for the soul?
River of Life
There is something haunting and healing about a river. I suspect this relates to the Bible’s description of paradise. The final book of the Bible says that a river runs through it—the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the very throne of God and bringing healing.
It is often the silence and solitude provided by fly fishing Montana rivers which force me to confront the pain I experience when I walk with families through the valley of the shadow of death.
I am not a melancholy person. I find great joy and delight in fly fishing. When I step into a stream or river, it is not as if a dark cloud suddenly hovers over my head. Most days on the river are filled with laughter, and sometimes, I am so intent on getting the right drift that I think of nothing else except catching trout.
But I do let down when I fly fish. When I am present with people in tragedy, I seem to suspend my emotional responses until days or weeks or months later. The emotions often hit me when I’m standing in a river. Then I may remember my own pain—the loss of my father to cancer, the betrayal of a friend, harsh words from a critic, or simply being misunderstood. When the painful memories come, I often think of the river in the Bible’s final chapter.
I am thankful for the promise of a river that brings healing and life. No wonder I am haunted by waters.
Reflections on “A River Runs Through It” are often about family – and what it means to love someone you don’t understand.The movie A River Runs Through It starring Brad Pitt, Tom Skerritt, and Craig Sheffer, and directed by Robert Redford, narrated a tragic but true story of a Presbyterian family in western Montana. Before the movie, though, came the book, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories. The story A River Runs Through It is actually a novella inside the book of short stories by Norman MacClean, the older son who taught at the University of Chicago and who died right before the movie was made. In this podcast, Steve and Dave reflect on how the story impacted them, including the relationships within their families. Listen to Episode 5: Reflections on “A River Runs Through It”
Great Stuff from Our Listeners. At the end of each episode, we often include a feature called “Great Stuff from Our Listeners.” It’s the last segment of each episode, where Steve reads one of the comments from our listeners or readers. We enjoy hearing from you, and appreciate your advice, wisdom, and fly fishing experiences.
How did you make the transition to fly fishing on your own? What advice would you give someone who wants to start the learning curve to fish on his or her own?
By the way, we’d love for you to refer our podcast to a friend, your TU chapter, or fly fishing club. Be sure to pass along our podcast to others.
Be sure to subscribe to our podcast feed. You can do that on your smartphone or tablet by downloading a podcast app. The most common app used by 2 Guys feed subscribers is “Podcasts.”
We like to say it is a book of bite-sized snacks. Maybe even like a handful of potato chips. It’s an entire book of lists. The goal is to help you find practical help quickly and in an easily digestible format!
