Working on Your Fly Fishing Swing

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.

S2:E33 Fishing the Wild Places

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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.”

Listen to our episode “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:

    Fly Fishing’s Wilder Side

    The Trail Less Traveled

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Tactics for Fly Fishing a Lake

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.

Three Half Truths about Fly Rods

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.

S2:E2 Our Fly Fishing Bucket Lists

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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.

Listen to S2:E2 Our Fly Fishing Bucket Lists

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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