Fishing Tips Back Issues

Volume 1 Number 1

Number 1:

Use the heavy artillery when the wind is strong


Fly fishing in the wind can still be productive.

Use big heavy nymph and streamer patterns fished with a 7- or 8- weight sink-tip, or else with a good-sized rocket-taper floating fly line. Of course you need a stout fly rod to handle it, something with the backbone of the three-wood that you use for long drives in golf. This is the essence of "chuck and duck" fly fishing. You heave a heavy bug right up into the underbrush along the bank and pull up hard when the fish strikes.
Many fly fisherman persist in the futility of trying to fish dry flies, even when the wind makes it impossible to hit the surface of the water with a cast. Perhaps they will switch to a larger and more visible pattern, such as a Joes Hopper or a Parachute Whatchamacallit, but they might have more success with a heavy nymph. That's my strategy, anyway.

Number 2:

Doing catch-and release properly

If we want to preserve the opportunities for fishing that we have today throughout the lives of our children and our children's children's children, then fishermen should release all the big studs and breeders.


Catching and releasing... the only way to go.

Step 1 (above): CATCH
Step 2 (below): RELEASE


Release ALL cutthroat trout. They are endangered.

Play the fish rapidly so that you can get him back in the water before he's totally exhausted, and don't fret if you lose him prematurely. As a "catch-and-release only" fisherman, you can legally "count your coup" if you set the hook and get a quick look at 'em.
Put the fish back in the water gently, with his head upstream, and support him like that until he revives and is ready to swim off under his own power. If he is in shock, he may clamp his mouth shut and forget to breathe, so you may need to open his mouth a little to let the current run through his gills. When he's fully revived he will take off like a shot, vigorously and without hesitation. Don't just toss him back to be bounced around by the rocks and the current.


Number 3:

Run Silent, Run Deep

Even where the fishing is pretty good, you can catch many many more fish when you consistently put your temptation DIRECTLY in harm's way. Proximity to their feeding locations is the key.

 

Great fish from the xxx river

In the fast, cold rivers of Montana, the big trout tend to be deep, so you have to fish deep to catch them. It may look like I dragged him up close to the shore but this nice leviathan brown trout was at the very bottom of a long deep pool of moving water when he was fooled by a fly bounced along the bottom behind about 6 split shots.
A heavily-weighted, size 2 muddler was the hot ticket for me on this summer day, but without the additional weight, I might as well have been trolling with jelly donuts.

It's a fish-eat-fish world

At last, VHS or DV Dee-Vee Tee-Vee for the masses! A steal at only $50 each. Totally unrehearsed and spontaneous. Specify whether you would like to see the Clark Fork, the Big Hole, the Smith, or an assortment of odd "family float" video clips from rivers such as the Missouri, the Yellowstone, the Jefferson and the Madison. Classic floats.

Take me home