The Orvis Guide to Beginning Fly Fishing, page 9
The white parachute wing on this Royal PMX helps you track it on the water.
65
Preparing for your first float trip
CHANCES ARE YOUR FIRST GUIDED TROUT-FISHING TRIP will be in a drift boat with a friend or guide. With a little preparation, you’ll have a lot more fun and keep the stress level for both you and your guide to a minimum.
Be honest with your ability so the guide can plan a day on water that suits your experience level. He’ll figure it out in five minutes anyway if you exaggerate.
Most guides provide lunch, equipment, and flies—but some don’t. Make sure you establish that the guide is bringing lunch and drinks before you’re five miles into a ten-mile trip on a hot day.
Don’t wear wading shoes with metal cleats.They’ll tear up the bottom of the guide’s expensive boat. If they’re the only wading boots you own, wear a pair of sandals or sneakers and only put on the wading boots if you get out and wade while on the trip.
The guide will give you directions based on the hands of a clock. Twelve o’clock is not whatever is in front of you. It’s always the front of the boat, and six o’clock is directly behind the boat.
Pack a raincoat and try to get all your gear into one bag that can be easily stowed.
It’s best to fish and move around the boat as directed by the guide. If you want to try a cast in a different spot, ask first so you don’t risk hooking the guide or falling out of the boat when you suddenly do something he didn’t expect.
Evening Shadows
66
Reading currents to find trout
BEHAVIORAL STUDIES OF TROUT HAVE SHOWN THAT THEY prefer current speeds of about ten to twelve inches per second, which is about the speed of a slow walk. Try pacing it out with your foot. However, while they like to lie in water of this speed, they also like to be on the edge of a faster current, because the faster the current, the quicker food is brought to them. Thus the best place to find trout is where fast currents meet slower water, known as a seam.You can see these obvious breaks on the edges of fast surface currents, but there are also hidden seams below the surface.
Hidden seams are found on stream bottoms with rough texture, because each rock on the bottom makes turbulence and slows the downstream progress of currents. Thus, a piece of water studded with large boulders will hold more trout than one with a smooth sand or gravel bottom. The friction of water running along a bank creates a seam as well, and here, too, a bank with a rough or uneven shoreline will hold more trout than a smooth bank where the current runs swift and unbroken.
This angler is fishing to the other side of a distinct seam where fast water meets slower current.
Changes in depth also create hidden seams. Any place deep water meets shallow will be likely to hold feeding trout, as long as the shallow side is at least eight inches deep. Trout will feed in surprisingly shallow water if not disturbed, and if threatened they can quickly dart back into the depths to hide.
67
Setting the hook on trout
THE HOOKS USED IN MOST TROUT FLIES ARE SMALL AND very sharp. Trout jaws are almost the perfect medium for sinking a hook, and if you have trouble setting the hook, the problem could be your reflexes—but it could also be the fish. Trout quickly detect the fraud in our flies, and unlike when caught with bait, they eject a fly in a flash. If you don’t set the hook the moment a trout takes your fly, you’ll miss the opportunity. They won’t wait around gumming your fly until you get your act together. Striking to a trout is simple—just raise your rod tip enough to take all of the slack out of your line and tighten the line until you feel resistance—no more, or you can risk breaking the tippet.
If you keep missing fish and are sure you’re striking quickly enough, it may be the trout and not you. A trout that moves to a dry fly but changes its mind at the last minute because it doesn’t like the fly or sees it suddenly begin to drag still has forward momentum and can’t put on the brakes quickly enough. What happens is that the trout splashes at your fly with its mouth closed. We call this a refusal, and it means you were close but not close enough. Change your casting angle to avoid drag or try a fly one size smaller if you think you are getting refusals.
Trout also chase streamers, and sometimes seem only to want to move that obnoxious, gaudy thing out of their territory. They sometimes just bump the fly or even throw a cross-body block at it without connecting. Try fishing the same fly slower or faster, which seems to be more productive than changing flies.
Setting the hook on trout is a matter of just lifting the tip of the rod enough to tighten the line.
68
What do you do if a rising trout won’t take your fly?
YOU’VE FINALLY FOUND A STEADILY RISING TROUT, AND despite your best efforts, you can’t get it to take your fly. Congratulations! At least you have not spooked the fish, and that’s more than half the battle. Many anglers prefer trout that are tough to catch on a dry fly because they love the challenge of matching wits with an animal whose brain is smaller than your thumbnail.
More than half the time, a trout will refuse your fly not because the fly was wrong but because it was not behaving naturally. Because your fly is connected to a line and leader that drift at different speeds than the fly, and often land in currents of different velocities, it’s very difficult to get a float free of drag for very long. Sometimes just a change in position will give you a longer float. A longer, lighter tippet can also help—if your tippet is twenty-four inches of 5X, try thirty inches of 6X instead.You can also try casting a lot of slack, which will prolong the natural drift of your fly before drag sets in.
If you’re sure that your presentation is good, then it’s time to try a new fly. I’ve found that the best approach is to try a fly one size smaller with a slightly different profile. For example, if you see the fish taking what looks like a size 16 cream-colored mayfly and you’ve been fishing with a size 16 Pale Evening Dun, try a size 18 Sparkle Dun.And if that doesn’t work, the fish may be taking the emerging mayflies just under the surface, so try a cream-colored emerger.
If a fish keeps rising but ignores your fly, often a smaller imitation will do the trick.
69
What do you do if the water is dirty?
REALLY FILTHY WATER THE COLOR OF COFFEE WITH cream, with visibility of less than a couple inches and lots of debris floating down a river, usually means you should read a book or head to the nearest establishment that serves fine food and drink. Sometimes, if you catch rising water when it first begins to get dirty a streamer will draw very aggressive strikes from fish that are on the prowl for disoriented baitfish, but once the water has been dirty for over an hour it’s going to be slim pickings and I really can’t offer you much solace.
However, dirty water with visibility of ten inches or more can actually work in your favor, because trout lose a lot of their caution when they can’t see out of the water very well. In this situation, look for trout in slower, shallower water where they can still find food in the slower, less turbulent current of a still pool. Dry flies, nymphs, and streamers all work well in slightly dirty water, especially if it is in that optimum temperature range of 55 to 65 degrees farenheit.
In dirty water, a big streamer may be the only fly a trout can see.
70
What do you do if you don’t see any trout?
TAKE HEART. JUST BECAUSE YOU DON’T SEE ANY TROUT in the water does not mean a river is lifeless. Unless trout are obviously feeding on the surface, you may not see any, because they are very well camouflaged; otherwise, they would not survive. The best place to see trout in a river is from a high vantage point where you can creep up to the edge without spooking them, but even in perfectly clear water you can stare at the bottom for many minutes before you finally pick up the shape of a tail or a shadow that moves sideways. In some rivers, trout are relatively easy to spot, but in most you can fish all day long (and catch a dozen) without ever seeing one in the water. If you know the water holds trout, fish a streamer or a nymph over places you think will hold fish.
If you don’t see any trout in the water, take heart. Even from a good vantage point looking down into the water, this brown trout (in the center of the photo) is so well-camoflauged it is nearly invisible.
71
What do you do when you scare all the fish?
TROUT ARE VERY GOOD AT SEEING US, AND WE’RE PRETTY big and clumsy critters in their world.You will scare fish. In fact, I believe that even the best fly fishers scare over half of the fish in a pool before ever getting a cast over them. You probably won’t see many trout bolting for cover in fright, either, because they are good at sneaking away before you can spot them, unless the water is very low and clear and the sun is directly overhead.
You may suspect that you’re scaring fish when you never seem to catch any, and this is especially common in small streams, where the fish aren’t terribly picky about flies but are very wary of predators. There are many tricks to help you fish without scaring the fish.
Skinny Water
Fish can see out of the water, and the deeper they are the better they can see you. They do have a blind spot directly behind them, so working upstream helps. Just be careful of fish in whirlpools, as some of them may be facing downstream.
Keeping your profile low is especially important when not fishing upstream. Objects close to the ground or surface of the water are tougher for a trout to spot.
Objects that move are immediately spotted by all animals. Try to keep your movements slow, and keep a high bank or trees behind you so your silhouette does not stand out against the sky.
Fish can’t see very well into the sun but are very frightened by sudden shadows on the water. Try to keep the sun at your back but avoid letting your shadow fall on the water.
Fish are equally sensitive to vibrations, which travel a long way underwater. Tread lightly on the bank, try not to roll rocks with your feet as you wade, and don’t slap your fly line on the water.
When fishing in a still pool, don’t create a wake when you wade. Sudden waves across the still surface of a pool can send every trout within fifty yards bolting for cover. This sometimes means moving excruciatingly slowly, but it will be worth the effort.
72
What is a mend and when should you do it?
IN MOST DRY FLY AND NYMPH FISHING, THE BEST presentation is a dead drift, which means the fly moves at exactly the same speed as the current, no slower and no faster. When swinging a wet fly in the current for steelhead, salmon, or trout, the best presentation is usually obtained by having the fly line in a straight line as it swings in the current. And when fishing a sinking-tip fly line, it’s important to keep the floating portion of your line from pulling on the weighted part because the floater will draw the sinking part back to the surface. Forty feet of fly line cast across several different currents never behaves the way you want it to, and this is where mends come in handy.
Making a mend is easier than deciding when and where to use one. If you make a cast straight across a uniform current, you’ll see that the line in the middle of the cast begins to move downstream faster than the line that is held close the rod tip, and faster than the fly and leader, which are slowed down by resistance to the water. As a result, as the line swings round, the fly begins to accelerate like the end of a whip. A little acceleration at the end of a swing is sometimes desirable, but left unattended it’s too abrupt to appeal to most fish. By reaching out with the rod and making a quick flip upstream, you can straighten the fly line, or actually move the arc upstream in a mirror image of itself, depending on how much you want the swing to slow down or how deep you want your sinking-tip fly line to descend.
There may be times when you want a downstream mend, especially when your fly lands in fast water and the current between you and the fly is slower. In this case you mend in the opposite, downstream direction. Mends can be done with a stiff arm, a quick flip of the wrist, or a combination of the two. The more line you have to mend, the longer your rod should reach and the higher you’ll have to reach with the rod. It doesn’t matter how you do it as long as you move the line without moving the fly.
73
What is an emerger fly and when should you use one?
A NATURAL EMERGER IS AN AQUATIC INSECT AT THE moment it reaches the meniscus. The surface is quite a barrier to emerging flies, and they often struggle against it, more helpless than they are at any other time in their short life spans. Trout recognize this easy meal and go out of their way to prey on emergers. If you see trout rising but they keep refusing your dry flies or seem to be swirling in the current without breaking the surface, they may be taking emergers.
An emerger fly is a dry fly that doesn’t float well or a nymph that doesn’t sink. Take your pick on the definition. Emergers are tied with light wire hooks but with materials that don’t float well, so they hang just below the surface or right in the film. Sometimes a bit of fly floatant helps keep them suspended, but often just a few false casts will keep them right where they should be. Fish an emerger just like you would a dry fly, and strike to the rise the same way you would a dry, because even if a trout takes your fly just under the surface it will still produce a swirl when it eats.
Emerger flies float right in the surface film.
74
When is the best time of day to go trout fishing?
THE BEST TIME TO GO FISHING FOR TROUT IS WHEN their food is active. It’s typically also the most pleasant time of day for humans. So in winter and through the beginning of May at lower altitudes and through June at higher altitudes, the best time to go fishing is in the middle of the day, when the water warms up enough to stimulate insect hatches and get a trout’s metabolism moving. As summer progresses and the weather gets hotter in the middle of the day, the best time to go trout fishing is at dawn and dusk. In fall it reverts back to mid-day.
There are a few caveats to this rule. Dawn and dusk are nearly always worth trying, unless the water is below 50 degrees, because although insects may not be hatching, trout may be prowling the shallows for minnows and crustaceans when light levels are low. Also, late morning through late afternoon can be good for trout fishing as long as the water does not rise above 65 degrees, because ants, beetles, grasshoppers, and other land insects are more active in the hot parts of the day and fall into the water, especially on windy days.
And, of course, the answer you’ll get from many authorities on the best time to go trout fishing is, “When you can get away.”
In the warmer days of the season, dawn and dusk are the best times for trout fishing.
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When to fish streamers
THERE IS SOMETIMES ONE STREAMER PATTERN THAT out-fishes others, and frequently the speed you strip line when fishing a streamer is important. But I’ve found that it’s more a matter of timing and location in a river, and when trout are really pounding streamers it’s hard not to catch them. First, streamers are always productive when the light is low, when predatory trout have an advantage over the faster, more maneuverable baitfish. Dawn, dusk, after dark, and during rainstorms are the best times to catch trout on streamers.
Water temperatures in the prime range for trout, 55 to 65 degrees, also make them more aggressive for streamers, because a trout will often chase a streamer eight to ten feet before grabbing it, and they just won’t move that far for a fly when the water is too cold or too warm. Water that is just starting to get dirty after a sudden rainstorm is one of the best times, as dirty water disorients baitfish and trout will begin feeding on baitfish like someone threw a bucket of chum in the water.
Trout can be caught on streamers in the middle of a bright, sunny day. It seems like about 5 percent of the trout in any given stretch of water can be induced to chase a streamer in bright sunlight, and this is why fishing streamers from a drift boat is so productive—you cover so much water that you’re bound to put your fly over one of those takers. The best places to catch fish on streamers in the middle of the day are stretches of fast, heavy water and deep water around logs and big jumbles of rocks, where large trout wait in ambush.
76
Where will you find trout in a lake?
WHEN FACED WITH A FLAT EXPANSE OF WATER WITH NO current, even experienced fly fishers panic. Lakes are not as easy to read as rivers, trout can be anywhere because there are no currents to keep them pinioned to one spot, and in lakes you have both geography and depth to worry about. Local knowledge is best, but there are a few tips that can help you narrow down the possibilities.
Scan the lake surface with binoculars for rising fish early in the morning or right before dark. Chances are any trout that are hungry will come to the surface then looking for hatching insects.
Inlets and outlets are always hotspots in lakes. Trout spawn in moving water in spring and fall, and inlets bring in hatches of insects.
