The Orvis Guide to Beginning Fly Fishing Read online

  What to do when you first get to the water

  A LITTLE OBSERVATION BEFORE YOU ENTER THE WATER and begin casting will make your fishing day more productive and fun. Whether you’re launching a boat or wading a river, take a few minutes to observe the water before disturbing it with your presence. The best fish in a body of water are not necessarily a half mile upstream or on the other side of the lake—fish take the best habitat for feeding, regardless of how close it is to an access point, and you might frighten some nice fish by making premature waves.

  Try to observe the water from a high vantage point if possible, which gives you a better look into the water than you would have at the water level. I often climb a hill above the water before fishing, even if it means getting out of breath for a few minutes, because it helps to slow me down and also alerts me to deep pockets or submerged objects in the middle of the river that might harbor nice fish, stuff I would never see if I just waded into the water. Once you’ve scoped the water for inanimate objects, look for fish.

  Look for subtle dimples of trout taking tiny insects, wakes in the shallows from cruising redfish, or smallmouth bass crashing minnows in the shallows. Next, look for prey. Are there baitfish in the water? What size and shape are they? Are there insects on the surface or in spiderwebs along the bank? A few minutes of careful study may help you pick the best fly of the day.

  For the sake of others and for your own fishing success, look for other anglers. Disturbing another angler might spoil someone else’s day and even evoke harsh words, and following another person in a river or on a lake forces you to fish water another angler has already fished, water that is probably already disturbed and devoid of feeding fish.

  Although few anglers carry them, a small pair of binoculars can greatly enhance your initial surveillance. Is that a big log out in the middle of the river or a twenty-inch brown trout? Are those insects mayflies or caddisflies? Is that shape along the bank that’s just out of sight a dead tree or another fly fisher waiting for the hatch?

  Usually, the best way to start a day on the water is to sit and quietly observe the water, looking for feeding fish or likely fish-holding spots.

  8

  Fly fishing in urban areas

  YOU MAY FEEL SELF-CONSCIOUS FISHING CLOSE TO A sidewalk or along a busy highway, subject to long stares and smarmy comments from pedestrians, but some of the best fishing you have might be right under your nose. I’ve caught steelhead in downtown Rochester, New York, and Grand Rapids, Michigan. I’ve stalked carp in sight of the Denver skyline and on a golf course in Houston.You can catch striped bass within the city limits of San Francisco and New York, peacock and largemouth bass (plus tarpon and bonefish!) in Miami, and trout in the suburbs of Atlanta.

  Because boat traffic and swimmers disturb cautious gamefish, the best time to fish urban areas is from dawn until the first rays of sunlight hit the water, which probably fits in best with your work schedule, anyway. Multiple-piece rods and a minimum of tackle also allow you to commute by car or bicycle or train with your tackle right after fishing, and if you wear waders, a pair of wrinkle-free pants lets you arrive in the office with no one the wiser.

  I don’t know of a single urban area in North America that does not have fly-fishing opportunities within the city limits. It might not be as peaceful and prestigious as the Florida Keys or wilderness trout, but that doesn’t mean the fishing is any less appealing or challenging. The more you fish with a fly the better you’ll get, and fishing close to home a few days a week, even if it’s bluegills in Central Park, will sharpen your skills for that summer trip to Alaska. There is not a better way to start your day, and I guarantee you’ll forget about the noise and bustle around you in short order.

  You don’t have to travel to the wilderness to catch fish on a fly. This hefty lake trout was caught on a fly in the middle of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

  PART II

  Equipment

  9

  Pick a rod by line size

  THE FIRST DECISION ABOUT PICKING A FLY ROD HAS nothing to do with your height, weight, strength, location, or casting skill. The physical weight of a fly rod is also insignificant. The first thing to decide is what line size you need. Every fly rod made is designed for a specific line size (although some may handle several with some adjustment in casting style). These sizes are based on the weight in grains of the first thirty feet of the line, regardless of whether the line floats or sinks, because it’s the weight of the line bending the rod that lets you cast. Luckily, you and I don’t need to memorize these grain weights because all fly-fishing manufacturers use a number system that ranges from 1 through 15, where each line size correlates to a grain weight. It’s used by every maker of fly rods throughout the world.

  The smaller the number, the lighter the line. Lighter lines, in sizes 1 through 4, deliver a fly with more delicacy. They cast small flies and light leaders best, but don’t cast as far as heavier lines and don’t handle the wind as well. As lines get heavier, in the 5 through 7 range, they lose some delicacy but gain in their ability to deliver larger flies and longer casts, and you won’t have to fight the wind as much. These middle sizes are most often used for trout and smallmouth bass. Sizes 8 through 10 are considered the basic rods for long casts, big flies, and lots of wind, and are the sizes most often used by saltwater, bass, and salmon anglers. But they splash down heavier and won’t protect a light tippet as well as the lighter rods. When you get into line sizes 11 and heavier, you’re really looking at a rod designed to fight big fish, because once you get to a 10-weight rod, you’ve probably maximized the distance you’ll get and going heavier only gives you more power to turn the head of a big tarpon or shark.

  Fortunately, the flexibility of the rod needed to throw each line size corresponds perfectly with its purpose. Rods designed for lighter fly lines are very flexible, so it’s easier to play a trout on a two-pound tippet with a flexible 4-weight rod. If you fish a leader with a two-pound tippet on a 9-weight rod, you’ll most likely break most fish off on the strike because the stiffer rod is not as good a shock absorber, and besides, fishing a heavy 9-weight line on top of spooky trout will send most fish running for cover before they even see your fly. Playing a small trout on a 9-weight rod is not much fun, anyway, because the rod will hardly bend against the wiggles of a ten-inch fish. And playing a ten-pound redfish on a 4-weight might be fun for a few moments, but the lighter rod just does not have the strength to land a big fish sounding under a boat, something a stiffer rod will do with ease.

  Just by looking at this small stream with clear water you can expect that a 4-weight line would be about perfect.

  10

  How long should your rod be?

  I ONCE ASKED A TOURNAMENT CASTER IF THERE WAS AN optimum rod length for casting, ignoring all the other tasks we ask of a fly rod. Without hesitating, he answered “eight and a half feet.” The physics of fly fishing are not easily understood, and air resistance, line weight, loop shape, and line speed all come into play, so I won’t begin to theorize as to why eight and a half feet is the optimum length. But if all you ever wanted to do was cast out in the open with no wind, and had no conflicting currents to worry about, you’d want an eight-and-a-half-foot rod.

  But fishing is much more than casting. In small, brushy places, an eight-and-a-half-foot rod gets tangled in the brush as you walk from one spot to another, and the wider casting arc of a longer rod offers overhanging trees more chances to snatch your fly and leader. A rod that is between six and seven and a half feet long is better for brushy streams, with the really short ones best for almost impenetrable woodland brooks, while rocky mountain streams with wider banks, where if you can get midstream you have plenty of room in front of and behind you, allow rods up to eight feet long before they get clumsy.

  Rods longer than eight and a half feet are best for bigger waters. It’s easier to keep your back cast off the ground behind you with a longer rod, they are better at making casts over fifty feet, and when y
ou need to mend line or hold line off the water to prevent drag, that extra six inches make a surprising difference. Nine-foot rods seem to be the perfect length for saltwater fly fishing and give a great balance between making longer casts and the ability to play a large fish. It’s actually easier to play large fish on a shorter rod as opposed to a longer rod, though, and that is why 14- and 15-weight rods for huge sailfish, marlin, and tuna are usually made in eight-and-a-half-foot lengths. They don’t cast as well as nine-footers, but these species are typically teased close to the boat with a hook-less plug or bait so casts longer than fifty feet aren’t needed.

  To manipulate a fly line over these tricky currents, a fly rod nine feet long or longer would be the most efficient tool.

  Really long rods, ten feet and over, are best when tricky currents require the angler to manipulate the fly line once it hits the water. Because the swing of a fly is so important in salmon and steelhead fishing, and these fish are often caught in very wide rivers, two-handed rods up to fifteen feet long are sometimes used with special casts called spey casts that can pick up sixty or seventy feet of line and deliver it back on target without false casting and without the line ever going behind the angler.

  11

  How to pick a reel

  FOR FISH LIKE SMALL TROUT, PANFISH, AND BASS, A FLY REEL is simply a line storage device. It keeps your line neat and orderly when you walk to and from fishing, and also keeps excess line from tangling at your feet and around the clutter that fishing boats seem to attract. Nearly all of the reels you see are single action, which means that one revolution of the handle moves the spool around once. Unlike spin fishing or bait casting, where you retrieve line after each cast and a multiplying action comes in handy, it’s not needed in fly fishing. In the past, automatic reels with springloaded spools and multiplying reels with gear systems were made, but these reels proved to be heavy and clumsy, not to mention difficult to maintain in good working order.

  Smaller reels don’t need strong drag tension, either. All that’s needed is enough tension on the reel to prevent the line from back-lashing on the spool when you pull some off, and perhaps some light tension if a bass or trout pulls a few feet of line when fighting. This tension might be provided by a simple click mechanism composed of a spring and a small metal triangle called a pawl, that engages teeth on the reel spool, or it can be from a small disc drag system. The main considerations when looking for a small reel are how nice it looks and how much it weighs, as the more expensive reels are lighter and more attractive than the less expensive entry-level reels.

  A narrow arbor trout reel on the left compared to the heavier, large arbor saltwater reel on the right.

  Many fish run a hundred yards or more when first hooked. Big trout, salmon, steelhead, and most saltwater species will yank from five feet to a hundred yards of line during a battle, and it’s difficult to put tension on a reel by grabbing the fly line with your fingers, as it is neither precise nor uniform, and grabbing a fly line when a fish is running usually leads to a broken leader. These fish require a mechanical, adjustable break system or drag to help you tire them; otherwise they’ll just swim away until they steal all your line and backing. Fly reels for these species employ a disc drag system like the brakes on your car, and these drags are most often made with a cork or plastic disc against the aluminum frame of the spool. These bigger reels also require extra capacity for the one hundred to four hundred yards of backing you’ll need. Thus, when looking for a reel for these species, check the capacity to make sure it will hold the line size you have plus the maximum length of backing you’ll need.

  In big-game fishing for tarpon, marlin, sailfish, or tuna, where the fish run as fast as a car and may keep up the pace for hundreds of yards, drag strength is critical, as is the ability of the reel’s design to dissipate the heat generated by the friction of the drag surfaces. In the middle of a battle with a marlin, lesser fly reels get so hot they smoke and then seize up completely. There is no way for a consumer to tell if a fly reel is up to this challenge, and the only way to assure yourself of a reel that will hold up is to buy a large, expensive big-game reel with a first-class reputation.

  12

  Large-, mid-, and standard-arbor reels

  ONE ADDITIONAL DECISION TO MAKE WHEN CHOOSING A fly reel is the relative size of its arbor. Standard-arbor fly reels, the most traditional, wind the line on a narrow central arbor. Reeling in fifty feet of fly line when you are done for the day takes about one hundred cranks of the reel handle. And imagine how hard you’d have to reel to get control of a bonefish that suddenly decided to run toward the boat at full speed. Fly line also has a “memory” when coiled on a spool, so the narrower the arc a line is wound on, the tighter the coils. Fly reel designers got around both of these problems by making the arbor in the center of the reel wider, which not only makes the coils less severe, it also doubles the amount of line wound with each revolution of the spool. Not surprisingly, these are called “large-arbor fly reels.”

  All three of these reels have the same line and backing capacity. The large-arbor reel on the left is bigger but will retrieve line twice as fast as the standard-arbor reel on the right. The mid-arbor reel in the middle is a compromise between size and retrieve ratio.

  Why would anyone wish for a fly reel that kinks up the line and takes in so little line with each revolution? Large-arbor reels are wider overall than standard-arbor reels, and on a light trout rod a large-arbor reel looks overpowering. Thus, for small-stream fishing with light fly rods, where casts are less than twenty feet all day long, a large-arbor reel just isn’t needed. For those in-between situations (or for people that just can’t make up their minds) mid-arbor reels are also made in some styles.

  Spools aren’t interchangeable between standard-, mid-, and large-arbor reels, but don’t lose any sleep over which one you pick. I’ve fished for small-stream trout with large-arbor reels and for years I fished for bonefish with standard-arbor reels and never felt handicapped in either circumstance.

  13

  Picking the right waders

  WHEN PICKING A PAIR OF WADERS, REGARDLESS OF WHAT other decisions you make, the most important point is the correct fit. Waders should be loose enough to let you do deep-knee bends without constricting your movement so you’ll be able to step over logs or climb a steep bank once you get to the river, but they also should not be excessively loose, as baggy waders present more resistance to the current and will also wear more quickly because the fabric chafes and eventually wears through. Buy waders at a store where you can try them on, or carefully study the size chart on a Web site and buy from a retailer that offers easy return privileges if they don’t fit.

  The boot-foot waders on the right come with boots already attached and are ready to use. The stocking-foot waders on the left will need a pair of separate wading shoes.

  Get breathable waders. Clammy waders can ruin your day, and although those thick neoprene waders may look warm, your body condensation stays inside them all day long. (Besides, you can wear layers of fleece inside breathable waders and stay just as warm.) And you only have to wear neoprene waders once on a 90-degree afternoon under the blazing Montana summer sun to realize you made a big mistake.

  Waders come in two basic styles: boot foot and stocking foot.With boot foots, the boot is an integral part of the wader and you just slip them over your socks. Some have laces for extra security and some are just plain rubber boots. They are the easiest waders to put on if you aren’t very nimble. Stocking foot waders, which incorporate a breathable upper with neoprene booties, require a separate wading boot. They give you a lot more flexibility, so if your foot size does not correspond to what is common for your height and weight, your chances of getting a better fit are greatly increased.You can also pick a lightweight wading boot for travel or a heavier boot for more support on long walks or rocky streams.

  14

  What to wear under waders

  EVEN IF YOU’RE A NATURAL-FIBER NUT, I U
RGE YOU TO put aside your cotton pants when wearing waders. Cotton absorbs sweat and condensation, and when you’re exposed to the open air, cotton keeps you cool, but once trapped inside waders, cotton gets ugly. Synthetic fibers like polypropylene and nylon absorb little water or wick it away from your body, and when you take your waders off they dissipate moisture quickly.

  Start with a pair of light wool or synthetic liner socks, adding a pair of heavier wool socks for cold water. Be careful that your socks are long enough to trap your lower pant leg, because bare skin anywhere against waders is a sure ticket to nasty skin abrasion. For warm weather, a pair of light synthetic pants of whatever style you like is perfect. For colder weather, layer a pair of thin synthetic base-layer bottoms followed by a pair of heavy fleece pants.

  On top, for warm weather you can get away with anything you want—even a cotton shirt if you insist. For cold weather, layer like you do on the bottom—a thin synthetic base layer, a layer of fleece or merino wool over that, and for really cold weather follow with a thin jacket or vest. I find that knit fabrics under waders for both top and bottom are superior to woven fabrics because they stretch more and let you move easier, even when bundled up against the cold.

  With proper layering, you can fish all winter in comfort.