The Orvis Guide to Beginning Fly Fishing Read online

  During a close-quarters battle, whether from a boat in deep water or in a current while wading, remember that a fish can only swim in the direction its head is pointing. It is not easy merely to crank in a big fish, and it requires a lot less force to just turn the fish’s head. Keeping the rod high over your head and pointed directly at the fish gives the fish only one option—to swim away from you and down, and any time the fish gains distance from you the fight will be longer. Keeping your rod to one side or another leads the fish back and forth, but it has to swim on an angle toward you if you keep its head pointed in your direction.

  35

  How long should your leader be?

  YOUR HEIGHT AND THE LENGTH OF YOUR ROD HAVE NO bearing on the proper leader length. It’s determined entirely by fishing conditions. When using sinking lines, you should keep the fly relatively close to the fly line, because the sinking line keeps the fly swimming deep enough and a long leader may allow the fly to rise to the surface. So here, a leader of between four and six feet is about right. Don’t worry about spooking the fish with your fly so close to the line—if the fish were really spooky you would not be using a clumsy sinking line anyway.

  In small streams, where line speed is slower and drifts are very short, you seldom need a leader longer than seven and a half feet unless the pools are flat and calm and fish are spooky. The short leader straightens more easily on short casts. Freshwater bass are also not shy of the fly line or leader, and you can get way with the easiercasting seven-and-a-half-footer.

  Basic trout fishing with dry flies and nymphs in most rivers is done with a nine-foot leader. This length keeps the fly line far enough away from spooky trout, yet is easy to straighten, even in a stiff breeze. Most saltwater fly fishing is also done with nine-foot leaders, except for bonefish, redfish, or striped bass feeding in clear, shallow water, where a twelve-foot leader may give you a slight edge in stealth. Twelve-foot leaders or longer are best when fishing for trout in lakes with a floating line, because in the smooth water of a lake’s surface a trout can spot a fly line landing from a long way off. And in still pools on rivers, where conditions approach those of a lake, a twelve-foot leader may be a wise move.

  On flat, clear water like this, a twelve-foot leader will help prevent spooking wary trout.

  Under conditions of extreme low water and very spooky fish, trout anglers may also go as long as an eighteen-foot leader by adding a few feet to the butt section and to the tippet of a leader. These ultra-long leaders are helpful in keeping the fly line well away from the fish, and in making conflicting currents less of a problem with drag because a leader is suppler than a fly line. However, an eighteen-footer requires nearly perfect casts to avoid frustration, and a mere whisper of a wind can blow one well off course, so don’t try one until you’ve developed your casting skills.

  36

  How to avoid upsetting other people on the water

  I STILL CRINGE WHEN I THINK OF THE TIMES AS A TEENAGER when I waded right up the middle of a river where other people were fishing. I wasn’t arrogant or confrontational, I just didn’t know any better; but I must have raised the blood pressure of more than one fly fisher and I’m surprised I never got into an altercation. Somebody should have set me straight.

  Your first rule of consideration starts before you even approach the water. If someone is already at a parking spot and getting suited up to fish, the right thing to do is to ask which direction he or she intends to go. If the other angler heads upstream, you have an obligation to go downstream. Never race to put on your gear to try to beat someone to the best water if he or she was there before you. It’s just poor manners.

  If you have to walk past other anglers to get to an un-crowded spot, stay as far away from the bank as you can. Walking close to the bank or in the shallows can spook fish and you’ll spoil the fishing for people who got there before you.And if you have to cross a river, do so in shallow riffles where no one is fishing, rather than slogging through the deeper water, pushing out waves that may frighten every fish in a pool.

  When a number of anglers are in a large pool, try to keep as much distance from others as possible.

  Always try to find a pool or a stretch of water with no one in it. Most fly fishers enjoy their solitude, whether wading a river, paddling a kayak, or walking a lonely beach. Only enter a piece of water close to another angler if he or she invites you in—otherwise give everyone a wide berth. Fly fishers move around a lot, and just because a piece of water is empty does not mean it offers poor fishing. Besides, you may find a secret hot spot that everyone else has passed up.

  37

  In lakes, what do you do once the fly hits the water?

  ALTHOUGH IT’S SMARTER FOR A FLY FISHER TO LEARN ON a pond before advancing to the complexities of flowing water, it’s usually not what happens. Most fly fishers begin as stream trout anglers, and when faced with a huge expanse of water without current to move the fly or tighten the line, they’re lost.

  First, slack line is never desirable on a pond, as it sometimes is in moving water. So once the fly lands, take up any slack by stripping in some line. The best way to fish a dry fly on a pond, especially if fish are rising, is to let the fly sit there without any motion. This can get boring without any fish in the vicinity, so the key to fishing a dry in still water is to move the boat close to the fish and then try to anticipate their path and get your fly in front of them. Otherwise it’s about as interesting as picking knots out of your leader. Largemouth and smallmouth bass will also attack a fly that has remained motionless for minutes, especially if the fly has rubber legs that keep wiggling long after the fly has landed.

  But most flies fished on still water are manipulated by the angler.After casting, strip in line, keeping the rod tip low and pointed straight at the fly to make the fly swim through the water, until it gets about twenty feet away. Then pick up and make another cast. If no fish or obvious cover are in sight, cast at different angle until you’ve covered all the water within the reach of your casting skills. Experiment with retrieve speeds as well. Small nymphs imitate tiny insects or crustaceans that can’t swim very fast, so strips should be short and slow; streamers imitate baitfish that swim at a faster clip, so longer, faster movements might be in order. But there are always those days when a streamer works better with a slow, steady strip and a nymph catches more fish when streaking through the water. It always pays to experiment.

  In lakes, after you complete a cast the rod tip should stay close to the water’s surface.

  38

  Is it worth fishing an area with canoe or boat traffic?

  IN A WORD, NO, IF YOU CAN HELP IT. MOST GAMEFISH, especially trout and shallow-water saltwater species like bonefish and striped bass, are wary animals, and when faced with a lot of boat traffic they either move elsewhere or stay hidden and refuse to feed. This doesn’t mean you have to give up. Look for coves out of the main boat channel in lakes and saltwater shorelines, or look for side channels too shallow for boat traffic in rivers. Sometimes, fish bigger than you’d expect will live in these less-thanoptimum spots in order to avoid disturbance. The other alternative is to fish at night or in early morning, when low boat traffic makes fish less nervous and more likely to feed.

  In a river with lots of boat traffic, you might have better luck in a small side channel that the boats have not disturbed.

  39

  Releasing fish properly

  THE BEST WAY TO RELEASE ANY KIND OF FISH IS WITH A minimum of handling out of the water and gentle cradling in clean water until the fish regains enough strength to swim off on its own. One of the worst things you can do is to play a fish to exhaustion. Always use a tippet strong enough to play a fish quickly, bringing it to hand while it is still “green,” not half-dead and swimming on its side. A net and a pair of forceps help keep a fish immobile in the water while you remove the hook, and of course barbless hooks are much quicker to remove. If you do handle the fish, keep your fingers away from its delicate gills
and wet your hands before handling it, which helps maintain the protective mucus layer on a fish’s skin.

  The best way to release a fish is to hold it in clear water until it is able to swim away strongly under its own power.

  One of the biggest impediments to fish survival is the famous “hero shot,” where a fish is held out of the water for many minutes while the happy angler gets ready and the cameraman gets into position. First, the person with the camera should get ready while you’re still fighting the fish, and you should both plan the shot before the fish is landed, taking into account background and sun angle so you don’t have to reposition while the fish is out of the water. Because fish should be removed from the water for only a few seconds or not at all to ensure survival, if you really want a nice shot, try bending down and cradling the fish in the water, close to the surface. Not only are photographs like this safer for the fish, they’re more interesting than a fish held out at arm’s length like a bowling trophy.

  Be prepared to revive a fish for as long as you played it. Many tired fish, when just thrown back in the water, go belly-up and can’t maintain their equilibrium. Apparently their gills do not work properly when they are upside-down, so they can drown if not kept upright. Find an area of clean water with slight waves or moderate current that completely covers the fish. Cradle its head and belly with your hands and gently move it back and forth to get water moving across its gills. When a fish is ready to move off on its own, it will let you know by breaking free of your gentle embrace.

  40

  What is drag and how do you stop it?

  THE EASIEST WAY TO DESCRIBE DRAG IS TO DEMONSTRATE when it is absent. Throw a twig into moving water and watch how it floats—it moves at the mercy of each little micro-current on the surface, never cutting across currents of different speed. This is how an insect drifts. Few insects have the power to swim contrary to any amount of current, and the movements they do make are tiny hops and pirouettes, not enough to throw off a wake. A fly that creates a wake telegraphs a message to a feeding fish that the object in question is not food because it does not behave like the rest of the insects.

  When attached to a leader, a fly can streak across currents when the leader or line is in a different current than the fly.This will happen, eventually, on every cast you make, and avoiding drag is merely ameliorating what must happen when something is attached to a floating object. Drag can be very overt, when you can see the wake from thirty feet away, or it can be minuscule, arising from tiny current threads and invisible to an observer just a few feet from the fly. But trout can always see it.

  The best way to avoid drag is to fish in uniform currents and cast straight upstream. If the line and leader float at exactly the same speed as the fly, drag won’t develop until the fly is almost even with your rod tip. But fishing straight upstream is often not practical or even desirable, because on a long drift it puts your fly line right on top of the fish. So most times when fishing with a dry fly or nymph we cast at an angle that is somewhere between straight upstream and directly across the current. At this angle you’ll often get a decent drag-free float for four or five feet. However, you’ll often be faced with trout feeding in slow water along the far bank and fast water between you and the fish, so without some tricky moves you might get only an inch of drag-free float. Here are some of the tricks to use, either alone or in combination:

  Change positions. Often just moving a few feet will give you a longer drag-free float.

  Instead of fishing quartering upstream, fish quartering downstream. If you can, also make a quick mend upstream just before your line hits the water. This is called a reach cast, and that upstream arc in your line has to invert before the fly drags.

  Add an extra-long tippet to your leader. The tippet will land in loose coils, which will have to straighten before your fly begins to drag.

  Make a sloppy cast. By this I don’t mean one that slams on the water, but an underpowered cast of controlled sloppiness that throws big piles of slack line on the water.You’ll have to cast more line than you think you need because some of your line will be taken up in the loose piles on the water.

  41

  What is the best way to wade a fast river?

  PEOPLE DROWN EVERY YEAR WHILE WADING IN RIVERS. Most of these accidents are preventable. The first rule is to always wear a wader belt. Waders with air trapped inside them are quite buoyant (no, you won’t float upside down and drown; Lee Wulff proved that eighty years ago by jumping off a bridge while wearing waders) and by keeping the belt tightly cinched around your waist, you’ll hold a lot of air inside. Besides, in a moderate spill you’ll only get wet from the waist up.

  The best way to fish a treacherous river like this is to shuffle your feet slowly, keep your profile sideways to the current, and never wade downstream when you don’t know what’s below you.

  In addition, keep these tips in mind to avoid an accident:

  When crossing fast water, always angle upstream. You will be sure you can retrace your steps to safety, whereas if you wade downstream in fast current and find yourself pushed into a deep hole, you may not be able to retreat.

  The best places to cross are in riffles and the tails of pools, where the water is shallowest.

  Keep your profile sideways to the current to present less resistance to the water.

  Use a wading staff, which adds amazing security and balance to your wading. If you don’t have one and need to cross some raging currents, find a hefty stick to use as a temporary staff. It’s like growing a third leg.

  Shuffle your feet along the bottom, making sure your forward foot has a secure spot before moving your other foot forward.

  Look for patches of sand and gravel, which typically show up as lighter spots on the bottom. They are much easier to negotiate than rounded boulders. (It goes without saying that you should wear polarized glasses so you can see below the surface better.)

  42

  What to do if you hook yourself or someone else

  SOONER OR LATER YOU WILL HOOK YOURSELF OR someone else. Hopefully you always wear a hat and some kind of eyeglasses so that you will not be removing a hook from a dangerous place. Barbless hooks remove as easily from human skin as they do from fish jaws, so using them is an important component of safety. But sooner or later you’ll forget to de-barb a hook, or someone fishing with a barbed fly will hook you, and it’s important to know how to proceed.

  First, if the hook is in an eye or anywhere near it, I probably don’t have to tell you get to the emergency room quickly. There is nothing you can do in this circumstance except get qualified medical care.

  If the fly is lodged in an arm, cheek, or leg, the procedure for removing even a barbed hook is surprisingly easy and painless. Get a loop of strong monofilament line, about ten inches long. Place the monofilament around the bend of the hook so the open end of a loop is facing away from the eye of the fly. Wrap the open ends of the loop around your index finger. Now, while pushing straight down on the eye of the fly, give a firm, quick jerk on the monofilament. The fly will pop right out, with a minimum amount of tissue damage. Wash the wound with some type of antiseptic and make sure your tetanus shots are current.

  43

  Where should you hold your rod tip after casting?

  A GOOD CAST REQUIRES A NICE FOLLOW-THROUGH OF the rod tip, with it ending up comfortably at waist level, parallel to the water. This is especially important when practicing, as there seems to be a natural tendency to then point the tip back up to about the ten o’clock position. I think this comes from those of us who learned to fish with a spinning rod before we learned fly casting. But this causes problems most times, as when the tip is up there swinging in the breeze it moves the line backward from where you just carefully placed it with your cast, and it leaves a big loop of line in front of you to be shoved around by the wind.

  In all cases when fishing in still water, saltwater or fresh, your rod tip should move down to the surface of the water after casting.
Here you have more control over your fly line, and in fact some bonefish guides recommend that you put the tip just under the surface of the water and keep it there when retrieving your fly.When fishing moving water, if you are swinging a fly downstream or making a long cast in uniform current, then again your rod tip should be held low. However, if you’re fishing in places with lots of swirling currents, or if the place your fly lands is in a different current lane than where you’re standing, it makes sense to hold the rod higher—high enough to keep the different current between you and your fly isolated from the fly line.

  A low rod tip like this keeps your line under control, especially when fishing a streamer.

  44

  Why do you keep breaking off fish?

  THE MOST OBVIOUS CULPRIT WHEN BREAKING OFF FISH is that the fish was just too big for the tippet you were using. That might be the case, especially when you strike in a proper manner (raising the tip of the rod or making a long quick strip just until you feel tension), especially if the fish is moving away from you when it strikes. But most fish break off due to operator error.