Sometimes it's fun to revisit topics from your past, this post from the old blog came to mind the other day as it was brought to my attention from a reader who had taken the time to respond via email. I often find myself contemplating a variety of current topics in fly fishing on a daily basis, and this one seems to continually resurface. Although it is from a 2015, I truly think it is a topic that can always be discussed. For that sake, I decided to repost it here on the new website for you to enjoy. Read on:
Happy New Year, for 2015 I have made a pact with myself to write on the blog more. I am going to start you off lightly with something that struck me the other day. Feel free to comment, good bad or indifferent. Heck, I may even respond.
The other day while I was walking out of a not so familiar fishery with a good friend we had a pretty deep discussion. The premise of our conversation stemmed mostly as the result of our freezing our rear ends off with little success on what at times had been a rather productive stretch of water. We both began belly aching about how this particular piece of water had been "blown up" so to speak, and it got me thinking that evening.
Regardless of how forthcoming any of us fisherman are, we all are secretive about certain aspects of our sport to varying degrees. I would be outright lying if I stated that I have never been in the many years that I have fished, but I have also struggled with what is the linear demarcation between giving up too much, and not giving up enough.
When I guided, my morals had me constantly re-evaluating situations in an effort to constantly do the right thing so as not to disrespect the fisheries I guided on. I quickly found that it was a conundrum that I struggled with a lot, but somehow a little reflection or thought kept me on the right side of that thin line of ethical decisions. Granted, there will always be some that disagree with you no matter what you do, and that is just human nature, but overall by putting the river and fish first I seemed to always make the right decisions with a clear head.
A perfect example lies in the volume of fly tying videos I have concocted over the last 5-6 years. Most of the people I encounter are more than thankful that I have freely put them up there for the masses to indulge without charging a fee or asking for something in return. The payment for me is the many nice emails and quick mentions I get from fellow fisherman who have had successes of their own after watching the videos and tying the fly flies for themselves.
The very small minority who have commented on why I would put those videos out there for the masses to see without something in return I take with a grain of salt. My simple answer to the few who ask this is always the same. I really don't see the need to keep something like fly patterns a secret, the concepts and ideals behind all of them were influenced by people before me who found that sharing them was their way of giving back. Besides, no matter how many patterns you show somebody, they still need to be able to deliver the "goods" so to speak in an effective manner in order to get that positive response from the fish. To the less than 2% of you out there who are of this mindset, I understand your concern, but in the end I disagree with you whole heartily.
The Internet has made many of these "secrets" not so much a secret anymore. If you are willing and able, you can pretty much find a plethora of information on the web just by strategically plugging in a few key words in a search engine. So after our conversation about spot burning, and the dissemination of fishing Intel, I got on my computer over a cup of coffee (I gotta admit it was more like 3, I have a caffeine problem), and began typing in random fly fishing related topics just to see what I could find.
In the end here's what I found, it is rather interesting albeit even if my topics were rather limited. A quick search on Bing found the following:
Fly Fishing Secrets = 9,170,000 results
Fly Fishing = 5,170,00 results
Fly Tying Secrets = 4,670,000 results
Fly Tying = 7,170,000 results
Fly Fishing Places = 11,800,000 results
Fly Fishing Maps = 18,300,000 results
Millions and millions of results. The average human couldn't peruse a quarter of them all in a lifetime. I can tell you too, I am not the most Internet savvy individual either, and I am fairly certain that somebody who is could most likely narrow the searches to precisely what they are looking for. But, for starters, that is a whole hell of a lot of information for a rather small cottage sized community hobby don't you think?
So, I guess the moral of this story is all of us (including myself) need to realize that there really isn't many secrets left out there, as you can find them if you know where to look. I will say this however, there are some secrets that the Internet just can't find, and for those I am willing to take my time searching them out with a good friend or my two kids, and like most things you only get out of things what you put into them. My good friend Tommy summed it up rather well last week, "I need to be out there finding these places cuz it drives me to know that they exist, and exist not too far from me".
Many of us are all looking for that hot fly, hot piece of water or what have you, always striving to stay in front of that curve. In actuality, everything is cyclical, almost like fads in clothing and design. Heck, skinny jeans are in again, something I never quite understood when I was in high school let alone now. I think the same can be said about fly patterns and fishing locales alike. There has been a slight resurgence in wet flies and soft hackles in the last couple of years; euro nymphing has recently run it's course and like most who've been at this sport for a while would tell you, it is what it is, but the luster has sort of worn off. I guess in the end, history repeats itself, and the only way to stay relevant or on top of things is to be ahead of the curve, but only if that's what excites you.
In the end, there truly aren't too many secrets out there anymore, but I guess you really have to be mindful of who and how you share them if you run into any conundrums of your own.
Write comment (0 Comments)Once again my life is busy and I am trying to juggle many things. I am tying, but not accepting any more fly orders until I right the ship as I have way too many on the books to complete. If you are however looking to purchase any flies, the best way to find out where I am with things is to either email me or use the general contact form on the website. The fishing season is upon us and I am invevitably buried at the moment. It has most definitely been a great winter and 2018 has started off with a bang over here on my end.
I recently spent the night with the students of the Penn State Flyfishers Club tying and talking streamers and we all had a very good time. That was my second to last presentation for the season, I have one more slated next month in the Adirondacks and then my schedule is wide open for the season. If any of you out there are looking to have me come join you and your club for a presentation, book early as the open dates go fast. Have a great season and I will keep you all updated with things as I find the time; even some more tying videos too.
-RS-
Write comment (0 Comments)Streamer fishing for large Brown Trout, as many of you know is one of my favorite pursuits with a fly rod; the constant process of figuring out currents, dissecting every section of a river, casting larger flies into specific locations only to have that next voracious eat and your line coming tight on a gator-like brown trout measuring in pounds not inches never seems to get old.
When the opportunity presented itself for me and a group of anglers to head to Chile to chase larger than average Browns in a pristine setting, I jumped at the opportunity. Visiting the General Carrera lake region with Lance Wilt and his partner J.D. both of Wilts Outcastanglers made a dream come to reality. I have always dreamed of going to Patagonia to flyfish, but I never really understood how labor intensive a trip of these sorts would be until I left a little over a week ago. After 27 hours of travel which included 3 separate plane changes, a two hour truck ride and an equally as long ferry across a lake that felt like an ocean, we arrived at our destination where we would call home for the next 6 days. Oh and if you can’t quite wrap your head around the geographical aspect of getting to Patagonia, lets just say its another 2 hour flight north of Antarctica.
Any seasoned streamer angler would agree, fishing streamers for any species is work, and although the potential for some very memorable fish was around every corner of the river we fished, we covered large expanses of riffles, runs and plunge pools every day over some relatively rough terrain. The scenery was spectacular, and every moment spent walking the banks of the river was taxing on the legs, it was all quickly forgotten once you picked your head up from the water and took a look around you. 10-16 miles of hiking a day was the norm, but every section of water we encountered seemed to exude that feeling that something large was lurking below that mesmerizing milky blue glacial water.
Every exotic trip I take, I don’t put any expectations on what I am about to experience, but I do however assign a magic number in regards to what would be a truly awesome catch considering the locale. My first time to Alaska, that number was a rainbow trout of 30 inches; on another trip deeper into the state for some apex predators, that number was a northern pike of 48 inches just to name a few. For this particular trip that magic number was a brown trout north of 30 inches, but more precisely tipping the scales at 15 pounds. Early on I recognized that was a very large number, but that size seemed very attainable as this particular fishery hosted a very healthy population of migratory browns. When I say migratory, I am not referring to sea run fish, but fish that migrate from a massive lake reminisceint of our own Great Lakes fisheries. As I said earlier, I did not expect to catch one of that caliber, but I knew that the potential was there and maybe I would actually get a glimpse of such a creature.
Everyday we drove into some pretty rugged terrain and found ourselves streamside to a boulder strewn pocketwater fisherman’s delight. The backdrop was equally as spectacular; snowcapped peaks off in the distance with various rock and sand formations lining the banks of where we fished. Every day we set out on the water, I couldn’t help but wonder how few people had ever set foot there. Feeling insignificant is an understatement; everything was vast and expansive, and it reminded me very much of some of the places that I have visited and fished in the western side of North America. Two hours into my first day that number that I had in mind was not only about to happen, but be surpassed beyond measure.
Lance had brought my brother in law Jeff and I to a very fishy piece of water that any streamer fisherman would quickly fall in love with. Within a few casts I found myself releasing a very respectable trout in the 6-7 pound range. Two casts later after snapping a couple pictures and releasing the very colorful Brown Trout, my Headbanger Sculpin disappeared into the jaws of something prehistoric looking, and the battle began.
After falling in the water and filling my waders to prevent the beast from wrapping me around a large boulder, Lance and I scrambled to shore in hopes of keeping pace with this monster that decided he wanted no part of being netted. Barely escaping a dunking of his own, Lance high tailed his way to the shoreline and motioned me along as we ran downstream to keep up with the beast. After five minutes of running the banks as it barreled downstream through a rather rough set of rapids the moment I had only dreamed of became reality as Lance lifted the net out of the water with a fish that literally spilled out of both ends of the hoop. The three of us sat there in awe of what had just transpired, and the many obstacles that clearly could have been disasterous were overcome as we stared at the largest brown trout all three of us had ever put eyes on, a 34” x 20” hook jawed dinosaur which calculated out to a conservative 17 pounds. Everything after that moment was what I termed “gravy”, considering a milestone I had only ever dreamed of had just come to fruition.
The remainder of our week was equally as impressive; we sight fished to some very large trout, chased some with mice patterns in broad daylight, watching as shadows erupted from the depths behind bolders and in slicks only to devour our offerings, and cast weighted streamers into plunge pools, glides and slicks . The takes were visual and violent, and once committed it seemed nothing was going to stop these fish from eating your fly. There is nothing more exciting than watching the shape of a large brown trout chasing your fly down several yards and smashing it violently, then jumping out of the water like an atlantic salmon several times before coming to net.
The beauty of all the fishing was I never once felt ill equipped as my Exocett SS 250 made short work of all the big aggressive browns that I encountered; even that dinosaur from day 1. One thing is certain, I am already counting the days till my return in 2019....
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