14 Tips for Spring Creek Fishing, with Brant Oswald
Podcast Transcript:
Tom: Hi, and welcome to the "Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast." This is your host, Tom Rosenbauer, and my guest today is Brant Oswald. Brant is a guide and a long-time veteran of the fly fishing industry, particularly in the guiding and the educational areas of fly fishing. I've known Brant for a long time, [00:00:30.079] and he's probably one of the best spring creek anglers that I know of. And so I wanted to do a podcast on tips for spring creek fishing, because there are some differences in spring creek fishing. And Brant has 14 different tips for fishing spring creeks, and when I looked at this list, I realized that they're really applicable to any kind of trout fishing, particularly in low water or in slow pools. [00:01:00.219] So I think that you'll get a lot out of this. Brant is a wealth of knowledge and a great guy, and I'm sure that you'll enjoy the interview later in the podcast.
But first, let's do the Fly Box. And if you have a question for the Fly Box, you can email it to me at
And oh, by the way, I host a bunch of trips. I love hosting trips, and I love meeting podcast listeners. And my trips usually fill up pretty quickly. I don't know why, but they fill up pretty quickly. I've got a couple of trips to Chile and a trip to the Bahamas this year that are already filled. But I do have a trip [00:02:30.060] that has some spots available. It's August 22nd to 28th, and it's at Casa Clorinda with Enrico Puglisi, who is an incredibly innovative fly-tier. And Enrico has this place down in Mexico. It's mainly baby and juvenile tarpon, but there's also some snook and cudas. And I just love baby tarpon fishing. So I'm looking forward to hosting that trip with Enrico. And if you're interested in it, you can find the information on [00:03:00.400] the Orvis website, under fly fishing trips to Mexico.
I've also got a trip coming up to fly fish for brown trout in Spain, in the Pyrenees, in November. We don't have all the details available yet, but keep an eye on the Orvis website. And once we get the details, I'll mention it here on the podcast. I'm really excited about both of these trips.
All right. Let's do the Fly Box. [00:03:30.159] And the first one is an email from Dave from Pennsylvania.
"I am new to bamboo. I had my dad's bamboo rods restored, and I'm putting them to use. One of them is a nine-foot Heddon Rod of Rods. It is a lot of rod to handle. Currently, I have a Pflueger Medalist 1495 AK reel on it for the vintage look, but this light reel does not seem to balance the rod well. I was told by the refurbisher that all rods should be balanced by a reel heavy enough that your index finger [00:04:00.219] positioned on the cork near the top end should be the balance fulcrum point.
Question one is whether this is standard dogma. My reel with line weighs in at 8.0 ounces. I added weight to get it balanced, 5.3 ounces, so I would need a reel in a line weighing a total of 13.4 ounces to get that desired balance or an empty reel of about 11.5 ounces, assuming about 2 ounces for line. A recent scan [00:04:30.279] of vintage reels on Fiberglass Flyrodders' chat line found none that heavy, and I don't know whether new reels run that heavy. Should I be looking for a heavy new model reel, add weight to the reel I have, is that possible, or suck it up and beef up my forearm muscles? What would you put on this rod? Thanks for any help. Getting on the water with this rod helps me keep my dad's memories alive."
Well, Dave, that is a problem if [00:05:00.139] you believe that a reel should be balanced like that. Honestly, I don't particularly care whether a reel is balanced like that. I pick a reel that I like that will hold enough line and backing for the appropriate circumstances, and I don't really worry about the balance point. I suppose it might make your casting a little bit easier if it balances [00:05:30.180] like that. It makes sense. But honestly, on my bamboo rods, I use the C.F.O. reel, which is quite light, and it nowhere near balances in that point. And I don't notice any problems with it.
To try to get a reel that's 13 ounces, that's still more physical weight that you've got to hold out in front of you and at your side, and I really don't think you need it. I would pick a reel that you like [00:06:00.060] the looks of with that bamboo rod and that'll handle enough line and backing that you need on that rod, and then just go for it. I wouldn't worry about adding weight to the reel or anything. There probably are going to be people who disagree with me, but honestly, that balance point on a fly rod is really not that significant.
Here's an email from Aristeo.
"So in my early years of fly fishing, I have never been more frustrated than when a big trout [00:06:30.139] eats a strike indicator. I have had at least a dozen trout over 20 inches go for my strike indicator. To try and solve that problem, I would tie on a large-size hopper with a dropper. Well, I've only had, like, two false takes on the hopper, but I can't hook anything. Now, here's why I emailed you. Have you ever had this problem with the strike indicator? What was your solution? I had a silly idea of tying an oversized egg pattern to be used as a strike indicator. Do you think that would work? I haven't tried it yet, but it was a thought. [00:07:00.598] Anyway, just started listening to your podcast, but I've been watching you on TV and YouTube for many years. I've been fly fishing since 2018 and have learned most of my knowledge from watching you. I still have a lot to learn, and you're still teaching me. Thanks, Tom."
Well, Aristeo, I still have a lot to learn too, believe me. You'll never stop learning if you enjoy fly fishing. Yeah, I've had fish take my strike indicator many times. I don't like it either. [00:07:30.339] And the solution is to go to a dry-dropper, like you've done. Sometimes you don't need a really large hopper. Depending on the nymph that you've got on there, sometimes you don't need a really large hopper, but if they're taking a strike indicator, something like a foam hopper that lands with a pretty good pop or even a beetle imitation will make a decent strike indicator. [00:08:00.279] And yeah, I mean, you could try, I guess, tying an oversized egg pattern. It probably wouldn't float very well. Most of those egg yarns don't float that well, but you could try it. But I think the standard dry-dropper, I mean, the fact that a couple of fish just swirled at your hopper and didn't take it doesn't mean that it won't work in the future. So I'd stick with a dry-dropper if that fish taking your strike indicator annoys you.
Brett: Hey, Tom, this is Brett calling from North Carolina. I've been listening [00:08:30.100] to this show for so long, I feel like I know you, but this is the first time I've submitted a question. I got a new drift boat. I've never had a drift boat before. I don't have any experience of rowing. I've got some kayaking experience, a lot of fishing experience, but I wondered what your ideas will be about hiring a guide to help me learn to navigate some class I and class II rapids. I want to make sure I do it safely. [00:09:00.019] I want to make sure I do it ethically. So I'm wondering what your thoughts are on that, whether you think a guide would be willing to do it. What would be a good way to approach them about it? I appreciate everything that you do, and I thank you for your answer.
Tom: So, Brett, yeah, I think teaching yourself to row by watching videos and stuff, you could do it, but I think it would be a problem. And I think that you're much better off hiring a guide. And you know, [00:09:30.840] some guides might be interested in teaching how to row, some guides might not, and I just think a simple phone call or an email to a guide in your area and ask them if they're comfortable teaching you how to row. There's also guide schools that concentrate a lot on rowing, and even if you don't want to be a guide, a lot of people take these guide schools just because they want to learn how to be a better angler or they want to learn how to row or back a trailer [00:10:00.259] into a takeout situation. I do know that Three Rivers Ranch and WorldCast Anglers in Idaho do run guide schools, and there are other fly shops and guide operations that run guide schools. So you might want to look into a guide school. It'd be a lot of fun, and you would really...not only would you learn how to row from an experienced rower, but you'd learn [00:10:30.080] how to row from somebody who has concentrated on teaching rowing to other guides. So that might be your best bet.
Here's an email from Matt from Atlanta.
"Hi, Tom. Love the podcast. Thank you so much for what you do. You've taught me a ton, and just listening to you often is enough motivation to get me out and fishing. A quick note for fly fishermen with a cat. If you take a fly that you no longer expect to use, I used a poorly tied stimulator, and break it [00:11:00.220] at the bend, then tie tippet to the fly and then to an unused key chain, you now have a better cat toy than anything that you can get at a pet store. My two cats go crazy for this stupid thing. As for my question, I've often wondered about using cat hair to tie. I pull hair off the brush we use quite a lot and throw it away. I've constantly thought about using it as a substitute for something like hare's fur but haven't actually experimented yet. I'm curious if you've heard of anyone using [00:11:30.159] cat hair on their fly and if it was successful or not."
Well, Matt, I don't have any cats in the house. I've got two labs, and they shed all over the place, and I was looking at the ball of hair that my wife swept up the other day. I do sweep it up too sometimes but not as often as my wife would like. And I thought, "Boy, that would make some great dubbing for a big black stonefly nymph." And, yeah, you can really use anything to tie flies, and cat hair is [00:12:00.139] pretty fine. It dubs pretty well. I have used it before. And the longer hairs you can use for a wing on a wet fly or a bonefish fly. Dog hair you can use. Your own hair you can use. So, yeah, there's nothing magic about most of the dubbings that we use. It's just that they're from animals that are available. And of course, hare's ear fur does have some magic properties because of all those little speckled hairs, but [00:12:30.419] it's probably not any better than something like red squirrel or fox squirrel hair. So, yeah, I would go ahead and use the cat hair, and I'm sure it'll work as well as any synthetic or natural stuff that you can buy in the store.
Here's Parker, writing in from the banks of the Beaverkill.
"I have a question for you today as well as a tip for listeners. My question is about mending. I find when I'm [00:13:00.240] mending my line, fishing dry flies or an indicator rig, that I over-mend and move my dry fly or I don't mend enough and my fly still drags. What is the proper way to mend to prevent drag? Do I put the mend into my fly line, or do I put the mend into my leader, or should I just present my dry fly closer to the rising trout so I don't have to mend?
My tip is everyone should read more books about fly fishing or fly tying when trying to learn. While more modern resources like [00:13:30.240] online articles or YouTube videos do exist and are great in their own right, they only really scratch the surface of the topic they're about. For example, the Orvis YouTube channel has a great video about how to read trout streams, but the book "Orvis Guide to Reading Trout Streams" goes so much more in-depth on the topic. And I find myself periodically rereading the book, and it's a great resource for all trout fishermen. Last thing, I would like to say thank you, Tom and Orvis, for helping making fly fishing more accessible to everyone [00:14:00.159] and helping us all enjoy the great outdoors and fly fishing more. Thanks."
Well, Parker, mending is a situational thing. There are times when you want to mend all the way to the fly or the indicator and there are times when you want to only mend half your line, and it really depends on how much drag you anticipate, what the currents are like. So what I would do if I were you is [00:14:30.320] before you mend, you want to lift the rod to break that surface tension and then practice just flipping your line enough to put that part of the line between your rod tip and the fly, usually, in an upstream situation. But moving the fly with a dry fly, mending all the way to the fly, is usually not a good idea unless you're trying to slide the fly into a different current lane and then getting a dead drift. But mending [00:15:00.259] it all the way to the indicator nymph fishing isn't so bad, but there are times when you only want to mend half the line or even a quarter of the line, and you just need to look at the situation.
And personally, with dry fly fishing, I think you hit the nail on the head. I try not to mend ever when I'm dry fly fishing. I try to put myself in a situation where I can get a short drift [00:15:30.200] over a rising fish without having to mend. I don't like mending at all with dry fly fishing. So I think that's a good practice. You can't always do it. Sometimes you can't get into that position so you do have to mend, but just be careful how much line you mend and where you put the mend into your line. And thank you for the comments on the "Orvis Guide to Reading Trout Streams." Actually, there's a newer book [00:16:00.259] that I have out called Finding Trout, which is, I think, a lot more detailed. And I've learned a lot since I wrote the "Orvis Guide to Reading Trout Streams," and so I think that that newer book, "The Orvis Guide to Finding Trout," is going to be...I think you'll find to be an even better reference. But thank you. Thank you for the book plug.
Here's an email from Ken from Washington.
"Just a quick fix. If your fly line is wrapping around your rod while tying [00:16:30.200] on a new fly, try letting out more not less fly line. It can be on the water or just hanging lower, and I think you'll find it's less likely to wrap. I sometimes kayak fish, and this helps me anyway. Now I just need a surefire way to connect with fish. I'm told you need to be smarter than the fish."
Well, Ken, I hope you're smarter than the fish because they're not very bright. But that's a good tip, and I think a couple of podcasts ago, I recommended that angler have less line out. And [00:17:00.860] I'm going to have to try your method and have more line out and have some line in the water or something so that it doesn't wrap around the rod tip. So I'm going to try that out. Thank you. Thank you so much for the tip.
Tom: Right, yeah, absolutely. Very similar. All right. So it's a stream, basically, that is mostly groundwater, spring water coming out of the ground. Most of the flow is coming from that, right? And typically, [00:31:00.000] they could have anything from a silty to a gravelly bottom, but typically, they have quite a bit of vegetation, although I've seen some spring creeks that have very little even though they're mostly spring flow. But typically, you have a lot of vegetation, clear water, big trout.
Brant: Yeah. And the other thing is I think too, and that's a place to start, I think, is to think that through, you know, what effect does that water source have [00:31:30.119] on the fishing? And you struck on some of it, that you're usually dealing with clear water. You're usually dealing with, you know, less gradient than you would on a typical freestone stream. So the water is moving more slowly. So it's typically, you know, more riffles and flats rather than, you know, boulders and deep pools. As you say, the substrate is usually finer, so you end up with, you know, gravel and silt and weedy bottoms rather than cobble and big boulders because of the gradient.
And really the thing that ends up doing with this, [00:32:00.880] I think the thing that really defines spring creeks, for me at least, is the fact that when you do get those situations, also, usually co-occurring with hard water, lots of dissolved minerals that you end up with almost an ideal environment for aquatic insects and aquatic vegetation. But because you don't get fluctuations in temperature, the typical thing that happens is you get lots and lots of bugs but a lot of the same ones over and over.
Tom: Yeah, yeah.
Brant: So again, the other thing that, [00:32:30.420] again, I think, for most people, defines the spring creek experience is the fact that then you end up with more, again, lots of jargon to use here, but hatch-based or hatch-driven fishing, a lot of the fishing really revolves around the hatches, and then we get that thing we call selectivity. And I'm sure we'll talk about this more, but certainly part of that, I think, we do get some natural selectivity in spring creeks because fish are seeing the same food forms in large numbers, you know, repeatedly. [00:33:00.593]
Tom: Yeah, every day.
Brant: There is some natural selectivity that comes from that. So you know, it just requires that we play, you know, a little bit different game than we would on a typical freestone stream.
Tom: Right. Yep, okay. All right. Tip number one.
Brant: Well, maybe the most important one of the whole thing is, you know, I guess I always tell people, don't try to imitate a bull in a china shop, you know. Take your time. [00:33:30.000] It's sometimes amusing but sort of tragic when I'm on a heavily fished spring creek, and I see someone drive into a parking lot, and the doors fling open and they're guys in their waders. And they rush out to the stream, and they rush into the water and wade until they're waist deep, and then they kind of look around to see what the heck is going on. I mean, always taking that extra time to...especially if it's a different time of the year, [00:34:00.099] a different piece of water than you've ever fished. It's just so easy to get to the edge of the stream and you see one fish rise and you think, "Oh, God, I got to catch that fish right away."
I just encourage people to take time, you know, stand on the bank, you know, watch for feeding fish. So much of the time I see people, you know, rush into the stream to get to what looks like a juicy piece of water. And if they're not really aware of where the fish might be, they're crashing through a bunch of fish that they might have had an opportunity to catch [00:34:30.139] if they'd stopped and looked. Even investing a few minutes of just taking the time to look around and see what's going on is usually time well invested.
Tom: Yeah, I think that's one of the most important things, because, in a spring creek, fish can live almost anywhere, you know, because there's food everywhere. They can live in slower, shallower water that you might ordinarily pass up. They often seem to be concentrated in [00:35:00.000] certain places. So you know, that observation that carefully walking the bank and looking, I think, you know, you put it as number one, one of the keys, looking for rises, especially.
Brant: Yeah. And like I say, the thing that's so tragic, we talked about it, you often don't get big fluctuations in flow, but even in a spring creek, weed beds grow differently, and [00:35:30.019] even a spring creek where you'd think you could fish the same spot from year to year and the conditions would be exactly the same, but they're definitely not. And I know I see a lot on the Paradise Valley spring creeks where I spend most of my time, I see those guys that race from their car to the water, and they take off or head from point A to point B. And I talk to them later, and it's like, you know, "Why were you in such a rush to go to that spot?" It's like, "Well, I caught a really big fish there four years ago in that spot." It's like, "Well, [00:36:00.000] your spot might not even exist anymore in that same place." Just some direct observation and taking a little bit of time to look.
And frankly, I think that's part of the spring creek experience too. There's a lot going on. There's birds and bugs and water and fish, and you know, just taking some time to let a little bit of that stuff sink in. And certainly, watching the birds can provide valuable fishing clues and that sort of thing, but I think [00:36:30.199] it's also just the richness of the experience of noticing the birds and noticing the bugs, noticing what's going on around you is really still, I think, the biggest lure of the whole fly fishing experience for me.
Tom: Yeah, absolutely.
Brant: We deserve to enjoy that.
Tom: All right, number two.
Brant: Number two, again, one of the things that I find I think lots of modern anglers, [00:37:00.000] I don't know, their approach to fishing tends to be a little more, you know, step one, step two, step three. And you know, they put on a certain rig that they know is effective, and they go out and they fish it, and they just kind of apply themselves. I think the one thing that spring creek fishing really should encourage us to do is, again, recognize that there are going to be peaks and valleys in a typical fishing day. And on a spring creek where we really are [00:37:30.000] relying on patches to provide some structure for what's going on around us, then, you know, I can't expect my clients or myself to be at peak performance for, you know, 12 hours in a row.
So one of the things I think that's important to spring creek fishing is, you know, recognize there'll be times when there's not a lot going on, you know. Don't be afraid to work on your casting for a while if there's absolutely nothing going on or go, you know, take a look around the creek [00:38:00.000] and see if you can find some fish you haven't seen before. But at the same time, try to make sure that if you can predict when fishing is going to be at its peak and the fish are going to be working, make sure that you're not burned out by the time the good fishing happens, make sure that you've got some physical energy and some mental and emotional energy to deal with the fishing when it comes. So, again, it's just don't try to keep yourself on point [00:38:30.340] for the entire day.
And I guess the obvious corollary of that, Tucker Nelson, a good friend and outfitter, whose family owns Nelson's Spring Creek, we've joked about it for years that the most important decision we make every day as a spring creek guy is just when to eat lunch.
Tom: Because you don't want to miss the hatch, right?
Brant: There's nothing worse than, you know, waiting for the bugs and waiting for the bugs and then finally realizing your clients are going to kill you if you don't feed them sometime, and you sit down to lunch and realize [00:39:00.000] the fish have timed it perfectly to...they wanna try to eat the same time you are.
Tom: Maybe they know.
Brant: Sometimes it almost seems like it, but I hope they're not that intelligent because I won't have a chance with them if that sort of thing happens.
Tom: Would you agree that in a spring creek, typically, the peak times are later in the day than they would be on a freestone stream, more toward the middle of the day?
Brant: Yeah. I think, [00:39:30.059] generally, you will find that, I guess, again, for a lot of western spring creeks, we're dealing with baetis mayflies in the spring and the fall and PMDs in the summertime. And again, PMD is typically late morning to midday, and baetis, you know, early afternoon, sometime, depending on weather.
Tom: Yeah, yeah.
Brant: Yeah, again, a lot of times. On the other hand, there have been times when I've been very delighted to have good midge fishing fairly early in the mornings in the springtime. [00:40:00.059] And I find a lot of other anglers and guides are thinking of nothing but afternoon baetis hatches. So sometimes I also have the creek to myself for two or three or four hours in the morning. And again, having some knowledge of local hatches, there will be some times when you might get, you know, morning spinner falls or some relatively early midge emergencies that a lot of anglers, if they're not thinking about them, may just, you know, show up late enough, not even to notice that it's happening.
Tom: So to [00:40:30.579] paraphrase a photography maxim, be there and f/8, would be, be there and 6X.
Brant: Exactly. That's a nice one. I got to steal that one.
Tom: I just thought of that one. I'm feeling really clever today, Brant. All right. And I assume that you sometimes have peaks in the evening too [00:41:00.039] when the light gets lower.
Brant: Yeah. You know, it's interesting, though, I guess I have to admit since I'm doing a lot of this as a fishing guide and a lot of my clientele is aging with me, that, certainly, sometimes if you really do want to fish to the better end and fish late, you'd see some midge activity or some caddis, at least a little bit of caddis activity on the spring creeks. But again, if you're picking and choosing, again, I realize there's still some anglers out there that, [00:41:30.139] you know, the fishing experience involves fishing from dawn until dark. So you know, those people will take advantage of it. But I'd say, typically, in a lot of situations, spinner falls are probably, you know, on the spring creeks, I'm most familiar with, probably the very best with the evening activity is probably spinner falls.
Tom: Okay.
Brant: That's definitely worth it. But again, even that could be something that, in the structure of a guide day, sometimes I'll leave clients and say, "If you want to hang out till 7:30 [00:42:00.199] this evening and see if the spinner fall happens, it's definitely going to be worth your time." But I probably won't invest three or four more hours with the client on the chances that that's going to happen. But certainly right that there definitely can be some good evening activity as well.
Tom: Okay. All right, number three.
Brant: Number three is...I still remember doing actually an Orvis school back in the early '80s when I was teaching on a [00:42:30.500] small spring creek in southern Oregon and I had a fairly experienced angler with me. And we saw a rising fish, and I walked out to get in position to help him, you know, work to the fish. And I was moving very slowly and carefully, and I turned around, and the guy looked at me, says, "You're kidding, right?" I said, "Why?" He said, "You don't really move that slowly when you're fishing." And I said, "Well, only if I want to catch the fish." You know, almost 40 years [00:43:00.039] later, that one still strikes me, one of the things I do see, and especially if a lot of my clients ended up being people that have fished freestone waters extensively and not spent much time on spring creeks. And almost invariably, one of the first things I have to work on them is moving on the banks more slowly and wading more slowly so that they're not pushing a wave, or if I can hear a client sloshing around behind me, I know something's going wrong. [00:43:30.159]
So again, just be careful with the approach, you know, recognize these fishes, you know, they're still wild creatures. As our pal John Juracek, you know, summed up fish behavior for us in a recent School of Trout school is, like, trout are wild creatures. They don't like us messing with them. So if we take that to heart, one of the things is think about the approach, think about getting in position. Again, I guide on spring creeks where, [00:44:00.360] you know, the fish won't stop feeding if they see someone walking up and down the bank. But I'm certainly convinced we're still way ahead of the game if our first presentation is made to a fish that's not aware that we're there yet.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.
Brant: I guess one thing I'd say is so much of...as I think I made aware to you that New Zealand has become my adult addiction in the last 10 or 15 years, and certainly, [00:44:30.099] one of the lessons the New Zealand brown trout have taught me is, you know, don't be making a lot of careless motion around the stream. So that's certainly made me much more careful about coming back to my local fish and just being very aware of. And probably the other rule there with fish senses is just make sure that, you know, if you're making a careful approach to the fish, just stay low. That's an easy rule of thumb, is the lower you can approach the fish, you know, whether it's crouching, hands [00:45:00.079] on knees, sitting, whatever, is always an advantage.
Tom: Yep, absolutely. And these kind of things will benefit the freestone angler too in a slower pool. It's the same deal, right?
Brant: Oh, absolutely, yeah.
Tom: If you're pushing waves that you can see propagating ahead of you, then you're moving too fast.
Brant: Yeah. And even with careful observation, I'm still surprised at, you know, how many [00:45:30.119] fish I don't nearly step on just because I'm not being quite careful.
Tom: Oh, you and me both.
Brant: I've done it long enough that I should have learned that lesson. I learn it very frequently.
Tom: Yeah, me too. All right. Number, what were we on? One, two, four, number four. Vision.
Brant: Well, I think, yeah, one of the things I think that keeps a lot of people from enjoying spring creek fishing is, as we talked about, [00:46:00.039] the substrate tends to be small. And one of the correlations there is that most of the bugs tend to be small, and therefore, we're using lighter tippets. So you know, dealing with light tippet and little tiny flies is the one thing I think a lot of people just, you know, throw up their hands and say, "Yeah, it's not for me." And I realize, especially those of us that are, you know, over 50 years old, you know, it's hard to see. But I think the main thing to deal with there is if you have trouble seeing little flies, [00:46:30.059] you know, use whatever tools you have at your disposal to make that easier. So you know, nothing is going to make a spring creek day more frustrating and less fun than, you know, struggling to be able to tie a fly on or tie a knot. So you know, whatever system you use, whether... I found bifocal sunglasses to be very effective for me, but magnifiers or the Pop of Power readers or whatever, whatever vision aids you use, just [00:47:00.039] don't hide from the fact that you need the help and just find the technological solution and move on. I'd like to be 25 again, but I'm not, so.
Tom: Yeah. And it comes sometimes very subtle, you know. I can't tell you the number of 42, 43-year-old anglers that have suddenly had trouble tying on flies, and they can't figure it out, "What's going on with me?" It's like, "Oh, you lose your near vision."
Brant: A couple [00:47:30.039] of my very good friends were...I think this is an Argentina story, but you know, one half of the boat was using her reading glasses and tying on a fly and the other person was struggling with it. And she offered the reading glasses several times, was turned down, and finally said, "Okay, I'll give them a try." And the voice from the back of the boat was, "Oh, no," when they finally realized that, yeah, they weren't going to be doing that without some sort of vision aid. So it's just, [00:48:00.739] if that's the thing that's limiting your fun of dealing with this stuff, just, you know, find something that will help.
Tom: Yeah. And a tip I might offer is that if somebody uses readers for reading a book or newspaper, computer, whatever, you need a little higher power. Generally, if you're going to buy a pair of readers, I think that a 3X...depending on your vision, but I think a 3X, 3.00 diopter reading glasses for fishing, particularly with small flies, [00:48:30.239] are going to be much better than a pair of normal readers. So you may want to have your normal readers for reading maps or whatever or your phone and fishing readers.
Brant: You know, that is a good point. One of the things that's...you know, something I've come to grips with in the last year or two too is if you're using bifocal sunglasses, typically, the bifocal will also be, you know, tinted. So, in low light, the bifocal sunglasses...
Tom: You lose resolution.
Brant: ...you have to have some [00:49:00.780] separate thing to deal with low light, you know, early or late in the day, or even on very cloudy days.
Tom: Yeah, bifocal sunglasses, also, when you're wading, sometimes it gets a little weird unless you really get used to it because you're looking down and you can't see the bottom as well. So I tend toward using standard sunglasses and then a pair of readers around my neck.
Brant: Yep. Just use something. [00:49:30.139]
Tom: Yeah. Just don't be too proud to use readers because it'll change your life.
Brant: And spending 20 minutes on a simple knot just because you can't see the damn thing is no fun at all.
Tom: Yeah, it's not. It's not. It's frustrating. All right. Next one.
Brant: Well, this, again, I can't resist quoting our pal John Juracek that we teach with in the School of Trout that. Our mantra there is, you know, we should be [00:50:00.039] proud of our leaders. And it's really true, you know. I often think that, you know, what do fishing guides do? Well, we make sure that our client has a leader that will actually function well enough to catch a fish, because most people are horrid at the sort of leaders that they cobble together, you know, to try to catch a fish. And it's sad to say, but cool new fly rods and shiny reels and fancy flies are all really cool, but an awful lot of where [00:50:30.079] fishing really happens is in having a leader that's constructed properly so that it performs everything it's supposed to do. It allows us to get the fly to the target efficiently, turns over well even in wind, and at the same time, that is constructed well enough that we can get a reasonable float with the fly that's tied to the tippet.
So again, just spend time with the leaders, be willing to understand how leaders work, know your knots well enough that [00:51:00.079] you're not, again, spending an inordinate amount of time. You know, if you realize you need to make a leader change, again, it's one of those things that I would hope that every confident fishing guide, again, you see a fishing situation, is, "Yeah, I need to rebuild part of this leader, and it's going to take me a couple of tippet knots and a fly knot," that should be something that you deal within a minute or two, not sitting on the bank for half an hour. So that, to me, is just so much of [00:51:30.099] fishing success happens, you know, within the leader that it's just something people need to spend more time on.
Tom: They do.
Brant: And I'll jump ahead to, I think, what was next in my outline, is become a good knot tier. Again, the thing that I would say as a working guide, when I see people, you know, limit their own success, an awful lot of it still just comes down to their fishing with a crappy leader, and their knots very suspect. And those are [00:52:00.159] just two things that should, you know, I would hope fairly early on in the learning curve, but those are things that we just get past and work on and practice well enough that it's not an issue. But I still have, you know, lots of folks I fish around that have been doing it for decades that are still...you know, they don't want to change the fly even though they need a fly change because it takes too long to tie the damn knot. Yes, they know they need to build a transition section in this leader, but you know, [00:52:30.159] they're afraid the hatch will be over by the time they, you know, manage to tie a couple of secure knots. So that's just a thing. It's kind of tragic how much success is impaired by, you know, just building a decent leader and tying good knots.
Tom: Yeah. And you know, I've said this before, I could do a leader podcast every week and people would still listen to it because there is nothing that mystifies [00:53:00.000] people more than leaders, particularly in trout fishing, because they're more complex than a saltwater or a bass leader. But there's nothing that scares people away more than leaders and knots, and you just need to get comfortable with them. You need to understand them, and you need to practice your knots and test your knots.
Brant: Right. And I think that's one thing that really is true. I guess two things I would say from a guide perspective that I see most of the time [00:53:30.019] is...something I try to do on a regular basis is make sure that I have the client change the fly so I have a chance to watch them tie a fly knot, I have them put on a piece of tippet so I can see how they're doing with knots. The one thing I would say with most fly knots, probably most tippet knots as well, is the mistake that I see most anglers make is they never actually get the knot tight.
Tom: Yeah. I remember you saying that [00:54:00.099] at the School of Trout, and I hadn't really thought about that.
Brant: I just see it consistently. And one of the things I think, again, to try to tie this to spring creek fishing, well, I guess two things, one, obviously, we are usually a lot of times having...you know, because of the fly sizes, we're fishing lighter tippet. And definitely, with modern tippet materials are so damn strong, I see a lot of really crappy knots that if you're catching relatively small fish on 4X, I mean, you can get away with murder. [00:54:30.340]
Tom: Yeah, yeah.
Brant: The knot won't fail. But if you are fishing down to 6X and you're now dealing with a pretty sizable fish, then, again, good knots are one of the ways to prevent as much personal anguish of watching the fish go away at the last minute as you're trying to land it. And as you say, again, with light tippet, it becomes important not just to test the knot when you tied it, but fairly frequently, just [00:55:00.179] every time that that tippet hits a blade of grass on a back cast, you need to be looking at it again because the one time you ignore that, the biggest fish of your life is going to eat on the next drift. So, like you say, testing and retesting frequently is something a good guide should be doing but every angler should be doing for themselves too.
Tom: Yep. And don't ask us what knots to use. Learn one that's popular and learn it well. [00:55:30.199] Right?
Brant: Quick and secure. I guess one final thought there too that I sometimes see with small flies is people, I think, don't get their knots tight, even with relatively light tippet, because they're afraid they're going to stick themselves with the hook. So, again, use clamps. You know, I always point out to people, if you're wearing a vest or a pack, you almost always have a D-ring or a zipper pull or something that can hang onto the fly while you draw your knot down.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. [00:56:00.260] Or just stick it in your thumb and tighten it that way.
Brant: Yeah, yeah. Well, I do that fairly frequently, but not always on purpose.
Tom: All right. We're up to number seven, Brant.
Brant: Okay. And now let's...this one's pretty easy to get to, but you know, I do teach some casting for some guide schools, and I always tell the students in a guide school, I said, "I think I could pull every working fly fishing guide on [00:56:30.059] the planet." And if I said, "What's the one thing you wish your clients could do better?" It's like, "Boy, I sure wish they could cast."
Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Brant: So, again, on a spring creek, typically, we're not having to deal with, you know, extremely long casts, but accuracy, you know, accuracy, sort of location, location, location. For a spring creek angler, it's accuracy, accuracy, accuracy, get your fly on target. It's just so important. You know, as recently as a couple of days ago, with a client on the stream, [00:57:00.099] it was just one of those things that, you know, an actively feeding fish and a number of casts for short and a number of casts for long, and we finally get the fly where it's supposed to go. And the fish eats on the first drift. So, again, sometimes it isn't rocket surgery, as we say, it's just getting the fly somewhere the fish can see it is by far the most important, and having good enough loop control that you can do it consistently, in some situations and probably [00:57:30.179] things that we see on spring creeks frequently. I certainly see it on New Zealand streams a lot is, you know, we're not going to give you six practice casts to get the fly to the target.
Tom: Right.
Brant: It needs to happen the first time you present the fly, and that just requires a substantial amount of practice to make sure that that accuracy is there. If I get a caster that can form a good loop and cast accurately, all the other presentation casts are relatively easy to learn, [00:58:00.000] but you have to start with those good casting basics to start there. I would say, you know, beyond an accurate cast, I would say, if someone hasn't really fished kind of slow, flat water situations before, learning a reach cast is probably, you know, the first tool in the toolkit that I would say that most people really need to work on. A reach cast, you know, could be applied to so many situations effectively. And probably a pile cast, you know, would be [00:58:30.079] the other presentation cast that I work on most of the other. Frankly, it's rare that I get to work on, you know, throwing her cast and some of the other stuff. For so many situations, just an accurate cast first and then working on a good reach is going to be really important.
Tom: Absolutely. Can't be in the game for any kind of trout fishing without learning the reach cast, I don't think.
Brant: And it's, you know, so much time [00:59:00.019] gets wasted on, you know, casts that were basically useless. Some time on the practice field just working on casting is something that all of us can use. You know, even the best casters among us are always needing that practice. And sadly, so many of our, again, from a guide perspective, so many of my clients, the only casting practice they get is when they're paying their guide to take them fishing, so.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. [00:59:30.000] All right, number eight.
Brant: Well, this one's really critical, and it's kind of funny. I kind of went through a lot of thoughts on what to include on this little tips list. But I would say reading rise forms, you know, the one thing that's so nice about spring creek fishing is, in a lot of cases, we do get an opportunity to fish over good hatches and be able to see fish rising and learn from that. But rise forms are such a useful thing to be able to tell, again, [01:00:00.139] where in the water column of a feeding fish is feeding, whether it's, you know, subsurface rim of film or something that's sitting on top of the surface. And the advantage for me is being able to do that from considerable distance away. I always tell clients, you know, trying to learn how to fish Silver Creek as a teenager, you know, Swisher and Richards' "Selective Trout" was...I mean, quite literally, I, you know, practically carried it with me on the stream.
But I remember what those authors told me back when I was 14, [01:00:30.079] was if I couldn't figure out what the fish are eating, I was supposed to wade in the middle of them and, you know, put my dip net in there and figure out what the food form was. You know, that's silly. Now, I got to sit on the bank and wait for them to start rising again, in so many situations, you know, I mean, by watching rise forms and combining that with some knowledge of hatches, which is what we'll get to next. But in a lot of cases, by knowing time of year and time of day and weather conditions, you can look at a rising fish from [01:01:00.139] 100 yards away and have a very good idea of what the fish is feeding on, and you may be pretty close to fly selection before you even get close. So that is such a huge time saver. You know, it's hugely helpful in terms of fly selection.
But the other thing, I think it comes back to the same thing we talked about, that, you know, I guess the thing that hooked me as a kid on fly fishing was I guess I've always [01:01:30.039] tried to describe that when I was fairly effective with ultralight spinning tackle. And I got a fish to eat a little Dardevle or a little Mepps spinner. It was always really fun. But even at a tender age, I was thinking, "Well, you know, I'm kinda making the fish play my game when I do that." And even though I wasn't very good at it for the first decade that I tried it, the insight I had with fly fishing was that I was having a chance to step into the fish's environment, step into their world, and again, reading rise forms is [01:02:00.179] one of those things that you can start to understand, you know, feeding behavior and understand what the fish and the bugs are all doing together. That, to me, just makes the whole thing a lot richer.
Tom: Yeah. Brant, can you give a few tips on what you look for in a rise form? Just to give people some idea of, you know, reading a rise form. It's fine to say read the rise form, but how do you know what it's telling you?
Brant: Well, a few of these things are original. As you know, [01:02:30.340] our buddy John Juracek does a really outstanding presentation in the School of Trout, and I've learned some things from John. But one place to start with is just recognizing that, maybe even take a step backward, I often tell my clients that, you know, the fish that gets to be the big one that you really, you know, that biggest fish in the creek you want to catch is not smart, it's not athletic, it's an efficient feeder. So one of the things that generally you'll find is fish, [01:03:00.400] if they manage to eat enough not to starve to death when they're very small, that they will feed efficiently. So usually, if you're seeing rise forms that are very subtle, very quiet rise forms, there's a little bit of an overgeneralization, but you're usually looking at either a food form that's small or a food form that typically is trapped in the surface film, the fish.
Tom: Okay.
Brant: Again, I'm all scared to use the verb know when I'm talking about a trout, but again, the fish recognize food forms that, [01:03:30.260] you know, a spinner that's trapped in the surface film, for example, or maybe, you know, an emerger of a midge or a mayfly, that those fish will not be terribly aggressive toward a small food form or something that's stuck in the film. If it's something that's active, you know, if they actually need to expend some energy to catch it moving, you know, whether it's a Skittering Caddis or saw some really interesting behavior [01:04:00.239] on still water a few weeks ago with backswimmers, but again, if it's a more active food form that they recognize has a chance to get away, in a lot of cases there, they will be more aggressive. And sometimes just a really big chunk of food. So sometimes, you know, a fish will crash a grasshopper or, you know, a floating salmon fly. Those are the kind of times that you get typically really, really aggressive takes.
Tom: Okay.
Brant: A couple of easy insights, maybe one that, you know, if you're seeing a gas bubble, you actually [01:04:30.079] see a real bubble on the surface, that's usually a surface take because you're actually seeing that gas bubble that's trapped in the roof of the fish's mouth. It's expelled through the gills. But again, I would start with the idea that just recognize, if you're trying to decide between whether you're looking at...the other thing I've seen recently is sometimes you will see situations where a number of small fish are rising and being able to pick out a small fish from a big fish. Again, a lot of times, [01:05:00.000] big fish, I guess the way I've always described it is, you know, the big fish moves water, and you'll just sort of have, you know, a rise form the big fish will just have kind of a different presence than what you'd see with sort of splashy, kind of snippy little rises from small fish will definitely have a different look.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. Bigger waves pushed out from a big fish usually because it's just got more mass.
Brant: Right. So if, [01:05:30.019] again, they're moving to the surface or even close to the surface, one of the things you're often going to see, I guess, lots more to talk about here, but another thing that a lot of times if you're seeing the dorsal tail rise where you don't see the nose of the fish but you see dorsal and tail, a lot of times that the fish seem to take something just subsurface, so again, can be a really valuable clue in terms of both presentation and fly selection.
Tom: Yeah, of course, we could do a whole podcast [01:06:00.460] on rise forms, right?
Brant: Exactly.
Tom: So let's go on to number nine.
Brant: The one thing that I'd say, you know, I think some people are scared by spring creek fishing because they think the flies are going to be tiny and perhaps going to fish, you know, super light tippet. The other thing I do sometimes see and I've certainly seen your presentations at the School of Trout where you try to make it clear that, you know, [01:06:30.059] we don't have to learn scientific names of every species of insect in North America to be an effective fly angler. But the one thing I would say is that I think the bug information to me is, you know, watching insects hatch is almost as interesting to me as watching the trout that comes up and eat them when they do.
Tom: Yeah, yeah.
Brant: So just, again, immersing yourself in what's going on around you. When you see insect behavior and you understand what it is you're seeing, I think it adds to the richness. And especially if you're going [01:07:00.000] to be fishing, you know, if you have home water that you fish frequently or if you travel frequently to go to certain places to fish specific hatches, then I think learning a little bit more of the bug information. You know, for most of us, again, there's a lot of different ways to approach that, but I think just understanding more of the hatches that you do encounter, you know, does add to the richness and certainly does supply some really useful fishing information. So, again, I guess the only rule there is [01:07:30.119] just don't be afraid of the richness of the bug life. Still watching a mayfly hatch when I go fishing every time is still almost as miraculous, you know, to watch as a big brown trout come and try to eat it.
Tom: Almost.
Brant: Yeah. I know a lot of that.
Tom: Pretty cool, but not quite there.
Brant: Yeah, yeah.
Tom: Okay. And number 10 is about matching the hatch, right, [01:08:00.260] or more than matching the hatch.
Brant: And one of the things that when you do get good hatches, then I think sometimes, whether it's someone that is with me and they're absolutely flabbergasted when they see a really strong hatch, one of the things that's very, very common if you get a group of fish, probably even worse on a tailwater where you've got a pod of 50 rising fish instead of a handful on a spring creek, [01:08:30.279] pick a single target. Flock shooting doesn't work for game birds, and it doesn't work for trout either. So just make sure that you pick a specific target. In some ways, even when you've got multiple targets, one of the ways I try to have my own mindset of thinking about that is each individual fish is a different campaign. Pick a fish. I'm usually not trying to be greedy enough to say, [01:09:00.079] you know, if I play my cards right, I could hook every fish in this group. It's, you know, maybe pick the biggest one, maybe pick the most interesting one, maybe pick the hardest one, you know, whatever it is. But when you figure out which fish you want to try to catch, then concentrate on a good presentation to that specific fish, and it'll work out way better in terms of actual efficiency and getting efficient on that too.
Tom: Yeah. Yep. [01:09:30.180] It's too easy to flock shoot when you got a whole pod of fish rising. And it doesn't usually work.
Brant: If it's easy, sometimes that'll pay off. You can just chuck it in there. And even if your target fish doesn't eat it, somebody else will. But I guess one thing I've seen...it's interesting, I think about my own personality, and one of the things I find almost every season when I'm guiding, there are two or three or four concepts that I sort of stop and say, "You know, [01:10:00.060] I don't think very many of my clients really think about this issue." And one of the ones that I've looked at, even in the last couple of weeks of guiding, is that idea that they're fishing to a specific fish, and then after it goes by the specific fish, then they'll spend three times as much time on the crappy part of the drift and letting it go down for another 30 or 40 feet below their target fish.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah.
Brant: It's usually pointless. [01:10:30.359] It's a huge, huge time waster.
Tom: Yeah, yeah.
Brant: No, we don't need to be efficient when we're fishing if you don't want to be. But I do sometimes think that's the one thing guides do for our clients, is that we try to minimize the time you're wasting on pointless activity, whether it's keep your fly in the water, things that simple, but that idea of don't waste your time doing something. [01:11:00.000] Something I see all the time is if you're blind, say you're just blind nymphing a piece of water, and you're working your way upstream, and you've covered a piece of water as you worked up, and then the angler still, again, lets the fly drift badly through all the water that they just fished 15 minutes ago. And again, it's just one of the things that, like, I sometimes look at people that are very smart, very accomplished people, and it's like, no, there's just some of that stuff that is [01:11:30.020] a waste of the fishing day. Of course, if you want to waste your fishing day, I sometimes have to remind myself that if that's what my client wants to do, that's what they should be doing.
Tom: Yeah, it's your day.
Brant: You don't always have to be efficient. But if you're concerned about catching fish, then I would say, work out some of those things where you're wasting your time on a crappy part of the drift.
Tom: Yep, yep. And that doesn't mean ripping the line off the water as soon as it drift past the fish. You got to let it get down a little bit so you can [01:12:00.020] quietly lift it up and put it back in front of them.
Brant: And of course, one of the things you may find, that maybe you read the water, you stepped in, and suddenly, all the grabs are happening at that bottom end of the drift.
Tom: Yeah, sometimes it is.
Brant: Probably some to be learned from that.
Tom: Right. Yeah.
Brant: Maybe you're standing in the wrong spot. Maybe you didn't read the water very well and the fish aren't where you thought they were, or maybe if it's a depth, maybe you don't have enough weight on it and it's taking [01:12:30.300] the entire drift for the fly to actually get down to the zone where the fish are. You know, lots of things going on. We should be learning from our mistakes even when we do that.
Tom: Yeah, absolutely.
Brant: And I guess the next one I had in my outline really is another one of those things I really noticed in the last year or two, is I think, again, in a spring creek situation, the tendency is to think about not wanting to spook the fish with the delivery of the fly. [01:13:00.439] But one of the things I find in a lot of situations is, especially, again, if we're thinking about a rising fish or, you know, a visible fish that we can see feeding, the tendency is to actually lead the fish too far upstream. In a lot of cases, I just see that, one, again, to get back to where we started, you know, accuracy is absolutely paramount, that if you lead the fish by, you know, 25 feet, the odds of you having a really accurate drift to get by your target fish [01:13:30.140] is not that great. And I think in most presentations, we always have, you know, of course, fish do eat the fly sometimes the second it touches the water, and sometimes they eat it when it's dragging badly at the end of the drift.
But most of the time, we're trying to plan our approach so that we have, you know, that sweet spot in the drift, whether it's dry fly or nymph, that it's, you know, coming to the fish properly in exactly the right position. And if you're leading the fish too far, [01:14:00.159] I think that sweet spot in the drift is usually gone away by the time you actually get it to your target fish. So, again, take that with a grain of salt because, obviously, we don't want to be slamming the fly down right on top of the fish's nose. But I think there is a happy medium. Sometimes 2 or 3 or 4 feet instead of 20 or 30 or 40, I guess, is what I throw at my clients.
Tom: Okay. Okay. Good. Number 13.
Brant: Hooking angle. This is one of those things...I actually did an online [01:14:30.319] post years ago that I was actually kind of proud of, and that was to go through that idea that I think so much of the time, even in a guided situation, that we have a tendency to put somebody in a position where there's a fish or a good spot in front of them, we think about the angle of approach on how we're going to cast the fly and get the right drift, and we tend to, as fishing guides, I think we have a tendency to coach our clients right up to the point of success, which is the fish taking the fly. [01:15:00.300] And then we sort of forget everything that happens after that. So one of the things that I guess I sometimes talk about this in the guide schools and say, you know, one of the things my clients almost never do is come to me and say, "Boy, that was the best fishing day of my life. I had 50 fish take the fly, and well, I hooked 2. And we didn't land anything, but, boy, wasn't that great?"
So my whole sermon on this is just start working the idea that you're going to be successful. [01:15:30.859] So, again, let's not say if the fish takes my fly, but when the fish takes my fly, you know, what can I do to make sure that I get a secure hook set? So, you know, sometimes that's some obvious stuff. Typically, I'd say, if you have the angle to do it, striking to the downstream side, the fairly low rod angle is usually an advantage. But part of it may not be actually what the angler is doing, but part of it may be setting up the hooking angle by the way [01:16:00.159] you approach the fish in the first place. I guess one of the things, certainly, with reach casting, as much as I rely on reach casting, if you're making a reach cast on a fairly steep angle downstream, the hooking angle is poor. I don't think there's any way to get around that.
So one of the things I guess maybe that I throw at your listeners is that one of the things I started to do is try an upstream cast, you know. In a lot of situations, we'll be getting enough micro drag that maybe an upstream cast won't work [01:16:30.159] as well as a reach cast, but if the fish will eat that upstream presentation, I know my hooking angle is going to be a lot better. So to my mind, that's one thing now that, in most situations, I let the fish make that decision for me. You know, I'll test them to see if I can make a slight upstream presentation to give me a better hooking angle, and if not, then I'll, you know, work around to a new angle and use that steeper presentation downstream, but just recognize that I'll probably miss some fish [01:17:00.119] and probably have some fish come off because the hook set is not going to be as secure.
Tom: I don't know how many times a month I get a question on the podcast that, "I'm fishing downstream to these fish, and I can't hook them. What are the tricks?" I don't have any tricks. It doesn't work that well. And moving the rod sideways on a 40-foot cast doesn't make any difference. The fly is still going to [01:17:30.140] jump upstream no matter what you do.
Brant: You're exactly right. And that's one of those things that it's...life and fishing are a series of trade-offs.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah.
Brant: So that's one that sometimes, you know, when I show people a reach cast, we talk through the problems of hooking angle and just say it's going to be a very effective way to get the fish to eat the fly, but you're going to have to accept that, you know, you'll certainly miss some and you're going to lose some fish where you don't have a really secure [01:18:00.779] hook set. But, again, I guess my only sermon is that needs to be built into, you know, the actual tactics you're using. You know, you see a fish or a spot, and it's like, "Okay, where do I stand? And what angle do I cast from?" I just say, thinking through the idea that, you know, how do I get the fish hooked securely?
And then maybe to add one more that, again, would be another podcast, but what do I do after the fish is actually hooked? Do I have a good spot [01:18:30.380] where I can land this fish? Am I going to have to chase the fish downstream? Thinking that through before you make the cast. So just adding that idea of, you know, don't short yourself and say, "Well, you know, I'm never going to catch the fish anyway, so it doesn't matter. Let's bank on success and assume the fish will take the fly and then try to make sure that things work out as successfully as possible after that."
Tom: Yeah. Yep. And finally, [01:19:00.399] we get to number 14.
Brant: Which, again, you know, you could turn me on and I could talk about this for days.
Tom: Yeah. Each one of these, we could do a whole podcast on.
Brant: Everybody needs to incorporate, you know, if you fish a spring creek, it's amazing to me when I went back to, you know, again, I managed a fly shop in Livingston for years and years, went back to guiding full time. The first thing that really struck me was that a lot of the fish were, in particular, [01:19:30.060] on our spring creeks, one of the things that I see is fish move a ton. Sometimes they're tied to a specific structure, but fish that feed over the weed beds are constantly moving. Particularly with PMDs, I don't see a lot of fish eat duns anymore. Lots of emergers and lots of nymphs just subsurface. So the thing it led me to was the fact that, you know, we really need to sight fish on a bunch of [01:20:00.020] different levels, and obviously, the first one to start with is it's really fun in and of itself. So I have to admit, I think a lot of the lure of New Zealand for me is just the hunt, looking for a fish and developing those skills to be able to see the fish.
And then, for so much of my spring creek fishing, again, if the fish is constantly on the move, a lot of my clients over the years, I recognize, that their approach to the creeks has either been to fish a dry fly or, you know, [01:20:30.100] to fish a nymph under an indicator, and that's pretty much it. And there's so much fun fishing to be done. With fish that are constantly on the move, you know, a couple of basic things. If the fish is moving around and feeding, if you can keep your eye on the fish and not rely just on the rise form, my catchphrase with my clients most of the time is rise form is really useful because it told you where the fish was, not necessarily where he is right now, but again, it's a way to keep tabs on the fish. But it allows you to, again, come back to [01:21:00.159] casting accuracy. If I know right where the fish is, not where I saw him rise three minutes ago, but if I'm watching the fish move, I can make that an accurate cast, both in terms of space of actually putting the fly in front of the fish but also being able to watch the fish's feeding behavior and deliver it, you know, in terms of timing accuracy as well, that I can present the fly to the fish at a point in that feeding sequence where I have a pretty good idea that the fish is going to be ready for my fly when it comes by. [01:21:30.000]
And certainly, with a lot of the fish preferring to eat shallow nymphs over freshly hatched duns, one of the other things that I've spent probably most of my guide time in the last 10 or 15 years, you know, is showing people techniques for sight nymphing. And that, to me, is really fun, can be really challenging, but when you do it well, it's incredibly effective. And it's just one of those skills that most freshwater anglers don't really ever [01:22:00.020] work on. So it's something that's really...I probably would have been retired 10 years ago if I hadn't been able to, you know, show people sight fishing and sight nymphing on the creeks.
Tom: Yeah. And by this, sight nymphing, I assume you mean no indicator, no euro nymphing, no dry-dropper, just a single nymph, and you keep an eye on what the fish is doing, right, instead of watching an indicator. [01:22:30.000]
Brant: That's kind of where I started with myself. How I've adapted it to a guiding situation is, actually, usually, what I do is I do sort of a spring creek dry-dropper system, often with a very small CDC emerger, and then have the nymph, you know, still a suspended nymph, but often, you know, a couple of inches away from the dry fly.
Tom: Okay. Okay.
Brant: Anywhere up to, you know, sometimes somewhat deeper but often very, very close. [01:23:00.000] And as I tell people, certainly, one of the things that, you know, the reason I do it that way is, for a lot of clients, obviously, the casting accuracy without some sort of visual check is difficult if you just went, you know, with a nymph naked with nothing on the leader.
Tom: Yeah.
Brant: But I am convinced that if I'm in a situation where, again, I've got a moving fish and I might have to make, you know, not one cast to catch the fish but half a dozen or a dozen casts to put the fly in the right spot, [01:23:30.619] I'm definitely convinced that that little CDC emerger is much less likely to spook a fish than, you know, anything else I could attach to the leader, any kind of separate indicator system. But what I usually do try to do then is get clients to think about the fact that, you know, don't rely on that little dry fly as a strike indicator. It's just telling us where the nymph is, and that allows us to shift focus to the fish as the fish approaches the fly. Then it's judging [01:24:00.180] when the fish is taking the fly, and you know, lots of cool stuff there to see that.
Again, with spring creek fishing, some cases I get a chance to almost see a fish, you know, feeding right in front of my kneecap, so you can see the whole process. So sometimes we talk about, you know, white mouthing the fish of actually watching for the flash of the mouth when it opens and closes to take the nymph. And if you've got the right angle, that's usually helpful. The one thing I try to teach clients is that most of [01:24:30.119] the time, when the fish moves to the nymph and stops, when it stops, you know, mouth is open and the gills are flared, and it's sucking that nymph in the second it stops.
So most of the time, and again, it's amazing to me, I watch it happen all season long, but sometimes even when I've got just, you know, three or four inches between the two flies, I'll watch a fish come over, eat the nymph, reject the nymph, and swim away, and never see anything happen in the dry fly, [01:25:00.199] even when they're inches apart. And again, it's just fun to watch that kind of feeding behavior. So I think it certainly adds another level of efficiency to someone's fishing and a whole new set of skills.
Tom: Yeah. I mean, reading their body language is so fascinating, how they wiggle or twitch when a fly goes by. Of course, I...
Brant: Yeah, it's just those things [01:25:30.159] that, you know, the times when you realize, even when you're fairly well practiced at it and you're watching the fish move, and you know, sometimes you see almost nothing happen. The fish gets to the fly, and sometimes, again, the mouth flash can be super subtle. The one thing I've seen when I've been right on top of fish is that, you know, those pectoral fins are actually used like air brakes, you know, when you see those pectorals flare to put the brakes on. And again, [01:26:00.079] if you see that, you ought to be setting the hook.
Tom: Ah, interesting. I mean, I can't tell you the number of times I've been watching a fish and suddenly the fish starts shaking his head, and I realize the fly is in his mouth.
Brant: Which, again, that's one of the things I say. If you're watching that happen, again, it's one of those things that remind you of why, you know, sharp hooks are a good thing. But again, usually, by the time you're seeing an indicator move, [01:26:30.279] you try to tell people you're not usually seeing the take, you're seeing the fish trying to get that fly back out of his mouth if it starts to move. So, again, that's really useful information, but you know, we'd hope to be one step ahead of that.
Tom: Yeah, yeah. Well, Brant, this was fantastic, and you know, I think that any one of your points could be applicable to freestone streams as well. It's a great guide for just [01:27:00.720] good fishing in clear water and great practice for fishing in clear water. So I want to thank you for taking the time to share those thoughts with us today.
Brant: Thank you very much. It's been fun. As you said, it's been fun to catch up the last couple of years and have a chance to teach together. It's been a lot of fun to talk over some of this. I guess one final thing that you just mentioned, that, you know, a lot of these same lessons are lessons we can use everywhere. [01:27:30.279] One thing that's been fascinating to me, again, the New Zealand experience, is to recognize that you do see people doing some sight fishing in spring creeks, but you really see anybody take on the challenge of trying to sight fish in freestones. So much of what I do in New Zealand, the thing that's kind of boggled my mind when I watch the guides do it is they're not doing it in eight inches of slow-moving water like I do on a spring creek. You're looking for several feet of fast water and still [01:28:00.079] use a lot of those same skills to help. And again, I just get people to think about, you know, small stream fishing or, you know, pools on a freestone stream, think about using some of those sight fishing skills in other places.
Tom: Yeah. If you can see the fish, of course, it's often much harder in freestone, but, boy, the rare occasion when you can, it's pretty cool stuff. All right, Brant. Well, it has been great catching up with you, and I want to thank you again for taking the time. And where can people [01:28:30.060] get hold of you if they want to guide trip with you or something?
Brant: Probably the easiest thing is just Google my name and my website. So brantoswaldflyfishing.com is the website.
Tom: Okay.
Brant: So it should be the first thing that pops up in Google if you put my name in.
Tom: All right.
Brant: So, love to talk fishing.
Tom: Yeah, all right. Well, thanks again, Brant.
Brant: Thanks, Tom. Talk to you soon.
Man: Thanks for listening to the "Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast" with Tom Rosenbauer. You can be a part of the show. [01:29:00.079] Have a question or comment? Send it to us at