The Seven Deadly Sins of Playing and Landing Fish, with Josh Nugent

Tom: Hi, and welcome to the Orvis Fly Fishing podcast. This is your host, Tom Rosenbauer, and my guest this week is Josh Nugent. And Josh and I have done a number of podcasts together over the years, always with the title of the Seven Deadly Sins. So I think the [00:00:30.089] first one was the Seven Deadly Sins of Sight Fishing, and then we did dry fly fishing, and nymph fishing, and pike fishing, and we've got a new seven deadlies for you, and I think it's gonna be a popular one.
I get a lot of questions about landing fish. I hooked a fish. I hooked three fish. I hooked four fish, and the hook came out of all of them, and I didn't land them. So what did I do wrong? Well, often, it's nothing that you did wrong. [00:01:00.289] Sometimes fish just come unbuttoned. The hook doesn't get in the right place. But there are things you could do, and Josh has prepared the seven deadly sins of playing and landing fish. So, I think you'll get some tips out of this, and there are some things you can do to help get those fish to the net. And so Josh is, you know, he's a serious thinker. He analyzes these things, and he's got a lot of time on the water. So, his teachings [00:01:30.670] are always super, super valuable and, often things that I never thought of. So, I know you'll enjoy it. And, a little bit later, we'll be talking to Josh about the seven deadly sins of playing and landing fish.
But first, a few announcements. One is I still have two more spots on my trip to Iceland, July 15th through 20th with Fish Partner. We're gonna fish for Atlantic salmon, brown trout, char, sea-run browns, and sea-run char. [00:02:00.738] So that's an exciting trip. I've never been there before, and I'm really looking forward to it.
Now, another place I've never been before is Spain. And I'm going to Spain, hosting a trip to Spain in late September. This is in the Pyrenees, September 28th to October 4th, and there's one more spot, one more angling spot left in this trip. So if you're interested in either one of these trips, give Orvis Adventures a call.
[00:02:30.865] Speaking of Orvis Adventures, I'd like to tell you about three of our endorsed operations that you might wanna put in your planning for the next year or so, on your journeys around the country. The first one is Captain Drew Rodriguez at Drew's Guide Service. Now, I did a podcast with Drew. If you wanna look it up, it was July 15th, 2024, last summer. [00:03:00.645] And Drew is the first and only Orvis-endorsed freshwater guide in South Florida. So Drew fishes the areas around Miami, fishes the Everglades, and fishes for largemouth bass and peacock bass and and other exotic species. And if you wanna go and just catch a lot of fish and have a good time, listen to that podcast, you'll realize that this is a place to go and have some real success and have [00:03:30.115] a lot of fun. So, look up Captain Drew on the Orvis website.
Our outfitter this week is Bay Street Outfitters. They're located in Beaufort. So they're near Hilton Head, Charleston, and Savannah. And they specialize in fly fishing for redfish, sea trout, cobia, jack crevalle. And this is really that classic low country fishing. Something that actually I've never done and it's on [00:04:00.205] my list of things to do. You're fishing in tide waters and grassy marshes. And from people that have gone there, have told me that, a, it's some of the most fun red fishing they've ever done, and b, they wanna move there and live there. So, it's a great place to go there. A very, very experienced Orvis-endorsed operation. They've been around for a long time. Very, very [00:04:30.134] experienced and qualified guides, and you can do, you know, you might be there on vacation, you could do a half-day trip, a three-quarter day trip, or a full day trip. Whatever you have time for, they'll take you out and show you the best the Low Country has to offer.
Now, if you're interested in the trip of a lifetime to Alaska, Crystal Creek Lodge is one of the finest lodges in Alaska. It's been run by [00:05:00.415] Dan Michaels who's the owner and general manager since 1988. And so if you've spent any time at all in the fly fishing industry, you know Dan. He's a great guy, super experienced, and he's run this amazing lodge for a long, long time with many, many, many great reviews from our customers. They have five float planes, and all kinds of boats. So they can take you to 75 different fishing spots. And, [00:05:30.555] all their guides are licensed U.S. Coast Guard captains, trained in wilderness first aid, and they have 24 staff members and only 16 guests per week. So this ensures that you're gonna have some real personal service when you go there. And, of course, you're gonna fish for large rainbow trout, possibly five species of Pacific salmon, char, and grayling. So, Alaska, [00:06:00.214] of course, is one of the greatest places in the world to go fly fishing, and Crystal Creek Lodge is a place that I would highly recommend.
And you can also check out other Orvis-endorsed operations if you go to orvis.com/adventures. There's a interactive map there. And if you're planning on going somewhere on vacation or you just wanna fish in a particular region, you can find outfits that we have vetted and inspected and that we fish with, [00:06:30.214] on our vacation. So you know you're gonna get a great experience.
And finally, one more commercial because, you know, I don't always talk too much about products on the podcast, but I do talk about things that I'm really excited about and I think are extra special. The one I wanna talk about this week is the Orvis Pro deck boots because we're getting into boat fishing season, and [00:07:00.852] I've been fishing a lot from both lately because we've had a lot of high water here in the Northeast, lot of floods, and trout fishing has been tough to access. So I've been fishing from boats quite a bit. And these are just the most comfortable slip-on boots you can wear.
And the great thing about these as a deck shoe, as a boat shoe, is that they have Michelin non-slip sole. And these things [00:07:30.060] grip a boat deck like nothing you have ever worn. And I don't know, I don't think there's another boat shoe out there with a Michelin non-slip sole. And they're super comfortable. I wear them around the house and honestly, if I'm going to take the dogs out for a walk and the grass is wet, they're great for that too. They're great for dog walking. So, yeah, you may find you almost live in them if you get a pair. They're really terrific slip-on shoes [00:08:00.189] and good for any time where you don't wanna slip and your feet might get wet.
All right. Now, let's do the fly box. Fly box is where you ask questions and I try to answer them or you share a tip with other listeners. And you can send your question or tip to me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. I listen to all of them. I read them all. I don't answer them all. But, you can either just type your question in an email or [00:08:30.170] you can attach a voice file from your phone and, maybe I'll read it on the air.
So our first question is an email from Ken. "Hi, Tom. You said before that a nine-foot five-weight rod can handle smaller streamers. Would you elaborate? What is considered a smaller streamer? Does it have to do with some combination of hook size, added weight, length, materials, wind speed, distance from the Equator, or whether or not I can remember what I had for breakfast yesterday? [00:09:00.330] I've been enjoying tying streamers lately, especially bait fish patterns, and would like to add a few to my box that would work well with my setup. I have the Orvis Clearwater Fly Rod in a nine-foot five-weight, the model before the recent reel update. It still has the weight forward floating Clearwater line on the reel. As I gain experience, what are some of the things I should notice when swinging a rod that would indicate the streamer that I have on is too large? Is it all about the casting, or are there retrieval issues that may arise as well?"
[00:09:30.507] Well, Ken, first of all, retrieval issues, no. Not really. Not really. The retrieval issues are gonna be the same. But the casting issues can make a difference. So it's all about the mass and the air resistance of the streamer you have on there. So, you know, when I say smaller streamer, I guess I mean something like maybe a 6, but probably 8, 10, or a 12. So smaller streamers on a five-weight. Now I've [00:10:00.664] cast bigger streamers on a five-weight. I've cast big, articulated, size two streamers on a five-weight. Doesn't work very well because you don't have enough mass to push those big streamers, and often you can't fire them in exactly where you want them. The stuff kinda collapses at the end. So, I would say, you know, maybe 6, 8, 10, and 12 would be what I consider a smaller streamer.
Now, the thing is, if you [00:10:30.225] have a, let's say you have a clouser minnow with really big eyes on it, real big heavy eyes, and it's a size 10, that's gonna be a struggle with a five-weight too. Or if you have a super, super, super air-resistant streamer in a size eight, something with a lot of deer hair, you may have a little trouble pushing it, but it'll probably work okay. So it's a combination of weight and air resistance. And what you'll notice, if the streamer gets too big is that [00:11:00.154] it just won't cast very well. It won't feel good, and your loop will open up. And it'll collapse at the end, and you just won't be able to get the fly where you want it to.
So as long as you're comfortable getting a fly where you want it to with that five-weight, you can use any streamer you want. You know, bigger streamers, generally, you wanna shorten and stiffen your leader. So a shorter, heavier leader will work better if you get into the, [00:11:30.004] you know, bigger size six streamers. That'll help somewhat. But, you know, you can cast most streamers on a five-weight. Is it ideal for a big streamer? No. But you can make it work.
Ben: Hi, Tom. This is Ben in Oregon. I have had some great success this season on Phil Rowley's washer line rig. I know he didn't invent this setup, but that's where I learned it. For everyone out there, it's a big buoyant fly on [00:12:00.024] the point or out on the farthest fly away from you. And then a couple of emergers sinking below the surface, say every 16 inches up line from that big buoyant point fly. So the point fly is floating, and the emergers are in the film or, you know, two, three, six inches lower than the surface of the water. This has been a game changer for me this year, and we [00:12:30.065] don't really talk about emergers as often as we talk about streamers, nymphing, and dry flies. I really see emerger fishing as a game of its own. My question for you is, how do you set up an emerger rig, just a double dry with a dry fly to act as an indicator is another way. And then what's your go-to pattern? You know, I like, say, an RS2. [00:13:00.320] But are you fishing an emerger... is your emerger just a kind of more like a weightless nymph? I'd love to hear your opinions. Thanks, Tom.
Tom: So, Ben, that's an interesting concept. A big dry fly on the point and then some mergers on droppers. I've never actually tried that, but Phil Rowley is one of the best. And I don't do a lot of still water fishing, so that's probably why I don't do it. But I'm thinking [00:13:30.159] maybe it would work in river, and I'm gonna try it. But, I actually haven't it that way, but plan on trying it.
I guess we don't talk that much about emergers. Generally, I tend to fish... the way I fish emergers is, I fish them only, I fish emergers only when there's a hatch going on, and I see at least a few fish rising. So I'm not gonna go around blind casting or prospecting [00:14:00.500] with an emerger generally. I'll use dried and nymph or two dry flies if I'm prospecting. So, I'm generally targeting rising fish when I use emergers. And I like them to float a little bit. So, you know, I like something with a wing that sticks up but a body that hangs down in the water so that the fly hangs flush in the surface film, but you still have something to see so you can see where your fly is and whether it's dragging or not. And I [00:14:30.120] don't often use two emergers, and I don't usually use a dry and an emerger because, again, my bias is that when I got a rising fish, I want only one fly on the end. I wanna be as super accurate as I can, and I don't want the clutter of another fly out there.
So, you know, I generally fish them just like dry flies. And my go-to emerger is, I don't have one really. I use a rabbit's foot emerger which is one of my own [00:15:00.459] patterns a lot. You know, I consider a sparkle dun and an x cat a sort of an emerger. I use little unweighted flies with just a fur body and CDC hackle, kinda tied like a soft hackle. Very, very simple, straightforward emerger. So, you know, I just... or just an unweighted nymph and I might even put a little floating on the fly or put a little fly floating on the leader to get it to, [00:15:30.304] hang in the film a little bit more. But I honestly don't have a go-to emerger. It really depends on what's hatching. I try to pick an emerger that's close to what I see hatching.
Here's an email from John. "The blood knot comes up frequently in the podcast, and you always coach us to learn it. I've tried and hate it. Now, last year, I had shoulder surgery and did some spin fishing for smallies. As part of the learning [00:16:00.095] knots for braid, I stumbled on the Albright knot. I'm now using for heavier line connections in place of the blood on fly leaders and find it to have all the blood knot attributes. What do you think?
Two. I was blue lining for brookies recently, and my biggest challenge, other than stealth, is a good hook set without sending a small, sometimes only four-inch brookie into the rhododendron. I tend to under-set and lose them. I use a three-weight fiberglass with an Orvis click and paw [00:16:30.144] reel. One time, I didn't have any slack line, so just set with the reel versus my finger on the line. The reel clicked for a second, and the hook was set without worrying about launching them out of the water. This won't work if you're stripping line in, but a lot of these brookies hit right on the landing. Is this a fluke or a viable approach for small fish?"
John, I honestly think that's a viable approach for small fish. You know, if you're not stripping in line and often you just make a cast and let it drift a little bit [00:17:00.065] and pick it up, so you're not always stripping line. So I think that's a good way of doing it. The trick with small brook trout, they're so fast, is to set the hook fast but not hard. So you gotta be quick, but you don't want the rod to go through too much of an arc. You know, just a quick flick of the rod tip. But you gotta be really quick or they're gonna spit it out. And, you know, you're gonna lose a lot of small brook trout anyways. They're just good at bashing the flies so quickly [00:17:30.375] that you never get a chance to set the hook. So don't worry about losing a few. And, yeah, you're gonna launch a few into the bushes and that's always a tragedy because often it hurts them. But I think if you just do a quick flick of the rod tip, if you're stripping in line without a long hook set, you know, it doesn't take much to set that hook, that little dry fly hook. It doesn't take much to set that hook into a brookie's mouth. So you [00:18:00.075] don't need a big, long hook set. So try a little shorter, quicker hook set and see if that helps.
John, regarding the Albright knot on a leader, I find that knot particularly difficult to tie in leader material itself. I do use the Albright knot when I'm attaching a stiff piece of single-strand wire to a saltwater or a pike leader. And [00:18:30.585] if one of the materials that you use is really stiff and the other one is a lot more flexible, it works okay. If you can tie that easier than you could tie a blood knot, I suppose it's fine. It's a good knot. It's been around a long time. I just honestly think that, once you practice a blood knot, you'll be able to tie that a lot easier than an Albright knot. But if it's working for you and it [00:19:00.065] holds okay, then use it.
Here's an email from Mark. "I listen to the podcast as I drive to various places to fish. Usually, a 45-minute drive for me. And I always pick up a tip or two I can use that day. This means I might go a month without listening and then hear four podcasts or more over a fishing weekend. This was the case last weekend when I realized you had already covered the issue of fish attacking the strike indicator I sent last week. [00:19:30.454] Sorry for not being up to date. I am now. I went back to that hole and caught several fish, but lost over half of them before the net. I always use barbless hooks and wonder if I'm doing something wrong. I keep a tight line but still lose them. I can understand it when they jump, but not when they are downstream of me on a tight line."
Well, Mark, first of all, this is the podcast for you because Josh is gonna tell you all sorts of things that'll hopefully keep those fish buttoned [00:20:00.325] onto your line. But, one of the things that... a couple of things. One is if you're using a barbless hook with a beadhead, and I do that often, you're gonna lose some fish because you've got some mass on that hook. And when they shake their head, they can shake the fly and get rid of the fly. So, you know, barbless speed heads, you're gonna lose some fish. No doubt about it. But they work, and it's easy to release fish. So I continue [00:20:30.049] to use them. And the other thing is, you said that when they are downstream of me on a tight line, now that's a problem. Try not to let those fish get downstream of you. Try to lead them upstream somehow so that when you put pressure on them, you're pulling them back down. Because when you have a fish directly downstream, its mouth is facing you. And when you put some pressure on there, it's easy to pull the hook out of their mouth. As opposed to when they're upstream of you, [00:21:00.170] you're gonna pull the hook deeper into their jaw. So, try not to let them get downstream of you, but I think you're also gonna get lots of good tips in today's podcast.
Frank: Hey, Tom. This is Frank from New Jersey. Had a quick question here for you. I'm heading out to Yellowstone this summer, and I know that in the park, you're not allowed to use any lead weights. And I've been researching [00:21:30.259] online trying to find any, you know, split shot that doesn't include lead, but I'm kinda getting mixed results on some of them being mixed, and then also just the actual weight of the split shot not being sufficient to get the fly down. I was wondering if you had any specific products that you utilize that don't include any lead that have worked well for you in the past. So any guidance is much appreciated. Appreciate everything you do. Thanks.
Tom: [00:22:00.015] Well, Frank, I'm a little perplexed that you can't find a splitshot that doesn't use lead because, for one thing, there's plenty of it on the Orvis website. There's Orvis non-toxic splitshot in a couple of varieties, and there's also soft tungsten weight. None of these have lead in them. The nontoxic split shot, I think, has tin and something else in it, but [00:22:30.230] it doesn't have any lead, and it's not toxic. And most fly shops should have nontoxic shot. Most people today, when they're fly fishing, have gone to nontoxic shot.
And then you got the option of the soft tungsten weight. Tungsten doesn't make good split shot because it's too hard and you can't crimp it onto your leader. But this soft tungsten is a putty with a tungsten powder in it. And it's nice because you can add and subtract amounts of it very quickly and easily. The [00:23:00.089] problem with the tungsten weight is it does come off your leader. You know, you have to kinda make a nice easy cast or a log or a water load with the tungsten weight. If you don't have a knot on your leader, it'll slip down your leader often. But it is great. I use it a lot. But I'm not quite sure why you can't find any non-lead shot because it's basically what you see in fly shops these days. [00:23:30.450] Maybe they aren't labeling it well enough.
Here's an email from Allen from Texas. "I'm a huge fan of the podcast. Thanks to you and to Orvis for everything you do for the fly fishing community. I have a quick question about knots. I've heard you mentioned that you use a regular clinch knot to attach your fly to the tippet section of the leader. My question is for trout fishing purposes, where you're using 3x, 4x, or 5x tippet, is there any situation where an improved clinch knot would be better than the regular [00:24:00.255] clinch knot? If not, are there any other fly fishing situations where you would choose to use the improved clinch knot over the regular clinch knot?"
Well, Allen, you're only getting my biased opinion here. I don't like the improved clinch knot because I find it harder to tie and harder to tighten. And I don't find it to be any stronger than the regular clinch knot in normal trout fishing situations where, [00:24:30.295] again, you're using 3x, 4x and 5x, and you're using a fairly fine wire hook, a nymph hook, or a dry fly hook.
Now, there is a situation where I use a different knot in trout fishing and particularly in saltwater fishing, or in carp fishing. Where there might be a lot of pressure on the fly, and I might be using a relatively light tippet. Let's say 10 or 12-pound on a fairly good-sized hook. [00:25:00.255] So what I've found is if the diameter of the wire of a fly hook is greatly larger, much larger than the diameter of the tippet you're using. If you tie a regular clinch knot, there's kind of an opening there that never quite closes and seats, and that knot can slip. So what I do in this case, and I wanna do a video. I've got a [00:25:30.115] got a note to myself to do a video on this, is I use a trilene knot. And a trilene knot is really easy, and this is the knot I use in salt water for bonefish flies and redfish flies, and striped bass, and for carp fishing, where I've got sometimes a fairly light tippet and a relatively good-sized hook.
So the trilene knot is just you go through the eye once, like you're tying a clinch knot. And then you go back [00:26:00.194] and you go through the eye again. So you go through the eye twice from the same direction. Then you tie a regular six-turn, five or six-turn clinch knot and you go back through the two loops that you formed in front of the eye. And that knot tends not to slip as a clinch knot might when you're tying a light tippet to a big hook. So, if my description is hard to follow [00:26:30.255] here on the podcast, you can just look up trilene knot on the internet, and you can find 100 different videos on tying the trilene knot. But it's a great knot, and I don't find that I need it for normal dry flies and nymphs, but with a streamer. And, you know, let's say I'm fishing a size six streamer and I wanna fish it on a 3 or even a 4x tippet. [00:27:00.119] Not something I do often, but maybe I don't feel like changing my tippet. I wanna keep that light tippet on a size six streamer. That's the situation I would use a trilene knot.
The other option is to use a non-slip mono loop, but I'm not a big fan of loop knots either. So I'd like to keep my knot selection and my knot-tying skills good. And that means because I'm not very coordinated, that I just stick to a couple of different knots that I know and trust.
Here's a [00:27:30.099] tip from Frank. "Hey, Tom. Thanks for all the great fly fishing info. Recently, one of your listeners mentioned that he was having a hard time getting his hoppers to land upright on the water. I've had that problem too. One thing that helps is to use hooks with a straight eye. A downturn hook eye was making my Chernobyl ant pattern flip upside down. Your suggestion about not making the fly top heavy also helps."
Well, thank you, Frank. That's a great tip. And, yeah, a turned-up eye might be even better, but finding [00:28:00.140] a turned-up eye hook these days is nearly impossible. I don't think many people are making them. But a ring eye or a straight eye, yeah, that would help. And there are lots of, you know, 2 and 3x long, ring eye hooks out there that you can choose from.
Jim: Hi, Tom. This is Jim Aylesworth from Sugar Land, Texas, where there is no equal. I read your article with great interest from the March issue of Trout Magazine, [00:28:30.410] Trout Unlimited. You called it trout myths. Cutthroat and brook trout are dumb. Browns and rainbows are smart. I've lived by those myths many, many years. Thanks for clarifying your point. At the end of the article, you made reference to something that but what about hatchery fish? I think that's enough of a story for another column. Well, Tom, do you mind commenting on that just a little bit for me? Because as you know, in the great state of Texas, the only trout [00:29:00.079] we can catch are stocked fish. But like most anglers, I'm always looking for the holdover, that trout that actually survived one of the hot summers of Texas and is still in the Guadalupe River. But would you let me know a couple of thoughts and what your feelings are about hatchery fish?
Tom: Thank you for the nice words on that, Trout Magazine column. I have fun doing that. Yeah. Hatchery fish, you know, where do they fall in [00:29:30.009] the spectrum of perceived intelligence? It's an interesting question. So hatchery fish, as I see it, go through kind of three stages. When they're first dumped into a river, they're milling all around. This is, you know, for a few days, and they're not really sure where they are or what they're supposed to do. And they might be tough to catch just because they're not even feeding [00:30:00.269] yet. They're nervous, and they're in a different kind of environment. They're in moving water instead of a pond, and they have to sort things out. Some of them get caught. Some of them do eat. Some of them get caught. But the other ones, you know, settle in and figure out how to feed in the current, or they stick to slow water.
And then, for the next, I don't know, few weeks, months, whatever, they're pretty easy to catch because [00:30:30.180] they're sampling stuff. They're not seeing pellets anymore. And so they gotta find a new source of food, and so they're experimenting. And, they'll eat all kinds of things. You never know what a freshly stocked, hatchery fish will eat. And then, this is only my own theory, I think that hatchery fish get super selective. Because we have trained them to [00:31:00.184] be selective. We've raised them on only one food, you know, pellets. And since there's no pellets anymore, they kinda got it ingrained that they gotta eat the same thing all the time. So once they find something that satisfies their caloric needs, could be midges, could be scuds, could be mayflies, whatever, they tend to get, I think, really selective.
And I've found, honestly, that, if you take a river, all other things being equal, [00:31:30.715] if you take a river that has just wild trout in it, they're switching back and forth between different foods often. And I don't find them to be that super selective because they can't be selective all the time because they gotta switch from one food to the next. And if in the same kind of river, you know, the same velocity, same flow and everything, if you have hatchery [00:32:00.125] holdovers or hatchery fish that have been in the river for a long time, I find them to be extremely difficult to catch. They often, of course, generally those fish, hatchery fish that stay in a stream for a while get a lot of pressure, so, you know, people know it's been stocked. So a lot of people fish there. And that may be one reason they get hard to catch. But I think they get really selective. And often they get on midges and they just [00:32:30.005] find a safe source of food, which is midges. They're easy to eat, and they're abundant in a lot of places we stock hatchery fish. And they can be incredibly picky. So, you know, I think hatchery fish, this is generalization, but I think hatchery fish go through kind of three phases on the, it's not an intelligence scale, just difficulty of fooling them on a fly scale. So, hope that helps.
And I [00:33:00.015] know that I have fished Guadalupe and I didn't find, they're all hatchery fish, but I didn't find those fish that easy. I found them to be quite difficult.
All right, let's end with an email this week. I usually end with a phone call. I'm gonna end with an email. This one's from Jamie.
"Thank you so much for the podcast. It's been a staple for me since I was a teenager. It always seems to motivate me to get out on the water and try new things, or even just get out and enjoy the sport [00:33:30.144] I love. On that same note, I'm finding it harder and harder to get out there in my young adulthood, whether it be due to work, my other passions/hobbies, or maintaining some sense of community, I seem to have left fly fishing in the corner to collect dust as of late. This pains me as it used to be something I did every week, if not every day. Maybe this is the blight of growing up or my tendency to get interested in too many things at once. Outside of my day job, I'm a musician and I write [00:34:00.055] and produce music. Sometimes, I feel that my two passions can butt heads as they compete for my time.
As a creative person who writes and has many obligations, how do you balance various passions, family, work, and still have the energy and time to get out on the water? Does something need to go to make room for the other? I try to maintain my sleep schedule, but maybe it's time to become an insomniac."
Well, Jamie, don't become an insomniac. I hear that's not very healthy for you. You need your seven hours of [00:34:30.005] sleep. And you know what? Honestly, you guys think that I fish all the time. I don't. And, I don't get to fish as much as I want. Now, I think most of us don't get to fish as much as we want because unless we're retired or independently wealthy, we got other stuff to do. So, you know, we always have other things to do. And fly fishing is so addicting that I think you're gonna [00:35:00.315] always have that feeling that you're not fishing enough. So I think you gotta get over that. It's a little bit unfair for me to answer this question because I can justify fishing as part of my writing. You know, I can do "research" for a book when I'm fishing. Or, you know, I can be testing new products or learning a new technique to talk about on the fly cast. So, [00:35:30.264] you know, I can combine my fishing and I can justify it.
For most people, there's always more important things to do than fishing, and you just have to prioritize. And, you know, like you said, you've got lots of other passions. And maybe you, a, need to put one of those other passions aside a little bit, or you just need to fish less but enjoy it more and and fish when you can and, you know, [00:36:00.224] don't worry about it. But, it's a problem I think nearly everybody has. None of us feel like we fish enough. Even me, I don't feel like I fish enough. But, again, there's always more important things to do than fish, unless you consider your mental health, because they say that fly fishing and being out in nature is really good for your mental health. So, maybe you think of it that way. You need a mental health day, and a good [00:36:30.125] mental health day is to go fly fishing.
All right. That is the fly box for this week. Let's go talk to my buddy, Josh, about the seven deadly sins of playing and landing fish.
So my guest today is my good friend, Josh Nugent. John owns Out Fly Fishing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. And Josh and I have done a number of podcasts together [00:37:00.739] with the theme of the seven deadly sins, nymph fishing and dry fly fishing and sight fishing, and pike fishing. And today, Josh, we're gonna talk about the seven deadly sins of playing and landing fish. Right?
Josh: That's correct.
Tom: Because I get these questions. You know what we have to do next, is the seven deadly sins of leader design, because I could answer leader questions all day long [00:37:30.019] on the podcast. So let's think about doing that. I just thought of that. So let's put that on our list. Anyway, but I get an equal number of questions. You know, I hooked three fish and I lost them all. Why did I lose them? What was I doing wrong? Or what do I do when I get a big fish close because I can't reach them with my net? And, you know, we get a lot of questions like that on the podcast, so I figured this would be a good topic. So I'm gonna let you [00:38:00.349] take it away and start with the first deadly sin.
Josh: Sure. So this first one that we're gonna talk about is timing of a hookset or setting too fast. And, Tom, I don't think there's anything that cost people more fish than this that I see. Like, I can promise you I've made... like, all these mistakes, I've made them first. I've made them so many times. But when you spend every day, day after day, and you spend, you know, thousands [00:38:30.199] of days in a boat with guests, you also get to see patterns, and it's one of the most common ways I see someone missing it. Like, they've made the right cast. They've got the right fly. Their presentation was what it needed to be. The fish wanted it. The fish comes up to eat it, and then we set too fast. And some of it is excitement and some of it like, to me, there's probably nothing harder than if you're dry fly fishing and you haven't had it eat in a long time, and if it's been hours since you're last eaten, then all of a sudden, the [00:39:00.070] fish just comes up and grabs your fly. And it's just knee-jerk reaction, and you rip it right out of its mouth.
But one of the things I've noticed in, like, now, Joe and I have spent, like, you would not believe how many hours we spent talking about this. Like, how do we get these people to hook these fish that they're making the cast, the fly's where it needs to be, like, everything is there, and they can't get it because we're pulling so many flies out of fish's mouth. And after hours and hours talking about this, one thing that I realized, most of us do most of our dry fly fishing on foot [00:39:30.409] and gassing upstream to a rising fish.
Tom: Yeah.
Josh: That's kind of the traditional not as many people are used to drifting downstream to a fish. But when you put people in a drift boat, you're not casting upstream. You're casting downstream, so the fish is facing you. And it's such a huge difference because if I'm on shore and I'm casting upstream, as that fish rises, I see the back of its head. I don't see its open mouth. So if I throw [00:40:00.010] a cast upstream and I'm trying to, like, help people visualize this, it's harder when you don't have like, I'm used to doing this with PowerPoint presentations [crosstalk 00:40:09.670]
Tom: Yeah. Me too.
Josh: ...photos, and now I have to actually use words. So I'm downstream of the fish. I see a fish rise. I cast up to it. As that fly starts drifting down and this fish comes up and eats, my fly disappears because that fish's head now blocks wherever my fly is, and I set right [00:40:30.010] away. And that fish's mouth can still be completely open. And when I set, I'm pulling downstream, so I'm gonna pull that hook down into its mouth. So that fish may not have closed its mouth yet. I'm gonna hook it somewhere in that open mouth.
When you do the flip side of that, whether you're standing on shore drifting downstream to a fish or you're in a drift boat and you're casting ahead of the boat so that you don't have drag on it, because if you cast beside the boat or behind the boat, your dry fly is dragging and the fish won't touch it most of the time. So you're leading the boat, [00:41:00.219] you're casting to this fish, the fish comes up, and it's facing you, and so now it's got an open mouth. And you see this so often that, especially, like, with our river where we guide on the bow, there's a lot of predatory birds. Like, we've got some really large average-sized fish. Like, our average fish is the 18 to 19, but most people don't consider a brown big until it's over 24 or 25.
We see a ton of those fish eating dry flies. And I remember 15 years ago, all the big fish that I would [00:41:30.110] get would usually come on streamers. And then we had all these people that were like, oh, yeah. You can get those big fish on streamers, but you're not getting them on dry. And it was kind of one of those like, well, why can't we get them on drys? So we started focusing on drys. And now, if you came and you just wanted a big brown and it was July or August or September, I would still use drys as the most successful way to put you on a very large brown in that 25 to 28 or larger.
Tom: Cool.
Josh: Which is awesome and [00:42:00.059] it's super exciting, but a fish that big is very smart. And their entire life, they've had some sort of predatory bird just trying to eat them. Whether it's a bald eagle, whether it's an osprey, whether it's a cormorant, a pelican, a great blue heron, a McGahniser. Like, there's every stage of life, they've got birds that are trying to eat them. So their number one priority is never eat that food. It's don't draw attention to yourself and don't die. And so they don't smash things really hard. Those big fish will come up so slow that they hardly make any ripple. And so now you've got this mouth [00:42:30.059] that's open, that's facing you, but it's not rushed. And the analogy I tell people is, like, the time you have is that you see it come up, put the rod down, grab a camera, take a photo of it, put the camera down, pick up your rod, wait for the fish to drop, close its mouth, now set the hook. But instead, we see this giant squared-off nose start to wrap around your fly, and we just floss their teeth at this amazing pace.
And I tell people all the time, I'm like, you just saved that fly's life. That fly was about to die, [00:43:00.005] and you just saved his life. You pulled it from the jaws of death or and it's, like, it can frustrate people because it's the fish of their lifetime, and they just ripped a fly out of their mouth. And you try and make light of the situation. I tell people all the time, I'm like, man, you know what? If you hadn't done that, that fly would be full of teeth marks. There's no way we can resell it once it's got teeth marks in it, so you just save that fly. Now I could still sell it. Because it happens so often that, like, one of the worst days I can think of this happening and [00:43:30.195] also one of the best days I can ever think of how the river was fishing, I had a guest that they had 114. I don't normally count, but it was just one of those days where it was off the chart. They had a 114 eats on foam. And I didn't count any fish that came up that looked like it would be anywhere near or under 16 inches. So those are all fish bigger than that. Out of those 114, we landed 14 fish.
Which is kind of the point of why we're having this whole podcast is [00:44:00.074] it it it drove me nuts. I'm like, how do I get people to land more of these fish? Because out of those 114 fish, like, probably half of them would have easily bested their PBs.
Tom: Now, Josh, you're using hyperbole when you said you can put down your camera, take a picture, and then pick the rod back up. Right? It's not...
Josh: Somewhat. Yeah. Like, that's an exaggeration of it. But [crosstalk 00:44:27.274]
Tom: And please don't use the cliche [00:44:30.894] of telling people to say, God save the Queen. Now it's God save the King, actually. But please don't use that cliche.
Josh: I will not, and this is my thing. And I'll never forget, like, Steven Palmer, who's the fishing manager at the Orvis Plano store in Texas, who you know and I know you fished with. He was up with a group of guests, and he'd missed a couple of fish from setting too fast. I told him you've gotta wait till that fish drops. Like, the fish is facing you. It's [00:45:00.094] got its open mouth. You have to wait till that fish drops with the fly and it's under. The next fish came up. Like, Steven's a good stick, and I've watched him over the last, like, eleven years that I've known him at Orvis, and, like, he's become a very good angler. And makes it another good cast. Fish comes up and eats. He waited, and the fish dropped, and that fish was completely underwater. And he set the hook, and he didn't have it. And it ripped it right out of his mouth. And he's just like, what do you want me to do differently? He's like, I waited. I waited. And I [00:45:30.150] watched it.
And it's very different again when you're rowing because you're not holding the rod, and so you don't have this panic feeling of I have to respond, you're just observing. And I watched it. That fish rolled, and it was a large brown. And it rolled, and it dropped, and he waited. But the fish's mouth was still completely open. I could see both the white wing on the big chubby that we were fishing, and I could see the open mouth of that fish. And so that fish, even though it had dropped below the surface of the water, it had not closed its mouth yet. And that's the thing where people are like, [00:46:00.094] well, how long do I wait? That God save the Queen. Well, that doesn't help you if the fish rolls and eats fast. Right? That doesn't help you if the fish rolls and goes under, so it's hard. But if you can see your fly, or if you can see the white of a fish's mouth, don't set the hook because all you're doing is ripping that fly out of a fish's mouth. Like, they have to close their mouth before we can set the hook.
Tom: Don't you worry about them spitting it out, though?
Josh: No. Because they [00:46:30.039] can spit it out after they've closed their mouth, but they're not spitting it out before they've closed it.
Tom: Oh, true. Because they haven't tasted it yet.
Josh: Yeah. And so once they close their mouth, you'll see it. And I've learned a ton when I wasn't fishing, and I stopped fishing. I always say, like, you learn a lot more when we stop trying to put a sharp pokey object in their face, and we just sit back and watch them in their natural environment. I've spent, like, hundreds of hours on side of a river watching fish, photographing fish, and some of the things that blew me away is when we were, [00:47:00.599] videotaping them at high speed. So we were doing a master class for April and anchored outdoors and on targeting really spooky fish, and we did something that I went to a really high-pressure area. It was a provincial park. It's right near a waterfall. It's a bay use area where it gets tons and tons of foot traffic. The fish there are ultra spooky. And we went. We didn't bring any rods, and we just had cameras. And I wish we'd had butterfly nets because we were running around with our hats trying to catch all these grasshoppers.
So it threw a grasshopper in the [00:47:30.070] water, in the pool that you could be up on this cliff about 20 feet above the pool, and you could see all these fish down there. Threw the first grasshopper in, two fish raced at it. They got about an inch away from it, and they flared and sprayed and left. And the grasshopper drifted out the back of the pool. I was like, interesting. What I expected, these are really pressured fish. Threw another grasshopper in, they race at it, they flare, same thing. I watched this happen over and over again, and then, like, the grasshopper would kick, and they would come racing back [00:48:00.019] to it. They're like, oh, it is real. And then they'd look at it, and they'd flare. These are all real grasshoppers, not flies, no kits involved, real bugs. They're flaring on the real bugs. So I threw, I can't remember now. It was either 26 or 28. No. It was 26 grasshoppers through that pool before the first one got eaten.
Once the first one got eaten, out of the 58 that I threw, every single one after that was eaten. So it gets kinda hardwired, and they [00:48:30.190] want it so badly. A big meal, they want it, but they don't trust it because we've pricked them too many times. Like, I always say, what's the best day of offer fishing you've ever had? How many natural grasshoppers did you see on the water? Most people say, well, I saw none, or I saw one or two. Right? How many anglers did you see that day that were casting grasshoppers? Well, probably like 98 out of 100. Right? So fish start to associate these bugs with they all have sharp pointy bugs.
One of the things that was really interesting, though, that [00:49:00.199] first fish that ate the grasshopper, you could not see this by the naked eye. We were taking photos of it, and I was filming it at 300 frames a second. It came up and it ate the grasshopper, closed its mouth, spit it out underwater, hesitated for a split second, and then ate it again.
Tom: It was crushing it or tasting it.
Josh: What's that?
Tom: It was crushing it or tasting it. Yeah.
Josh: And didn't trust it. So even though he ate it, that first one that he ate, he [00:49:30.050] didn't trust it, so he was very hesitant. Again, they don't have hands. They can't come squish it and feel it and see what it's like, so they put it in their mouth. And he put it in his mouth very quickly and spit it out. But when you watched it 300 frames a second, it was completely closed, and then he spits it out, and there was that hesitation. Like, I'd, ever since I was a little kid, catching frogs and grasshoppers and throwing them in the water and watching trout come and eat them, if you hold a grasshopper, the back of their wing case is actually quite hard and very sharp. Like, as [00:50:00.019] much as holding a fly. So I'm sure those fish are very used to getting pricked, which is also why when you miss a fish, that people, like, leave it there. Like, if you miss that hookset, leave it there because they'll often come back and eat it.
And so that whole setting too fast thing, trying to watch what's happening and actually watch what the fish does because I've seen really educated fish, especially very large fish, come up and what they do, they come up underneath whether it's a stonefly or a [00:50:30.054] hopper, and they'll lift it with their nose. And people set the hook right away. And like, just leave it, leave it because they never open their mouth. Their mouth is completely closed. They're lifting it because, again, they don't have hands. They can't squeeze it and pinch it and see if it's real. So they bump it, and then they drop back down about three or four inches below it, and then they just watch it. Because what would happen with a stonefly or a grasshopper that's been stuck in the water and it's been drifting for a long time, and it gets tired, it stops [00:51:00.114] kicking, it stops struggling. But the moment you touch it or go to pick it up, it's gonna feel threatened, and it starts to run. So when they bump a natural and it starts to scurry and move right away, they come back and eat it. And it's where when they bump it like that, if you don't set the hook when they're just bumping it, and then when it drops back and looks at it, if you just give it a little twitch or a wiggle, man, the majority of those fish get converted to hooked fish. Because you left it there, you waited, you watch what the fish is doing instead of just, I see movement, set the hook.
Tom: Okay. [00:51:30.981] So that's deadly sin number one is if you're fishing upstream, when your fly disappears, set the hook. If you're fishing downstream to a fish, wait till the fish goes under and closes his mouth.
Josh: And or closes his mouth. Because I've seen fish that'll close its mouth when it's still above the surface of the water and those that don't close their mouth until they're below the surface. If you can see your fly or the white of their mouth, it's too soon.
Tom: Okay. So there's no standard... what you're saying again, [00:52:00.034] let me paraphrase this. Is there's no standard hesitation? You have to watch what's going on.
Josh: Correct. Because every fish can eat on different timing. Like, a five-inch fish typically eats super fast. A 25-inch fish typically eats very, very slow. A large cutthroat often eats very slow, you know.
Tom: Oh, incredibly slow.
Josh: Different timing. And the same as, like, in all of this, we're not just gonna talk about trout. I wanna make sure that whether you fish for salt or warm water species. [00:52:30.069] Like, we both have seen it. I know when you're on the front of a flat skiff and a tarpon races at you and it eats coming towards you and it's inhaled your fly, when its mouth is still wide open. Right? Where if I set right now with its mouth open, I could pull that fly right out of its mouth. Pike do the same thing that they're following. All of a sudden, they just they coil up and make that S curve of their body, and they shoot forward and they eat your fly. And as they hoover that thing in their mouth, you know, their gills flare and they suck it in, they're still gliding [00:53:00.414] straight at you. If I don't wait until that fish starts to turn to the side or I wait till it closes its mouth, and same thing with a tarpon, whether it's a tarpon or we're talking about a peacock bass or those pike, I either need that fish to close its mouth or I need it to turn away from me. And tarpon will often do that where they're gliding towards you, and then they turn away. Soon as it turns away, now I can set the hook because I'm gonna be pulling back into their mouth instead of pulling out of their mouth.
Tom: So just keep stripping with those kinds of... with streamers or with baitfish [00:53:30.094] invitations. Just keep stripping until you feel them. Yep.
Josh: Just keep stripping.
Tom: All right. Let's move on to deadly sin number two.
Josh: So number two of these, using the wrong hook set for the situation. And the most common one that we talk about here is using a trout set, versus a strip set. So anytime I'm streamer fishing, that rod tip should be pointed at the fly. I wanna have the best connection between, [00:54:00.155] you know, my hand that's stripping and that fly as possible. I gotta tell people this when I do streamer presentations all the time. I could promise you I will get more strikes if I'm using the rod tip and twitching and popping a streamer, and I will land way fewer fish. Because I can give more action and life to that fly with the rod tip as it twitches and pulsates and flexes, than I can do stripping. But I will miss the majority of those fish because if my rod [00:54:30.045] tip is at 90 degrees from the fly, the rod is gonna do exactly what it's built to do, which is flex.
And as it flexes, I'm not gonna get a good hook set. If I am stripping a streamer and a fish grabs that streamer, and I trout set, now that fish has missed whether he missed a fly or ate the fly, I ripped that fly right out of its mouth, and now the fly is just gone. And I've seen countless brown trout do this. I've seen musky do this. I've seen tarpon do this. Where that fly now races to the surface... [00:55:00.019] or, sorry, the fly. The fish races to the surface, trying to find that food. He's like, where did it go? It was right here and it's gone. And it's trying to find I've had a GT just about run me over then it was looking for the fly because it ripped it out of its mouth. You know? If you strip set and they miss it, where is that fly?
Tom: Still in front of them.
Josh: Inches in front of that fish. Still in front of it.
Think about a crab. Think about a shrimp. I mean, if we're talking about bonefish, permit, tarpon, like, shrabs... shrabs. That's a shrimp and a crab combined. [00:55:30.239] Crabs and shrimp have hard shells, and they're pretty pokey. Those fish are really used to being stuck. Like, you say, how many times have you had a triggerfish or a bonefish or a permit try and eat your fly? Five, six, seven, eight times on one retrieve. As long as you keep strip setting, the fly's still right in front of it. It's amazing how often they go back and eat it. And I see the same thing. Even trout fishing, where most people think of, like, a trout hits, and if you miss it, it's done. Not necessarily. Like, whether that's a [00:56:00.119] pike or a muskie that's eating stuff like walleye or bass, like perch, there's a lot of their prey that has really sharp spines on its back. They're really used to grabbing their prey and getting poked or pricked by something. So if they feel that hook, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're gone.
Tom: Yeah.
Josh: So continuing to strip is super important, but, also, like, when I say using that wrong hook set, it's not just a trout set versus a strip set. And, like, [00:56:30.010] I had somebody the other day that I was guiding that they've been streamer fishing, then we went to dry fly fishing. So we went to make the dry fly [crosstalk 00:56:36.799]
Tom: I know where you're going.
Josh: Okay. That one didn't take enough slack out. That one, we need to actually lift the rod. And so there's situations where we do have to still trout set. If I'm dry fly fishing, I need the trout set, and I need to lift the rod. But it's also really important to consider the angle of the fish's mouth because, especially, if we think of when someone's fishing with an indicator, [00:57:00.559] and they've cast upstream, and I'm standing on shore, and now it starts to drift past me, and it's downstream of my position. If that indicator is downstream of my position, the flies are still closer to me than the indicator is. So if I set upstream, I'm moving the indicator, and I'm moving my rod towards the flies and towards the fish. So I'm putting slack into that leader, and I hope people can visualize and see that. So I'm standing. I cast upriver with an infinite indicator as it drifts [00:57:30.280] past me. It's downstream of my location. As it gets downstream of me, that indicator goes down.
If I set upstream, I'm moving the rod towards the fish, towards the flies. I'm putting slack into the leader, and I'm probably gonna miss that fish. If I'm trying to set as that indicator has got past my position, I'm gonna need to set downstream pulling towards the shoreline away from it so that I'm sweeping tension onto it, and I'm also utilizing the current that's pushing downstream. [00:58:00.730] I'll keep that rod low to the water so that the current is pushing on my fly line and creating more tension to try and keep that tension on the line. That's gonna give me a much better chance of a hook set. Whereas if I just pull straight upstream, I'm pulling the fly out of a fish's mouth. Does that make sense visually in terms of...
Tom: Yeah, so in other words, if you're fishing a nymph with an indicator and it's downstream of you, you wanna set toward the bank, toward [00:58:30.300] your bank.
Josh: Yes.
Tom: Okay.
Josh: Yes. And same as even... and I see this a lot too, both with people in the boat and people on shore. If I cast upstream and I've got an indicator rig or I've got a dry fly rig, it doesn't really matter. I could be fishing a hopper dropper. As it's drifting down towards me and it's still upstream in my position, you see people that are lifting kind of straight upstream, and you watch, especially with an indicator, if you've got a longer leader, if they just do that [00:59:00.269] standard kind of trout set and you lift straight up, well, all you really end up doing is pivoting the indicator around that point that where is it anchored at the flies, but you haven't actually put tension on it. And I've actually done this, like, I did this in our guide school with you. I held on to flies underwater and had someone set hard upstream, and they're like, no. I'll hit you. I'm like, set as hard as you can. Like, try and hook me. And they couldn't because you couldn't swing that rod in the wrong direction. It just [00:59:30.190] pivots around that point.
Whereas, when they pull downstream, as soon as they pull downstream, there's instant tension. So instead of just popping up with that kind of that dry fly trout set, by setting downstream when that indicator is above you, or if you've got a dry dropper rig or a dry fly. But I'm pulling downstream, so I'm pulling it into their mouth. I always wanna pull the hook into the fish's mouth. It's why when you look at, you know, if they're teasing billfish, they wait until they tease the fish all the way into the back of the boat, whether it's a marlin [01:00:00.199] or a sail. And then when they rip the teasers out, they have you cast behind. And it's the strangest thing because, like, normally, we're always casting to the end that eats, not the end that cheats. Right? And so, when you cast behind the fish, it seems strange, but when you pop that now and they put the boat into neutral and all those bubbles clear, now all of a sudden this billfish hears a fly behind it. It turns around and eats it going away from you. When they eat it going away from you, you hook the fish almost every time. When they're [01:00:30.054] coming towards you, their bill catches, it knocks the fly out of the way, and you rarely ever hook the fish. I had a sailfish eat 13 times on one cast and retrieve, and I never stuck it properly because it was always coming towards me. It wasn't going away from me. So we're always trying to make sure that we set in the direction that we pull the hook into the fish's mouth, not out of the fish's mouth.
Tom: And I think it goes without saying if you're fishing dry dropper indicator, when that indicator, whatever it is, moves, you set right [01:01:00.074] away. There's no hesitation there. Right? Because you know the fish has got it in its mouth. So you wanna... and it's gonna spit it out quickly, so you wanna set immediately there.
Josh: For sure.
Tom: Okay.
Josh: And that's a really important point, and I'm glad you said that because I forgot to mention that. One of the things that I tell people all the time, I spend a ton of time up on the bank watching, and watching what the fish does while the angler is casting. And I've got to the point that I tell people the majority of the time that [01:01:30.065] I watch a trout come up and eat a dropper. So we're talking within two feet of your dry fly, whether it's a hopper, whether it's a stonefly, whatever it is. Your maximum running is probably two feet. Often, it's shorter than that when you're fishing shallow water. The majority of the time that I watch a fish eat the dropper, the dry does not move at all. Not in the slightest.
And I'll tell people that, like, if you hear me say set, I need you to set. You are not gonna see that dry move. Do not [01:02:00.114] wait for it to go under. Do not wait for it to move. When I yell set, set.
And we are filming a TV show once and I had these two hosts and one was up on the shore with me and one was down in the water and he's casting first cast over the fish, rainbow comes up, and what happens is as that fish starts rising up in the water column, what's happening to it? It's also getting pushed back with the current. So where it started, it's now getting pushed further downstream as it approaches that fly. And at the point that it gets to the fly and closes its mouth on the fly, it's now drifting at the same [01:02:30.335] speed. If it's moving at the same speed, there's no reason for that fly to move yet. When it hasn't pulled that dry under. It closes its mouth. It feels that beadhead, and it spits really quickly. And so if you don't set right away, and the thing that I tell people, like, when we're watching from the boat and I don't have that elevated position on a bank, I always tell people what you're looking for is your grasshopper did a push out. You're not gonna see it go under. If it goes under, [01:03:00.054] that's great, but it's not the norm. Big fish don't yard on things. They come up real slow, and they're getting pushed by the current, so they're moving at the same speed as your setup. They close their mouth, if it doesn't feel right, they're gonna spit it out right away.
So the most that we usually see is it looks like the rubber legs kinda either flexed a little bit, or it looks like your grasshopper just did a little push up. If it just go to dunk, that's it. Set on that. That's the big fish. A 12-inch fish might grab that fly and rip it under at a million miles an hour because it's not smart [01:03:30.125] enough to kinda know what to do yet. But those big fish aren't going to do that. So I'm really glad you mentioned that because I see so many people missing fish, both on indicators and on drys, because they're waiting for this giant bobber to go down completely under a million miles an hour instead of just that tiny little dimple.
I was fishing years and years ago, like, over 25 years ago with two other guys that were mentors to me getting into guiding [01:04:00.010] on the river. And I really looked up to them, and we're fishing in November. I remember they hadn't caught fish that day, and I was in double-digit numbers of fish. And they actually got out of the water. It was super cold. I actually, like, got fry spied on my feet that day because I stayed in the water too long because I was catching fish, and I forgot that, oh, yeah. Get out of the water. Your feet are getting cold.
They started watching, and they're like, what are you setting on? And it was one of those things that I was using the smallest little corking that they made. Tiny little corking with fish and little midge patterns. [01:04:30.110] And it never once went under. It didn't even bob. It was just hesitating ever so slightly where the speed it was moving changed. And if anything changed on the drift, I was setting the hook, and I was hooking these fish. They were watching and going, what did you set on? We can't even see it. And I was like, it just kinda hesitated, and so I set. Because in that super cold water, the fish were very sluggish, and it wasn't an aggressive take.
So, like, the slightest movement, like you said, like, that's [01:05:00.199] such a good point, and I did not include that in here. So thank you for bringing it up.
Tom: Basically, if your dryer indicator does anything suspicious, set the hook.
Josh: When in doubt, strike it out.
Tom: Yep. Okay.
Josh: Hook sets are free. Whatever you wanna use for the cliche, they're all true. If you don't set the hook, you're not catching fish. These fish aren't gonna set the hooks on themselves.
Tom: Okay. Number three.
Josh: All right. Number three is [01:05:30.010] this is a huge one. I would say 90% of the fish that I see lost are in the first 10 seconds. Because that is when the fish is at its freshest. That is when the fish is the most confused, the most angry. It just felt the hook in their face. And that is when I see so many people do one of two things. They either rush to get the fish on the reel, or conversely, they're switching hands. And I don't wanna get into the argument over right-hand retrieve, left-hand retrieve. People have [01:06:00.159] their preferences. That's fine. However, if you are going to switch hands, wait until the fish is under control. Let the fish do its first initial freak out.
Same as when people are rushing to get it on the reel. They're so focused on, Oh, I gotta get this fish on the reel, that they're looking down and they're not looking at fish, and they don't realize that fish just ran straight at you. All you had to do was strip line in, but you're trying to reel, and you're not watching the fish, which is another [01:06:30.070] one we're gonna talk about in a minute. But make sure the fish is fully under control. And the majority of the time, if it's a big fish, it's gonna take all that line that you just reeled in anyway. Right? And so while you're rushing in to get that fish onto the reel, you're not watching the fish, and you lose that fish because it's at its absolute freshest. It has the most energy. It's the most upset, freaking out. And now instead of watching that fish, you're worrying about the reel. And you [01:07:00.090] watch most people when they reel as fast as they can, the rod tip bobs up and down so much that [crosstalk 01:07:06.553]
Tom: I was just gonna say that. Yeah.
Josh: It wraps around the tip, and now they can't reel anymore and they're stuck, or when you bob up and down, up and down, you're creating slack tension, slack tension. What does the fish do when they're trying to get rid of a hook? Pull their head back and forth creating slack tension slack tension. You're exactly mimicking what they do to get rid of a hook. You're doing it for [01:07:30.230] them now. And so many fish I see lost in that first 10 seconds because people aren't watching the fish and reacting to the fish. They're just so focused on I gotta get this on the reel. It's different on shore because your line can get caught on a lot of things. In a boat, I almost don't want people to use the reel.
Tom: Yeah. Unless they have to.
Josh: Because it's difficult, it's got flat areas. Like, there's no corners or sharp edges so that you can dump the line on the ground, all you gotta do is keep your feet still and you'll be okay. And [01:08:00.030] you can strip line faster than you can reel it in when a fish comes at you. And when a fish takes off, you don't have to worry about where the drag set right when you just kinda feather the tension in your fingers. So that's number three. It's a short one to talk about, but it's super important one. The first 10 seconds is everything.
Tom: Especially when you're fishing beadheads. I find that fish can shake. Barbless beadheads are the worst. I mean, there's mass at the end of that fly and...
Josh: And I think also, in [01:08:30.029] that same respect, your weighted streamers too. If you're fishing a clouser that now has those weighted eyes. When they shake their head, they could throw that hook much easier when there's some weight for them to throw around. A little harder for them to do that with a dry. Those beads, especially with, like, a tungsten bead that's much heavier than a brass beads used to be, or now you're fishing, like, jig buggers or stuff like that that your streamer has this heavy tungsten hook on it. They've got leverage when they throw their head around. So just keep the tension on the [01:09:00.020] fish, watch the fish, let it do its thing. Don't worry about the reel till later.
Tom: Okay. Good one. Good one.
Josh: All right. Number four. This is, I think, this is more of now you've hooked a fish and fighting fish. So the sin here, the mistake, is the wrong amount of pressure. So I see so many people break fish off because they panic, and they just clamp down on the reel. And who cares? It happens. [01:09:30.005] Right? We've all done it where we got too excited, and you have people turn around and look at you and be like, oh, why did I do that? That was so dumb. I'm so sorry. I'm just like, I'm not gonna be mad at you for losing a fish. I'm gonna be happy if you landed it, but it doesn't help either of our day if I get upset with you because you lost a fish. But keeping your hands away from the reel and not trying to stop a fish from running.
And here's the rule that I always talk to people. When you're fighting a fish, one of you is always taking line [01:10:00.300] at a time, but it can never ever be both of you. So if a fish is running, I cannot be trying to pull line at the same time because if the fish is taking line, I can't be. Vice versa, if a fish stops and starts swimming at me, that fish is no longer taking line from me. So I have to be taking line or I'm gonna have slack and I'm gonna lose the fish.
Tom: Right.
Josh: So if I remember that and I just keep that rule like it was the fighting of fish, one of you is always taking line at a time. Never ever both of you. You're not going to break off [01:10:30.154] so many fish. And I see so many fish that whole you know, you put too much tension on a rod, and also that rod boxes, that fish takes off and runs. You're putting too much pressure on the fish. Your rod flattens out. And now, instead of that rod being vertical and that rod is your shock absorber protecting the tippet, now I'm pointing it right at it. It's just me and the tippet, and the fish breaks me off. If I keep that rod vertical, the whole point of that is that's my shock absorber. If I didn't [01:11:00.305] expect the fish to all of a sudden run, that's gonna protect that light line, protect that light tippet.
Now, what if we're not talking about small fish? So it's one thing if you're talking about a trout. We're talking about, you know, a size 20 dry fly, and I've got 5 or 6x tippet on there. So we take clients down to Mag Bay, and we're fishing for striped marlin, and then you've got fish that can be well over 100 and even to 200 pounds. We're fishing what [01:11:30.024] we call commitment rigs. There's no line class in there. Like, we don't have that. It's just straight 80 pound, which call it a commitment rig because once you hook that fish, you're fully committed to that. If you get your finger in there, you're in trouble.
Maybe not the smartest thing always, but you can land those fish way faster, which means that that fish is gonna be way fresher when you release it and have a much higher chance of survival. But what I see so often is people are exhausting themselves and not the fish. [01:12:00.244] So whether I'm talking about a trout on light tippet, or whether I'm talking about a tarpon or a marlin, and I've got a 100-pound straight floral leader commitment rig, the same thing applies. When a fish runs and does its maximal effort, that is not when I want to try and slow a fish down. And this always kinda confuses people.
Think about a sprinter. When they run their absolute hardest, how many races do they run a day? One. They run for 10 seconds, [01:12:30.185] 100-yard dash. They run 10 seconds, and then they don't run again that day. Sometimes it's several days in between races. Because for your absolute maximal efforts, you don't have the stores in your muscle to do that constantly. And so when a fish runs, if a trout is running and I've got light tippet, I want it to run as fast as it possibly can unimpeded. Because I don't wanna slow it down, because how does that seems... go back to that sprinter analogy. How [01:13:00.045] does that sprinter train for a race? They put a parachute on and they run against the resistance of the parachute, and they do lap after lap after lap. Or they've got a trainer that holds, you know, those rubber bands, those elastic bands with the handles on them, put them around their waist, and they're pulling against their trainer's resistance, doing lap after lap after lap.
If I constantly put pressure on that fish while that fish is running and I don't let it get to its maximal speed, now that fish can do that for lap [01:13:30.175] after lap after, and now I've prolonged the fight.
Tom: Interesting.
Josh: Whereas, when you let that fish blow all of its energy, like, think about that 100-yard dash, maximal effort. At the end of it, does that sprinter wanna jump in a cage and have to do a UFC fight? Probably not. Right? And so the moment that that fish stops, I want it to expend as much energy as it possibly can, moving as fast [01:14:00.074] as it can possibly go. And the moment it stops, I take all of it back. Never let the fish rest.
That sprinter doesn't wanna jump in a cage and start fighting somebody at that point. They want to try and recover. You can't let that fish recover. You don't let it rest. But what happens is that fish makes this big run, then I slowed it down, and then all of a sudden it stops, and someone's just pulling on it, and they've got this great bend in the rod, they've got great tension, and they're at a stalemate. And they think, man, I'm really putting the pressure on this fish. And they're like, oh, my [01:14:30.175] arm is burning. Your arm is burning. Turns out that fish swims in the current all day, every day. You're not exhausting that fish. That fish is getting its energy back, which prolongs the fight. The longer a fight takes, the more chance I have of losing that fish.
If it's something like, tarpon or a billfish, they could wear it through that leader, and I'm gonna lose that fish. If it's something like a trout, just the longer I'm fighting it, they can start to wear that hole. That hole that that little tiny size 16 [01:15:00.364] nymph within it is now worn a bigger hole, and now as he shakes his head, it's easier to throw that hook. The longer the fight goes on, the more likelihood there is that that fish wraps me around a stick, around a rock, that it bumps its head on the bottom and knocks that hook loose. The longer I fight a fish, the more likelihood that fish is of winning and the less likelihood that fish has of actually surviving.
Tom: Yeah. And...
Josh: When you're talking about... [01:15:30.734] Yeah?
Tom: I wanted to just wanted to do a little aside here. What do you do when a fish sulks? Let's say it's a big fish, and it makes a run, and then it sulks, then it stops. What do you do to keep it moving, to keep it off guard? Or is this...
Josh: Try and change the angle is usually what I do with the rod tip. Either change the angle with the rod tip. Because one of the things that I see this a lot, and this is kind of some of what, it's actually point number [01:16:00.034] five, not using your rod to your advantage.
Tom: Okay. We'll wait for that then.
Josh: Yeah. Okay. So I will address exactly that because I love that, and it's one of the things that you see, and it costs a person a fish because it just kinda buries itself and starts to sulk.
Tom: So we're on number five here?
Josh: Yeah. Just the last thing talking about number four with the wrong amount of pressure, that always adjust that pressure to what the fish is doing. Like, it's interesting when [01:16:30.005] you see at the beginning of the week when you take people marlin fishing, they take often 45 minutes to an hour to even an hour and a half to land their first fish, and they are so gassed, and they are so done. And they don't think they could possibly pull on that fish any harder. By the end of the week, most of them are landing those fish in under five minutes.
Rudy, one of the owners there, he's hooked, played, and built the fish himself, leered and built the fish himself in under a minute [01:17:00.305] without anyone building the fish.
Tom: Oh my god.
Josh: Which is mind-boggling. But it just shows you there's such a big difference between you forcing that fish to work hard, and that fish tiring you out. And so many people are not tiring the fish out. They're tiring themselves out. But then you're not giving that fish a chance to live and survive after the fight, because you took too long to fight. I would rather break a fish off and lose it, and he'll throw that barbless hook so quickly than risk that fish losing [01:17:30.340] its life because I thought it, you hear people, I caught the biggest brown I've ever caught. It took me 45 minutes to land it. You're like, oh, that fish is dead.
Tom: Yeah. For sure.
Josh: The faster you land it, but you could do it without breaking the fish off. You just need to one of you is taking line at a time, never both of you.
Tom: Yep. Good good point.
Josh: Okay. So moving on to number five, and the point you were talking about is the big mistake I see is people not using the rod to their advantage. [01:18:00.439] Like, why do you see where people are fighting marlin in a chair or stuff like sturgeon or giant halibut? They're not using nine-foot-long rods. They're using super short, super stout rods. So the advantage is to them with that shorter rod. When you get a longer rod like a spey rod, now all of a sudden, that fish has that leverage advantage. If I'm fighting a marlin and I'm pulling up on the rod and bending the rod, I'm doing nothing to tire that fish out. I'm exhausting myself. I need to point the rod [01:18:30.279] at the fish more. If I've got a 100-pound test leader, an 80-pound test leader, I can point the rod just about directly at that fish and just back up on the deck of the boat. And then as I walk forward, reel down, back up. And now I'm fighting the fish with my legs and not the rod at all. If I lift and try and lift that marlin off the bottom of the ocean, it's never gonna work. I mean, I absolutely exhaust myself, and I'm not actually gonna get any ground.
Whereas now we'll go to the opposite end of the spectrum. [01:19:00.170] You're fighting a fish on really light tippet or really light fly where I can't pull really hard. Well, that's what my rod is for. If I keep my rod very vertical, that's my shock absorber. My rod is gonna flex, and it's gonna protect that light tippet. It's why a glass rod, like, I laugh. It's great to see people going back to glass rods and that kind of resurgence of things, but so often people are using them in really odd applications. Whereas if you use a glass rod to throw small dry flies, I [01:19:30.015] mean, that rod like, I've literally watched a fish swim between an angler's legs, and the rod tip fall in it because it was a glass rod. The rod didn't blow up.
Also, the light tip, it didn't break because that rod flexes so incredibly deeply into the cork and into the handle that it protects that light tip and those light hooks. If you keep that rod more vertical, it's going to help you. Now, when you have a fish that runs and then all of a sudden it sulks and it drops into heavy current like you were talking about, if I just pull [01:20:00.225] straight up and down on a fish, that fish can just point its nose down. It stays streamlined with the current, and I could pull and I can try and lift, and I'm not gonna budge that fish. Like, you don't have the strength to move that fish.
But what happens now if I change my rod angle and instead of pulling straight up and down where that fish can just kinda bulldog and point its nose down, if I pull sideways, now that I pull sideways, that fish can't stay streamlined with the current anymore. When it's in the current, as I put side pressure on that [01:20:30.164] fish, well, that side pressure now forces that fish to keep correcting. And as the current pushes it over, it tries to correct it, tries to stay true. Each time they try to correct with the current, that fish just got closer and closer to the shoreline. And that's where I'll use side pressure to get a fish to the shoreline, and a fish that I see. I see so many guests lose fish because their rod is straight up and down, like they're trying to mine lightning, and they're trying to, like, pick me. This is the highest point around. The rod is as high as they can reach it, [01:21:00.284] but that fish is completely streamlined with the current. And there's no side pressure to force that fish to get to the side. And the number of times I've been almost at the top of my waders, and you can't go out to the fish. It's too deep. It's too fast, and they won't bring the fish into you because they're just straight up and down.
If you put side pressure on it, and if side pressure isn't enough, change your angle. Walk downstream of that fish. Get below the fish because now if I'm below the fish and now I'm pulling from the side, well, now I've [01:21:30.164] got an entirely different scenario because now the fish is fighting the current. The whole time the fish is below me, that fish is having me fight the current because it can just hang in the current. And you watch a fish that it's exhausted, and it's just kind of swinging back and forth in the current. And the person's like, it's still fighting. It's like, it's not fighting. Like, I can see the fish. It's too far for me to wade out to get to it. That fish has stopped fighting. You're in a heavy current, and it's just swinging back and forth in the current because you haven't put any side pressure [01:22:00.055] to get it out of the current and towards the shoreline.
So if you can't move that fish that's dogging you and just keeping its head down, just by changing the rod angle, try and get downstream of that fish. Because now if I'm downstream of that fish, now that fish is pulling against me, and the fish is fighting the current instead of me fighting the current when the fish is downstream of my position. Does that make sense?
Tom: Yeah. And a fish has to swim in the direction its head is pointing. So if you can turn their head, you can make them go in the direction you want them to go.
Josh: [01:22:30.489] A hundred percent. Exactly. And that's just lining that up. One of the other things that I'd always got people to apply side pressure. One of the things that I hadn't thought about, and now to who their head guy, he mentioned this to me one time, and it kinda caught me off guard, and I was like, dang, that's smart. With trout, and not all fish are this way, but with trout, when a fish is really dogging you and you can't move it and you're trying to put side pressure and sometimes as you try and put side pressure, they'll point their head out towards the current away from you. So now the current is pulling on the side of their body, and there's all this pressure, and you can't turn their head. And one thing he said is pull straight upstream. I'm like, well, what do you mean? He's like, pull straight upstream. And you're like, the way a trout's fins are set on them, they use their fins to keep their balance, whether it's their pec fins or their pelvic fins. Those are used to keep their balance, but those fins cannot prevent them from being pulled straight upstream.
So when you pull on a fish [01:23:30.470] straight upstream, they don't have the ability to pull against you in that direction. And it will often get them to change what they're doing. And it was one of those things that caught me off guard because I always had people apply side pressure in a fish that, like, the side pressure, it was a very large fish, and this brown was just sticking its head out away from us in the heavy current. So now we're kind of at the stalemate where we're, you know, trying to get downstream of it, but we're in a point, like, on the end of the island that you couldn't get downstream of where the [01:24:00.069] fish was. And by pulling straight up, you were able to just kinda glide that fish up, and its fins can't brace against that direction of travel. It can brace with its body against going away from you. And I'd never heard somebody say that before, and I've had so many fish that we were able to do that because you just pull straight upstream because the angle of its pec fins and its pelvic fins just glide straight through the current when you're pulling it straight forward upstream.
Tom: Interesting. Yeah. I never thought of that.
Josh: And so, yeah, some of those fish that have been stuck like [01:24:30.039] that, we've got around that by just pulling straight upstream.
Tom: Pulling straight upstream. Okay.
Josh: I always tell them, the tip of the rod is for casting. The rest of the rod and the butt of the rod is for fighting the fish. Right? Get that rod low. Use the butt of the rod to put that pressure on the fish. And the tip of the rod is also gonna protect the light tippet [crosstalk 01:24:53.218]
Tom: Yeah. The tip will protect your tippet, but you wanna put pressure on it using the butt. And side pressure, it's a lot easier to use side pressure [01:25:00.460] or a lot easier to use the butt of the rod when you fight a fish to the side.
Josh: Exactly.
Tom: Using your body more. You're using your lower muscles too if you actually turn your body using your stronger muscles than your arm muscles.
Josh: Mh-hmm.
Tom: Okay.
Josh: So that's number five.
Tom: Okay. Number six.
Josh: We're almost there. Number six, and this is a big one, and it seems so obvious, but I see so many people not [01:25:30.199] watching and responding to the fish. The number of people that I see, they hook a fish, and their first thing is to turn to the person in the back of the boat and be like, fish on. Fish on. I'm like, cool. If you want to stay that way, look at the fish. And right now that fish is coming right at you. And you're so worried about yelling fish on, or you're trying to tell someone to get their camera out, or you just stop, or you're looking down at your reel like we were talking about earlier, and now they're racing, they're staring at the reel. You're not watching the fish. We need to watch the fish [01:26:00.095] at all times and react to what the fish is doing.
And one of the things that you see, like, we talk about tarpon fishing. If you don't bow to a tarpon when they jump, you're probably gonna lose that fish. If you're not paying attention to the fish and seeing it, like, you'll see it start to surge and build, and you know that that jump is coming, and now you're already ready to bow. Right? When you have a fish running right at you, if I see that fish running right at me, well, now I know, forget the reel and just start stripping. I can never reel as fast as I can strip.
One [01:26:30.045] of the ones that gets a lot of people and especially near the end of the fight where you've done everything right, the fish is getting tired, and especially big browns like to do this, when they get close to the boat or close to your feet in the net, they start thrashing and rolling on the surface of the water, and they'll roll and tangle themselves and all the flies if you've got a dropper underneath your dry or if you get two streamers or something, and they're just rolling back and forth on the surface, and I see so many fish come off. As they roll back and [01:27:00.104] forth, they're changing the angle so rapidly that so often that hook pops. People are devastated.
Have you spent much time riding horses or working with horses at all, Tom?
Tom: As little as possible. Although I do ride horses when I'm in Chile. But that's it. As little as possible.
Josh: So leading a horse. So, like, I grew up on a cattle farm, and we had horses as kids. And I remember, especially when I was really small, you'll get a horse that sometimes starts acting up, and they start bucking and rearing back, and they're pulling [01:27:30.204] their head back. And you can't get them to come forward anymore. And what I was always taught was don't pull against that horse because you're not as strong as they are. Give them something else to concern themselves with, and they always showed us lead them in a circle real quick. Because when you lead them in a tight circle, that horse walks out of the circle, and you walk out of that circle, and then you continue walking. And now the horse is walking in a straight line following you again.
Tom: Oh, okay.
Josh: You preoccupied them with something else. And I've had the same thing with dogs. Dog starts pulling back against [01:28:00.145] the leash. If I you lead that dog in a quick circle and it comes out of that circle. Now, all of a sudden, it's following you again.
When that fish is thrashing back and forth at the surface of the water, that's when I get so puckered, and I'm worried that hook's gonna pop. And I tell people, get your rod low, get that fish's head back in the water, and lead them on a smooth arc. Out of the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of fish I've seen landed, whether we're talking fresh or salt, I've only ever once seen a fish come off [01:28:30.545] when it was moving on a smooth arc.
In a straight line, it's different. But when you get that fish, instead of thrashing its head, just make a smooth arc with that rod, and even like, I'll rotate if I'm not in a boat. I'll rotate around in a circle and get that fish moving on. As soon as it starts moving on a smooth arc, it's following that line. It's following that tension. It's no longer focused on how do I get rid of this hook? How do I roll and thrash? And now all of a sudden, it's just following on the smooth arc. And the only fish I ever saw come off doing that was I could [01:29:00.225] see it. It was hooked in such a light piece of skin that it didn't throw the hook. The hook just tore through the skin. And so the fish did come off doing that, but it wasn't because of that. Any pressure at that point, it was going to tear through that skin. And so I've seen so many fish lost when they're thrashing with their head at the surface. Get that fish's head back in the water, and just lead them on a smooth arc. And it's amazing how often they just calm right down, and then you can come over and have that fish.
Tom: Okay. [01:29:30.154] Good one.
Josh: The other thing when you're watching a fish and responding to that fish, this is so, so common, and I try and warn guests about this all the time. I tell them, okay, like, the fish is tired, now you put that side pressure on. The fish is out of the current. Be ready when the fish sees the boat, or it sees my feet if I'm out of the boat getting ready to net that fish, they will so often make that last ditch run or that effort where they surge, and people aren't expecting it. And all of a sudden, boom. And a tarpon is right by the boat, [01:30:00.234] and you're about to try and lead her and grab his jaws. And all of a sudden, it does that big surge, and you're not ready for it because you're like, oh, I did it. The fish is here. So many fish are lost in that last two feet. Be ready for it. Keep watching that fish. Once it's in the net, you're fine. But until that fish is in the net, just because it's close to the net, it's blind to the net, it sometimes sees that net at the last second, and then freaks out and surges. If you're not ready for it, so many fish get broken off, because they stopped watching the fish.
Tom: [01:30:30.460] Stopped watching the fish.
Josh: Always keep your eyes on the fish through the whole fight.
Tom: Okay. Good. Good one.
Josh: All right. That's number six. We're onto our last one. It's kinda the opposite of what we talked about at the beginning. Number one was not setting too fast. This is it is possible to set too slow. Now, I will say when it comes to dry fly fishing, I would say that 95% of the people that missed the eat are because they were [01:31:00.119] too fast.
The five percent that weren't too fast, I would say that probably four percent of them didn't notice the eat, and that's why they were too slow. There might be one percent that actually reacts and then ends up going too slow. But it's like we talked about at the beginning. Everything comes down to your set just needs to match the speed of the eat. If a fish, like, races over at your streamer at a million miles an hour and just drills it, [01:31:30.090] you're gonna have to set very quickly in response to how quick they... Peacock bass blow my mind at how fast they can race over, hit a fly, and then spit that fly. Where if you don't set immediately, you're gonna miss that. So just like what we were talking about the beginning with setting too slow, the setting, or sorry, setting too fast was the first one that we talked about. Setting too slow doesn't happen anywhere near as often as most people think. They're like, oh, I'm gonna be too slow. There's [01:32:00.164] certain situations where you can be, but just always match the speed of the eat. If a fish eats your fly extremely quickly, you need to set quickly. If a fish eats your fly extremely slowly, you just need to set slowly. So that's that's the last one.
I don't see, especially dry fly fishing, it's very rare that I see someone, especially with bigger fish. It almost never happens with bigger fish. Small fish can hit a fly very fast. They hit a fly very fast, you need to respond fast. But [01:32:30.194] it'll usually happen to the person that's had three fish in a row that ate super slow, and they rip the fly out every fish's mouth, and they're finally telling themselves, slow down, slow down, slow down. And then the next eat will be the one that happened at mock chicken, and it eats super fast. And then you set super slow, and they're like, I did what you said. And you're like, yep. You did. I should've said more. And that's why there's two ends of the spectrum that it's like there's no, like, to god save the queen on a dry fly because it does that's only [01:33:00.835] one scenario that that's the exact time that it's going to work for. You need to react to what the fish does. When they eat fast, set fast. When they eat slow, set slow.
Tom: Okay. That's great. That's great.
Josh: Those are the seven deadly sins.
Tom: The seven deadly sins of hooking and playing fish. That's awesome, Josh. And I know that you've answered a lot of questions that I get. So...
Josh: Hopefully. To me, it's one of the biggest [01:33:30.244] things that, like, at this point, you've already picked the right fly. You've already made the right presentation. A good get all of those things. This is, to me, the area where people can start converting the biggest difference in terms of the number of fish that they convert that are landed, is these things. Like, it kills me to see how many people come so close, and then the fish is two feet from the net or the fish is [01:34:00.395] wrapped its lips around your fly, and you rip it out of an open mouth.
Those are the type of things that, like, the fish is committed. So now, how do we convert that into landed fish? And I really hope that this helps more people. It certainly helped me get a lot of guests into more fish than before I understood how to articulate some of these things to them.
Tom: Yeah. No. And you articulated it very well. And I really appreciate you as always. You really prepared your talk [01:34:30.284] and, you know, thought it out. And it is hard if you're not in a boat with somebody to describe these things, but I think you did a great job.
Josh: It's funny, Tom, because a bunch of, like I remember when we did the seven deadly sins of... I could talk, what I would say is, when we did the seven deadly sins of streamer fishing.
Tom: Yeah.
Josh: And when I was in Vermont and I showed up at the headquarters and you were there and you're like, hey. If you're here, do you wanna do a podcast? I'm like, sure. Can you give me 45 seconds to write down seven things? And we talked about it [01:35:00.015] because it's really easy to talk about fishing when it's your livelihood. Right? And when it's all you do, and so... but this is one of those ones that, like, I made a lot of notes and I changed them and I changed the seven things, like, what are the most important ones. Because this is the one that I think people could make the biggest difference in the number of fish that they can actually convert to being landed fish instead of, man, I just lost the fish of my dream, and I don't know why. And that's what sucks when you hear someone say, I don't know why I lost [01:35:30.215] it.
If you're not there, it's tough because we get people walk into the shop all the time. We're like, man, I hooked this giant fish and I lost it, and I don't know what happened, and when you're not there. It's one thing when they're in the boat with you. You can talk them through it, and it can be a learning moment. And, like, we learn way more from mistakes than we do if you just fluked out and you did it right the first time. You don't necessarily know why you did it. When we make a mistake and it costs us something like a fish, well, now that tends to be a really strong learning moment that we don't [01:36:00.555] forget as quickly. But it would be much nicer for people to learn from my mistakes instead of having to make them themselves. That's how I look at it.
Tom: Yeah. No. That's my philosophy too. Well, thank you, Josh. I really appreciate it. It's always fun talking to you, and I could talk fishing for hours and hours. I know. Because we've done it before. So...
Josh: Yeah. We have.
Tom: And...
Josh: I think we kept to a better timeline today.
Tom: Yeah. We were pretty tight. Yeah. So thank you so much. We've been talking [01:36:30.104] to Josh Nug... I'm having trouble talking too. We've been talking to Josh Nugent of Out Fly Fishing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. World-famous guide and world traveler, photographer, videographer, and student of casting mechanics. We did the seven deadly sins of casting, which was really interesting. So, Josh, thank you so much, and I'll talk to you soon.
Josh: Thanks for having me, Tom. Appreciate [01:37:00.284] it.
Male Speaker: Thanks for listening to the Orvis Fly Fishing podcast with Tom Rosenbauer. You can be a part of the show. Have a question or a comment? Send it to us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. in the body of an email or as a voice attachment. You can find more free fishing tips on howtoflyfish.orvis.com.