How to swing soft hackle wets, with Steve Culton

Tom: Hi and welcome to "The Orvis Fly-Fishing Podcast." This is your host, Tom Rosenbauer. And this week we're going to be talking about swinging wet flies, specifically swinging soft tackles. That's a very much misunderstood way of fly fishing. I think it's one of the oldest ways of fly fishing, probably the oldest way. It's a really elegant, relaxing way to fish and lots of fun. So, I'm not very good at it, so I got an expert on today, Steve Culton of Connecticut, and Steve is going to tell us about his ways of swinging wet flies and how he rigged them and so on. So, I think you'll enjoy that. It's a very informative podcast. I know I took a lot of notes myself when I was interviewing Steve.
You know what? I haven't talked about products recently, and you asked me to talk about products that I get excited about or I recommend. And one of the products that I highly recommend are the Orvis Clearwater Waders. Not everyone can afford to spend over $500 for a pair of waders, which is what you're going to pay for a premium pair of waders these days. You know, the ultimate, the best of the best from any manufacturer. And, you know, if you try to buy a pair of waders for under, say, 200 bucks, you're really gonna get what you pay for and they're not going to work very well, they're not going to fit very well, they're not going to last very long.
But the Orvis Clearwater Waders are a real value. They're 249 bucks. They will last a long time. Of course, that depends on your individual pace and how much brush you go through and how often you use the waders, and so on. But they're gonna be a long-lasting pair of waders and they're lightweight, they're very flexible, they're reliable, and the fit is great on these waders. Actually, these are the waders that I wear during the summertime and also when I'm traveling, I take a pair of them as a backup pair because they're light and they pack down easily. But I really liked these waders. They've got a nice modern fit. You know, they don't have all the bells and whistles as, say, something like the PRO waders. And I wouldn't wear these waders where I was busting through a lot of blackberries or multiflora roses. You know, that's the place for the Orvis PRO waders. But, boy, for day-in and day-out fishing, they're just a great pair of waders.
The other great thing about them is that they come in short, they come in regular, they come in long, and they come in extra-long sizes, and they also come in men sizes, women sizes specifically fitted for women, and kids sizes. So, they're just a great pair of waders and they're of super value, one of the best values you're going to find in fly fishing gear anywhere. So, hope that helps for someone that's either looking for a new pair of waders and doesn't have the budget to get the best of the best, or if you're looking for a pair of backup waders because, you know, you go on a trip and sometimes you rip your waders on barbed wire.
Now, let's do the Fly Box. And the Fly Box is where you ask me questions and I try to answer, or sometimes you offer a tip and if I think it's worthwhile for the rest of the listeners, I'll play it on the air. You can send me a question at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. You can either just put it in your email, or you can attach a voice file. And speaking of voice files, let's start with a voice file first this week instead of an email.
Jared: Hey, Tom. This is Jared from Missoula, Montana, and Sage, the chocolate lab who also enjoys Orvis products. I have three questions in regards to streamer fishing and I'm hoping you can help with. Let's see, the first question is about foul hooking. So, I've just kind of really started to get into streamer fishing in the last couple of months and, you know, I'm doing kind of active streamer retrieves, stripping, jerk stripping. And sometimes when I catch a fish, I end up foul hooking it up and the pectoral fins are somewhere up near there. And I'm thinking what's happening is the fish is maybe striking at the streamer out of aggression and then just kind of quickly turned on its head and then I ended up hooking it after it's turned away. But anyways, I'm curious how you think I might be able to minimize the amount of foul hooking that I'm doing. It's not happening a ton, but enough that I like to not have it happen anymore.
Second question is in regards to techniques. So, I have two rods that I'm fishing with these days when I go out on the riverbank fishing. I have one rod that's set up for tight line nymphing, and then the other rod I have set up for streamer fishing. That streamer fishing, by the way, for other listeners, that's a Helios 3 6F, 6-weight F. And it's really good, I really liked that rod for streamer fishing. So, I have these two rods, and I fished the same water with them, same holes. And I'm wondering what you think might be the best order, you know, whether it's the nymph first or streamer fish through the hole first. And the tight line nymphing, you know, you need to be pretty close, you got to be a bit into the water since you can't cast that far. So, I wonder if stepping through the water while you nymph might kind of scare things up or...so I don't know what you think might be the best thing to do first.
And the last question is in regards to how long to fight the fish. I'm not trying to fight the fish long, you know, I'm trying to just bring the fish in as quickly as possible. And I'm fishing with a 13-pound tippet on the end, just about three feet of that line on the end of my fly line. And, yeah, the question is just how do I know I'm finding that balance? You know, I don't want to break off the fly in the fish, but I also want to land the fish. So, I want to get in as quickly as possible but how do I know just kind of how long to fight the fish and what kind of pressure I can apply to it? So, those are my questions. Thanks for all you do. Thanks for your help. I've learned a lot from you and I hope to hear your answers soon.
Tom: So, Jared, regarding the foul hooking with streamers, you know, sometimes fish are just bumping a fly to get it out of the way. You know, they might be thinking that a small fish is in their territory, and they just want to chase it away and they may not want to eat it. So, sometimes they'll bump the fly or push it around. You know, maybe sometimes they're not quite sure what it is and they think they might want to eat it but they might want to bump it first to see what happens. I'm certainly not sure, but it's probably aggression. And some of the suggestions I might have if you have this happen to you is don't use flies with two hooks.
Flies with two hooks, yes, sometimes you can foul hook a fish because they'll bite the fly and one of the trailing hook especially might hook them in the pectoral fin or something. So, I don't care for flies with two hooks, these big...if you're gonna tie an articulated fly, you can tie it with shanks, or you can get a non...you can get an articulated fly without two hooks. So, that's going to help somewhat. The other thing is sometimes downsizing your streamers. Sometimes your streamer is just a little bit too big, people tend to fish very large streamers these days. Sometimes your fly is a little bit too big and, you know, you want something that the fish are going to crush and they're going to eat. And speaking of that, you know, I don't find that leaving the trailing hook off a streamer fly results in any fewer hookups.
I mean, if a fish really wants a streamer fly, they're gonna crush it and it doesn't matter how many hooks you have on there, one is plenty. So, I would try that. Sometimes either speeding up or slowing down your retrieve might change the behavior of the fish but I would look at the fly that you're using first. Regarding your tight line rod and your streamer fishing, I would say I think you want to...if you're going to fish a pool with both methods, I think you want a tight line first because streamer fishing can kind of disturb a pool. You might get fish to come out and chase the fly and not eat it, and then they're probably going to get spooked because they're going to see you and, you know, streamers create a lot of commotion in a pool.
And I have found that if a fish is going to take a streamer, they're generally hiding somewhere ready to ambush and they're not as spooky as a fish that's actively feeding. So, you know, I think you can go through a pool with a tight line rod and then run through it with a streamer. That's the way I would do it anyways. And regarding how long you should fight a fish, 13-pound tip, it's pretty heavy. I would say, you know, if you got a 12-inch fish on there, you should be able to get it in in less than 30 seconds, and a bigger fish should be no longer than a minute or two, you know, depending on the speed of the current and how hard the fish are fighting and what the water temperature is. But, you know, you shouldn't be spending more than a minute or two with the 13-pound tippet unless you got a real monster.
Okay, now let's do an email. This is from Benjamin who is 13 years old. "Hi, Tom, I have one question. I live in Utah and as you know, we have broken every single snowfall record this year, so there's a lot of runoff and rivers and streams and they're moving pretty fast. So, with that being said, do you think I should fish rivers right now or stick to ponds? And if so, what flies would you recommend?"
So, Benjamin, you know, you can catch fish in really high water but it's tougher. It's going to be much tougher if you do fish them in high water. Fish the slower water along the banks, that's probably the best place to try. But I think you're better off...I definitely think you're better off sticking to ponds until the waters drop to a more comfortable fishable wadeable level and that will come, don't worry about it. It will come. So, I would stick to the stillwater right now. And as far as what flies I would recommend, I can't tell you, Benjamin. I don't know what kind of ponds you're fishing and, you know, you've got lots of local fly shops in Utah and I would ask a local fly shop or go on the internet and see what people recommend for ponds in Utah.
Here's an email from Lance. "Hi, Tom. Thanks for all you and Orvis do for this sport of fly fishing. I wanted to get your advice on watercraft for solo floats down rivers. I live in the southeast, so I live near a lot of great smallmouth rivers, but also some great reservoirs filled with striped bass, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass. I really love fishing alone and getting out by myself, but a lot of the rivers in my area are not wadeable. Do you have a recommendation on what type of watercraft is best for solo river floats with the occasional lake trip? I originally thought kayak but with kayak prices now reaching close to a fishing raft or pontoon raft prices, I am torn if I would be better off with a kayak or a smaller raft. Any insight would be appreciated. Thank you."
Well, Lance, I think you're right, I think a small one-man raft is probably a better bet. You know, if you were going to...if you're fishing lakes more often, I would tend toward a kayak. But if you're fishing mostly rivers...you know, the people that I know that fish smaller rivers almost invariably are fishing small rafts and not kayaks. You don't see a lot of people fishing kayaks in rivers. I don't think it's a great...as good of a craft in rivers. The other thing you might consider is a canoe which would work really well on both your rivers and your lakes, but I think that you're best sticking to a one-man raft.
Devon: Hey, Tom, Devon here from Kingston, New York, calling with a couple of questions and a lot of gratitude for all you do for all of us out there, trying our best and having fun on the water, and for Orvis as well for all the good you do for our planet. First question is a situation I ran into yesterday on the East Branch of the Delaware and I went out there because I was reading reports about the Hendrickson. Sure enough, I got out there in the afternoon and there were clouds, you know, Hendrickson or some...I think Blue Quills or Quill Gordons, you know, 14 or 16-ish brown mayflies.
Bugs everywhere, hit me in the face, blanketing the water, but only, like, three or four risers that I could see in this big old flat. And I spent two hours kind of going up and down this stretch of river and only really saw those three or four trout rising and I ended up, you know, getting one on Hendriksen emerger. But this guy that was behind me even remarked, "Man, so many bugs, they're usually rising up and down this whole stretch of river." I usually see him here. I guess he's a local all the time. So, the question is, is like when there's bugs, the flows are good, the weather's right, but so few trout are rising, what accounts for that?
The second question is what happened later that day towards 6:00, 6:30 in the evening. I was on a different stretch of the water. The hatch had petered out and there were a couple of stragglers on the water, but I actually saw more consistent and more frequent risers. And I've learned from you the splashes they were making as they were rising indicated they were feeding subsurface, so I started fishing an emerged and actually did really well and caught, you know, a bunch of trout after the hatch had stopped when there were no bugs in the air and very few bugs on the water.
So, I guess attached to that first question, what explains when there's far less bug activity but far more risers? I guess it could just be a stretch of water, but I talked to a few people that said they as well saw lots of bugs but not many trout during the hatch. And then the third and final kind of quick hitter is any tips you might have for being stealth walking on a flat. I know the trout up in the East Branch are super spooky, but it seems like as soon as I get in the water, there's instantly ripples that inevitably spook them and scare them away. But anyway, would love your thoughts. Appreciate you, man, and hope to hear from you. Thanks.
Tom: Devon, that is the million-dollar question and we all see it particularly early in the season. I don't know exactly what happens, but I think sometimes the water's a little bit too cold for the fish to get active and rise frequently. I think that sometimes, a lot of times, the water is moving too fast for the fish to fight the current and come up to the surface. And, you know, who knows? Sometimes it takes them a couple of days to get on to a new mayfly hatch that they're not used to feeding on. So, it happens, we all see it. I suspect that you saw more risers in the evening, even if you saw duns, I suspect that those fish were eating Hendrickson spinners and not duns. The spinners will fall anytime from late afternoon to just before dark, and often they'll fall in a riffle way upstream of where you're fishing and they'll float down, and fish really prefer spinners.
The spinners are easier to capture, they're not going to fly away, the fish know that. And so, if I were in that situation again, I would definitely fish a spinner pattern. Even if you still saw duns on the water, I would fish a spinner pattern. Regarding tips for stealth walking in a flat pool. You know, the most important thing, Devon, is to move slowly, move painfully slowly. You know, sometimes it might take you 10 or 15 minutes to get into position on a flat pool but you got to do it because, boy, pushing those waves ahead of you, as you probably realize, is going to spook the fish. They know something's up, they know there's an otter swimming through there or a heron or an angler. And so, those ripples on the surface or those waves on the surface can move a long way and the fish knows something is up. So, in general, moving slowly.
The other thing is, if you can get away with it, work downstream, wade downstream, instead of wading upstream. You push more waves when you're pushing against the current in a flat pool than you do by moving downstream. On some rivers, you can't move downstream because you're gonna spook the fish because you're more in their line of sight. But if it's a big wide river, I would get into position by wading downstream. And then one final thing is if you can use a rock or a bunch of rocks or a log, if there's a rock in between you and the fish, you can sometimes use those structures to kind of break that wave pattern that you push. But in general, just move very, very slowly. Shuffle your feet along the bottom.
All right, let's do another email. This one is from Jared from Redding, Pennsylvania. "Hi, Tom, just a quick question. I heard you mentioned previously that you overline your 3-weight rod with a 4-weight line. I'm just wondering, would it be better to use a double taper weight-forward? I find myself having to do more roll casting than regular casting in the small streams I fish and wasn't sure which would be better. Thanks for your help. I love your show and everything you guys do at Orvis for the outdoors."
Well, Jared, I'm glad you mentioned that you fish small streams because here's the important thing. For the first 30 feet, a standard weight-forward in double taper line are going to be exactly the same. So, in a small stream, you're probably never fishing more than 30 feet, so it doesn't really matter. You can use either line, whichever line you prefer. Now, if you're making longer roll casts, say 40 or 50 feet, which is a long roll cast, then a double taper is going to be better because the weight-forward, when you get into that running line, doesn't roll cast very well and double taper lines on a long cast are going to mend a little bit better. Weight-forward lines, you're going to have...you're going to be able to use fewer false casts and you're going to be able to shoot more line. But really, all of it is when you get beyond 30-35 feet. So, in small streams, doesn't matter one bit.
Here's an email from Don from Ohio. "A quick question or two for you. I think fly line weights are consistent across manufacturers, right? How about rods? Is a medium action 8-foot 4-weight rod consistent as we move from Orvis to other manufacturers?" Well, Don, you're correct in that, you know, fly lines, to be a 5-weight fly line, should and most of the time does fall within a particular grain weight, a particular mass. You know, sometimes you'll find things like the Orvis Power Taper or lines from other manufacturers that are overweighted that are like a line size and a half, but there is a range that fly lines can land in but that range is pretty consistent across manufacturers.
Now, as far as rods are concerned, no. Every rod manufacturer has different design parameters and different ways that they put a load on a rod. The load is how much line it'll hold in the air. And it depends on the design philosophy of the rod manufacturer. There are many rods out there that I think are way underlined. In other words, a 5-weight rod is really a 6, sometimes even a 7. These rods will often feel quite stiff and people think that they're going to be more powerful and maybe they are, but a lot of rods are underlined. And, you know, there is no consistency between manufacturers and even between different lines of rods within the same manufacturer. So, you really have to try them out or get some advice from someone because it's not going to be consistent from one manufacturer to another.
Michael: Hello, Tom. My name is Michael Cravens, and I'm calling in from Flagstaff, Arizona. And I'm hoping to get from you today some advice on places that I can go chasing these iconic saltwater species, species like bonefish, permit, tarpon, and even fish like roosterfish from the beaches of Baja. But here's the thing, I want to do it on my own without a guide and I say that for a couple of reasons. One of which is I really do enjoy the struggle. There is nothing I love more than being in a new habitat, chasing a new species I'm excited about, and trying to figure it all out. I'm okay with the failures that come with that. But boy, when it comes together and you succeed, let me tell you there is not a more exciting way to catch a fish for me.
But secondly, and probably if I'm being more honest, and quite frankly, I'm not wealthy. I work for a conservation nonprofit. I love my work, I want to do it for the rest of my days, so I'm never going to be wealthy and I can't afford guide fees. I absolutely respect the guiding industry, I think it is money well spent if you can spend it, but it's not in the cards for me. I still want to go chasing these fish in these amazing places. So, whether that be a foot or finding a local or renting a skiff or a kayak and just getting out there and rolling with it on your own, that's what I want to do. But I want to know I'm in the right place, everything else, I'll figure out. So, if you could recommend some places, whether that be countries, towns, villages, or beaches, anything would be helpful, and boy, I would appreciate it. Thank you so much.
Tom: So, Michael, I'm a little bit reluctant to tell you where to go because, for one thing, yeah, bonefish can be caught from shore, roosterfish can be caught from shore Of course, if you're going to fish roosterfish, you're gonna probably want to go to Baja because that's the only place that I know of where they're consistently caught. Bonefish and tarpon are caught in a lot of other places. Tarpon is going to be tough from shore unless you're fishing for baby tarpon in canals or in the mangroves, and that's often can be really difficult wading if you're on your own. But, you know, bonefish can be found from shore. You know, places like Belize and northern Belize and southern Mexico and the Bahamas are probably the best places to fish on your own for bonefish.
You know, I know the Bahamas a lot better than I know any other area and you can pick any island in the Bahamas and you're gonna find bonefish somewhere along the shoreline eventually. Not all shorelines are as good as another and not all flats are as good as another one, but you will for sure find bonefish on any island in the Bahamas. You know, you may be able to rent a boat or a kayak, you may not be able to, that's something you have to research. And, you know, I would research...I would look...if you're thinking of going into a particular area, I would study Google Earth and look for flats because it's going to be tough on your own probably wading or in a kayak, it can be tough to fish steep deep shorelines on your own without a boat. Whereas if you can find a wadable flat, that's a place where you're probably going to be able to catch some bonefish on your own. I hope that helps. Difficult question, though.
Here's an email from Jonathan from Erie, Pennsylvania. "Hi, Tom, appreciate you not getting taken over by AI, yet I hope you keep the great podcast episodes flowing, ha-ha. Just listen to the 421 episode and I have a clever tip on getting the leader in line out of the rod tip. I'm sure I'm not the only one doing this, but hold the rod handle in one hand and lightly bumped the cork handle a few times with the palm of your other hand while wiggling the tip of the rod a few inches back and forth with the rod pointed slightly downward. Just need to make sure you have some extra fly line to shoot as your wiggle. I figured this out with my 6-weight going after snook and baby tarpon standing in the front of a small skiff. This seems to work really well for me and hope it helps a few people that have the same issue.
Question, at what point would I need to stop repairing my waders and just buy new ones? I fish a couple of times a week, so I'm lucky to wear these so much that I'm curious about wader life on the Orvis PRO wader. By far, these are the best waders I've owned, but they're going on four years old and I have been having to repair some wear marks from the PRO boots I own on the neoprene foot. The surface layers are getting rubbed away around the ankle of the foot. It's not a hole, but I'm assuming I've lost a millimeter or so off the five millimeter it has.
I could obviously Aquaseal as much as I need, but does this hurt the neoprene or make it worse for the inside of my wading boots? Is there a point where there's just too much Aquaseal? Ha-ha. Also, the gravel guards have torn a bit from the bottom where the rubber meshes because I always repair the waders. Is it just easier or cost-effective to get a new pair? Thanks for taking the time. If you read this...thanks for taking the time. If you read this, I got to meet you at the Fly Tying Symposium last November in New Jersey. Super cool moment for me. So, thank you."
Well, Jonathan, I love repairing waders, and I'll keep repairing waders until I just can't do it anymore. And, you know, I think you can keep putting Aquaseal on those waders until you just can't find the leaks, you know, or the...you really can't make Aquaseal too thick. It's not going to hurt your wading boots. So, you can keep putting Aquaseal on there. It's a flexible, soft material when it dries, so it's not going to hurt your wading boots at all. But eventually, you know, eventually you're going to say, "All right, I got way too many patches on these waders and I just can't stand it anymore."
And so, you have a couple of options there. One is just by a pair of new waters, and the other is Orvis does offer a repair for waders. And most of the waders we sell, we offer repair service for. But the people that repair the waders will sometimes take a look at a pair of waders and say, "Okay, these are just beyond repair and we're gonna have to...you know, we'll give you a discount on a new pair of waders." So, it really depends, they need to take a look at them. But I'd keep repairing them until they just...until they leak so much and you can't find the leaks anymore. That's my philosophy anyways.
Here's an email from Taylor from Syracuse, New York. "I've been fly fishing for only about nine months and fly tying for about one month. But with the help of this podcast, your books, and of course, the wealth of information on YouTube, I feel grateful for the amount of knowledge I've acquired in that short span of time. I was taken aback when reading "Prospecting for Trout" that you have also spent a portion of your life in Syracuse. My question relates to a local stream you are probably familiar with and I'm not going to mention the name of the stream, but I think it applies to most trout streams.
This stream is pretty heavily fished from top to bottom, but what I find hard to navigate is how different the water is in different sections. One section is relatively fast water and a rocky solid bottom. Other sections have slower water even after a heavy rain and the bottom is almost a quicksand-like mucky consistency. Some areas are in between. I've had luck in both types of water, but I think it has more to do with luck and changing tactics four times than actual knowledge. My question is, one, what causes a stream to have such different ecosystems in different areas? And two, if you're going to fish both areas on the same day, is a complete change of techniques, flies, or presentation from one spot to another necessary? If so, any tips would be much appreciated."
Well, Taylor, trout streams are dynamic, and you want a trout stream that has a mixture of riffles and pools. It's gonna have a more varied habitat and the more varied habitat you have, the greater the diversity of the food supply for the fish, and the greater the opportunity for the fish to have places to live. So, that just happens. You know, riffle roof is kind of a trademark of a healthy trout stream. So, you know, you're gonna find that in most streams that you fish. Regarding your complete change in technique and flies, yeah, it probably is necessary.
In general, when you're fishing the pool sections, the slower water, you're probably gonna want to use flies that are a little bit smaller and maybe a longer lighter tippet. You can also use that in the faster water but you can generally get away with bigger flies and not quite as much stealth and a little bit heavier tippet in the fast water, and then when you get to the slower water, you're probably just going to have to adjust your tippet and maybe the size flies you use. But it sounds like you've been successful in both types of water, so I wouldn't change what you're doing too much.
Here's an email from David. "Further to your discussion regarding 50 ways to break your fly rod, I just wanted to add another to the list. I spent the best part of 10 years working in a fly shop and without a doubt, the most common break would occur when less experienced customers were rigging their fly rod. They would strip enough line or leader from the reel to give them a rod length outside the guides. But if they wanted more length, they would just pull on the line without stripping more slack with the rod held out in front of them and the lining pulling back toward them all the way. All the force went into the tip section, which at such an acute angle, simply snap.
We'd always do our best to advise new fly fishers on how to rig their rod correctly in-store but with a lot of sales these days now being online as opposed to face-to-face, it can be difficult. If you haven't done so, perhaps Orvis should produce a video showing you the correct way to rig a fly rod. Anyway, I hope this helped save a few broken tips." Oh, thank you, David. That's a good tip and, yeah, that's a very common way of breaking a rod by trying to pull the leader knot out of the guides by pulling straight down.
Here's another email. "Hi, Tom. My name is Dylan. I live in Missoula, Montana. My question is about dry flies in the early season. Here in Missoula, our dry fly season has started, but I'm wondering how do you decide when to put on a dry during this time of year when fish aren't always rising or feeding on dries and the weather is very inconsistent? Some days it's on and then we'll get a cold snap and then it's off for a few days. There's certain windows where they do feed on dries at this time of year but it's not consistent. What would be your approach as a walk-and-wade angler? Start with nymphs and switch to a dry fly when you see rise or bugs flying around? Thanks for your input."
Well, Dylan, my advice, what I would do, and, you know, you guys out there in Missoula have Skwala stoneflies early in the season and I've always been surprised at how the fish will rise in fairly cold, fairly fast water in the early season to a dry fly in that area. So, you know, as long as the water isn't in flood and, you know, the waters has some clarity to it at all, I would fish a dry dropper. You know, I would put a Skwala stonefly or, you know, some other relatively large dry fly and then hang a smaller nymph from the dry fly. That way you're fishing both methods at the same time and, you know, it's my go-to approach for fishing a stream when I think there's even a remote chance of a fish coming to a dry fly. And dry fly makes a pretty good indicator for your nymphs, so that's what I would do. I would almost always fish dry dropper in that situation.
Ryan: Hi, Tom. My name is Ryan, I live on Cape Cod, and I actually just started fly fishing a few years ago. I'd always wanted to learn but I had to force myself a few years back when I did a trip out to Wyoming on a sage grouse hunt where the outfitter did a cast and blast, you hunted for sage grouse in the morning, and then in the afternoon, you would do a float trip down the South Platte. So, in order to not embarrass myself, I decided that I needed to learn at least how to cast, so I borrowed a dusty 4-weight rod that my dad had tucked away in storage somewhere and I started practicing and I ended up taking the one-day fly fishing class at Orvis up in Manchester.
And I learned so much from that class on that day that I was able to take that information that I got, I went down to the Battenkill that afternoon, and I caught my first trout on the fly. So, I would highly recommend that class to anybody that wants to get into fly fishing or wants to learn more. I have been fishing probably since before I was two, but my dad was never really big into fly fishing even though right in my backyard, we have a pretty well-known river, the Deerfield River that a lot of people come to fly fish. And I never really fished it, but I would watch the guides in the drift boats going down the river and I always thought to myself, "Man, that would be such an awesome job to just...every day, your office is outside and you're fishing." So, in the back of my head, I always thought, "Man, that seems like such a great job."
Well, now that I live on Cape Cod, I'm in my 30s, and I still want to pursue guiding, you know, more towards saltwater now than freshwater. But I'm just looking for any suggestions that you might have for somebody who has been fishing their whole life, you know, but for me, fly fishing is a newly acquired skill and I'm still working on it, what do I need to do in order to best prepare myself if I still am thinking about guiding as a profession? Any information that would help, you know, from what kind of equipment you might need to, you know, any specific things that you could think of?
On a side note, I also...I'm very curious, and as I get more and more into fly fishing, I realized that people use the term fly fishers as opposed to like fly anglers. And I know that, you know, the term fisherman is outdated, but why are we using the term fly fishers? Because if I told anybody that I was a fisher, nobody would really understand what I was talking about, or even if they did, it sounds weird. But fly fishers seems to stick in the community. So, just curious what your take is on that. Thank you for all the great content that you do and I hope all is well in the 802.
Tom: Ryan, that's great that you had such a great experience in the one-day class in Manchester and to just go out and catch a trout in the Battenkill is quite an accomplishment. So, congratulations. Regarding what you need to do to pursue guiding. First of all, you know, if you're going to have fishers on a boat, you got to have a captain's license. So, that's number one. And probably a captain's license is not a bad idea even if you're our guiding wade anglers because there's a lot of good knowledge that you're going to obtain by getting a captain's license. Plus, if you, you know, start out as a land captain or a walkway guide, you can always move up to a boat if you have a captain's license.
Other things you're going to need is an intimate knowledge of the water throughout the season. So, know the moods and the changes in the beaches and the estuaries throughout the season. You better be good at teaching casting and knots. Most of the people that you get as clients are not going to be very good casters, so you're going to need to learn how to teach casting, not just how to cast but how to teach casting to someone, and how to teach knots and how to tie knots. And you need to like people, you need to get as excited about other people's fish as you do your own. The other thing is maybe first aid class is very, very helpful to have. And then you need to think about things like insurance and health care. You know, depending on your state, that's going to vary.
But, you know, you really should listen to some guides talk about being a guide. And I don't normally do this but I decided to do it. Here's two podcasts for you to go back in the archive and listen to that were done by guides about guiding. One is December 29th, 2011, and the other one is March 2nd, 2018. So, both of those were with guides about guiding and what a guide's life is like. So, hope that's helpful. All right, that is the Fly Box for this week. Let's go talk to Steve about the pleasures of swinging a wet fly. So, my guest today is Steve Culton. Steve is a teacher, a fly fishing teacher, and a writer, does a lot of shows, and has his own website. Steve, can you remind me of your website again?
Steve: Yeah, it's currentseams.com. That's "seams," not "streams." So, one word, currentseams.com.
Tom: currentseams.com, okay. And Steve is really a very serious wet fly angler and that's something you don't see as much these days, people who are really into wet flies and really adept at catching fish on swinging wet flies and soft tackles. And I get a lot of questions about especially fishing soft tackles, Steve. And so, I thought we would spend our time here today with you sharing your tips and your knowledge about fishing these kinds of flies.
Steve: Absolutely. And, you know, just for the record, I mean, I look at fly fishing as one giant experiment and I'm still learning and figuring things out.
Tom: I should hope so.
Steve: It's wonderful. Yeah, I don't believe there are any experts because, you know, all it takes is one humbling afternoon on the Farmington River or any other tailwater and you realize how much you actually don't know.
Tim: Yes, I floated nine miles a river yesterday in the lower Battenkill and didn't touch a fish, so don't call me an expert either. So, anyway, I'm gonna let you take it away and just introduce the topic and why you like to fish them and then give us lots and lots of good tips on fishing these flies.
Steve: Sure. I think wet flies are probably one of the most misunderstood categories of fly fishing. It's funny because I think many fly-fishing scholars would say that wet fly fishing is the oldest form of fly fishing.
Tom: For sure, yeah.
Steve: That's one thing that initially drew me to wet fly fishing. It took me until I was an adult to figure out that I'm not like everyone else. When 90% of the population zigs, I like to zag. So, when the Euro nymphing craze hit the shores 20 years ago or so, rather than attach myself to the newest thing from Europe, I decided to go with the oldest thing from Europe, which was wet fly fishing, and I've never looked back. It's a wonderful way to fish. It's a very...I use the word organic, it's an organic way to fish. You're casting, you're mending, it's almost like a Zen exercise. It's very meditative.
You can make wet fly fishing as simple as you like and you can really complicate it if you want to, in a good way, get really serious and technical about it. You know, most of what I do, I'm a lesson-based teaching guide and the vast majority of my lessons are people who want a wet fly lesson. And people just...a lot of people don't even...you know, what is wet fly fishing? My simplest explanation is, and of course, there's plenty of gray areas within this, so I say so nymphing, you're fishing from the bottom of the river to one or two feet up. Maybe just inches up. That's nymphing. Dry fly fishing, you're fishing on top of the water. Wet fly fishing is everything else in between.
And, you know, I said gray area because I'm a huge fan of fishing wet flies on the surface as dry flies and I'm a huge fan of presenting wet flies along the bottom or including them in my nymph rig. So, I think wet fly fishing is the...and wet flies are the most versatile of all...if you, you know, divvy up flies into dry flies, wet flies, streamers, nymphs, I believe wet flies are by far the most versatile of those four groups. And your dog...the dog agrees.
Tom: Yeah, the UPS man always interrupts my podcasts. I'm surprised you could hear the dog.
Steve: Ah, well. Wet fly fishing too is...it has its moments. There are times when it's not as productive, there are times when it's by far the most productive method you can use to catch fish. I always tell my students when we go out if it's just not happening on that day and if they're starting to grasp what it is we're trying to accomplish but they're not seeing the results, I always encourage them, "Keep doing this because there's going to come a day or a time very soon where all of a sudden, you're going to look like a genius doing this and you'll be the angler that everyone is chasing down the path towards the parking lot saying, "What were you using? What fly were you using?" You know, it can be like that.
Tom: Okay.
Steve: Are you gonna...yeah, go ahead.
Tom: So, I'm not very good at swinging wet flies and soft tackles, specifically soft tackles. I love tying them and I actually love fishing them, I love the act of fishing them, but they don't work that often for me. So, tell me, give me some...I mean, obviously, you haven't seen me fish with them. So, tell me some of the things...you know, when you hear that from someone, and I'm sure you hear that a lot because I hear it from friends of mine too, what do you suspect that they're doing wrong that they should be changing?
Steve: So, as in many things in fly fishing, there's no one simple answer to that.
Tom: Yeah, obviously.
Tom: And I think we need to start with what is a soft tackle, okay? Just like with streamers or dry flies or even nymphs, there's different kinds of wet flies. So, soft tackles, soft tackle is sort of like the OG fly pattern probably. You picture a Macedonian angler 2,000 years ago with a bone or a bronze hook, taking some thread...or even let's go more recent, let's go 1,000 years ago up in the Highlands of Scotland, an angler taking some of his wife's thread from her sewing kit and lashing it to a hook and then taking a feather from the grouse that he shot that...or, you know, captured or bow and arrow, I'm not sure what weapons they had back then.
But he takes a feather from one of the gamebirds he shot and wraps it around the hook and looks at it and says, "That looks interesting, I wonder if the trout in the lake bottom will think it's interesting," and it turns out it did. So, soft tackles are...they're very simple, elegant creations. They're also known as North Country spiders, which points towards North Country being in England, the Yorkshire Dales. And again, very simple, elegant creations that are very often nothing more than some silk and a gamebird hackle wound around a hook shank. And so, we speak to the versatility now of wet flies because by altering the color of the hackle, the color of the thread, and the size of the hook, you can match just about any hatch. Okay?
Take a yellow thread and a partridge feather and a size 16. Sulfur. Or Yellow Sally, all right? Take a size 18 hook and a grouse feather and some deep crimson thread. Parallax, okay? Take a rusty brown thread and a brown partridge feather, size 12, put a little tail on the partridge. Hendrickson. So, you've got...that's where you get your supreme versatility. And, Syl Nemes, excuse me, Syl Nemes has a great quote that I point to a lot Syl wrote that, "Any sunk artificial fly to be good must transform itself in the water into something alive, something suggestive and moving, something that looks good to eat," and soft tackles do a brilliant job of that.
Now, they're called spiders not because they're supposed to imitate an arachnid, they're called spiders because of the umbrella shape of the hackle. And all of those...you know, who knows...I go to another quote, Bill McMillan, the steelhead angler, had a great quote where he said, "I don't like to pretend that a fish is anything other than the primitive animal that it is." So, I always hesitate to say what does the fish think it is, you know? Does it think it's a drowned ant? Does it think it's a sulfur? And I think the beauty of the Nemes quote is that all Syl is saying is it has to look good to the fish, the fish have to want to eat it, and soft tackles do a great job of that, they're just buggy and simple and elegant. So, when you come to me and you say, "I fish soft tackles and I'm just not doing well with them," I would ask you a bunch of questions. I would say, "Are you fishing to rising fish? Is there a hatch going on?" And you might say, "No."
Tom: I would say no, I'm using them in between times when there might be an occasional rise here and there. But no, I'm not fishing them to rising fish.
Steve: Okay. So, I mean, you see where this is going here. Now, if you said yes...it's like one of those diagram question chains. You know, if no, then this, if yes...so, let's go to no. So, then my next question would be, "How are you fishing them? Are you fishing...are you swinging them in a current? Are you fishing them as part of your nymph team?" Okay?
Tom: Okay, I'll answer that. I do occasionally use them, you know, in a nymph team with a heavier nymph to get it down so, you know, the soft tackle is usually up a little bit higher on the leader. But no, what I'm talking about is putting on usually two soft tackles or maybe as a winged wet fly and a soft tackle, tied on a separate dropper, the upper fly, and then casting across the current or maybe upstream a little bit and making a good mend and then letting it swing and maybe there might be two or three mends in the process, and then letting it, you know, swing in the current.
Steve: Well, that's a good start right there, for sure. Before I get to that, I just want to say to your listeners, so if you're fishing a nymph rig that has multiple flies and you're not...whether you're fishing two or three flies, if you don't have a soft tackle among your top droppers, you're really missing out. I tell a story many years ago in the Farmington River. I don't know about you, Tom, but I go through phases in my fishing work. All I want to do is throw streamers. I don't care if there's a great hatch, I want to throw streamers. That's what I want to do. Or I want a nymph, I got a nymph, that's all I want to do. And I went through this late summer phase on the Farmington, this was many years ago, where I just wanted to fish nymphs.
and I fished a gingery caddis larva as my bottom fly and I fished a soft tackled beadhead...probably not even a beadhead, just a soft tackle of Pheasant Tail, really tiny, as my top dropper. And I went out, I don't know, a couple of times a week for a month and I didn't even...not only did I not change the patterns, I didn't even change flies. I use those same two exact flies for a whole month. And every time I was out, I caught fish on both and sometimes they really wanted that caddis larva, sometimes they wanted that little dark...I don't know what they thought it was. You know, Pheasant Tail is a beautiful fly because it looks like everything in general but nothing in particular, but it looks alive and like something good to eat.
But I was catching fish on it because there was some kind of small dark emergence thing going on underwater that I couldn't see that the trout were just glomming on to. Yeah. So, anyways, to get back to your question. So, what I would say is if I was giving you a lesson, I would say, "So, Tom, the first thing I want to do is I want to teach you how to fish a team of three flies, okay?" I love a team of three because it is an ancient and traditional method. And, you know, I have an ancient and traditional streak about, I don't know, 10 miles wide. I love the fact that anglers have been using that setup for years and centuries.
Tom: Now, before you get into anything, what I'm going to want to know and what the listeners I'm sure are going to want to know is exactly how you set up your leader.
Steve: You mean building the team? Yeah, okay.
Tom: Yeah. Oh, and I should mention, Steve, you asked me, you know, how I fished soft tackle. I typically fish soft tackles or swing wet flies or whatever in a time where I want to cover a lot of water because I don't know exactly where the fish are and maybe it's a bigger water and, you know, I want to cover more water. And so, you know, blind fishing a dry fly is sometimes...you know, you can't cover a lot of water, and certainly, deep nymphing you can't cover a lot of water at any one time. So, it's something I use to...you know, just to move from spot to spot or to cover a lot of water to try to locate the fish.
Steve: That's a fantastic strategy and it's one of my...I have three situations where I like to fish wet flies, and that's one of the three, when there's nothing going on and I want to cover water. You know, and the time of year matters, okay? I'm probably...I live in the Northeast, I live in Connecticut, so we have four seasons. I'm not swinging wet flies from, say...generally speaking, from late November to April 1. It's a very...it's not that you can't catch fish, I've had some great winter days swinging wet flies to actively rising fish, but it's not a high percentage play.
Tom: Yeah, you need some...you need water temperature to get those fish a little more active.
Steve: Yeah, I mean, I love...so, the Farmington River is a tailwater, it's my home river, I love going to the Farmington on a hot day in July when the waters may be a little low. And it could be noon with blazing brilliant sunshine, and I'm confident I'm going to catch fish with my team of three wets. Yeah, I'll get into building the leader in just a second. But I don't want to lose this point, and the point is where you fish with wet flies is also critical. It's critical. I mean, most people...if you find an avid nympher and you give them this big, long, deep, glassy dry fly pool, they're probably going to look at you and say, "What are you, nuts?"
Tom: Yeah.
Steve: It's the same thing with a team of three wets. I wouldn't go anywhere near that at noon on a July day, all right? So, we can talk about that later if you remember, but where you fish wet flies is also critical. So, building a three-fly team.
Tom: Yep.
Steve: So, I should also say too, Tom, at this point, I like to tell...whenever I give a talk or a lesson, I like to say I'm not right, I'm just telling you how I do things. You know, everyone's got their own way and I encourage your listeners to embrace that. You know, whenever you hear me or you or anyone give a talk, you know, take what we say and put it into practice. If you don't like it, if it doesn't work for you, then don't do it because confidence catches fish, right? And if you're not confident, you're not going to have a good time.
Tom: Yeah, don't worry about it, they don't believe everything I say either.
Steve: So, I like to start...let's start here. I'm a believer that it's not your leader that turns your team of flies over, it's your cast. If you give me a straight shot of mono right now, I can go out into the backyard here and I can make a pile cast and I can also get that straight shot on mono that layout flat and unfold like the most beautifully, scientifically, mathematically formulated tapered leader you could possibly build. How I build a leader is I start with a 3x or 4x 9-foot tapered leader and I create a butt section by cutting off the bottom three feet of that tapered leader. So, I've got a six-foot butt section.
And so, what you want to do is you want to tie the stoutest material you can find that won't spook the fish to build a three-fly team because if you use like a 5x or a 6x material, it's not going to handle the load of three flies as well as a stiffer material. So, I think you're probably looking at probably a 4x material and even a 3x material. And, you know, we talked about where you fish with what flies, because I typically fish this setup in faster water, okay? I don't think that...everyone has their own theories, I come from the school that says if the fish are paying attention to your leader and tippet, you're doing something wrong. So, you know, I always feel like fish, you know, they don't see the hook point, so, you know, I just...
Tom: Right, yeah.
Steve: All right. So, basically, I'm tying three triple surgeon's knots to create two tags about six to eight inches long, spaced about between probably about 30 inches apart. I don't measure any of this, all right? You want your tags long enough to let the flies move independently while being part of the team and you want the spacing far enough so that you can cover more water. So, 30 inches apart is a good length. There's a diagram of this on my website as well, which helps. I use a triple surgeon's knot because it's a knot that I know and I trust. And, you know, when you tie that, you'll have two tags, just clip off the really short one and you leave that other tag longer six to eight inches.
And here's the beauty of the three-fly team constructed like that. All the flies are part of a team that will generally move in the same direction but because they're on tags, they're able to operate independently of one another. So, if one hits a little eddy and kind of boiling upward, that fly is gonna move up in the current, just like a natural wood. Okay? If another one hits a current that's dragging it to the left, it's gonna move to the left, just like a natural wood. And the other beauty of the three-fly team is your point fly or what an anchor fly is...it's called that now in Euro nymphing, but the point fly can serve as is if you're in deeper water or if you want to sink that rig, you can actually put on a bead head or a tungsten bead head fly in your point position.
And as you said, by making your cast and throwing some mends, you can get that fly to sink...that rig to sink down a little bit. And then because of what we know from aqua dynamics, when you introduced tension into that presentation, the whole thing is going to come rising up. And what are the bugs doing in the river? They're rising up. So, you have this fantastic action. You know, I think in its purest form, wet fly fishing is you're trying to duplicate subsurface insect life. What are those naturals doing? That's what I'm trying to duplicate.
Tom: Okay, but will you help me sort something out and it's something that I've always wondered and people asked me about all the time. Most of the time, unless your mends are extremely precise and they're all perfectly upstream of your flies, when those flies start to come under tension, they're going to slide across the currents. Natural bugs, with the exception of some caddis pupi and isonychia and stuff, don't slide across current lanes.
Steve: Yeah, yeah, it's a great question. So, typically, when I'm fishing wet flies, I'm looking for...so ideal wet fly water is between...really ideal is probably one to three feet. I included in my talks, I say one to four feet deep. It's moving at a brisk walking pace. And I want the surface to have boils, bubbles, seems, slots, because that indicates structure underneath. All right? I want boulders, I want boulders, I want sunken tree, logs, etc. I want all stuff like that, little slots where fish can hide. So, to answer your question there, you know, you want to make your presentation as natural as possible, but two things are happening here, okay? One is that there's a village idiot in every pool. Okay?
Tom: Yeah, sometimes.
Steve: That will see that thing moving down and across at an unnatural speed and say, "I want that, gotta have it, gotta have it." The other thing is that, once again, I can't speak for trout, who knows what they see, but when you're fishing in that faster water, they may not see your fly until it's time to make a decision, and then they suddenly say, "Oh, caddis getting away, must have that." And what you're doing in that situation fishing in that faster water, if there's nothing going on, if there's no indication, there's no bugs in the air, there's no indication of actively feeding fish, you're looking for aggressive fish. Okay? If you were selling cars, all right? You'd be looking for the equivalent of people who have come onto the lot with their checkbooks open already. That's the fish I'm looking for. I'm looking for the one...yeah.
Tom: That's a really good point. You know, we all expect that fish are seeing our flies throughout the drift. But they're not, they're seeing it for a very brief...because they can't see those things from very far away, particularly underwater. So, that's a really good point that it's an instantaneous thing, they're not seeing it through the whole drift.
Steve: Yeah, yeah.
Tom: Good stuff.
Steve: And Syl Nemes has another great...you can tell that I'm Syl's fan, I've got a lot of his books. Actually, when I read books, I have a yellow...I'm such a fly-fishing nerd, I have a yellow highlighter and I just like...it's like I'm studying for an exam in college. But I highlight these...yeah, so many decades ago, I highlight these passages because some of them really resonate and Syl wrote this, this is also wonderful. He wrote, "With a soft tackle fly, the trout throws caution to the wind because he's not afraid to move under the water and speeds to the fly with urgency." So, that speaks to the environment he's in, right? That speaks to the wonderful life-imitating qualities of soft tackle.
And I think most of all with wet flies, you're fishing where the fish are feeding with confidence, they're not afraid to attack that fly. And, you know, in the interest of full disclosure, I couldn't possibly tell you the number of hours that I've fished over the water like I'm describing, doing what you're doing, and not had to touch. And, you know, I get mortally depressed and, you know, I just say, "Well, it's just not my day." It's just not...you know, another story I tell is, and this also on the Farmington many years ago. I was fishing in an August afternoon and there was a particularly snotty stretch of water.
It's basically pocket water. It's a boulder field, what I call snotty water or the B water. No one ever fishes it, right? And it's about 300 yards long and I parked my car down the bottom of it, I walk up to the top, it takes two hours to kind of walk through and fish it. So, it's August, it's afternoon like I say, 1:00 to 3:00, overcast, probably 80 degrees, decent amount of bugs popping, nothing showing on the surface but bugs in the air, birds working. And in that stretch, I caught 13 trout including an absolute beast of a Farmington River trout, big, big wild fish.
That's a good time to just do a sidebar and say one of the things I love about wet fly fishing is that in any given season, some of my best, most crushing hammering hits come on wet flies, that this trout hits so hard, it ripped the line out of my hands. And that goes to, you know, that sense of urgency that Syl Nemes was talking about. So anyways, you know, I had opportunity and motive of the next day. Wouldn't you go back? Sure you would. Exact same conditions, exact same barometer, same water height, same cloud cover, same bugs, same birds working, walked that run, one fish.
Tom: Well, you caught them all the day before.
Steve: You know, it's like, "What? What is going on here?" So, I mean, some days it's not working, but really don't be discouraged. It happens and there are other days where you're just gonna walk through and just be pounding fish. And, you know, getting back to the question you asked a long time ago when you describe what you're doing with throwing those mends, that's a really good idea. If you just make a cast down and across and do nothing, you get this big C or inverted C shape in your line and, you know, the flies go racing down and across the water.
And it doesn't mean you can't catch fish. Like I said, there's a village idiot in every pool that will chase that down. But your instincts are good to throw those mends. And what I teach anyone that I give a wet fly lesson to is try to picture a straight line from your rod tip to the end of your fly line. Now, because of the varying current seams and eddies and speeds and all the stuff that's going on, you're never going to have an exact line segment. But try to make that as straight as possible for as much of your drift as possible. Does that make sense?
Tom: Yeah, yeah. No, it does. Absolutely.
Steve: And a lot of times, it's not just an upstream mend, sometimes it's a little downstream mend. Sometimes it's the entire fly line, and I would say too with a lot of lessons I give, people are sometimes bashful about moving the entire fly line. I like to say, I'd like to tell them, "Just pick the line up off the water and put it where you want it." And if people are also afraid to move their flies, don't worry about it, you can get away with a lot more at subsurface than you can on the top. You know, this is not necessarily an exacting dry fly presentation when you're fishing this faster water.
But don't be afraid to throw half-mends too. If part of your line is dragging, throw a mend in the direction you need to do, just maintain that straight line as straight as possible and that's going to slow your drift down. And I think you're going to have more success because as we talked about, we don't know how long fish are looking at these flies but we want to give them the opportunity. So, I worked in advertising for many years and, you know, an old advertising mantra was, "Make it easy for the buyer to buy." So, that's what you're doing when you're fly fishing, make it easy for the buyer to buy.
Tom: Okay. Another question, what angle do you hold your rod at? Because I know a lot of people hold the rod really high to keep the line off the water and then other people, well, particularly in slower water, will keep the rod lower so that, you know the line picks up speed. What do you...how do you hold your rod?
Steve: My answer to that would be yes.
Tom: Okay, yeah, Typical fly-fishing answer, right?
Steve: No, it's another great question because there is no one answer. It really depends on where you're fishing, where I am in the drift, how much line do I have? How am I fishing my wets? So, there's a maneuver called the Leisenring Lift, which your listeners may have heard of, and they're named for James Leisenring, one of the...another giant in the pantheon of American wet fly fishing. So, the Leisenring Lift is also...it's a very misunderstood presentation. People think it involves when you get down at the end of your drift, you're raising your rod tip. That's not the Leisenring Lift.
Don't get me wrong, that's a great strategy. I was out with a client last week and we caught a trout exactly by doing that. But the Leisenring Lift involves...it's a short line presentation, you probably have about as much fly line out as the length of your rod, it's almost like Euro nymphing in a way. And with the Leisenring Lift, you're making a cast upstream as far as you can get that will bring your flies right down into the lanes that the fish is feeding at and you're introducing no tension at all to the line. However, you're immediately lifting your rod tip up at a 45-degree angle off the water, and you're tracking that fly through the drift.
And when the fly gets exactly opposite you, you do what I call checking the rod. That is you no longer track the drift. You hold that rod static and now the current will bring those flies up. And what you want to do with the Leisenring Lift is you want those soft tackles to come rising up right where that fish is eating just like an insect coming off the bottom. That's the Leisenring Lift. So, in that case, I'm holding my rod at a 45-degree angle. I think, generally speaking, my presentation angle is much lower than that. Sometimes when I'm on the dangle, which is the position of the flies directly below you, when I'm on the dangle, my rod angle is even lower, almost parallel to the water, which almost seems counterintuitive. If you get a sharp strike or a hit, you seem like, "Oh, boy, there's so much tension there, you're gonna miss the fish."
I don't set, you know, my...I'm not necessarily holding on to the line and if you have your drag set right, the fish hits the fly, it's going to cushion the blow. But when I'm on the dangle, I'm doing...if I think there's a fish or a pod of fish right below me, I'm going to do all kinds of things to animate my flies. This goes back to the question you were asking about, you know, moving the flies unnaturally across the current. So, I may...as I mentioned before, I may raise and lower my rod tip slowly, I may throw mends two or three feet to either side of me, which is going to cause those flies to swing across. Again, it may not necessarily be what the bugs are doing but it may be all that you need to do to goad the fish into striking.
You know, it may see that fly and think, "Yeah, maybe I'm interested in that. Oh, now it's moving and getting away." You know, sometimes a little motion like that. You know, there's another move that I read about in Ray Bergman's book, "Trout," called the hand-twist retrieve, and that involves when you're on the dangle, you raise your rod at about a 45-degree angle, and you retrieve the line by slowly wrapping it around your wrist. And I hardly ever fish my wet flies like streamers, but it's a very slow retrieve. And again, I don't do it a lot and it doesn't work all the time, but it works enough for me to, you know, want to have that in my presentation arsenal. And again, when you're doing that hand-twist retrieve, because you're holding the line tight, you've got to have the rod tip up at a 45-degree angle. If you get one of those Titanic-crushing hits, you want the rod tip to be able to cushion, you know, the blow of the fish striking.
Tom: George Daniel uses the hand-twist a lot. I noticed going fishing with him, he uses it an awful lot when on the dangle. So, yeah, it's a good...and there's nothing that moves the fly quite as slowly and erratically as a hand-twist retrieve. It's a good thing to know.
Steve: Yeah, Bergman talks about that too. He said, "You think you're going at a steady pace, but you're really not." And it's almost like a herky-jerky kind of thing.
Tom: Yeah. Let's talk about hook setting because people often miss a lot of strikes on a fish that takes downstream on a tight line. So, let's talk about hook setting or not hook setting, you know?
Steve: Yeah. Yeah, it's another great topic. So, when you're wet fly fishing and you're doing a downstream presentation or down and across presentation, even though you're throwing mends and you're trying to, for much of the drift, have some kind of slack in the line...this is gonna be a staggering contradiction right now. Even though you're trying to have slack in the line and not have it, you know, dragging across the current, it's still a tight line presentation. Okay? It's tighter than you think. You're always in really good contact with your flies. So, because of that, okay, when the fish hits your fly, I think we as anglers, we immediately want to give it our best largemouth bass strip set, you know? Our best tarpon strip set or, you know, even raising the rod tip, and it's so often a fatal error.
Tom: Yeah, it is.
Steve: You know? Ask me how I know, Tom. And I teach this, okay? And every year, I don't know how many fish I blow because I want to set the hook because I felt this big hit and you just do it.
Tom: It doesn't work very often.
Steve: You know? Eventually, you get it. Eventually, you get it. And, you know, when I'm giving a lesson, so often the fish hits, they miss it, and they look at me and said, "Oh, I set the hook." And I say, "Listen, listen, don't worry about it. Here's the beauty of it, you just fooled a fish on a wet fly. You know, that's 90% of it right there. All right? Now you're going to figure this out quick." So, I always go back to the Atlantic salmon fishing in the highlands, where you're swinging flies for Atlantic salmon, and the ghillie, they'll tell you up there when you feel the hit on that swing, where they say you're supposed to say...well, for many years, for decades, you said, "God Save the Queen," and then you set the hook, all right? Now, it's "God save the King."
My little joke about that is I say, "So, we're in America, we don't have a king, we have a president, and depending on your politics, you may or may not want God to save the president." And I get laughs...I've been telling that joke through four administrations now and it doesn't matter who's in the way, it always gets laughs. So, I got this one from Dave Hughes who wrote a great book called "Wet Flies." Dave Hughes said, "When you feel that hit, ask yourself the question, "Are you still there?" So, that's what I teach my students. You're swinging, you feel that hit bump, ask the question, "Are you still there?" And in the time it takes you to answer that question...ask that question, the trout will answer and the answer is always yes.
In that time, the trout will have turned away with the hook neatly impaled in the corner of its mouth, they'll hook themselves. Right? Because when you're doing that presentation and you set the hook...here's another deep dive, AHE Wood, the Scottish salmon angler, he called it...you know, when you think you get a short strike, you actually did it, you tighten too quickly. And he equated it to someone puts a fork of food in your mouth and, you know, the resting of the fork on your teeth, that would be the hit you feel, and then what you're doing by setting the hook is you're pulling that fork out before the mouth can get closed. So, if you don't do that, you are going to catch so many more fish.
Tom: That's a good one.
Steve: So, that's the thing to do. Ask the question, "Are you still there?" And, you know, so many times, fish, just because they're feeding with confidence, they get to the fly before you can and they hook themselves before you can even react. Yeah, it's a skill, it's a muscle memory that needs to be unlearned. But if I can do it, anyone can. So, there you go.
Tom: Well, you know, it's one of the ways if I'm taking someone who wants to go trout fishing and they don't know anything and I know they're gonna miss dry fly eats and nymph eats, that's what I will do. I will give them an unweighted nymph for a wet fly and I'll put them in a raffle and I'll just say, "Okay, just cast across the current and let it go." And they don't have to set the hook and they catch fish.
Steve: Yeah. I'm jumping back to another question...the original question you asked about soft tackles too. One thing we haven't talked about is fly placement on your team of three. And that's a question I get a lot. Is that all right to talk about?
Tom: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, people will ask that question. Definitely.
Steve: Yeah. You know, what fly do I put and where? So, again, I'm not right, this is just what I do. So, on a three-fly team, okay, my top fly, the top dropper is almost always a soft tackle of some sort. And the reason for that is to me, a soft tackle most closely imitates an emerging insect. And, you know, think about...go back to...you know, I call this the what and why of the wet fly. What are we doing with wet fly fishing? We're trying to duplicate subsurface insect life, emergers, cripples, egg layers, you know? And even we're attempting to imitate subsurface death. Drowned terrestrials, okay? Spent spinners, all right? Stillborn mayflies, stuff like that.
So, the reason I almost always put a soft tackle as my top dropper is that's probably where an emerger is gonna be, right? It's gonna be up in the water column and that fly will always be closest to the surface. Even if I have a tungsten bead head fly on point, that top dropper is going to be closest to the surface. So, that's a great place for a soft tackle. The middle fly, the middle fly I called it a wildcard. If you play poker, you know wildcard is a dealer's choice. It can be whatever you want. Well, this fly is whatever you want. And I like to...I always make it a high-confidence fly.
I like to match the hatch...we haven't even gotten into matching the hatch with wet flies. I like to make it match the hatch fly. And as a point fly, I always make that my heaviest or biggest fly. I just find the rig is easier to cast with the largest or heaviest fly on point. So, here's an example of a recent setup I had. So, right now we've got Hendricksons going on on the Farmington and I was out fishing them last week. So, my three-fly team for the Hendrickson emergence was my top dropper was actually a caddis pattern because Hendricksons get all the juice this time of year, there's also a pretty good caddis hatch going on. So, I had a caddis soft tackle as my top dropper.
My middle dropper was another soft tackle, it was a Hendrickson soft tackle. And then on point, I had a larger, it was the biggest fly, a Hendrickson classic American winged wet. And it was really interesting to me because the one day that I did really well with wet flies, they were all over the Hendrickson soft tackle that was the middle dropper, wouldn't touch the caddis, wouldn't touch the dark Hendrickson winged wet. And that dark Hendrickson winged wet, I have caught hundreds if not thousands of trout on that pattern. But it's really interesting. This is the other argument for the three-fly team, because you give the trout a choice, right? And unlike people, fish will always tell you the truth, they will always tell you what they want.
So, you know, by covering my bases there, for whatever reason, that's the fly that trout wanted. And if I may, I want to jump back, you talked about hook sets. There's a time when you're wet fly fishing, where you can actually pound that hook home and not ask, "Are you still there?" And that's with an upstream presentation. Sometimes you're presenting upstream in a feeding lane and I almost always do that when I've got actively feeding fish. And when you make a cast with a three-fly team upstream and you're not using a retrieve as in stripping or even a hand-twist retrieve, what you're doing is you're gathering line and slack line at the speed of the current, if that makes sense.
So, if I make a 40-foot cast upstream and I do nothing, that line is going to...my fly line is going to start to belly and twist and turn and it's going to end up...you know, if I stood...if it was directly upstream of me, it would end in a pile at my waist right? Or hit my thighs. So, I think we can all understand why that's bad for setting the hook. So, what you're doing is you're gathering that line at exactly the speed of the current. And when you're fishing wet flies upstream, one of two things is going to happen. One is you're going to see and feel that take, bang. And because it's coming towards you, you're still going to have some slacks, you can just strip set that hook home, you're not going to drop the fish.
The other thing that happens, and this is really cool, and I love when this happens, you're fishing upstream and the fish is feeding with such confidence that it will softly take the fly. And this happens to me every season, I'm fishing upstream to actively feeding fish, and I see...I don't feel anything, I don't see anything. But I see a flash subsurface and I make a mental note, "I've got to put a cast over that fish." And then moments later, I realize I've hooked that fish. He actually ate my fly and I just never felt it, he took it so softly and gently. There was no reason for him to be, you know, violent in his take. "That's just the bug like all the other ones I'm eating," and he took it. And that's when...and sometimes in takes like that, it's really important...it's good to get some kind of float paste and grease the tip of your line because sometimes your line is your strike indicator. It's moving downstream and then all of a sudden, it's not moving, set that hook. Right?
Tom: Yeah, you don't have to put a bobber on.
Steve: No. No.
Tom: All right. Well, what have we missed? We certainly have covered some really good stuff. I'm sitting here taking notes.
Steve: Yeah, a little bit on gear maybe.
Tom: Yeah, yeah, sure.
Steve: You know, when I speak at the fly-fishing show, I make a little joke about, you know, you want to know what kind of rod do...and there's all kinds of...there's dry fly rods, there's Euro nymphing rods, there's streamer rods, you know, "Is there a wet fly rod that I need?" And I make a joke about, "We're just a few 100 feet from brand new, all these gleaming rows of rods there, and I don't want to disappoint you, but probably what you have is fine for wet fly fishing." But be it far for me to be a killjoy, you know, I'm not a gear junkie, but if you are, I can make some recommendations and, you know, there's no one size fits all solution. But I like a longer rod and I like a softer rod. So, something 10-foot is going to serve you well.
I use a 10-foot-5-weight. It's a medium action. Actually, I have...and I have my dad's old cane rod that I had restored. I'll actually use that for wet fly fishing sometimes because the next point I want to make is whatever rod you're using for wet flies, it's got to have two characteristics. And one is that it's one that you find easy to cast or a pleasure to cast, and the other is that it's got to be one that you feel confident throwing mends, a good mending rod. I feel like when I'm using my dad's cane rod, it's not ideal in any kind of fast-moving water or if I think I'm going to be running into some bruiser size fish, but I almost feel like I'm using a sorcerer's wand when I have it.
It's almost like I need to think...I just need to think where I want to throw the mend and it's translated through those ancient cane fibers. It's a wonderful treat to mend. So, whatever rod you're using, make it fun to cast and good for mending. Because one thing we didn't mention with the three-fly team is...you know, the question I get is, "How do you stop a three-fly team from tangling?" And the answer is don't fish a three-fly team. You're always gonna...I always get tangles, every year.
Tom: Yeah. Or don't false cast.
Steve: Well, there you go. And there are ways to mitigate tangles, and this is why I say get a rod that you have a really good comfortable smooth casting stroke with. So, when you're dry fly fishing, there's a thing called a pile cast. You want your line to land in a pile. When you're nymphing, there's a cast called a tuck cast. You want the apparatus up in the air and then, boom, tucking right down into the water, okay? Both of those death with wet fly fishing, big trouble. You want that leader to lay out flat on the water. So, as you said, minimize your false cast. I think it was Joe Brooks who said, "Three false casts should be enough, two is better, and one is perfect."
Tom: Yeah, yeah, that's my philosophy too, never more than three ever.
Steve: Yeah, and flies in the water catch more fish. I'm going to jump on that in one second. You want to minimize the false cast, you want to open your loops a little bit. And the other thing is if it's a really, really windy day, a really gusty day, you know, you may want to rethink if you're gonna wet fly fish or if it's gusty, wait between gusts. Just wait. You know? I tell clients all the time, "Wait, it's gonna be over in 30 seconds, and then we'll have a little bit of calm and that's when we make our cast." You know? And to the point of casting, I like a floating line, I like a double-taper floating line. That serves me well with that. What did I just...I just said I wanted to talk about something and I forgot what it was. You got me so excited about wet flies here, Tom.
Tom: It'll come to you, Steve, it'll come to you. Let me see what other questions that I think I should ask. Oh, you know, the one thing for fishing three wet flies also, it's kind of nice to use some two-handed casts like, you know, a snap T or a double spey, you know, with a single-handed rod when you're fishing one and maybe two wet flies, but boy, it's not so much fun if you're doing it with three wet flies. You're gonna tangle.
Steve: I love that you brought that up too because all these wet fly things we're talking about right now, I use these in my streamer fishing. Whether it's for smallmouth trout or striped bass, I use these in my striped bass fly fishing all the time. As a matter of fact, I was fishing a team of three soft tackle striper flies for stripers before I ever did it for trout. I learned that from Ken Abrams, just a great...we can do that on another podcast.
Tom: All right, okay, okay.
Steve: But yeah, a lot of times my clients will say, "I want to roll cast," and I'll say, "Okay, but you've got to make a perfect roll cast." Okay? And I don't like roll cast in any kind of wind. I like to pick the line up of the water with one back cast and then, boom, get it out there. Open those loops. Again, that's why I like the double taper line. I think it makes life a lot easier. And I'm also a big fan of...we want to enjoy ourselves when we're fishing, you know? If you're miserable but you're casting, you're not having fun. I thought of one thing I did want to mention, which was the scenarios for fishing wet flies and you'd mentioned that one when there's nothing going on. I love wet flies for that. That's one of them.
But the two others are, which are closely related is...and I would suggest to your listeners, really embrace...I'm not a bug guy, I'm not an entomologist, I don't know all the Latin for everything but I have a really good idea, I think, of what hatches when. Time of year, time of day conditions, okay? You should know that blue-winged olives are very likely to appear on a damp day, you should know when the sulfurs are going to start popping on your rivers, things like that. So, the other two scenarios that I love to fish wet flies are pre-emergence and then during an emergence. So, for example, using the Hendrickson hatch, which is going on right now on the Farmington. The river gets so crowded, people will start showing up around 11:00 or 12:00 for a 2:30 emergence.
Some people will just stand in the water and wait. And it's gotten to the point where I come to a pool and I'll ask people, "Do you mind if I just walk through here?" And most people are very agreeable to that because nothing is going on. But I know something is going on underneath, you just can't see it right now. And because I know the hatch window for Hendrickson is typically around 2:30, I want to be fishing subsurface around 1:00 p.m. And it doesn't always happen but sometimes, you walk through and you can turn to the dry fly anglers and say, "You're gonna have a great hatch," because you're catching fish. Creatures are stirring underneath that, you know, you don't know about, you can't see.
And the other thing is during an emergence, I feel like during most emergences, when you see the river boiling and simmering, unless you see duns being eaten off the surface, they're eating emergers, they're taking them just below the surface. And that is the single best time to be fishing wet flies. Match the hatch, we didn't talk about that. Match the hatch, whether it's Hendrickson, sulfurs, caddis. If it's summertime, you could have sulfurs, you could have isonychia, you could have midges, you could have a terrestrial, that's a great time for a team of three. Pick one of each, right? Pick what you think the trout are most likely to be feeding on and throw it out there and present it like the naturals are behaving and hold on.
Tom: Yeah. All right. Well, we have gotten some really, really good stuff here today and I want to thank you for sharing all these great ideas. You've certainly given me some confidence to go out and give it a try. And I'm gonna modify my leader and my technique a little bit after talking to you, so thank you, Steve.
Steve: Well, it's my pleasure. I love fishing wet flies, I love talking about wet flies, I love teaching people about wet flies.
Tom: Really? Really, you do? Really?
Steve: My enthusiasm, I did not do a good job of tempering my enthusiasm. What you say is absolutely spot on. All of this, it's great to talk about, it's great to listen to this, but you've got to go out and you got to practice it.
Tom: And it's just another arrow to put in your quiver. You know, it's just something else...I mean, like most people, I don't stick with one method. I go back and forth all day long with different methods, and this is just one more thing to try when other things aren't working.
Steve: I've modified what I carry in my vest now to include...among my fly boxes, I've got another fly box that's just full of wet flies that I give away on the river because...you know, especially now, it's hard to go wrong with a hatch like the Hendrickson. And I'm telling you, I get out of the water and people follow me and, "What were you doing?" and "What was that fly?" and "Is that a wet fly?" And so, I got my little container of wet flies that I hand out and you too can be that angler if you learn how to fish wet flies.
Tom: Well, that's very generous of you, and appreciate that gesture to other anglers.
Steve: Well, you know, if you're looking for a good ending quote, another great quote from Syl Nemes is...he said, "If one is not..." I don't have this in front of me, but it's something like he basically said, "If you're not an absolute grouch, you'll meet a lot of nice people on the river." If you just open your heart a little...you know, I'm big on angler courtesy, I'm big on sharing water. Fly fishing should be fun. I was so excited to do the podcast just because, again, I love teaching people. So, hopefully, this helps.
Tom: I think it's going to help a lot of people. So, Steve, again, thank you for sharing your knowledge and taking the time to talk to us today.
Steve: It's my pleasure, Tom. Thanks for having me.
Tom: All right. Thank you, Steve. Bye-bye. 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 at howtoflyfish.orvis.com.