Seven Deadly Sins of Pike Fishing, with Josh Nugent

Mother mother ocean
I've heard you call
Wanted to sail upon your waters
Since I was three feet tall
You've seen it all
You've seen it all.
Tom: Hi, and welcome to the "Orvis Fly Fishing" podcast. This is your host, Tom Rosenbauer. And this week I have a guest who's been on the show a number of times before, and his shows are always super popular. His interviews are always super popular. My guest today is Josh Nugent from Out Fly Fishing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. And Josh has been doing a series of podcasts with me over the years called "The Seven Deadly Sins of Nymph Fishing, The Seven Deadly Sins of Sight Fishing for Trout," I think was one of them, but they've always been super popular. He thinks it's a title, the clever title. I think it's because Josh is a great, great interview. Anyway, this week the topic is "The Seven Deadly Sins of Pike Fishing." And boy, this is a great podcast if you're interested in catching northern pike on a fly rod, which are very exciting fish to catch on a fly rod.
Josh goes through the correct tackle to use, the correct leader, which is, you know the correct bite guard to put on there and where to find them, what flies to use, what kind of retrieve to use. He really goes into all the details of pike fishing. Josh has done a ton of pike fishing, both guiding and personally. So, I think you're gonna get a lot out of this podcast if you've ever been interested at all in fishing for northern pike, this is the podcast for you. All right, let's do the fly box first before we talk to Josh. And the fly box is where you ask me questions and I try to answer your questions on the air if I can. You can send your questions to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. and you can either just type your question into your email or you can attach a voice file and if I think it's valuable to other people, I'll read it on the air.
Without further ado, let's start with the first question. And this is an email from Patrick. "I've fished local streams on Long Island, New York for trout. I've only been fly fishing for two years and love it. I have an Orvis Encounter, 9-foot, 5-weight, it does a fantastic job with trout. I decided to get a 9-foot, 8-weight Orvis Encounter to be able to fish some bigger fish in the Catskill Mountains. After purchasing the rod, me and a buddy decided we were gonna do a trip upstate for the salmon run in late September. He told me I might wanna get a better rod, or at least a better reel with a more advanced drag system. Is this true? In your opinion, will the quality of the cheapest rod from Orvis work on a large salmon?" Well, Patrick, a couple of things here. First of all, you said you got an 8-weight to fish the waters in the Catskills, unless you're going for smallmouth bass or carp in the lower Delaware below the trout water, a 9-foot 8-weight's pretty heavy for the Catskills.
You know, most people use a 904, 905, or even 3-weight rod, so, I'm not sure where you're gonna use that in the Catskills. It's quite heavy unless you're maybe early season streamer fishing, I guess, an 8-weight wouldn't be bad, but for the most part, it's gonna be quite a heavy rod for the Catskills. Regarding the salmon run, yeah, these are big fish with a lot of muscle and you know, they take a fly when they're fresh from the lake. They're really bright, they're really hot and you're gonna need a pretty beefy rod and a reel with a good drag system for those salmon. Lots of rods are broken trying to land king salmon in these rivers. So, my advice for the salmon would be either a 9-weight or a 10-weight rod for those fish.
You certainly don't have to go to the upper price range in Orvis rods to get a rod that'll handle these salmon. But it needs to be a 9 or a 10. The higher-end rods, the ones that are made in our own rod chop or ones that are more expensive, are gonna be a little more durable and a little bit stronger, you know, at the extreme end of things when you're really putting pressure on a fish. But I think, you know, with careful playing, you can certainly handle these fish with a less expensive rod. You do need a reel. You do need a good reel with a good, strong drag for these fish. I would suggest either a hydros reel or a mirage. And the exact size is gonna depend on what line you're gonna use, what rod you're gonna use in line. But I would go with either a mirage or a hydros reel for those king salmon. They're bruisers and if the water's high and fast, you're gonna see the line peel off your reel very quickly. And it's gonna be a battle to the end. So, you're gonna need a heavy rod and a heavy reel for those fish. And your 8-weight is probably not gonna cut. It might work okay for some smaller steelhead in that river, but not for the king salmon.
"Hey, Tom, it's Scott from Mississippi. Love the podcast, you're the man. Really was hoping you could help me with this. I'm ashamed to admit it, it's kind of a problem. I've really become obsessed with Rabbit/Zonker strips lately. Every fly I've tied has had some form of magnum zonker strip, micros, cross cuts, groovy strips, got some magnum cut rabbit with flashy boo bottoms. Everything I'm tying is just rabbit fur and I don't know what to do. My EP fibers have dust on them. I haven't tied a clowser in months. I was hoping there was something you could do to help. Is there a support group? Something you could recommend? Anything to get me away from this obsession? I'm just gonna sign off and hope for your help."
Well, Scott, I don't know what to say. I don't know of a support group, but maybe you'd like to start a zonker support group and see how many members you get. Maybe you ought to go on Instagram or Facebook and start a support group for zonker addicts and, or rabbit strip addicts and you know, see how many people you get interested. I'm not gonna join. I still use other things. I use a lot of rabbit drips too, but I still use other materials, so maybe you should get out of that rut. But thanks for your call.
Here's an email from David. "I have recently started tying my own flies and had a quick question regarding mayfly wings. I see a lot of people referring to what they deem the wing component of their flies. For example, the post material for a parachute. I was wondering if this is really perceived as a wing by the trout. In the case of parachute-style flies, is the post really imitating a wing, considering that there are usually three to five turns of hackle obstructing the post material? I've seen tiers put a lot of effort in splitting their wings prior to posting on certain patterns, and it doesn't make much sense to me.
Also, I've been tying my posts with bright red CDC and green New Zealand wool, and these upper Delaware trout don't seem to mind too much. This has me thinking that most mayfly wings in fly tying are actually not perceived by the trout unless it's a downed wing spinner style. And so, more serve as strike indicators for us humans. Is it just the surface impression of a fly imitation that really matters since upright wings on duns don't actually contact the water? Or am I wrong here in overlooking how trout see through the window? Would appreciate your input when it comes to the efficacy of your fly patterns when it comes to wing materials/colors."
Well, David, there is a lot to unpack here, and I'll try to go through it bit by bit. First of all, in a parachute-style fly, if a fish is looking straight up and it's right underneath the fly, it can see the wing above the water. And the wing actually... You know, if you look at those diagrams and some of the underwater photographs that have been taken, the fish first sees the body in the surface film, and then it also sees the tops of the wings in the upper part of the window. And then when the fly gets directly over the fish, depending on how deep the fish is, it can see everything. It can see the legs and the tail and the body and the wings a little bit, but the wings are a little bit distorted. Now, parachute-style flies actually make this a little bit more realistic because you've got the legs of the insects spread out underneath the body, and the fish is gonna see the wings through the impression of those legs, and they're usually twitching and moving a little bit.
So, the parachute style fly actually really well imitates the legs and the wing of a mayfly. Now, does it matter? It's a good question and I think that sometimes it does and sometimes it doesn't. I don't think we'll ever know for sure. Certainly, wingless patterns do work, flies with just hackle or flies that are trim flat. But do the fish take the flies that are trimmed flat for a spinner? I don't know. Is that wing important? Probably sometimes it is, maybe not. I know that when fish are used to seeing spinners and let's say there's a spinner fall when it's still pretty bright out, when the fish can see pretty well, and I've put orange posts on my spinners, I think, and this is only a guess, that it seems to turn the fish off that red posts. Now, as you get closer to dark, when the fish can't really see that well and they just see the impression of the surface film, I think the red post doesn't matter at all, but I think maybe it does at times.
And another thing is the reason for cocking the wings is that it helps the fly to balance and land better on the water. Those v-shaped wings act like kind of a little parafoil that helps the fly land right side up. That being said, if you've looked at a lot of mayfly hatches, you know that sometimes the duns get knocked over and the wings are actually in the surface film. In fact, people tie what they call knockdown duns, where they want the wing to be sideways, and they want it to look like the mayfly has been knocked over. And the wing sits in the surface film because the trout know that that's easy prey. That fly isn't gonna go and fly away. So, you may wanna try some knockdown duns. But I'm with you, I think that most of the time the post that we use is for us and not for the fish, so that we can see those flies on the water.
You know, it'd be nice to have a wing that is realistic in color for a mayfly wing, yet still has the brightness of a red post. And I don't know how you do that other than, you know, have a bi-colored wing somehow. But anyway, I think a lot of the wings is for us so that we can see them on the water. We'll never know. But I would experiment. I would experiment with some different color posts. I would experiment with different kinds of posts and just see how the trout reacts to it and experiment under different light conditions because it may vary with the light condition. So, basically, the answer is, I don't know, but I'm with you. I think that the most valuable part of the wing is for us to be able to see the fly on the water.
Here's an email from Philip. "Thank you for all you do for the fly fishing sport in the podcast. I've learned so much from it, and I'm still learning. My main question deals with line management and line shooting from a canoe. When you fish from your canoe, do you strip line into the canoe or in the water? When lake fishing, I find it easier to strip into the water, but that hinders my ability to shoot line. When I strip into my canoe, I shoot line much better, but my line gets tangled with my anchor, gear, paddle, shoelaces, etc. Any tips, hints, or suggestions on how to fix this? One side question. I'm not a fly tire, I just got a batch of new flies, but one fly hook was pointing well away from the shank, so I bent it in a bit. Should the points be parallel to the shank or pointing slightly in toward the shank? If you purchased flies, what would you be looking for?"
So, Philip, regarding your canoe situation, there's a couple of things you can do. One is you can get yourself a stripping basket and that you would put, you know, between your legs in the canoe or actually in your lap but it might be a little too high in your lap, but you could put the stripping basket between your legs and strip line into that. But an easier way to do it is what a lot of people do, is they just take a piece of mesh, just a piece of cloth or mesh, and they lay it on their lap and then they lay it over the anchor and all the gear and stuff so that your line is protected from that stuff. So, you know, you could use an old towel if you wanted to. But a piece of mesh is a little bit easier to use and to work around corners and edges. So, either a stripping basket or a piece of mesh in your canoe should solve that problem.
Regarding flies, if you buy a bunch of flies and one hook looks bent in a particular direction, yeah, it probably wasn't supposed to be like that. Most of the time you want the point of the hook to be parallel to the shank. In most hooks, that's where you want it. Now, in some hooks, the point curves in by design particularly a lot of barbless hooks, where the point comes in at an angle of, I don't know, 10 degrees or so in from the horizontal line of the shank. And those hooks hold really well. They're designed that way though because they don't have a barb. That little turned-in point will help hold a fish a little bit better, and they're very, very effective.
So, you know, and generally, you want the point to be in line with the shank, parallel to the long part of the hook. But some styles of hooks, it's gonna point in a little bit. It should never point out. And if you do have a hook that gets bent, you can carefully with your forceps, bend it back into shape. If you're careful, it'll probably be almost as strong as a brand-new hook. I bend them back all the time and I can't remember having bent a hook back into shape and then having it break on me. So, anyway, hope I answered your questions. Let's do another phone call, a serious one this time.
Nick: Hi, Tom. A question for you about leaders. I fish a number of the Eastern Tailwaters that in the fall especially, have pretty low clear water situations and really command a long leader, you know, 12 feet, 16 feet sometimes. And I find that the store-bought version of like a 12-foot leader, of like a 5X, 6X tidbit have a really tough time getting the tidbit to turn over, especially in a little bit of wind. I've reverted to basically taking like a 9-foot 5X and adding 3 feet, 4 feet, 5 feet of heavy butt section to it. And then just going down to a lighter tidbit, that seems to work really well for me. But I'm curious if there is a store-bought tapered leader version of that. I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen at least, you know, a store-brought tapered version that has the heavier butt section to really get out there. It's still just fine to add the butt section, but I'm curious if you have any other solutions you'd recommend. Thanks.
Tom: So, Nick, those longer leaders are going to be tougher to turn over for sure. Sometimes a little bit more of an abrupt stop on both your back cast and your forward cast will help that leader turn over, kinda even shock it a little bit on the forward cast, will help that longer leader turnover. But there's more air resistance in that system with a longer leader, more air resistance than your line. You are gonna have a little trouble turning it over. A heavier butt section is definitely a good idea. If you're taking say a 9-footer and you wanna make it into a 15-footer, I would go a thousandth of an inch or 2 bigger than the butt section of your existing leader or the same diameter.
But I think lately I've been going to a little bit heavier material, a little bit bigger in diameter to increase the length of my leaders. And rarely you can find a knotless tapered leader longer than 12 feet. But they're really tough to find. I think Scientific Anglers has a 14-foot leader. I know I have one. I don't know if they still make them. I looked on their website and I didn't see them, but I have some that I got before that were 14 feet long. But I think you're better off building your own leader. So, you know, it sounds like you're comfortable with blood knots. I would lengthen my butt section a bit, you know 3 feet or so, and then I'd lengthen the tippet a little bit. Most tippets that come with knotless leaders are a little bit short, I'd go with maybe a 3-foot tippet on a long leader like that. And yeah, it's not gonna turn over all the time, especially in the wind. You're gonna have trouble turning it over if you've got wind blowing at you. But that's not always such a bad thing because sometimes you want slack in your leader to avoid drag.
Here's an email from Brian, from Maryland. "I have not had time to do much trout fishing this summer, but my wife and kids out of town for a week, I was able to get out to a small tailwater relatively close to home. Most of the fishing was with a dry dropper setup. I tried using beetle and ant patterns, but because I wanted to go small, my biggest problem was how to see the fly. I finally had to switch to a high-vis mayfly or elk care caddis pattern to be able to see the dry fly. But the issue, of course, is that we're not really in mayfly or caddis season on my local streams at this point. But even then, I still struggle with seeing some mayfly in caddis pattern. So, my question. When fishing a dry fly, like a small ant or beetle, or even a Griffiths gnat, what do you do to see the fly? Do you ever use a yarn indicator with a dry fly? Is there something I'm missing?"
So, Brian, there's a number of ways to tackle this. One is to take that bigger, more visible fly, which, you know, this time of year you might wanna use a small hopper instead of a, you know, Elk Hair Caddis or a mayfly because it is gonna be terrestrial, and they may have seen hoppers. And then tie a piece of 5X or 6X tippet to the bend of that bigger dry fly, and put your smaller dry fly on there. So, your bigger dry fly is both gonna act like an indicator if they take the fly, it'll twitch a little bit. And also it'll give you a really good idea of where that smaller fly is so that you can set the hook when you see a rise anywhere near that bigger fly. Yarn indicator is okay too. You wanna use a really small yarn indicator. You know, just a little bit of fuzz of either a Dorsey indicator that you make yourself or one of the New Zealand strike indicators. But you wanna make it really tiny. Orvis doesn't sell it, but there's a fluorescent red and make them in other colors, kind of like a waxy stuff that you can put, you know, a couple of feet up on your leader to be able to see where your dry fly is.
Or you can use stuff called Strike Putty, which is a removable strike indicator. It's like a floating putty and just use a little tiny dab of that on your leader. But actually, you know, don't expect to always see your dry fly when you're fishing ants and beetles. And I think you're often better off using one dry instead of two. It just creates tangle problems. And sometimes it's not quite as subtle or you're not quite as accurate with two dry flies. It works. But I prefer to fish one dry fly at a time most of the time. And, you know, you're just gonna have to learn to estimate where that fly is on the water, make a few practice casts off to the side, and kinda slap your fly down hard so that you can see where it lands to get an idea of how far from the end of your fly line that fly is. And then when you make your ordinary delicate cast, you'll have a better idea of where that fly is. But you're not always gonna see those little low floating flies. And that's okay. None of us can see our dry flies all the time. Just look for that rise or a little bit of disturbance anywhere near where you think your fly is. Well, there's a bunch of things you can try. Hopefully one of those will work.
Here is an email from Jaylen from Oregon. "Just a quick comment. I listened to you chat with the Idaho boys on the "Foul Hook" podcast. It was funny to hear you talk about some different things than you generally do here on your own podcast." Yeah, that's why I go on other people's podcasts, so I could say different things. "I had something to add to the why are we as fly fishers obsessed with trout conversation. I've thought about this as well and agree with you guys, just have something to add. One thing that always brings me back to trout fishing is the way a trout can look so unique. You can catch 10 brown trout in a day, and each one has a different pattern, color scheme, or even shape. Each fish feels special in that regard. You can catch 10 whitefish or 10 carp in a day. And while they're fun to look at, they all look almost identical. You could argue that smallmouth bass have unique markings, and you'd be right, but not quite like trout do."
But Jaylen that's a great thought. And, you know, unless you're fishing for hatchery fish where they're all gonna kind of look alike. If you're fishing in a wild trout population, it is really cool and exciting to see all the different colors and spot patterns on trout. And that's something that I take delight in, and I never really thought about that. So, that's a really great comment and I'm gonna think about that more when I'm fishing.
Here's an email from Mike from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. "Hi, Tom. I have a question regarding strategies for fishing in the rain. Here's an example. Today I was fishing one of my favorite pools for brookies in a small river near my house and was doing well with dry flies. For a solid hour, I was landing fish after fish, then suddenly the heavens opened, and down came the rain. I waited out the deluge under a tree until it slowed to just a drizzle and then went back to what I was doing previously at these dry flies. But the fish were not biting anymore. I switched to nymphs and even tried some small streamers to get the fly lower in the pool, but still nothing.
It's like the fish bolted when the rain came. The spot I fish in this river is a nice deep pool in between too narrow and shallow entry and exit points. So, it doesn't make sense to me that the fish would leave the safety of the deeper pool to go downstream. But maybe I'm wrong. I guess my question is, what's the best strategy for fishing small rivers in the rain, for speckled and browns? I live in Cape Breton where we get plenty of rain. So, I appreciate any advice you could offer on this subject."
Well, Mike when you're fishing in the rain, you're gonna find all sorts of different situations. At times, you're gonna find that when it starts raining the fish feed even more aggressively. The only thing I can think of is that there's probably a hatch of some sort of insects that were active when it wasn't raining. And when the rain started, it depressed the hatch, and the fish or the insects stopped hatching. And so, the fish said, "No, there's nothing here anymore. I'm gonna go settle down at the bottom of the pool." And yeah, I think you're right. I don't think they left the pool, but they just hunkered down to the bottom of the pool. I have found that in my experience if the fish are feeding, when it first starts raining the fish will stop for a couple of minutes because it is something new, it's something different.
But then often I find that they'll come back and start feeding as soon as they get used to the rain hitting the water. And again I've found that oftentimes it'll make a different insect hatch and the fish might feed even heavier. So, I don't think you're gonna see that same situation all the time, but it's gonna vary. The nice thing about fishing in the rain is you won't have anybody else around. Of course, in Cape Breton, you probably don't have too much competition. But I would keep fishing in the rain. It's not always gonna depress the fishing. Sometimes it's gonna make it better. And if the water gets a little dirty, starts to go up, and gets a little dirty after a downpour, one of the best things to do is put on a streamer. Because the bigger fish will come out and start looking for minnows and crayfish when that happens.
Here's an email from Patrick. "Let me begin by echoing the thanks of many others for your continued contribution to the sport of fly fishing. You are to my generation as Lefty was to yours. My question relates to the length of the dropper line. I know conventional wisdom is that the tippet length should be 1.5 times the depth of the water. But this presupposes that the section of stream yard fishing has a relatively even depth. The small mountain streams, I typically fish in the mid-Atlantic alternate between deep pools, narrow chutes, and shallow riffles. I'm curious to hear what strategy you employ when using a nympher dry dropper in streams with significant and frequent variations in depth. Are you constantly adjusting the length of your dropper tippet or do you have some tips for the lazier Anglers amongst us?"
Well, Patrick, thank you for that compliment. Anytime somebody compares me to Lefty, that's a huge compliment. He was an incredible human being. I don't think I'm quite up to the Lefty level, but I appreciate the compliment. You know what, I'm a lazy Angler like you, and I have found in fishing small streams that you don't need to be one and a half times the depth of the water. You don't need to be near the bottom. Most of the fish in those small streams get their food from above. It's mostly terrestrial insects, stuff that's fallen in, and they're gonna be looking up. And the water is shallow enough, so they're probably gonna see your nymph even if it's quite a bit above the bottom. So, what I do is I set my nymph dropper at kind of an average mid-depth in the water.
And I don't change it much. I find that, you know, between riffles, and runs, and shallower pools it does okay. And I don't have to bother changing it every time the water depth changes a little bit. I think the fish see that nymph most of the time, particularly because it has a dry fly splatting above it. And I think the dry fly sometimes attracts the fish to the nymph as well. So, I wouldn't worry so much about that. When you get to a really deep plunge pool, here's what I do. When I get to a really deep plunge pool that, you know, maybe like 4 feet deep, a lot deeper than the water I've been fishing. I'll make some casts with that standard-length dropper, that fairly short dropper.
And I'll make a bunch of casts in the pool. And then if I really think there's a fish in that pool and I wanna scratch the bottom and get down a little bit closer to the fish, then I will tie on a longer dropper. You know, it's a simple thing. You gotta tie two clinch knots. It doesn't take that long. You can actually save the short piece of dropper and use it again if you want. But, you know, I don't bother changing that much unless I got a really, really deep pool. So, I think you're fine being lazy. I'm lazy and it works out okay for me.
Luke: Hey, Tom, this is Luke. I live up in Charlotte, North Carolina, but just recently moved here from Florida and still go down there quite a bit to do some tarpon fishing. Usually, for smaller tarpon, anywhere between the 5-pound to 25-pound range, which is just about where I like to catch them. That seems to be the fun spot for me. And I've gone out with a few guides, both in the Florida area as well as abroad. And it seems like there's this obsession with creating and building your own leaders. And I understand, you know, there is an art to that and a lot of science behind it. However, I've always been a big fan of just using the tapered leaders, you know, mainly from Orvis, just the standard 20-pound tapered leaders and then putting about somewhere between 8 inches to 12 inches of a bite tippet, whether it be 25 pounds to 40 pounds depending on the size of the tarpon I'm targeting.
And I've always had really good success with that setup as far as my ability to cast and lay the fly out. And it seems to work pretty well for me. So, my question is, why is it that every time I go with a guide or I see them on YouTube or they're discussing things, they're talking about the art of building your own leaders and how it's important to do these stages and make them how they wanna make them. The other thing is, I get it, they do add a couple of feet if you build them. You know, a lot of these guys that are building leaders, they're going 10 feet to 12 feet where my setup's usually about 9 feet. So, I get that might help a little bit with super spooky fish. So, that's part one of my question.
Part 2 of my question is, if it is important to build your own leaders and it's better than going with a prepackaged tapered leader in a bite tippet, what are some tips on casting those, you know, 10-foot to 12-foot leaders? I usually, I'm using either an 8-weight or a 10-weight Helios 3D if that helps. And I usually use the igniter fly line. So, yeah, that's kind of my question for you. Appreciate the podcast. And also a big shout out to the team at the Orvis store in Charlotte. They've been really helpful in explaining and helping me explore some local waters in the North Carolina area as well. So, thanks again, looking forward to hearing your answer.
Tom: So, Luke, there's a couple of reasons why tarpon guides are obsessed with building their own leaders. One is that there aren't really any good class leaders, shock leaders on the market. You really have to build your own. And even if you go fishing with a tarpon guide and you bring your own leaders that you've tied or that you bought somewhere, he's probably gonna change them anyways. Because he wants his own leader on there. He doesn't want you to lose any fish. And he knows exactly what he wants in a leader and he trusts it. So, he builds it himself. And, you know, these guys do this every day and they're really quick and efficient and really good at tying those knots. The other reason is that a lot of saltwater fly fishers believe that if you don't have a separate IGFA-rated class tippet in your leader, you're not really fly fishing.
That's neither here nor there, but a lot of people believe that you gotta have a class tippet in there, or you're just not fly fishing. And so, a lot of the guides agree with that sentiment. And so, they have to have a leader with a class tippet, with Bimini twists in it. And this is just not something you're gonna be able to buy commercially. Maybe a few local shops might sell leaders like that. So, the guides are gonna build their own leaders. And, you know, again, it's not that hard and it's part of the craft and the skill of being a fly fishing guide. Regarding tips on casting those longer leaders, the same thing I said in an earlier question.
You wanna make sure that you have a really good abrupt stop, particularly on your forward cast. And, you know, it's just casting practice. Your basic fly cast has gotta be good for casting those longer leaders. You can't get too sloppy and all of us need to practice our casting. So, just a better casting form. Watch your casting form and a little bit more abrupt stop on your forward cast and you should be able to straighten those leaders well. The other thing is you can maybe use a little double haul. Sneak a little double haul in there or even a single haul on the forward cast that'll sometimes help that longer leader straighten.
Here's an email from Mike from Albany, New York. "I really enjoyed your recent podcast with Jeremy Prine, as I love to search out Blue Line headwater streams in the Green Mountains for brookies. It did though raise some questions based upon experiences I've had the past couple of years. I'm hoping you might share your thoughts regarding the following questions. One, in a few of these streams, mostly 10 feet to 15 feet wide, where there are pools and small riffles run, which appear would hold brookies. I might catch one brookie in the lower end of the stream and not get a nudge in the next several pools or riffles runs as I move to the upper stretches of it. Wondering if it could be there are just very few throughout the stream, maybe they don't make it further upstream. Curious as to your thoughts on the brook trout population in these types of streams as opposed to some of the lower streams they flow into that consistently hold many more brookies. Number two, does the brook trout population fluctuate from one year to another in these small streams? I ask as some of these were more productive last year than this year."
Now, Mike, those are great questions. I find the same thing. And generally in these really tiny brook trout streams what I find is generally one decent fish. By decent fish, I mean, you know, bigger than 6 inches or 7 inches long in each little pool. And there might be some little, little tiny trout in with that fish. But it generally won't hold more than one. That fish is gonna be king in the pool. There isn't a lot of food. There aren't a lot of places to hide in those small streams. And, you know, pools that look good to us, sometimes are just not right for those little brookies. It's a very extreme environment and they need to have everything just right.
The other thing is, somebody could have caught one of those brookies in those pools that didn't hold anything on a worm. Or maybe a predator, like a mink got the brookie that lived there. So, yeah, I find the same thing, and makes you scratch your head, but you know, the fish know what they want and you gotta just keep moving. You gotta cover a lot of water. And yes, the brook trout populations in these little streams do fluctuate quite a bit. The streams, again, they're a very extreme environment. Some years they go dry. The fish move throughout these systems. I find that brookies in these little systems do move quite a bit up and down. They move down when the water gets too low and they move up when the water gets too warm and sometimes they get caught in the middle and they're in trouble.
But they do move around. I think they migrate a fair amount. And they do have year class dominance because brook trout live two, three, at the most four years. So, you know, you might have a really good spawn and a really good success rate in the hatch of brook trout population one year. And then the next year there might be a drought and a lot of the habitat disappears and the fish get preyed upon by predators. And then it takes a year or two for the population to come back. So, they do fluctuate quite a bit. And I've experienced the same thing. Last year was quite a bit more productive than this year in our Green Mountain streams. Although with this high water for some reason it's gotten a little better. I don't know where those fish were before, but they seem to be appearing with our higher late summer water. So, yep, that's one of the delights of brook trout fishing is that you never know what you're gonna find.
Here's an email from RK in New Jersey, "Tom, what detrimental effects, if any, does ammonia have on breathable waiters? I think all of us would prefer to use natural products on our gear rather than harsh chemicals. I know ammonia and bleach are natural, and when diluted, the harsh effects can be mitigated. But I don't know how breathable waiter material reacts to such compounds. Obviously, bleach seems like a no-go due to its bleaching effects, but is ammonia feasible and a better idea?" Well, RK, I'm not sure about ammonia, but I wouldn't use it. I wouldn't use any kind of harsh chemical on waiters because you got a breathable membrane in there. Their proprietary breathable membranes, and they may be different from manufacturing to manufacturing. Ammonia is a fairly caustic chemical, so, I wouldn't put ammonia on your waiters.
If you wanna wash your waiters, there are some things that are recommended by the tech fabric people. One is Ivory Snow Powdered Laundry Detergent, although I've found that that's really hard to find these days. I don't even know if they make it anymore, but if you can find it, Ivory Snow Powdered Laundry Detergent. Two other products are Revive X Synthetic Fabric Cleaner and Nick Wax Tech Wash. So, those you can find in, you know, mountaineering stores or online hiking stores and stuff like that sell those products. Those are recommended for washing breathable waiters, don't need to use ammonia.
And you can machine wash them on gentle cycle cold water. You know, use the right detergent, don't use bleach and you wanna hang them or tumble dry but you wanna tumble dry on a very low setting. And, you know, once a year is really all you need to clean your waiters unless you're getting into some nasty stuff. You know, they generally recommend washing waiters once or at the most, twice a season. And you can tumble dry those on a low setting and that'll help reactivate the waterproof membrane and the DWR coating on the outside of the waiters. So, those are waiter care instructions.
Peter: Hey, Tom. I'm relatively new to the sport and have been going out a bunch and not catching much. So, one thing I was wondering is how much timing matters. If the sunrises at say, 6:00 a.m. but I can't make it out there till 10:00 a.m., is the bite gonna be much worse than if I'm able to get out there just before sunrise? And, you know, similarly in the evening, if I'm out there at 4:00 p.m. but the sun's not setting till 7:00, is it worth my time going? Or is the bite gonna be significantly worse? Also, curious if that varies based on if you're fishing in still water or rivers and creeks. Thanks so much.
Tom: So, Peter, I think timing is everything. It's difficult to predict when the right timing is though. Trout are cold-blooded, and insects are cold-blooded. So, both of these things, the activity of the trout and the insects is gonna depend on water temperature. And what I have found over the years is that a gentle rise in water temperature is often a stimulus to insect hatches and trout feeding. You know, it's always good fishing at dawn, at first light, and at last light. Those are always good times of fish. There's less bright light. Both the insects and the trout are gonna be a little bit more active and those are always good.
But I have found a real peak in mid-morning, in most streams. You know, once the early season is over, the early season when the water temperatures are gonna be like 40 at night or 45 at night you need that water temp to get up around 50 or a little bit above and that usually happens in the afternoon. But in the summertime, your coldest water's gonna be at dawn. And then there'll be, you know, a sunny day, there'll be an increase in water temperature, and around 9:00, 10:00, 11:00 in the morning, I sometimes find the fish feeding even better than they fed at first light. And generally, in the summertime, you know, anytime from noon to evening is gonna be okay, but not as great. But, you know, you can never predict it. You know, there are people that believe in the major and minor feeding periods in the Solunar Tables, the orientation of the sun and moon in relation to the earth. And they think that there are times that stimulate fish to feed.
So, you can look at the Solunar Tables. I have friends who swear by them. They seem to sometimes predict feeding activity, but, you know, generally, go fishing when you can, and make note of the conditions and the water temperature and whether it's rising or falling. And then use that to predict the next time you go out. But, you know, it's always interesting and there's no future in trying to predict how the fishing is gonna be at any given time. I can give you a few rules of thumb, but I'm probably gonna be wrong. So, just get out there and fish whenever you can and enjoy it.
All right. That is the fly box for this week. Let's go talk to Josh about the seven deadly sins of pike fishing. So, my guest today is Josh Nugent, and Josh has been on the podcast a number of times. And Josh has had some of the most popular podcasts. I don't know if it's because you're really good, Josh, or because of your titles, because you always do a seven deadly sins of sight fishing or nymph fishing, but whatever.
Josh: Probably just the titles.
Tom: Yeah, probably just the titles. No, Josh is the owner and chief bottle washer at Out Fly Fishing in Calgary and has been guiding for many years, right?
Josh: Yeah. It's 20-something now, 23, I think 23, 22. Yeah.
Tom: 20-something years. Yeah, Josh is one of the most savvy individuals in the world of fly fishing. So, I always enjoy having you on and you're always fun to talk to. So, today we're gonna do the seven deadly sins of pike fishing, which is interesting for you being more known as a trout guide, but I know you love your pike fishing. Do you guide pike trips?
Josh: We do, yeah, and it's one of the things that's probably set us apart a bit like June is our month where our rivers are all blown out from spring runoff typically. So, it's hard to guide, but it's also a month that, like Calgary gets a lot of conference traffic. And so, you get a lot of people that are in town for conferences. And they're like, "Hey, we wanna fish." And if you can't take them trout fishing, you're just kinda telling people, "Sorry, maybe next time." But June is a perfect month for us to be guiding for pike because like Calgary has some exceptional pike fisheries near it. Like, I've guided up north, I've done flying lodges. We do an annual trip every year where we take groups up to Northern Saskatchewan on a DIY flying trip.
I spend a lot of time chasing pike but some of the biggest, heaviest, largest northern pike you can find in North America are in the Southern Alberta region because we're so much further South that these fish have five months longer growing season than the lodges have guided at up North, right? Because the ice goes on much later and it comes off much later. Or sorry, comes off much earlier than the numbers work. So, they've got an extra five months that the lake's not iced up, and that allows them to grow much larger. So, you might have the same, you know, 40-inch fish that's double the body weight here, that it would be up North. You can get, you know, a 48-inch fish that's double the body weight of a 48 up North.
So, we've got some really, really impressive fisheries here. The difference is they see more pressure. So, our big pike are a lot more like fishing muskie. It's not throwing a fly and, you know, you're constantly pulling giant fish off. It's one of those, like, they'll follow, they'll see the boat, they'll flare, they'll follow, they'll see the boat, they'll flare, they'll follow, they look at your fly and go, "I've seen that too many times." They flare. So, it's certainly more of that fish of 10,000 casts than it is, you know, the whole like, "Oh, pike will eat anything." You can throw in, you know, a tin can with a hook on it, you're gonna catch them.
Tom: Yeah. Well, that's good because a lot of people that listen to the podcast probably fish pike in areas that are pressured. So, that'll be good. All right.
Josh: Yeah, exactly.
Tom: So, deadly sin number one.
Josh: Deadly sin number one that I'm gonna kinda talk about as almost a prerequisite to pike fishing is understanding is fish handling. Pike are known, especially for, like, I grew up fishing for pike as a kid. So, many people do where you're throwing spoons and everything and small piker known as some of the hardiest, toughest fish, kinda like bass. You know, there's a reason that you don't see the big tournaments for trout is that they would never survive that fish handling that, you know, a large amount of bass can handle. People see small pike as being exceptionally rugged, hardy. You know, for someone who's trying to keep a fish, to eat it where it's legal to do so or they're trying to harvest a fish, pike can be a hard fish to dispense. You know, there's all sorts of stories of people that, you know, they'd bonk their fish. It's sitting at the bottom of the boat two hours later, all of a sudden they see it swimming around in the water, they'd sneaked in the bottom of the boat.
Or people that ice fished and had a pike that was sitting on the ice and it's frozen and they throw it in the sink and all of a sudden as they're going to fillet this fish, it gets water on it, it thaws out and it starts swimming around their sink. Small pike are known for being... Like, it happens, it's crazy. Small pike are known for being super hardy, but the big fish that's been like, the largest fish that we're targeting those are the females. Those fish are so delicate. Like, they're more delicate than a gray loom, than a golden trout, than any fish I've put my hands on. Like, at one of the lodges I guided at guests weren't actually allowed to hold fish because if you drop one of those big fish in the bottom of the boat and they thrash around it all, even if it swims off, like when you're up at those lodges and you go back to the lake in the same bay every day, any of those fish that you saw dropped in the bottom of the boat, they don't make it.
Tom: Wow.
Josh: They're such a delicate fish. And it's such a big fish. It's such a mean-looking fish, such a strong fish when you fight it that everyone assumes they're just as hardy as the little fish. Like, by policy and by practice when we catch big fish, and we've got a fish over 40, I go to shore, we get it out landed at shore. If you're taking pictures, we take pictures in the water so that if that fish slips out of your hand, it swims off in the water. It doesn't fall in the bottom of the boat. It doesn't ever go up on shore. They are such a delicate fish and they're far older. Like, I've asked a lot of biologists what age we can expect the big fish to be. And one of the most common answers I keep getting is, "Well, we don't really know, but they could be over 40 years old." And you're like, "That's not super decisive."
But these are old fish that we need to handle very, very carefully. And so, that's the number one sin I would talk about. Like, they're such an incredible fish. And to feel the power in a fish that's over 4 feet long and just the muscle in that fish and to watch that fish swim off is such a cool feeling. But like, don't bring them to the boat unless you absolutely have to. And even then be so careful with those fish. If one of those fish thrashes and comes out of your hand... Like a fish that's, you know, high 20s to 30 pounds, that's gonna be hard fish to control if that fish starts to thrash around. So, when you're holding its tail and you're holding underneath their gill plate, you gotta be careful. The other thing, you see a lot of the pictures where people are holding under the belly.
That I don't know if it's doing something to their air bladder, but I commonly see fish that they're strong. They seem healthy, they swim off swim, but they've got so much air in them that as they swim off, you'll see them actually flip upside down and they're stuck upside down. And I know pike act like a turtle that they'll swim fine, upright, but then when they try and stop, they've got that air in them and they can't actually sit down on the bottom like a big fish. After you release it, it usually swims off and then it sits and sulks for a bit and goes, "I can't believe I fell for that. That's so stupid. I'm never eating that again." But if they can't sit on the bottom because they've got that air in them, they flip upside down and then they float to the surface and kinda like the turtle thing, they just totally stopped struggling.
So, that fish that was swimming fine when it was upside down, they can't. And if they're stuck on the surface with a white belly, birds are gonna find them and hit them and they're not gonna make it. So, avoid putting that hand under the belly and pushing up on the belly because I've just seen that too many times where people are trying to hold this big fish and it's a hard fish to hold. If you're talking about a 20 to 30-pound fish, that's not an easy fish to hold. Not for a photo. Like, when you see people with their arms stretched out, that's not a fish over 20 pounds because no one's holding that out without, you know, faltering.
Tom: Yeah. So, take a picture in the water.
Josh: In the water. Leave them floating. Just have that eye out of the water. Keep that gill under the water the whole time, other than when your photographer's ready, one, two, three, lift, right back in the water and you're good to go. They're amazing fish, you have a picture of them, but just that fish handling, there is a misconception that they are the strongest, toughest, hardiest fish out there. The small ones are the big ones of the most delicate fish that I fish for and that I encounter. And that's all over the world. And salt water, fresh water, I have not seen another fish that is so delicate and needs to be treated so, so carefully. Now, that's the number one now.
Tom: Are you gonna talk about where to hold the fish and the use of things like jaw spreaders and all that as we get into this? Or should we address that now?
Josh: Yeah, I'll talk about it now with the fish handling still. Because the biggest thing, like on a big pike, all your control and your way to hold them comes from the tail. You use that knuckle at the tail, kind of that wrist of their tail. You hold from the tail, all your control of that fish comes from the tail. You can hold that fish by a tail while it's in the water. And then if you slide your hand underneath the fish, like just between its gill plates underneath there where its pec fins are. It's kind of a hard part of its body where the two-pec fins are. If you support with a palm of your hand underneath those pec fins, you can lift that fish just so the eyes are out of the water so you can get that photo and then float it in again.
A lot of people like to do the gill plate hold where you slide your hand underneath the gill plate and hold it out. I don't bring fish into the boat, so we don't do those holds. I don't like to hold fish vertically because like their bodies normally float in the water. So, if you're holding with your hand under the gill plate, their whole body isn't supported doing that. So, I don't like holding them that way. I always prefer to have them in the water. And if you're gonna do a lift and hold it out of the water, an inch above the water is locked and then get it right back in the water, make sure those fish gills stay submerged through the whole process other than like you can talk to the cameraman or have whoever's taking your photo and just do a count ready on one, two, three, lift, click, fish is right back in the water. It doesn't even need to be out of the water for a full second.
Tom: Yep. Okay.
Josh: When it comes to the jaws spreaders, I have a lot of people asking about like, "What do you use for jaws spread?" I'm not a fan of them. Because they can puncture through the roof of that fish's mouth and put holes in their mouth. If you put your hand underneath their gill plate on their jaw, a pike is a big enough fish and their gill plate is strong enough that there's separation where if you follow that jawline, you can see well away from their gills where you're not touching their gills or their gill rakers. If you hold from the jaw there, you can open their mouth and another person can go in with pliers. It's not the easiest thing to do if you're by yourself.
You can't do it by yourself because I do it quite frequently for sure. But it's one of those things where jaw spreaders, you can do two things. I've seen people put electrical tape on them so that it's not a really sharp point to those jaw spreaders. Or I've seen people take plastic beads. And so, if you take a plastic bead that has a hole in it that's just a little bit too small, heat up the end of the jaw spreader, so it's hot, don't touch it with your hands at that point. But then you can force the plastic bead on there. I've seen people do it with wooden beads, so it's a rounded end. That will then save the fish's mouth where you're not poking holes through it.
Most of the time I just use my hands, open the jaw with my hands, and like I'll open with the left hand and go in with pliers right-handed. Or most of the time if we're fishing for really big fish, I'm either guiding or with other people. And then I'll just have somebody else that actually goes in and grabs. If you use those hook-outs, those long-handled hook-outs, your hand ends up being absolutely nowhere near the fish's teeth.
Tom: Okay, cool. Great.
Josh: So, hooked-outs are super important for proper handling. If you're using hemostats or if you're using regular shorthand pliers, your hands are gonna be too close to the fish's teeth and you're gonna be concerned and you're probably gonna take way more time handling that fish than you needed to because you didn't have the proper tools at the time. So, like either, there's some automotive pliers that are like 18 inches, 20 inches long. Those also work well. Those or the hooked-outs that have the handle, it looks kind of like a pistol almost in the shape of it. And then it just has the little jaws on the end. Those work really well to keep your hands way back from the fish's teeth. There's a lot of teeth in there. You don't wanna put your hands in it.
Tom: Nope. You will get cut.
Josh: Yeah. And some people aren't aware of this. If you do get cut, make sure you wash your hands out good. They have an enzyme... Wash your hands out good. I taught you it, eh, Tom?
Tom: Yeah.
Josh: Wash your hands well because there's an enzyme in their saliva that actually prevents clotting and so you'll bleed and bleed and bleed and keep on bleeding for a long period of time unless you really wash that slime out of there.
Tom: Okay. Yeah. And there could be bacteria there too, so it's a good idea to wash it out anyway. All right.
Josh: For sure.
Tom: Deadly sin number...
Josh: So, that was number one.
Tom: Number one. Deadly sin number two.
Josh: Deadly sin number two, we'll kinda start a little bit about setup and talking about leader setups. A lot of people have the wrong leader setup and that is kind of pulling the carpet out underneath them before they even start. So, wire is quite crucial. Like, a lot of people, when you tell them you're pike fishing, they're like, "Well, how do you do that? Don't you need a wire?" And you do. And then you can buy now, regular tapered leaders that are store-bought leaders that have either titanium wire or stainless steel wire on the end of them. They're a thousand times better than what they used to be. Twenty-plus years ago, I used to tie and sell pike leaders because there weren't good ones that were store-bought. There were like three stand stainless steel wire ones that you hooked one fish and even if it was a small fish, it looked like you were fishing with a slinky on the end of your leader.
It was so coiled up so quickly and it just threw the action of the fly off. You would strip and the coiled part of your leader would just kinda absorb your strip so it wasn't translating to the movement of the fly. It became very obvious in the water. Instead of this thin strand of wire, now you had this coiled-up round leader. It's worth spending a little bit of money on better leaders. Like Orbit used to have them, that you guys got rid of them, those poly leaders that had that nickel-titanium wire. That nickel-titanium wire is so strong, it is so resistant to [inaudible 01:02:07]. And it's super, super thin, so it's very hard to see. And even like around us, we're dealing with heavily pressured fish. So, if you have thick stainless steel wire that you know is seven or eight strands and it's really obvious in the water, you could get a lot of fish that'll see that and they'll flare on it.
And there's gonna be people that hear that and go, "Pike will hit anything." If you're fishing at a Northern lake that they've never seen another angler, you probably don't need to worry about any real technical aspects because they've never seen anything else and they'll probably hit everything. But if you're fishing so many of the lakes that are readily accessible, you can drive to, there's lots of other anglers on them, they get fish year-round. We're seeing a lot of fish that are getting very smart and they're much, much more line-shy.
Even up North where we did our flying trip, we're up at Creek Lake, like it's kind of middle of Saskatchewan and it's not up by the border. It's far enough North that there's no roads into it. You have to take a float plane into it. We do a hosted trip there each year that's a DIY trip so, it's not guided so, people can fish on their own schedule and do their own thing. Those fish don't see a lot of anglers. And even there, the tie-able wire, like the SA tie-able wire was using that. And now Tony's brother Yosh who were in the same boat as me at the same time, and they were fishing with a nickel titanium that was way thinner. And it was probably a 3 or 4:1 difference that they were out-fishing me in the boat and when I switched it was fish for fish. And so, the only difference, I kept the same fly, we were in the same boat, we were fishing in the same water. It blew me away that there was that big a difference. And some people go like, "What about fluoro? What about stainless steel? What about nickel titanium?"
All the different options, I've tried all of them. I used to run when I was guiding, I would have one person on fluoro, one person on tie-able wire, one person on a stainless steel wire, one person on nickel titanium. The nickel-titanium wire has outfished everything that I've tried. Fluorocarbon can be all right, but 100-pound fluorocarbon on a big fish, you know, you can do 50, 100 fish at a time and it'll be fine, but you get that wrong fish that hits the wrong tooth at the wrong angle. And I've seen so many big fish that still get lost on that hook set where you just strip set and it just hits the tooth and it slices. And now that fish of a lifetime that you wanted, you lost.
Yes, you've landed 100 fish in a row that were 24-inch to 36-inch fish, but you hook that 46 and as you strip that, it just slices right off on a tooth. So, I don't use fluoro anymore. You can get those big musky leaders that are pre-rigged, that are 200-pound fluorocarbon, that stands out in the water and is way more obvious than the nickel-titanium. I opt for the nickel-titanium. I far prefer that nickel-titanium. It doesn't impact the sink rates of your flies as much as those giant heavy fluorocarbon leaders will either. I think it's way harder to see. I choose the nickel-titanium every time. It's not easy to tie with. If you tie it on with an Albright tier leader, it works well. There's so many options now where you can just buy a pre-rigged leader already and you don't have to worry about any of that stuff. But I would definitely use a snap on it. Those cranes, not crane snaps. What are the snaps called, like the ones that come on the Orvis predator leaders that you guys sold? What are those snaps called?
Tom: Yeah, I don't know, quick clips maybe. I'm not sure what exactly...
Josh: Quick clips. Yeah. I don't know the proper name for it and that's probably a mistake, sorry. But those, I mean they're what, a third of an inch, maybe half an inch long on a fly that could be anywhere from 4 inches to 12 inches. There's not a fish that cares that that snap's there. And I have seen so many people miss fish or miss opportunities because that fish followed, it followed, it followed. And they threw the same flyback at it. Instead of quickly popping the fly off, try another fly and you throw another fly. The biggest fish I've ever gotten in Southern Alberta, I threw to it three times in a row. It followed me three times in a row. It obviously likes something about that fly, but if it's following and not already eating that fly, there's something it doesn't like. And so, as soon as I took off that fly and put on the exact same fly in a different color, that fish ate right away or another fish did.
That's another story we'll get into later. But being able to change flies quickly is super important. So, if you tie directly to the wire and a fish follows, I've never seen anyone that's like, "Okay, I'm gonna cut this wire off and now I'm gonna tie another fly on and quickly cast to this fish again." They just don't, instead, they opt to just cast to that same fish again. And there's so many missed opportunities. The fish that follows and flares the boat is probably not the small fish. So, it's probably the fish that you're out there for. It's that fish of a lifetime that you really wanted to catch. Like, having the ability to pop that fly off and put another fly on quickly is super important. If you've got the room in your boat that you can have four different rods rigged up and you're just gonna reach over and grab another rod and throw that, you're still gonna have to strip all the line out. You're still gonna have a longer delay where you might not get that cast in time. Where people factor all that in and then they end up throwing the same flyback at that same fish again. When you can reach down, unclip it, throw another fly on, three seconds later you're casting a new fly to that fish, there's a much higher likelihood that you're gonna hook those fish. Especially those bigger fussy fish.
Tom: Great tip, great tip.
Josh: So, that's leader setups in a nutshell, and we get a ton of questions about that. If you're making your own leaders, make sure you use a heavy enough butt section and I see a lot of people that try and go with 20-pound. Sure you probably don't need even 20-pound for braking strength, but if you're throwing bigger flies, you want a heavy enough butt section. Like, I used to tie it out of a 40-pound butt section. And then I would put 30 and then I would put the wire on. If I was stepping down, like if I was running a lighter leader for poppers and stuff like that, I might've stepped down to 20. So, it wasn't so heavy to pull a pop runner. But now with the amount of foam and everything else we're using, that's really not an issue. A stiffer leader is going to help you turn over bigger flies and it'll make a big difference.
So, if you're tying your own leaders, definitely start with a thicker butt section, step it down to a lighter midsection. Like, the whole point of a tapered leader, whether we tie it ourselves or whether it's made knotless tapered leader, is that stiffer butt section is inherently stiffer. So, it's gonna force that softer, more supple section in front of it to turn over. That's what we want. If it's all the same thickness, if it's all the same stiffness and it has a tendency to wanna just land in a pile. We want the leader to turn over and stretch out. So, if you're gonna tie your own, just make sure that you taper it with a heavy butt section and then instill a stiff midsection with something that's not as stiff as the butt. There, leaders in a nutshell. Done.
Tom: Good.
Josh: Okay. Number three is fly lines. A lot of people end up using the wrong fly line that just, they end up fighting with the rod and fighting with the bigger flies and thinking, "Man, I did not enjoy that at all. I don't wanna do that" because they were fishing a line. I mean, you can match the size of the rod line to whatever size pike you're fishing for. There's tons of people and all that they're fishing a 5-weight per pike because the pike they have in this little pond or in this slew that they're fishing get up to 22 inches. That's a ton of fun on a 5-weight, if you fish that on a 9-weight, that's not gonna be a lot of fun, right? So, you do need to match that. But if you're using a 5-weight line that was intended for, you know, presentation purposes, you need mass to move mass.
So, if you've got a line that's intended to lay down very softly, it's not gonna turn over big flies well. And even if you go up to an 8-weight line, if you're 8-weight line was an all-purpose line that's meant to throw some trout streamers and it's meant to also do some bigger indicator fishing or you're fishing a line that just doesn't have a lot of bulk or mass in it. You're gonna have a really hard time turning over bigger flies and you might think that, "Well, it's too hard or I'm not a good enough caster." It had nothing to do with that. You were using a line that was working against you. If you use one of the lines that has a mass in it like you look at like the Orvis' bank shot.
There's a ton. It's like a football with dental floss on the back of it. Like, there's mass there and that's gonna move mass so you can turn over a bigger fly. So, the fly that you struggled to cast on the wrong line, you put it on the appropriate line and suddenly you go, "Oh man, this is actually enjoyable." In terms of that line, that is a great line, if you're fishing pikes somewhere where you're gonna be sight fishing and you're not doing a lot of false casting and you're not making a lot of long casts. But you see a fish and it's either you don't have great light conditions because of cloud or it could be really wavy. Like, in Southern Alberta, a lot of our big pike lakes are irrigation reservoirs, so there's no trees around them. So, it's windy just about all the time.
So, site fishing is really tough, but you're also doing a lot of blind casting into, you know, the likely spots. So, there, a line that has a longer rear taper is going to be a lot easier to control while you're casting. So, that bank shot that I was talking about is awesome for short-range shots or even long-range shots that you're gonna do on one false cast, maybe two tops. You're not carrying a ton of line. It's, "I see a fish, I need to deliver the fly quickly." Fantastic line for that. If you're trying to blind cast in blanket water and cover water methodically, it's not a great line because that dental floss with the football on the back. When you throw the football, sure. That dental floss isn't gonna create a lot of resistance, but now grab the dental floss and swing the football around, it's gonna kick in bock.
And so, if you're throwing a long cast, it's harder to control. If you go into a line like SA's tight and long as an example, that's got a longer rear taper. I like that so much better than just the Titan line because that longer rear taper is way more stable if you're boss casting a lot or if you're throwing a long cast. And you're just covering water. That longer rear taper does a really nice job of keeping big flies stable while it moves through the air. And now you can throw that 12-inch fly that you'd wanted to throw, that you tried it on another line and it was just a nightmare. Like, might be a dream to cast, but a nightmare's still a dream, right? And so, that's my standard line when people are like, "Oh, living the dream, Josh."
I'm like, "Yeah, well nightmares are still a dream. Nightmares are still a dream." So, like, we wanna make the casting as enjoyable as possible. I love casting big flies, I love casting big rods, chucking long casts, watching a 12-inch or 16-inch fly go flying 80 feet, 90 feet through the air. And people are like, "Did he just cast the whole chicken?" And I'm like, "Well, it's also part of a rabbit." I really enjoy that. But if you match the rod and the line to the fly that you're throwing, your life will get so much easier and it can be really fun throwing those big flies. But you need to have the right line for the application. And it's the same as 85% to 90% of the situations where I pike fish, that's a floating line.
Most of the time, especially when you're fishing in the spring the whole reason we're fishing in the spring so much is those big fish, they come up into the shells, like they're spawning as the ice is coming off or even under the ice and then they're sliding up into the shallows afterwards to warm up. And like they may have lost up to two-thirds of their body weight so, they're exhausted, but in very, very cold water, their metabolism is in the toilet. They slide into that warm water to kickstart their metabolism because when their metabolism picks up, now they can start to feed more. Now, they can start to put, you know, more body weight back on to recover from that very harsh lonely period.
Because you look at pike after like post-bond pike, they're nasty to each other. And I mean, you watch trout and they're biting each other and chasing each other around and you know, the males are competing for the females. They don't have the teeth that pike have on them. You see pike after spawn and they can be torn up like crazy and super, super skinny. So, they need to put a bunch of weight back on. They slide into that shallow water. That shallow water is gonna be a nightmare to fish with a sinking line or a sink tip line. Most of the fishing we're doing for big pike is in that 3 to 5 feet of water. They'll also transition, you know, a little later in that June, kind of into July for us here in that 5 feet to kind of 12 feet of water. And that's where a sink tip or an intermediate sink tip can be very beneficial. But it's matching the line.
If you're fishing flies that are loaded with bucktails, you might need to fish a type six sink tip because otherwise your flies is stuck on the surface. So, it's just a matter of understanding what depth that you need to be fishing and making sure that you've got a line that's appropriate. If you're fishing very slow, you know, you're gonna want a slower sinking line because the water's really cold. If you're fishing very fast, you might need to have a faster sinking line just to keep the fly at the depth you want so that you're not stripping that fly 2 inches underneath the surface.
Tom: Okay. Good.
Josh: So, that's kind of fly line in a nutshell. Yeah, the whole, like what line do I use for pike? It's when I'm in a boat fishing for pike, I'll have a floating line rigged up. I'll have an intermediate tip rigged up and I will have a fast sinking tip rigged up, all of those rods rigged with different flies. The fast tip will have a fly that's got like a lot of bucktails in it. Something that's a lot more buoyant that I wanna move a fly quickly and strip aggressively. That tip will keep it down, but still fishing 3 to 5 feet of water. The floating line is still the line that I use most often though. And if I was only getting one line, I would definitely get a floating line.
Tom: Okay. All right.
Josh: All right. So, our next deadly sin would be not changing flies. I've got a really good buddy and he's not gonna remain anonymous right now. I'm about to throw him directly under a bus. Steve Loocy. He is a phenomenal angler, a super fishy dude. And when we went up and we were filming at Cree Lake when we did our exploratory trip before we were going to bring clients up there and we were filming, I've never seen a fishery like it. I've never seen anywhere that has that type of genetics and that many just giant fish. After lunch on the first day, Tom, we did not cast anything that looked like it would be under 45.
Tom: Wow.
Josh: I've never been anywhere where you have that luxury because normally here if you get a 45 that's like the fish of your season or for a lot of people that's a fish of their lifetime. We couldn't even begin to count the number of fish that we hooked between 44 and 47. We counted 47s, but I mean we had 47s, 48s, 49s, even a 50. Like, it's a mental fishery. The genetics they have and the amount of structure and shoreline and bait fish. It's incredible. And my one buddy Steve did not change his fly for the first like five days of the trip because it was kind of that running joke of like, "Their pike doesn't eat anything." And he hooked tons of fish and he's a better caster than 95% of the people that I will ever see. That guy could chuck string, he could put the fly where it needs to go. He understands the fish's body language. He can read and react to a fish that's happy, to a fish that's losing interest.
And he did not land one of those 47-inch to 50-inch fish that first go-round up there. And that was a bit of a heartbreaker for us because like he's a super fishy dude and so many people got those big fish. The next year when he was back up there, when he was helping host that group, it's a DIY trip but we're still hosting it and looking after the people. He fished and he got those 47s, but he was changing his fly. Just because the fish is willing to eat your fly or just because a small fish is willing to eat your fly doesn't mean a big fish will. And if you're not getting the interest from big fish, change your fly. If you're getting follows from big fish and they flare, change your fly. And I've seen way too many people way too often like, "They're gonna eat it or they're not."
With pike that are pressured, I completely disagree with that. Sure, if you're somewhere that no one has ever fished and they've never seen another angler, or they see relatively few anglers ever, maybe it doesn't make a difference. And especially on little hammer handles, snot rockets, danger noodles, whatever you wanna call small pike, they're not as fussy. But if you're trying to target trophy fish and you get a fish that follows and flares, change your fly. The example I started talking about before, on one of our lakes here, I threw three casts in a row that a really big fish followed. And it was giant like I'm saying conservatively over 50. I made three casts, it followed in with flare. And on this lake, it gets a ton of pressure and the fish commonly flared about 30 feet from the boat. A lot of places, pike will swim right up to the boat and they could care less that the boat is there.
So, on that lake, you have to be able to throw long cast because if they're flaring at 30 feet from the boat if you're only casting 50 feet, you only have 20 feet of functional retrieve before that fish is gonna flare. And so, I changed flies. I kept the exact same pattern. I just went from the black, blue, and purple version, I was fishing and I put on a yellow-red because the fish obviously liked something enough to follow on three different casts. But it didn't like it enough to actually eat. So, I kept the profile, I kept the size, but I changed the color and I made one strip, and a fish hit immediately. The caveat there is it wasn't the same fish. I cursed that fish in my head so many times.
I was actually on the phone with a buddy who was coming on a hosted trip we were doing to Cuba. So, I've got my headphones in so I can talk to him wirelessly. My phone's just in my pocket. He's hearing the play-by-play of this big fish that's following. So, he's like on board with this and asking what's going on? Like, "Did he eat?" And I changed flies and I cast out and he hears this fish starts thrashing at the surface. He's like, "You got him, you got him." I'm like, "No, it's a stupid small fish." And I was so annoyed by that fish tank and I tried to horse this fish in because I just wanted to get it unbuttoned and cast out to that big fish again. When that fish got boatside and I'm like I put the boots to this fish, burnt my finger a couple of times. Because to me this fish was so small compared to that fish that I had just had to follow.
I just wanted him off the line. And I wanted to be out casting to that big fish again. When it got boatside and it's thrashing around, and my buddy's on the phone. And he can hear this, he's like, "I'll let you go so you can deal with the fish." And I said to him, I'm like, "Don't worry about it. It's a small fish. I'm just popping the hook." When I reached down and grabbed the leader and started sliding my hand down the leader, I saw how big that fish's head was in reference to my hand. And I said to my buddy, I'm like, "Hey, maybe I'm being dumb. I'll call you right back." And so, I went to shore, a tripod and a timer. I took one photo, popped the hook, jumped back in the boat, went out, and started trying to find that big fish.
And I didn't get that big fish. And I remember later that night I was sitting in my truck, I was like doing the beach pickle thing, just being a fish bum, slept in the back of the truck, was getting up the next morning to fish. And I looked at my camera and I looked at the photo and I was like, "Holy crap. That fish was way bigger than I thought." And I measured it on the rod at the time, but I hadn't actually brought a tape measure out. So, I took the tape measure out and measured it and it was 47.5 inches. It had crushed my PB but it was absolutely dwarfed by the fish that had followed me. Now, because it was obviously in the exact same location, I didn't cast somewhere else. There was a little weeded bed in the shell that I was casting to a drop where we went from 3 feet of water to about 6.5, 7 feet of water.
I cast in the exact same spot. You know, you will get multiple big fish that will hang out together in spring, later in the season, not so much. But in spring for sure. That fish had seen my fly on the other cast as well. The big fish followed. But by changing the fly, I got an immediate response. Like, it landed on the water, I stripped once and it just crushed that fly. If I'd kept casting that same fly, I don't expect that it would've hooked any fish. So, changing flies can make a huge difference and it can be really important too. Twenty years ago when I pike fished, there were very few people by comparison doing it. There were definitely the hardcores, there were some people like Rolf Fisher, Ann Schwab in Alberta here, that they kind of pioneered that and came up with some really cool patterns that I used to tie their patterns all the time.
But it wasn't that common. So, if you threw a fly, you probably got fish that had flared on every spoon, on every, you know, crankbait, everything else they'd seen, but they'd never seen a fly. So, they would hit it with reckless abandon. Then we started throwing bigger flies. When people started fly fishing more, you know, you would see people considering, "This is a big fly. Like, I've thrown a size 4 wooly bugger, but look at this thing, it's almost 3.5 inches long." You know, we got to the point that we were probably throwing commonly 14-inch to 18-inch flies. And those used to work really well. And on those though, I wouldn't fish those on an 8 or a 9 because you could snap an 8-weight past just trying to cast it. Those cast fairly comfortably on a 10 or 11. You do not need a 10 or 11 to land a 45-inch to 48-inch pike. But you need it to cast those flies.
Tom: Right. Yeah.
Josh: And so, fishing a fly that no one else was fishing, got a lot of responses and we would crush pike on big flies. But then one of the things we started seeing, we would hook so many fish that you started seeing anglers that were not fly anglers observing this and they were coming in or ordering on the online store on our website. They're ordering these like 15-inch, 16-inch flies, and then they were trolling them. They weren't fly fishing at all, they were trolling. And they did extremely well because again, it wasn't what all the fish were seeing. After a couple of years of that, those flies stopped being like silly effective.
You'd still get fish on them here and there, but if you're fishing what everyone else is fishing, you cannot expect a different response from everyone else. Like, what's our definition of insanity or stupidity, right? Doing the same thing and expect a different result. It was amazing how many people started getting giant pike when they were fishing for walleye and they were fishing this 2 and 1/2 inch, 3-inch long fly. Why? Is that the primary food source of those pikes? Probably not. But it was a safer food source, right? Because of everything that was 12 inches to 16 inches long was either, you know, a dead sucker that they'd seen on a tipper through the ice in the wintertime, or now it was one of these giant flies. Either being cast by someone or being trolled by someone, that was so commonly a dangerous encounter.
Again, this isn't a fish that lives three to five years. If we're talking about fish that's living in decades, there's going to be a learned response. So, if everyone is fishing big, fish a small fly. If everyone is fishing tiny flies, throw a giant fly. Like, throw something different, change a color. You know, as a general rule on dark water or dark days, I'll throw darker colors like blacks or dark olives or browns or, you know, black and blue, black and purple, something like that. On brighter days, white and red, yellow and red. You know, white and silver-like baitfish patterns. Like, mimic what they're eating. I've got a ton of big fish with clients on a muskrat fly that I tied. It comes out of an old mink coat that my grandma gave me that the moss started to eat the coat.
So, she gave me this like gorgeous treated mink, Tom, that it's like 3 and 1/2 inches to 4 inches long and you cut little strips and palmer it and it looks like a muskrat. I put a black rabbit strip tail on it. I even put little whiskers and hen ears and eyes on the thing. That thing took so many big fish. And still, the biggest fish I've guided was on that pattern because the treated mink would trap all these air bubbles just like a muskrat when they dive and swim underwater. And they've got, you know, the natural oils in their fur to repel the water. As they swim, they've got all these air bubbles that escape out of their fur into the water, and fish see that. And this treated mink did the exact same thing. It trapped all these air bubbles and as you strip these air bubbles would come out of the fly. It was super.
So, you can mimic what pike are eating. If they're eating ducklings in that pond or frogs, throw frogs or duckling. If all they're eating is other bait fish, throw bait fish. If you got lots of leeches, like you can match a hatch with a pike. You know, it might have hatched out of an egg and been a bird as opposed to a little insect. Don't be afraid to change up. Don't be afraid to change. You got size, profile, color. Maybe you've got the right profile and you've got the wrong size. Maybe you've got the right profile, but it's just the wrong color. You change the color and that can trigger a take. But it's why also what we talked about with the leaders, having those snaps on there so that you can change up will make a big difference.
Tom: Yeah. Okay. What number are we up to?
Josh: We're on number five, so that's four. I can still count that with my fingers on my hand. I don't have to take my shoes off yet. So, the fifth one, not changing your retrieve. So, I had a hilarious time. One time I was fishing with a buddy and this was back probably close to 25 years ago. It was before I had a drift boat and I would commonly fish for pike out of a float tube. On those southern irrigation reservoirs that have no trees around them, you're on the bald prairie and they blow like crazy in the wind. It's a really good leg workout. And it was a really frustrating day because you're battling waves and white caps and all that stuff. But one of the reasons that fishing there can be so much fun if you're fishing that early spring... This was back before we had seasonal closures, so it used to be open year-round, so you could fish right after ice out.
And so, right after ice out, after they finished flaunting, they're often really shallow water where you could try and sight fish for them in the morning or evening if it wasn't windy. But in the windy parts of the day, that became tough. But those fish were in water that was so cold like that water temp might've only been, you know, low 40s. So, that's really, really cold water. And those fish are super, super sluggish. They're not cruising, they're not trying to go look for food. They're laying like pikers and ambush predators. So, they'll slide up into the shallows and they'll lay in that sand trying to warm up, but they'll also hide like near the edge of a weed bed or in weeds or in lily pads and stuff. And they're trying to intercept bait fish or whatever it is that they're eating.
An interesting thing I learned about pike is their old factory receptors, like their ability to smell or pick up a scent in the water, they have to have water moving over them for them to actually be able to smell. So, if a pike is laying, trying to ambush and there's no flow to the water, they cannot smell worth a darn. So, there's certain stages and you ask a lot of ice fishers this and they get it because they're like, "There are times in the year where fishing tip-ups with dead baits work really well because the pike are actively swimming and cruising." While they're moving and that water's passing over that old factory centers, they actually pick up on scent very well and they seek it out. But when they get to a point that the water gets colder and they're not cruising and then they're sitting suddenly those dead baits don't work because they can't smell them.
We were hooking so many fish because we were literally doing a hand twist retrieve like you would do with a leech for trout. Where you're just slowly crawling the thing along the bottom and my buddy and I that day stopped counting after we had been well over 100 fish and it was just ridiculous the number of fish we were hooking, but they were on hand crisp retrieves. And we had another friend that joined us that kept going like, "That's ridiculous, you guys. Like, pike strip fast, they're an aggressive fish." He did not touch a single fish that entire day because he was stripping the way he had caught pike mid-June when the water temps were in the low 60s or mid-60s where pike are prime and they're super aggressive. When that water was in the 40s and like it's been almost 25 years and he still brings up that day, "I still can't believe I didn't catch a single fish" just because we gave him the fly that we were using. We moved and gave him the spots that we were using. We had anglers on shore that were casting smelt and it was legal to fish that there. They were casting and they kept getting closer and closer and closer.
At one point the guy casted so close, he bounced his giant weight and smelt off the back of my float tube. And I turned around and I was like, "Really, man. It's not the spot, right?" And this is the time of year that in that early time of year, those fish are not cruising, they're not moving, and if they're not moving they can't smell. It's where fly fishing can be so incredibly effective. Up at the lodge that I guided at, at Milton in Northern Saskatchewan, fly anglers would out-fish gear anglers like 10:1 unless the gear anglers were fishing soft plastics. If they fished a big smuggle or something like that where they could twitch it and stall it and it didn't have to move. But the problem with gear was not that they weren't gear anglers because a lot of the fly anglers I was guiding had never touched a fly rod before that morning. A lot of those gear anglers came up there with like $5,000 to $10,000 worth of lurers. They were dialed, they had that.
But right after ice out, when that water's super cold and those fish are extremely sluggish and they've lost a ton of weight after they spawn, they cannot afford to chase something and maybe not catch it. They don't have the energy left. They cannot afford to commit to chasing something that is not a guaranteed meal. A spoon, a spinner bait, a crankbait, a buzz bait, like you name the lure, it needs motion to impart the action into the lure. And so, that's why those are not effective at that time of year. There's lots of times of year that they are, but in early spring they're not. And you take that gear angler that fishes like a soft plastic worm or a sluggo or something like that where they can twitch it and that thing is gonna continue moving while it flutters and falls, but it's not moving away from the fish, you're able to keep the fly in front of the fish. That's why flies are so incredibly effective for big, big pike.
In the early season is they don't wanna expend a bunch of energy. So, I can twitch a fly that it only moved an inch and now it's gonna twist and flutter and settle back to the bottom and it'll take 5, 6, maybe even close to 10 seconds before it stops moving completely without ever being pulled away from that fish. And when it sits right in front of them and it's too easy to pass out, that's where you'll see them just inhale that fly and now they've eaten that fly because they didn't have to chase it. They didn't have to risk going after it. And if you're stripping quickly or you're doing long big strips, even if they're slow, if it's a 2-foot long strip now that fly is so far away from that fish that they're going, "You know, that's too big a risk. I can't lose any more calories chasing something I might not catch." They need guaranteed meals at that time of year.
Now, the flip side of that is as the water starts to warm up and their metabolism picks up, you can easily miss fish because you were stripping too slow. If you have a fish that starts chasing after your fly and it's coming in super hot and it's super aggressive and you're doing this slow methodical strip, you'll see tons of fish that stop when they get close to the fly and they're like, "That ain't right." I've never chased spray coming in hot and had it go, "You know what, you caught me, just eat me now" and give up. It doesn't, the prey starts swimming at a much faster speed. Just like you would if you were suddenly being chased and running for your life.
So, reading a fish's body language and seeing this fish is coming in super aggressive. I need to mimic the energy it's giving me by picking up the pace of my retreat. Changing your retreat can make a huge difference. And it's one of the things like play with it. I always start slow, but then until I've hooked fish or hooked big fish consistently, I'll always change it. I'll never forget a day I was on a lake, it was one of those southern reservoirs, a huge windstorm picked up. I'd been fishing fairly slow because the water was quite cold, but a big storm picked up and it went from like flat to white caps instantly. And these two guys were in a tiny little dingy that, you know, they are facing themselves and they're facing each other and their legs are crossed in the middle because the thing was built for like one 4-year-old child and you had 2 adult men trying to fish out of this thing. And they were trying to paddle and get off in these giant waves.
And despite the fact that like, you know, there's some danger to themselves, they thought that my line was out and they still had the courtesy to try and stop so that they didn't cross my line. And I yelled out to the guys, I'm like, "Don't worry, just get off. Like, I appreciate the thought but just get yourself safe." And I started stripping just as fast as I could just to get the line out of their way so that they wouldn't try and stop because they were getting blown across the lake. And they were fighting to get to shore. I was stripping as far and as fast as I possibly could and I had a fish hit me so hard it cut right through 40-pound wire.
Tom: Wow.
Josh: I have no idea how big that fish was but I had been fishing in that exact spot on a slow retrieve and not touched a fish. Just trying to get the fly outta the way for those guys. It actually had to be a little bit late. It couldn't be super early season because of the thunderstorm. And we don't get those like in May. So, it would've been June, so it would've been later season. So, the water would've been warmer until the fish's metabolism was obvious it wanted a fast retrieve, it ignored those casts I made with a slower retrieve and then it hit so hard and I was stripping so hard at the same time. It just sheared right through a 40-pound wire. So, changing your retrieve is super important. Base it off your water temps, but at the same time, if you don't know where to start, start slow and speed up. If you're around the fish that's sluggish and you start too slow, you can spook them. If you're around aggressive fish and you strip too slow, they probably won't eat it, but you're probably not gonna spook them by going too slow. So, I always start slow and go faster if I'm not getting responses. But that's where I'd kind of go from there.
Tom: Okay. Good stuff.
Josh: So, that's retrieves.
Tom: All right. So...
Josh: The next one is...
Tom: ...we're on number six, right?
Josh: We're on number six. The old trout set. Don't do it.
Tom: End of story, right?
Josh: Yeah, exactly. Moving on, we've covered that. Trout sets will cost people so many fish. One of the things that's so important to realize, yes, pike have reasonably large teeth, but what makes them such a kind of fierce predator is not the size of their teeth, it's the number of the teeth. If you open up their mouth and you look at the roof of their mouth, it is completely covered with hundreds and hundreds of pyramid-shaped teeth that are pointed in. So, when it grabs something, it can hang onto it and it can start to pull it into its mouth. It's just like Velcro. If you're talking about a fly that's anywhere from 4 inches to 16 inches, there's a lot of... Are you there, Tom?
Tom: Yeah, I'm here.
Josh: Sorry, I don't know what happened there. So, if you're dealing with a fly that's anywhere from 4 inches to 6 inches long, there's a lot of material in that fly. And when you put that inside a pike's mouth, it's literally like Velcro. They close their mouth on your fly. It's stuck there like Velcro. That does not mean that the hook is in that fish. All it means is the fly is in its mouth. It's up to you to strip set and get that hook into the fish's jaw. Step one is that pike with that fly in its mouth. Step two, you have to strip set, you have to have your rod pointed at that fly and at the line and strip hard to pull that fly. The amount of bulk in that fly. And I've seen so many big fish lost because someone set the hook by jacking the rod and now they're fighting that fish.
And they'll fight that fish sometimes for 45 seconds, sometimes a minute. And then the first time that fish opens its mouth, bam, fly comes flying out and they lose their fish. They're like, "What happened? I had tension." Absolutely you did, but you didn't have a hook set. And I have landed fish that had the tail of the fly stuck in the roof of their mouth and no hook in their mouth. They did not have the hook on the inside of their mouth. The hook was clearly 2 inches outside of their mouth. They had bit down on the tail of the fly. And just rabbit, I'm not even talking about a synthetic material, a magnum rabbit strip. It was stuck to the roof of the mouth and we still landed that fish without a hook in it, right? Their mouth is so sticky when you put a fly in it that you have no choice, point the rod directly.
When you're retrieving, you should already have your rod pointed right at your line and right at the fly. If you don't strip set, you're not gonna get those big fish. Their mouth is way too hard and their jaw is too strong. They have pinned that fly and all the fibers in that fly between hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of teeth. So, yeah, you can fly. I've watched the fish like we got video footage once when we were filming a pike show, of a pike that grabbed a hold of a white fish and it was a white fish that was way too big for it. Like, it was probably a 24-inch pike and a 21-inch white fish. And we see this splashing and struggling across this bay and we motor over there and I mean we got underwater footage of this. We shot photos and video from above the water watching this fish struggle trying to hang onto this white fish for so long.
And then finally after about 10 minutes, the white fish stopped struggling. We thought it was dead. The pike thought it was dead. The pike let go of it to then try and grab it head first and swallow it. The moment it let go of that white fish, that white fish took off like a torpedo. He rope-a-doped him. He just played dead. His struggling wasn't working. He played dead. The moment that pike opened its jaws and loosened its grip, that white fish was off like a rocket. And so, like those fish are used to grabbing something that struggles. So, when they grab a hold of your fly and you start pulling on them and your rod tip is flexing, they're used to that.
They felt that when they grab the fish, like when they're eating these fish live, that fish struggles, that fish puts up a fight. And when you miss a fish and you strip set, where is your fly? 12 inches in front of that fish. What happens when you rod that? You miss that fish, you rip that fly, it comes right out of the water, it's gone. Usually, it wraps around your rod, gets stuck on the boat, it's on the other side of the boat. You don't get it cast back to that fish. That fish is all excited. It's all cranked up and you can't get a fly back in front of them because you're all tangled or it's on the other side of the boat or you don't get a cast off quickly enough. If you strip set and you miss that fish, your fly is now right in front of that fish again.
And now the thing that he wanted to eat just got away from him but it's still right there. Who cares? Like, people give up on it. And I've seen this so many times and I had this a bunch of times this spring, someone strip sets, they miss the fish and just instantly, you know, head down just [inaudible 01:44:19] they slump. You know, their head is in their hands and they're, "I can't believe that that was the fish I wanted." I'm like, "Strip, the fish is right there. Like, stop being sad or complaining or getting upset. The fish is right there. It's still willing to eat." As long as your fly is in front of that fish. Like, think about a walleye, think about a perch. Like, those are spiny dorsals. They're used to eating things that poke them and prick them.
I don't care like, think about a soft fish like a trout, like a sucker, like a white fish. A preferred meal for a pike because it's a lot softer and easier to digest and less chances of them getting poked and pricked. They still have all the bones in their fins of their dorsal, of their pepin. Those bones can still puncture their esophagus if they don't eat it head first. That's why when people are like, "I need this hook in the tail of this fly." I hate stinger hooks on pike flies. If it's a fly that has it, I cut it out. If I'm tying it, I never put it in. People are like, "What about a short strike?" Pike need to hit head first. Just like that little pike that made the mistake of grabbing that white fish in the center and it fought that thing for 15 minutes and then it got away because it grabbed it in the middle.
It can't swallow it from the middle. They'll pick up dead baits that way and then turn around and swallow them. They have to swallow headfirst. And if you watch a bigger fish that's more educated when they hit their bait, they hit it head first because they want to pin the gills. Because if that pike had hit the white fish at the gills, when it bites down and clamps down on their gill plates, it pins their gills that fish suffocates. So, that's not a 15-minute bite struggle anymore, when that pike loses so much energy fighting this fish. Or if they grab it by the tail and it keeps swimming around. Like, they lose so much energy and the fish is still alive. When they pin the gills, their prey suffocates. And so, it's a very short-lived fight and then they can swallow it headfirst.
If they swallowed from the tail, I don't care if it's a soft fish like a trout, if it's a soft fish like a sucker, if they tried to swallow it from the tail, those bones that are in the dorsal, that are in their fins will puncture their esophagus. It'll kill that fish. They have to swallow those bigger bait fish or bigger fish headfirst. So, that's why putting your fly at the head is all you need. I hate a second hook because it either catches a big fish's gill raker and now you tear a gill or now you're trying to release a fish and if you're trying to release like a 15to 30-pound fish and while you're trying to get one hook out, the other hook ends up in you and they start thrashing around...
Tom: Yeah. Not a good...
Josh: We have a local fly tire that used to put two hooks in all the flies for us. And I asked him to stop doing that because we're cutting those out. He got hooked by one of those trail hooks and he messaged me a picture of it and it was ugly. He's like, "Yeah, I get it now." He's like, "One hook, we're good [inaudible 01:47:14], right?" Like, all you need is one hook. They're gonna try and hit your fly. They're gonna t-bone it by the head of that fly. One hook is all you need. But in that same stance when we're talking about that strip set, they're very used to everything. They eat having sharp spinny parts in their body. So, the fact that you stung that fish, do not get upset, do not stop stripping. Stay with your retrieve, keep stripping. Those fish will come back so often. They're gonna come back and hit still. If that fish wanted it and he missed it, they'll hit it. Like, just keep stripping. If you keep stripping you'll hook that fish a high percentage of the time. If you trout set it might be 1 in 100 times you get that fish to come back and eat. It's just way too unnatural for that fly to come flying out of the water and disappear and then show up right on top of their head again. Like, it's just very unnatural. So, if you wanna hook those fish, trip-set.
Tom: Okay. Number seven.
Josh: Number seven. Not paying attention to water temps. We've touched on this a little bit before. Like, most of the clients that I take out, that pike fish a lot and they're super keen and they wanna get a giant and that's the whole reason they booked that trip. They're like, "What's the optimal water temp?" And I'm like, "Well, it depends on the day." Because I have seen big fish feeding on flats in 74-degree water temps. And I've seen them leave shallows because the water hit 67 and they left because it got too warm. So, like it depends on the body of water, it depends on the day, it depends on the time of year. Like, Nautou, our buddy and our head guide here, he spent like eight to nine different seasons up North guiding. And he's talking about the fact that he's seen fish in the middle of August.
I think he said it was like 76-degree or 77-degree water temps and huge pikes laying up in the shallows there. And some of them, you'd see fins sticking out like tails sticking out of their mouth. Because they'd eaten a fish and they're trying to swallow it and digest it, but they can't digest it fast enough in the cold water, in the deeper parts of the lake. So, they'll slide up into the shallows to kickstart their metabolism because when their metabolism starts cranking, they're gonna be able to digest that way faster. And now this tail that's sticking 4 inches out of their mouth, they can continue to swallow and digest that fish much faster. I've caught fish with clients where they landed a fish that had another tail sticking out of its mouth. It still ate another fly while there was another pike tail sticking out of that pike's mouth. And it's still a 10-inch fly, right?
So, when they wanna eat velli that being said, usually if you're in the high 60s getting towards 70s, those fish are gonna be looking for deeper water and colder water. Big pike especially, they need a ton of dissolved oxygen. So, they need cold water. Cold water holds far more dissolved oxygen than warm water does. So, as that water starts to warm up and it starts to lose oxygen, those big fish are gonna slide into deeper water. But I've seen lots of lakes where there's super cold water adjacent to flats. You're not gonna find those big hens on those flats all day, but in the morning and evenings they'll slide up there when midday, those water temps might hit 74, 76. They're in that deep water that's down at probably 62, 63. But they'll slide up there to feed in the morning and then they'll slide back into the deep water.
They'll slide up to feed and sometimes in the middle of the day, I've seen them slide up to feed if they have very cold water nearby. If you're a very shallow lake and it's the same depth everywhere, you're probably not gonna find fish very active when you start getting over that 70-degree mark. But if the water's really cold, you got to pay attention to that too. Because stripping really fast and being really aggressive probably isn't gonna work. And understanding that pike are an ambush predator. They wanna lay and wait and ambush their prey as it goes by. It's one of the reasons that pike's eyes are so close together on the top of their head. Their camouflage is meant for them to be able to lie on the bottom and still be able to see. It's why a trout can come up and sip a fly with, you know, this delicacy.
But I was reading this and it was interesting. I read this book 20 some years ago when I was writing an article on pikes. Pike when they look up because their eyes are positioned so close together on the top of their head, almost like a halibut, but not to that extent. When they look up, they believe that pike are cross-eyed. So, that's why pike won't really feed on the surface unless it's really calm. You don't see pike taking like frogs and mice and ducklings and stuff if it's really choppy. But if it's glass calm, you'll see them just absolutely blowing up on stuff and crushing stuff. But they don't come up and sip it gently. They come up and just smoke it. If you think about it, if you were cross-eyed and you couldn't see your meal and you're like, "Well, I see three of them so I'm just gonna go through and kill them all. If I miss and hit the wrong one, then I'll go back and collect it later, but I'm gonna make sure it's dead and then I'll go back and get it."
That's why top water fishing could be so much fun and so exciting because they absolutely hammer stuff. But it's why you do need calmer water for it. I've never seen top water effective when it was choppy. But I've had some unbelievable top water fishing days when it was really glass calm. If that water is super cold, you need to slow your retrieve. If that water's warmer, then you can speed up your retrieve to kind of match it there. I used to think there's magical temperatures. I used to think that between 60 degrees and 65 that was perfect. That's when their metabolism was kind of at its highest. But it was still cold enough. There was lots of oxygen in there. And I've seen some of the best pike fishing days, you know, even up North where we're up at Cree where water temps were like high, high 60s and we'd fished the bay all day, hadn't seen it. And there was a half-hour time period, Tom, where we had a 48 and a half landed.
Now, to when I had a doubleheader with a 49 and a 50 and all these big fish moved in within about a half-hour time window. They just all started sliding in and they came out of deep water and they came up to the flats. They were okay feeding on those flats in those warm temperatures. In the evening when they knew it wasn't gonna get any warmer... And we had been in there in the day, they hadn't been there. And you could see them coming up and crossing the white sand. It was one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen. And I wish we had a drone for it because all these big fish just started sliding in and sliding in and they're coming up across the white sand and they had to cross about a foot of water to get into this bay where they started feeding in about 5 feet of water on a really dark bottom. And that dark bottom heated up faster than a lot of the other ones.
So, they'd slide in there to feed in temperatures that years ago I would've thought, that's too warm for pike to really be aggressive in. They're gonna find deeper water. They had deep water right nearby. It's a huge, huge lake that is extremely deep, has extremely cold water year-round but they'll have bays that can reach, you know, high 70s, maybe even close to 80-degree water temps in the really shallow dark bottom bays. The fish aren't gonna spend time in the flood. If they've got really cold water nearby, they'll slide in to feed and then drop right back into that cold water.
So, I've changed, like I used to be very, you know, temperature related. Like, we're looking for this temperature of water. I've seen so many big fish feeding in water way colder and in water way warmer that pike is an interesting creature. The really big ones are really hard to figure out. Like, you'll find like we call them snot rockets. We call them ditch pickles. We call them danger noodles. The little pike, hammer handles, whatever you wanna call them, slew sharks. They have so many fun names. They'll be in the shallows...
Tom: I've never heard some of those names.
Josh: Yeah. Ditch pickles is my favorite one.
Tom: Yeah, I've heard that.
Josh: Sound like one of our Instagram posts and stuff. I'll refer to 'em as ditch pickles. I love that one but my buddy called the small one a danger noodle. He's one of our local hires here at [crosstalk 01:55:33.137]
Tom: Danger noodles.
Josh: He does amazing game changers that are so good. And he said, he's like, "That's one of the danger noodles." And I could not stop laughing. It's the perfect description.
Tom: Yeah, it is.
Josh: Those small flies are the one that trash your flies. Those are the ones that end up biting you and nicking your fingers to bleeding. Those are the danger noodles. They're just...it's [crosstalk 01:55:53.627] and they're so skinny. And they eat everything that moves. Like, there's lots of fun nicknames for them. And those aren't the most challenging fish to catch because they're up in the shallow water year round because they don't need as much dissolved oxygen. But when people are like pike are easy to catch, well, that's like saying brown trout are easy to catch because I went to a stock pond that was full of 5-inch fish and they just vanished, right? Like, a 30-inch brown is a very different creature than a 5-inch brown that's just ravenous because its metabolism is so high, just like an infant, they feed multiple times a day.
They're eating throughout the entire day. That's a very different creature than a large trophy fish. A large trophy pike is way more like fishing for muskie. You're looking for a fish that's seen pressure and that you're gonna have to do something that someone else has not when they encountered that fish. And this is a fish that's lived generations. I mean, in a lot of cases that fish might be older than you are. And turns out it's probably spent a lot more time dealing with anglers than you have dealing with pikes. Because it does it every day. It doesn't take many days off.
Tom: Well, Josh, you have given us not only seven deadly sins but a great education in pike fishing. I know I've learned...
Josh: I hope it helps.
Tom: ...a lot today. It's summertime, but the next time I go up to Lake Champlain I know where there's some deep water near some flats. I'm gonna give it a try. Generally don't bother with pike in the summer.
Josh: You need to get out here in the spring so we can take you pike fishing. I wanna take your pike fishing, Tom. We gotta do it. It'll be fun.
Tom: All right, deal. If I get up there in the spring, I'll do it. Well, Josh, thank you.
Josh: We have it recorded.
Tom: What?
Josh: I say now I have you. I can hold you to it.
Tom: Yeah, no, I'd love to. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to do that with you. You're always enthusiastic and you always have such great insight on various types of fishing. Really appreciate it. Again, we've been talking to Josh Nugent of Out Fly Fishing in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Thank you, Josh.
Josh: Thanks for your time, Tom. Appreciate it. Always good talking to you.
Tom: All right, talk to you soon.
Josh: Take care. Bye.
Tom: 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.