Twelve Tips for Fishing Dry Flies, with Todd Tanner

Tom: Hi and welcome to "The Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast." This is your host, Tom Rosenbauer, and my guest this week is my old friend, Todd Tanner. And Todd has been on the podcast before and his podcasts are always really popular. Today he's going to be talking to us about 12 tips for fishing dry flies. If you ever been in a hatch or you've ever been in a situation where you think the fish are going to feed on the surface and you can't get them to take, I'd advise you strongly to listen to this podcast. Todd is a dry fly aficionado. He prefers to fish dries, he loves fishing dries, he's been a guide on the Henry's Fork and lifelong fly angler and he's got some really good tips for you. So, I think you'll enjoy this one.
Before we get into the Fly Box, I only have one announcement this week and that is Helios 3 rods are on sale. You can save about 200 bucks on the fabulous Helios 3 fly rod, considered the finest fly rod in the world by many, many people. Super light, accurate, strong, and 100% made in the USA. So, they're on sale. Not all models are available, some of them are sold out. But you go on the Orvis website or you go into your Orvis store or Orvis dealer and check them out, and you'll find out which ones are available. Helios 3 rods don't go on sale very often. I don't know if they've ever been on sale before. I'll leave it to you to figure out why they're on sale. But anyway, take advantage of this while you can.
All right, let's do the Fly Box. This is where you ask questions or send in a comment on perhaps a question that somebody had before and you had a little bit more to add to my answer, which is always helpful and I thank you for those, or just ask a question yourself. And you can just type it into your email or you can attach a voice file with your question, and maybe I'll read it on the air. The first question this week is from Sam from West Virginia. "I'm a new fly fisherman, having just picked it up in the last few months. I've been fishing a stream, which has wild browns and brooks since late September. However, last couple of weeks I've not even seen a fish. I know both of these species spawn in the fall. During the spawn, do all individuals of a species make their way upstream? Is it possible that I'm fishing a section too far downstream for this time of year? Is it possible to target other species like rainbows to avoid the spawning species? I would appreciate any insight you can provide."
All right, Sam, well, here's the story in the fall. Yes, brook and brown trout do spawn in the fall, and some of them will go farther upstream to spawn. Not always, though. If the water quality and the gravel quality where you've been fishing for the rest of the year are suitable for spawning, they'll spawn right there in place. They might move, you know, 50 or 100 feet, but they may spawn right there or they may work upstream. Brook trout typically are the ones to move further upstream because they need about 50% spring water or groundwater in order to build their redd. So, they're going to be closer to the headwaters where there's some more spring inflow.
But brown trout often spawn right in the main stem right in the stream and don't move that very far. But it depends, it depends on where they were born, they typically go back to where they were first hatched to spawn and so they could be all over. One of the reasons you may not be seeing any fish is that they moved out and they're spawning. But the other reason is that there isn't a lot of food around in the fall or there aren't a lot of hatches and there's no reason for the fish to be more out in the open.
So, they're going to be hiding, you know, closer to cover. You know, they typically hide close to cover, and then they move out more into the middle of the stream or into more exposed areas when they feed. But since they're not feeding much, you just don't see them that much in the fall. So, they may be there, they may just be hiding. So, it could be a combination of things. And regarding rainbows, yes, if you want to avoid the spawning species altogether, if you have a stream with rainbows in it, you're not going to be bothering them at all this time of year.
How about another email? This one's from Mandy. "Hi, Tom. A quick note, haven't listened to the podcast yet but looking through your list of must-reads." This was on last week's podcast. "I noticed Jim Harrison's article in "Sporting Life" listed as may be hard to find. The article can be found in one of my favorite books, Ross Chatham's collection entitled "Silent Seasons." So, I didn't know exactly where to find that. I know it was published in a magazine somewhere. But if you can find a copy of Ross Chatham's "Science Seasons," you'll be able to find that essay.
Scott: Hey, Tom. Scott from North Carolina. Hey, I really enjoyed the recent podcast with George Daniel, where he talked about all the different things he's using a 10-foot rod for, which really got my wheels spinning. I've got an Orvis Clearwater, the 10 foot 3-weight, and I've been using it to start to learn some tight line nymphing techniques, but it got me really excited about the idea of using that rod for dry flies and dry droppers and micro streamers and just all the different things that you can do, which then also made me start to wonder a little bit about some of the product offering from Orvis.
I know that there is a 10-foot 3-weight Recon, but when you bump up to the Helios, there's a 10-foot 6 and 11-foot I believe in the 3-weight. And so it made me wonder, you know, is there a reason why there's not a Helios 3 10-foot 3-weight? Is that something that's maybe in the works? Or perhaps that's maybe what...if I remember correctly, I think George kind of alluded to trying out a new rod from Orvis. Maybe that's something that's already under the table? Anyways, thanks for everything you do. Appreciate it.
Tom: Scott, I'm glad you're finding that that 11-foot 3-weight is good for other things than tight line fishing, it's certainly an interesting dry fly rod or even a small streamer rod. It's going to castle but differently than a more conventional fly rod, but it'll certainly do the trick and it's kind of fun. I guess the reason...there's no concrete reason why the Helios 3 is available in a 10-and-a-half and 11-foot. I guess the reason is that we can because the Helios material is so much more structurally sound and tracks better, that we can make a longer rod out of that construction, whereas in the Clearwater or the Recon, because they're made with a different construction method may not be able to get those longer, lighter rods to perform as well. So, I believe that's why the rod designers did that. Now, is there one in the works? I can't tell you that, sorry. You'll have to find out in a little while.
Here's an email from Ron from Ocean Grove, New Jersey. "To start, thank you for all you and Orvis do for the fly fishing community and conservation. Your collective input is far-reaching and most certainly makes a difference. I'm a long, longtime listener, and having you as my carpool buddy on fishing trips commuting over the years definitely made the trips better. I was lucky enough to secure a spot in your fly-tying class this past November at the International Fly-Tying Symposium, which was an absolute pleasure, and learned a lot as always." Well, thank you, Ron, it was great to meet you as well. "I have one suggestion tip and one question. The suggestion first.
I was with a guide on a float trip this past summer who taught me this. Well, actually, I guess it's two suggestions. One, take a guide whenever and wherever possible. They are truly the frontline ambassadors for the sport we love and such a great resource for knowledge for the water you're fishing. Two, when dry fly fishing, at the end of your drift, don't just start stripping the fly back, dragging it through the water to make your next cast. Pop the fly up in the air backward and upstream toward you then start stripping in the line. If it was a long drift, just do it again and again until the line is short enough to recast.
The fly will essentially drift again as you strip in and stay dry much, much longer. Works like a charm. My question. I'm interested in delving into the rabbit hole of Euro nymphing. I currently have an interchangeable 7-foot to 10-foot 3-weight rod, brand shall remain nameless. I'd be interested in an Orvis 4-weight, and it's my understanding that this would be easier to quickly switch to dry fly cast if need be and alleviate bringing two rods to the stream. Am I correct in that thinking? And which Orvis 4-weight would you recommend?"
So, Ron, that's a great tip on retrieving a dry fly because, yeah, if you got a long cast and you're stripping it in and you're stripping it in underwater and you're saturating it. So, I'm going to try that trick myself. I have never tried it before, but I'm gonna give it a try. Regarding the rod, it sounds like the best rod for you, which is probably the most versatile rod, would be a 10-foot 4-weight it's long enough to be used for Euro or tight line nymphing. Yet, you can throw dry flies a good distance with it, nymphs and indicators, and even the smaller streamer. So, I think a 10-foot 4-weight would be a good compromise.
It's not going to have quite the really super soft tip as a dedicated Euro nymph fishing rod would be, but it's got the length to hold your leader off the water. So, that's the one I would recommend. The exact model really depends on your budget, you know, Clearwater or Recon or Helios 3. You generally going to get what you pay for, and when you go into the more expensive rod, you're going to get more accuracy, a stronger rod, and a little bit better performance. But, you know, that's going to really depend on your budget, so I'm going to leave that up to you.
Here's an email from John from Wisconsin. "Hi, Tom. Thanks for having Chris Jordan on your podcast. I was very grateful that there are people who spend all day thinking about how to fix degraded cold water streams. His description of fixing a watershed and floodplain was very enlightening and completely logical. But except for a few public land scenarios, it was also completely impractical. As an example, here in Wisconsin, very few trout streams other than small national forests brook trout streams flow through large tracts of public land and that land is usually farmed for most of the river course.
To the farmer, the land is his or her living, so any fixing of the river has to be in harmony with the private property rights and interests. What that means is one can't scrape down the valley floor to pre-settlement days, radically change a river's course, or create large floodplains. In the driftless area, soil deposition from 150 years of highland agriculture has added 10 to 30 feet of erosion to the valley floor. So, you play the cards you're dealt with a limited corridor within which the landowner has consented to allow work. Deep eroded banks are graded back to an angle of repose for floods to discharge their energy. A wide shallow stream is narrowed to create holding areas, reduce water temperatures, and provide cover.
It works, and not just for trout. Other non-game species benefit as well. Would that we had a magic wand to implement landscape-wide ivory tower aspirations, but we don't. Trout Unlimited has boots on the ground for more than 60 years. Indeed, the science of stream restoration has changed over the years, from riprap to more holistic approaches, recognizing the dynamic nature of rivers. But to say we're doing it all wrong is not accurate. We're doing what we can with the access and tools available to us."
Well, thank you, John, for your very thoughtful note and you're exactly right. And I take full credit or blame for the title of that podcast. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have said, "We're doing it all wrong," I should say, "We're sometimes doing it wrong." Because there's still the idea out there that we can engineer a trout stream and pigeonhole it into exactly the way we want it to flow using engineered solutions and I think that was the real point of the podcast. Yeah, I mean, I know so many rivers where you don't have access to the whole floodplain and you have to do what you can with the existing permission that you have from landowners. So, you are exactly right. And again, the real point of the podcast was that we can't force rivers into what we want them to look like. We can help them along and as you stated, we can help them along using more organic solutions, knowing that these things are going to change over time, over fairly short periods of time because rivers are so dynamic. So, anyways, thanks for your input.
Here's an email from Jaco from Finland, I hope I pronounced your name right. "Cheers from Finland, and thanks for an educational podcast, a pleasure listening and learning from a legend like you. I recently moved next to a big river which isn't really the most trout-riddled one, but they indeed stock some rainbows to a lake downstream where I live. They usually stock them in a smaller stretch of river stream left of the lake which is blocked by a power plant. So, the fish are there, usually there, but there's a catch. The same lake stream system also continues upward for about four miles as a wide river and is blocked by a bigger dam and power plant. No fish stairs or elevators there, so no fish shall pass. This big dam is 10 minutes from my place by bike. So, I had been thinking of going there and trying out the tail waters with a nymph or streamer rig.
My question is, what are the odds of finding some of those rainbow trout there? What are survival rates of those stocks is even? Of course, it isn't ruled out that there could be some lake trout also, but those probably don't end up in tail waters during the winter. I talked with some locals and they haven't heard anyone trying there with fly fishing methods and somebody even left a bid and offered to buy me a round if I catch a rainbow there. Sounds like a challenge, though. People catch pike and regular perch there, I have heard. If I go, what would be the most effective way to approach this type of winter tailwater with lots of water? Split shot nymph rig? Thanks again to you and Orvis. It would be quite interesting to hear your thoughts on this."
Well, Jaco, rainbow trout tend to wander. I think they're more mobile than any other trout species, and if they don't like where they're living, they're going to move pretty quickly. And whether they go upstream or downstream, you never know, but they do wander. And I would not be surprised...if the water temperatures are suitable, I would not be surprised to find rainbow trout in that area because again, they do move around a lot. So, the only way to find out really is to go there and fish for them. I would think of people...although no one's fly fishing in that area, I would think if people are fishing conventional gear, they're going to also catch rainbow trout. So, if you haven't heard of anyone catching trout, you know, on spinning lures or bait or whatever, they may not be there but then again, they may. And particularly in the fall or winter, the rainbows may migrate up there or they may come over the top of one of the dams. So, it's very possible.
And I think that the best way to fish for those trout in the winter is as you suggested with a split shot rig, a nymph, or with just heavily weighted nymphs. But you will need to probably get fairly close to the bottom, and I would suggest that you at least have one small midge nymph like a zebra midge or something else because that's typically the food that's most available, insect food that's most available to trout during the winter. You may also try a small streamer on those rainbow trout. Rainbow trout tend not to eat the bigger articulated streamers that are so common these days, but smaller size 8, 10, 12 streamers will often interest a rainbow trout. And whether they survive or not because they're stock, whether they survive or not is really up in the air. It depends on what the summer water temperatures were, it depends on how much fishing pressure there was, how much predation there was. They can certainly survive what are called holdover stock trout, but whether they do or not is going to depend on your particular ecosystem.
Kevin: Hey Tom, Kevin in Idaho, recently listening to your podcast about the 15 or so ways to make a fly rod, and you referenced somebody who had fended off a rattlesnake with their rod. And I think that was me, although I doubt I'm the only one who's done that. But I'll give the brief version of that story in case it is. But I had hiked into a tributary. A couple of miles on the way in, I had actually fallen and broken the tip of my fly rod, stored that in my pocket, made it up to where I wanted to fish. Just about the time I got up there, maybe the first or second cast, I tripped again, this time I broke the rod about at the first eyelet. And of course, that's when I hooked probably the biggest fish of the day, which I did not or was not able to land.
But anyway, collected the pieces, started my hike out since I wasn't carrying a spare rod, crossed the stream to get back to the trail, and came across a rattlesnake. Well, I'm not a big snake fan, so I decided I was going to climb over a boulder and then get around the snake. Set the pieces of this fly rod on the boulder as I scrambled over and one of the pieces slid down the boulder right to where the snake was, had to fend off the snake with the handle portion of the rod to retrieve the middle section, and eventually was successful. Made it back to the truck only to open my one beer, sit on the tailgate, and proceed to spill it. So, not the highlight of my fishing career but made for a good story.
As part of that podcast, you guys were talking about the fact that you don't put hook keepers on your rods and you suggest people wrap it around the reel and then put the hook on the eyelet. My suggestion is to let people know not to put that hook into the ceramic portion of that first eyelet because you could damage it. And then it got me to thinking about breaking rods and why rods are round. It seems like if they were ovalized or even triangular, they might be stronger. I suspect it's a manufacturing issue. I can't imagine a triangular rod would be very easy to make, maybe an oval one could be a little easier. But I wondered if you guys have ever considered trying other shapes for fly rods and what the advantages or disadvantages might be. Thanks. Have a great day. Talk to you soon. Bye.
Tom: Kevin, that's a great story. I don't think that's the one we've heard about. The one we heard about was much older, and it was someone who actually used an unbroken rod to fend off a rattlesnake which resulted in a broken rod. But that's a great story. And thank you for the tip. Yeah, it's not a good idea to use your stripping guide for your hook keeper, you want to use one of the snake guides above that. Regarding triangular or oval rod, I think that it's a matter of strength because I think that a round rod, a nearly perfectly round rod...no rods are perfectly circular because of the way graphite is wrapped around the mandrel.
And there is what's called a spine, a little tiny bit of a high spot, maybe a couple of thousandth of an inch that will be formed on the blank and then a good rod maker will make sure that they align the spine on all the sections so that the rod tracks better. But I think that you're not going to have the same strength with a triangular or oval rod because the stress is not going to be distributed equally around the surface of the road. So, that would be my thought on that.
Here's an email from Pete from Saratoga Springs. "I really love the show, it makes my ride to work more enjoyable. I have a couple of questions that are going to make me seem frugal, but everything is so expensive, you have to save money where you can. My question is about fluorocarbon leaders in line. I listened to the podcast with George Daniel on Euro nymphing. He said he's using 30 feet of fluorocarbon line with the tippet attached. For this 30-foot section of fluorocarbon, can I purchase a spool of fluorocarbon line that spin fishermen use? Or should I buy fly fishing leader material? The price difference between the two is huge. Is there a difference in the line?
My second question is going to make me seem even more frugal. When tying flies like an emerging pattern with CDC weighing, only the tip of the CDC feather is used, three-quarters of the CDC feather is cut off and discarded. Can I save them and use them for fly bodies or some other use? It seems like such a waste to toss them. I'm really not that cheap, but I'm curious."
So, Pete, there is a difference in the spinning line or casting line that's made from fluorocarbon than what you buy for fly fishing. There's typically more monofilament. It's not a pure fluorocarbon, it's a coal filament where you have both nylon and fluorocarbon. That's typically what you would see as the less expensive stuff. And I don't know how well it would work. You should just give it a try. You know, if the spinning line is so inexpensive, get some and give it a try. It may work out very well. I don't know, I've never tried it, but it is different. Whether it's any better or any worse, you're going to have to find out and let me know.
I got a better answer for you in the CDC. Yes, you can absolutely save that and there's a number of ways you can use that extra CDC. You can certainly dub it, just dub it straight onto a piece of thread like you would any kind of dubbing, to make a fly body. The other thing you can do is you can cut those fibers from the stem, and then just tie them in around the head of the fly. You might have to tie in two or three bunches because you're not winding it around there and it's tough to get it to distribute all around the head of a dry fly or a nymph but you can certainly cut those fibers out and tie them in.
And the other way to do it is to save those extra pieces and then form a dubbing loop and put just a little tiny bit of wax on it or no wax, but you're probably going to want to put a little bit of wax on it, and then insert those CDC fibers into the loop. And generally, what you want to do is get some sort of clip and hold the fibers in that clip, and then cut them from the stem and then leaving a little butt piece extending beyond the fibers. You can then transfer that easily to the loop and you may have to put on two or three bunches and you can spin that like a dubbing loop and wind it like hackles. So, yeah, there's lots of uses for that extra CDC and you certainly don't want to waste it.
Here's an email from Jim. "I do not have a question this time around, just some kudos. Two weeks ago, I made a phone call to the Orvis store on Peachtree Road in northeast Atlanta. It was the only phone call about equipment that day that made me feel like I was an important customer with a mutual respect for fishing. Saturday morning, two days after the call, I made a trek to Atlanta to meet up with Brian, my representative. More than one employee remembered my call and did not balk at my shopping list. The team got to work setting me up through conversations about my fishing plans as they are now in the future.
Although I was on the lower end of the spend as it relates to Orvis equipment, I was treated as if I were buying out the store by the entire team that day. We all swapped fishing stories from the Adirondacks in New York, through creeks and rivers of West Virginia, and beyond. They even requested to see my current equipment, which I was proud to show as it is near and dear to my heart. I walked out ready to fish within budget carrying some special gifts from Devon, the store manager for the delayed harvest trip for trout that I will embark on around 4:00 a.m. this coming Monday with my fellow Atlanta Fly Fishing Club members. Kudos to Brian, Devon, and JM at Orvis Atlanta Northeast."
Well, Jim, thank you so much. You know, we're very proud of both our Orvis retail store employees and our Orvis authorized dealers. And that's why they're the backbone of the fly fishing industry. People worry about online sales ruining the fly shops business and I can tell you for a fact that there is a lot more Orvis fly fishing gear sold through retail stores and independent dealers than there is online and I'm sure that will continue to be that way. So, that's the place to go if at all possible because you're gonna get that kind of personalized service.
Here's an email from Andy. "Hi, Tom. I've long enjoyed the podcast and learned a lot from both the Fly Box and your guests. In a discussion on barbless hooks, you stated that it's easy to match the barb and barb books. As a decade-long barbmasher, I'd agree that at many times it is easy. But I also have to say that often the barb fractures leaving a jagged edge and resulting in just a smaller barb. This lack of malleability, of course, varies between hook type, sizes, and manufactures, and sometimes even between different batches of the same hook from the same manufacturer. I've always used small smooth-jawed needlenose pliers in dealing with the more brittle barbs.
I've tried various approaches, slow increasing pressure, fast and hard, rolling the barb side to side in the jaws under slow increasing pressure. But no matter my method, there's still a lot of barb breakage, and trying to use a lot of pressure to compress the removal of the remnant barb both doesn't work and can lead to bending or breaking the hook itself. The conventional answer is simply filed on the remaining barb. Maybe I don't have the right kind of file, but my response is, "Easier said than done," particularly when dealing with small hooks. I'd appreciate any help you can offer on how to get a nice smooth smash."
Well, Andy, that's an interesting question because I've never had that problem myself. And, you know, sometimes you don't mash the barb entirely. Sometimes you just flatten it and you leave a little bump there. But I find that to work very well and it makes it almost as easy to remove the hook when you just flatten that pointy part of the barb. You don't have to squish it all the way down to the shank of the hook, again, leaves a little bump there, but that bump doesn't seem to hinder the removal process. So, I'm not sure...I've just never had that problem of barbs breaking like that. You say it's different manufacturers, so, you know, ordinarily, I would say, "Well, you know, try a different hook style."
But if you do want to file them down, if that little bump that's left bothers you, think the best thing is to get a diamond abrasive nail file. You can get them in most drugstores and, you know, you can get a really fine one and you can get in there and carefully file that barb down. But again, you really just have to round it off to remove that point. So, give that a try. Get yourself a little diamond file and give that a try and see if that's any easier for you.
Here's an email from Jess from Asheville. "Tom, I love the podcast. I have a few long road trips this year and I listened to every podcast again. It was fun listening to old podcasts and in some cases, I remembered putting some information in my quiver when I heard it. Tip. I was going through some old Fly Boxes and was looking at some flies I tied over 30 years ago. I've come a long way since then, but here's a tip for new fly tires. Almost all of these old flies had proportions that were off. I was obviously still learning proportions and amounts of materials to use.
Most of them were still fishable. To this day, one of the largest trout I've caught was a 20-inch plus brown on what looked to be a size 4 humpy somehow tied on a number 12. The tip is this. When learning to tie pay more attention to crowding or rushing the eye, really pay attention to where your material should end, and give yourself enough room to tie ahead. You will naturally get better at proportions as you go but may have a plan or a place in mind of where you will not go further than to finish your head. A few of my friends agreed that this was the biggest change they made to start having decent flies.
Question. On an old podcast, someone mentioned how rainbow trout are better equipped to feed in faster-moving water where brown's metabolism makes it necessary to feed out of the current more. I was thinking about aquatic life and thought someone in your network could answer this question. What aquatic insects can handle lower nutrient water the best? I noticed some of our Appalachian streams, which are relatively devoid of aquatic life, small blue line mountain streams, can still support decent stone fly hatches. It made me wonder if stone flies or other insects are better adapted to lower-nutrient waters."
Well, Jess, I absolutely agree with your tip on fly-tying. When I teach a fly tying class, in fact, I just got back from teaching some classes at the International Fly Tying Symposium in New Jersey, I sat everybody down and I said, "Okay, what you're all going to do is you're going to use too much material and you're going to crowd the eye, so I don't want to see that," and I think I scared all my students because nobody crowded the eye and nobody used too much materials. But, yeah, those I think are the two biggest issues that a novice fly tire, someone who's just starting out does.
They just don't remember that they need to finish off that head and they need to leave themselves some room so that they don't get all kinds of junk in the eye of the hook and then they can't thread it later on when they want to go fishing it. And most people tend to make their legs and their wings and their tails and their hackle too long. So ease up on...and they use too much dubbing, so ease up on your material usage and don't crowd the eye. And those are two of the best tips you could ever have in fly tying. Regarding the nutrient levels in streams, I have noticed the same thing. I remember doing a study when I was in college on aquatic insects in a very acidic spring in the Adirondacks and most of what I found in the biomass were stone flies.
So, I think that, yes, stone flies seem to be able to handle lower nutrient loads. Other things, there are certain species...you'll see mayflies and caddisflies in these lower nutrient streams, you just won't see as many of them. The biomass is not going to be as dense as it would be in a river with no nutrients and not a lot of leaf litter in there for them to eat when you're way up in the headwaters, but it does seem like stone flies are the most tolerant of low-nutrient waters. And probably the least tolerant of low-nutrient waters are caddisflies and midges, you don't see midges...you see black fly larvae, but you don't see midges that often in really low-nutrient streams and you don't see as many caddisflies. You will see certain species of mayflies, and that's about as far as I can go. And I don't know if anybody I can ask about that, but anyways, that's been my observation over the years.
Dylan: Hello, Tom, I'm Dylan. I'm from Arizona and specifically Phoenix. So, I went out to the closest body of water to Phoenix, you can catch trout in moving water, the Salt River, it's around 45 minutes away from Phoenix. And I was trying to teach my friend how to fly fish. I've caught fish in this body of water before but today going up and we found this big long run. It was probably two to four feet deep and it was a massive seam. We were fishing the seam and there were fish jumping everywhere, eating what seemed to be dry flies.
The whole problem was the dry fly...I could not find out what flies these fish are taking. They were taking some really small flies. I mean the only two hatches that really happen on this river are mayflies and trichos, and I didn't see any mayflies and I didn't see any trichos. And I was looking for anything on the water, I couldn't find anything. There was some caddis nymphs in the water but other than that, there was nothing. And the fish were not eating nymphs and they would not bite any dry flies I threw at them, small or large. I adjusted my tippet size, I moved myself to try to reduce drag. And I was really confused because they were getting to the point where they were jumping right at my feet completely unfazed, and I was really confused. If you have any tips to help, that'd be really helpful. Thank you very much. Have a good rest of your day. Thank you, Tom.
Tom: So, Dylan, it sounds like you tried everything and, you know, there's a couple of things that could have been happening here. You said you tried nymphs, but you didn't say if you tried like emergers and it sounds like you may be tried deeper nymphs, the way you would normally nymph. My inclination in a situation like that where fish are rising all over the place and I couldn't see anything in the water and I couldn't catch them would be to go to something in the surface film or just below the surface film because fish can take emerging flies and still produce a rise because their body has got some height to it and also the momentum of rising will break the surface, even though their mouth never breaks the surface. Their fin and top of their body can break the surface and leave a swirl and it can look every bit like a rise.
The one key is if you don't see bubbles in the rise, typically, the fish did not take something on the surface. So, you didn't mention that but if you don't see any bubbles in the rise, typically it's fish eating something right in the surface film. So, the two things that could have most likely been would be midge pupa. You know, really tiny midge pupa that are just hanging in the surface film getting ready to hatch, or caddis pupa. You know, fish will often take caddisflies just underwater and will almost ignore the fluttering adults on the surface. And it may have been early in the hatch, so you wouldn't have seen any adult caddis on the water.
The only other thing I can think it possibly could have been was a swarm of really tiny flying ants. Flying ants can be quite small, they can be as small as a tricho. And they swarm and they fall on the water for God knows what reason, but they do it, and that can create a rise where you can't really see anything on the water. You know, the next time you encounter something like that, the best thing to do is to go to Home Depot or a hardware store and get a five-gallon elastic paint strainer and stretch it around your net, your landing net or fishing net, and stick that in the water and hold it in there for two or three minutes and then pull it out.
The water will go right through that paint strainer and since they're white, you can see whatever is on it, and then you'll be able to see exactly what is drifting in the surface film. There was obviously something there that you couldn't see, so, you know, that would be my first guess or my first solution to the problem would be to put a little net in the water and see what's drifting in the film. You often have to get in the same current lane as the fish, so you may need to wait out where the fish are rising or maybe get below them or something and just strain the surface.
And, you know, go down a few inches, go down six or eight inches with the net, and just hold it there and pick it up and see what's in there. I'd also recommend that you take out your camera and maybe take a picture of what's in that net because it may be good for future reference when you're experiencing the same thing or when you're tying flies and you try to imitate what you saw in that net. All right, that is the Fly Box for this week. Let's go talk to Todd Tanner about 12 tips for fishing dry flies.
So, my guest today is my old friend, Todd Tanner, who until recently was the fishing editor of "Sporting Classics" magazine. Todd, you've written for "Hatch Magazine," "The New York Times." You've been a freelance writer for a long time, you're a veteran. And we fished together lots of times and we also teach together. You run the School of Trout in Idaho in the summer and fall, and I'm lucky enough to be invited to be an instructor, which is always a lot of fun. So, welcome, Todd, back to the podcast.
Todd: Thanks, Tom. It's great to be back here. I hope you're well, I hope things in Vermont are good.
Tom: Yep, yep. And you reminded me...we were talking the other day about something else, you reminded me that I have done a lot of Nymph podcasts in the past couple of years and not many or no dry fly podcasts. Actually, I did an emerger podcast, so that's not true. And you and I both dearly love dry fly fishing. I know that nymph fishing is a little more inscrutable to people and they need to learn more about it, but there are lots of things that are fun and interesting about dry fly fishing. And so, you've got 12 tips, right, for fishing dry flies?
Todd: So, yeah, I do have indeed 12 tips for dry flies, which is something that's near and dear to my heart. I do have a question before we get rolling on this, though.
Tom: Oh, I'm supposed to ask the questions here, Todd.
Todd: Yeah, but, you know, it's just one of those things where if I don't ask the occasional question, I don't feel like I'm getting enough on my end.
Tom: All right. Okay.
Todd: So, you know, I know you love to fish dry flies. I know you're a great nympher and that you fish streamers and wet flies, and that you do it all. But what is it that you love so much about dry flies?
Tom: Oh, you know, for me anyway, it's always about sight fishing. So, you know, even if I'm nymph fishing, I would prefer to sight fish to a fish eating nymphs. And in saltwater, I really prefer sight fishing to blind fishing even for, you know, things like smallmouth bass, I'd rather sight fish to them and carp, especially. So, it's all about sight fishing and dry fly fishing is all visual. You know, you see everything. You see your fly, you see the way it behaves, you see the fish's reaction to it, there's no mystery. When the fish refuses your fly or takes it or slaps at it or whatever, there's no mystery. So, you know, it's all visible. That's why I like it.
Todd: Yeah, and I agree with that completely. I used to fish a lot with Tim Linehan. You know Tim, who runs an outfitting company. And Tim always said, "The strike is everything," and it was specifically focused on dry flies. He loved watching that fish tilt up and take that fly off the surface. That moment is just so incredible. And the anticipation of that moment really, really gets me stoked and gets me focused. Which makes me wonder...and I don't know if you see this on the East Coast. I'm here in Montana, I see way fewer dry fly fishers than I used to. Thirty years ago on the Missouri, everybody was fishing dry flies. I was down there a couple of weeks ago and the dry fly fishing was absolutely wonderful, and there was nobody else out there fishing dries. And I don't know if that's sort of a universal thing here in the States anymore, but I see so many more folks fishing nymphs and swinging streamers than I do fishing dries anymore. And it always sort of perplexes me because dry fly fishing is just so much fun.
Tom: Yeah. Yeah, it really depends on the river. I mean, rivers where you got a lot of drip boats with novice anglers, you're gonna see most people in them fishing just because that's the easiest way for a guide to get someone into a fish. But, you know, it depends on the river, some rivers here in the east, you see still plenty of people dry fly fishing. You certainly see more people nymphing and Euro nymphing in particular just because it's so effective and rewarding because you hook a lot more fish. Even when fish aren't rising, you don't have to wait around for them. So, you know, it's a little bit of both, but I still see plenty of people dry fly fishing.
Todd: Well, that's heartening to me. I hope that that continues and I hope some of the folks listening to this realize that, you know, you can catch a fair number of fish with dry flies, and you can have absolutely wonderful time doing it. So, do you want me to jump into the 12 keys to dry fly success or do you want...?
Tom: I'm waiting for you, man. I'm waiting for you.
Todd: All right. So, the first one, and this is something that, you know, we tell a lot of folks when we teach fly fishing, they have to practice their casting. It's really, really difficult to be a successful dry fly angler if you can't make, you know, a 30-foot cast and put your fly where you want it to. You don't need to be a great caster, but the better you are, the more success you're likely to have. And if you can't cast, it makes it very, very difficult to not only put the flight where you want it but to get a good drift afterwards because the cast sets up everything else.
The cast is sort of the backbone that makes it so that we can make an aerial mend or on the water mend and have success. So, the very first thing is get out there and practice your casting. And you don't need to throw 50, 60 70 feet. Sure, there are any number of folks who can make a successful 60-foot cast and put a dry fly right on a dime and catch a fish. But you don't need to do that. If you can cast 20 to 40 feet pretty much when you need to, you're going to be absolutely fine. That's going to handle the vast majority of situations out there. Do you agree?
Tom: Yeah, and, you know, it's a game of inches. When you have a fish rising, they often won't move more than a couple of inches to either side for a fly. So, you need to get it in their lane without drag. And also, even if you're blind fishing with a dry or just prospecting, you need to put it in the right place, you know, you need to put it where you think a fish is going to be feeding. Not three feet away or two feet away or even a foot away, you need to place it properly. So, yeah, it's critical.
Todd: And I think that there's a misconception...you could probably ask Pete Kutzer about this, but I think there's a misconception that casting practice goes on forever and you have to do it every single day. I think if folks practice once a week for 10 or 15 minutes, they would be amazed to see how quickly they got better.
Tom: Yeah, I think so.
Todd: It doesn't require an awful lot.
Tom: No, but Pete practices every day, almost every day.
Todd: Yeah, but Pete's like ridiculously good.
Tom: Yeah. There's a reason.
Todd: There is a reason for that. So, yeah, practice your casting would be my first suggestion. Number two, and this is something that sort of had beaten into me over the years by folks that we've taught to fish at School of Trout, is pay attention to your leader. I suspect that you've seen some really, really horrible leaders on the water over the years, I know I have. And if you don't have a good dry fly leader, if your leader isn't set up for success, man, you're making things hard on yourself. And I have seen, you know, guys with an eight-foot leader down to 2x and they'll tie a piece of 6x on that, and that just isn't going to work the vast majority of the time.
So, people should take pride in their leaders. As our friend John Gersack [SP] says, you know, "Really pay attention to your leader," figure out what do you need, and the length and size of your leader depends on the type of water you're fishing and the size of the fly that you're fishing. So, if you're fishing a size 8 salmon fly or a golden stone, you don't want to be tapered down to 5x or 6x, you want to be at 3x, maybe 4. And, you know, if you're on the Henry's Fork or the Missouri or the South Fork, one of those rivers, you know, where you are making longer casts on flat water, you probably want a 10 or 12 or 14-foot leader for the situation. Conversely, if you're on the Madison and you're fishing dries, you might only need an eight-foot or nine-foot leader. You know, the water is choppy, your drifts are shorter, you know, you only need to get about a three-foot drift before you're back and you have to cast again. So, I would say paying attention to your leaders.
Tom: Agreed. That, in my opinion, is more important than the fly pattern.
Todd: Yeah, I think you're spot on there. It's just really tough to get a good drift, and I'll talk about drifts again in a minute. But if your leader is not set up for success, you're just not going to do well with dry flies. So, I would say the number three on my list, and this is something that I sort of look to you because I've heard you do any number of wonderful insect lectures over the years. I would just tell people that they need to know their bugs. They don't need to know the Latin names for them or the scientific name. But if you're dry fly fishing for trout, you should know the difference between a mayfly and a caddis and a stone fly midge.
And it also helps to know, you know, some of the basic terrestrials, whether that's beetles or ants or hoppers. You know, you don't need to know a whole bunch of stuff but...you know? And you don't necessarily need to know that a fly is a pale morning dun. But if you can see that flying, you can say, "Ah, it's about a 16 pale yellow mayfly. Well, do I have one of those in my box?" Even if you don't know the name of it. And so, I would say having just that basic understanding of insects...because this is fly fishing, we're out there imitating insects for the most part, certainly with dry flies.
And it's one of those things where if we're not conversant with the insects that we're likely to run across in any particular stream at a particular time of year, it makes it harder for us to be successful. And we want to...you know, success is a part of it, right? I would go to the river regardless, I would go out and fish regardless of whether I was going to catch any fish or not. But if I am going to go out, I want to be successful. And so, it helps me to know what those bugs are. You know, you've given more bug lectures than probably anybody I know. What do you have to say about insects as far as dry fly fishing?
Todd: Well, my bug lectures are usually a part of another talk or another presentation because I don't spend a lot of time on them. I tell people, "You need to know them to the order level," just as you said, mayflies, dun flies, midges, caddisflies. There's some other aquatic insects, but they're locally important and not as important. And then know their behavior and their lifecycle. You know, it's not hard to find information on, you know, do they have a pupa stage? Do they not have a pupa stage? How do they hatch? Do they crawl out of the water or do they hatch, you know, in the water itself in the surface film? And I think that's all you need to know.
I used to know the bugs a lot better than I used to, Todd. I don't pay any attention to the species anymore, I do what you do. I see a creamy-colored mayfly size 16 on the water and I might put an 18 on. Sometimes they look bigger on the water than they actually are. But, yeah, I just follow that and it's still just as much fun. There are a lot of people who take great pleasure in knowing the bugs and knowing the exact species. It's not that important to me. Sometimes it's important, but it's academically important, not so much for fishing.
Todd: Right. Well, it's fun to know what the bugs are out there. And especially, like you said, having an understanding of how those insects act on the water, how does a caddis behave differently than a mayfly? Or a mayfly differently than a midge or a stone? I mean, those things are all sorts of important. I want to talk a little bit...and you just alluded to it a little bit talking about maybe a size 18 instead of a size 16 about flies. So, a lot of folks...there's a ton of dry flies out there, right? And there's classics that have been used for, you know, 50, 60, 70 years, and then there are any number of new patterns or newer patterns that work really, really well.
And, you know, you mentioned earlier that you had done a podcast or two on emergers. And I think probably emergers certainly fit into sort of a generic dry fly world, right? If people are fishing emergers, they're usually fishing them right in the surface film. You know, there may be part of that fly that sticks up a little bit. And so, it's sort of technically dry. I would look at it like if I'm going to a body of water, I want to have flies that I know are likely to work, both for insects I may see for that particular trip and also I would want some flies that...if there's nothing going on, that I can just use to bring fish up. So, traditionally, those have been called attractor patterns, you know, they may not imitate something specifically. I know that there's been a little bit of pushback on that over the years, whether attractor is the right word to use. Do you have any thoughts on that?
Tom: No, I think the pushback has mainly been from me because, you know, the attractor gives someone the idea that, "Oh, the fish is attracted to that, like, it's curious or playful with that fly." Now, they think it's food, we just don't know what they think it is. They may not know what they think it is but it looks buggy and it looks edible, so they eat it. So, I just don't like the term attractor.
Todd: All right. Well, we will remove the term attractor from this podcast, we won't bring that up.
Tom: Generic, generic is a better word.
Todd: But what I can tell folks is that you don't need to see rising fish to catch fish on dry flies. There are any number of times when you can choose a fly that will incentivize a fish to rise and take that fly, regardless of whether or not there's any bugs in the water or any rising fish. And I think that's pretty cool. And a lot of people will only fish dries if they're convinced that they're seeing rises out there. And so, I would say that you don't necessarily need to look at it that way. You can bring fish up if you know what you're doing and you have flies that will incentivize those fish to rise regardless of whether or not there's a hatch going on.
I wanted to talk for just a second about this idea that there's always the right fly or that there's always a perfect fly, sort of like there's the fly fairies out there and she's going to come and she's going to sprinkle a little magic dust on a fly and fish just won't be able to refuse that. I don't think that's the case. There may be times when one fly just works great and not much else is being as effective as we might hope. But there is no magic fly, and I think it's important for people to realize that. One of the most common questions on trout streams that I've been on over the last, God, I don't know how to say how many years is, "What are you getting them on?" With the idea being that, you know, the fly is the ultimate arbiter of your success.
And I don't think that's the case. I think that in most situations, there are a number of flies that will probably work. And I would agree with you that presentation is far more important than fly choice the majority of the time. So, that said, you know, you do want to fly that's the right size, the right shape, the right color, that has the right attitude in the water. If there's bugs in the water, you know, it helps to try and mimic those insects. But, you know, probably the most important thing is just that you have confidence in the pattern you're fishing. And confidence only comes when you get out and fishing, so if you don't fish dry flies very much, it's really tough to be confident.
There are a lot of folks these days who, you know, are great nymph anglers, but they're not fishing dries as much, and so they might not have confidence. I've got probably a dozen flies that over the years I've grown so confident that if I do my job when I'm out on the water, chances are the fish is going to be interested in that fly. So, you know, I think it's really helpful for folks to go out with the idea that, yeah, there are some really good patterns. And, you know, I would say I would fish a sparkle dun if there was a mayfly hatching, mayfly hatch going on, and be pretty damn continent. How would you feel about that? I mean, do you have a bunch of go-to patterns, or do you have just a couple?
Tom: Well, I have a lot because I'm a fly tire, you know, and I tie a lot of flies, and sparkle dun would be my first choice. But, you know, else, I'll go through if that doesn't work or...often it's not the fact that that fly isn't working, it's the fact that that fly dragged over a fish or the fish was caught by a sparkle dun a couple of days ago. And often, you just have to go to a slight variation that has a little bit different silhouette because fish see bugs that are fully emerged, they see ones that have fallen over, they see ones that are crippled, you know, they see them in all different stages.
So, you know, changing the profile or the attitude of your fly a little bit will sometimes help on a difficult fish. So, sparkled dun doesn't work out, you know, I might try a standard hackled dry, I might try a no hackle, I might try, you know, some sort of emerger, rabbit's foot emerger. God, what else? Parachutes, I use parachutes a lot. You know, parachutes and thorax flies, both of those. So, I mixed them up.
Todd: Yeah, I mean, you know, those are all styles of flies that, you know, people have had a huge amount of success with over the years. You know, there are times too when visibility is important. And, you know, if there's a ton of insects on the water and you want to be able to differentiate your fly, one way to do that is with...like if you're fishing a parachute, is to use a post that you can see easily. So, maybe a really light post or a really dark post, or for some folks that might be an orange or chartreuse post. You know, sometimes something like that helps.
And I don't fish a bunch of parachutes anymore, but I do fish them in situations where, you know, sight conditions are a little tougher and maybe there's, you know, just blanket hatch on the water. We were both on the Henry's Fork a couple of years ago and it was just silly how many bugs that were coming down. And I remember thinking to myself, "Man, I wish I had a parachute with me." I would be fishing right now because it would really help me see what was...you know, because there were thousands and thousands of insects all over the water and fish rising.
Tom: That's important because when there's a lot of bugs, your accuracy needs to be even better, right? And you have to be dead on because if there's a lot of bugs, those fish are not going to move. And boy, if you can't really see your fly, you don't know if it's a couple inches on either side of the fish, particularly if it's windy and, you know, it's blowing your fly around, you can't really figure out where it lands. Yeah, in that case, you really have to see, and you may even sacrifice a little bit of realism for visibility.
Todd: You're absolutely right about that. And I think one of the reasons that people maybe shy away from dries on occasion is they can be hard to see. You know, if you're used to...if you're nymph fishing and you're fishing with an indicator, that's typically pretty easy for most people to see. But if you're fishing a little blue-winged olive or a PMD during a heavy PMD hatch or whatever, or if you're throwing a caddis out and there's a ton of caddis on the water, it can be hard to pick up your fly. And so, I think it really does make sense for folks, especially folks who maybe are a little older whose eyesight isn't as good as it used to be, you know, to say, "Yeah, I'm gonna have some patterns with me that improve my visibility," because it definitely is one of those things where you don't want to think to yourself, "Did he just eat my fly?" You know?
And sometimes that's unavoidable, sometimes we're in situations where we just aren't sure. In those cases, it makes sense to set the hook and see what happens. But, you know, it's always preferable to have, you know, a solid idea where our flies are floating and to be able to see whether a fish took it or not. So, I don't want to belabor that but I do think that it's important. I would say number five...so we've gone practice your casting and your leader and know your bugs and carry the right flies. This is a big thing for me. I don't think it's a big thing for many other folks. I think we need to be aware when we're on the water and I think we need to focus on opening up our awareness on paying attention to what's going on around us. What are the birds doing? What does the wind do? And what's the sun doing? Where are the shadows?
There are so many different little tells out there that nudge me in one direction or another when I'm fishing, and especially if there's not a lot of rising fish. You know, where do I want to...if I'm prospecting with a dry, "Where do I want to put that fly?" You know, "Where should it go as opposed to another place?" So, I know that awareness is not something that people tend to talk about with regard to fly fishing but, you know, it's a huge thing from my perspective, and it's related to reading the water, which is the next thing. Folks need to understand how to read water. They need to be able to look at the currents, look at the river, look at the creek, whatever it might be, whether it's 10 feet wide or 200 feet wide, and have a pretty good idea, "This is where the fish are likely to be."
It doesn't make much sense to spend time looking for fish if there's no fish in a particular place. And so, I would say, you know, if folks can...if I'm not mistaken about this, I think you'd have one or two really good videos on the Orvis site on reading water and on, you know, water speed, water depth, maybe water clarity, things like that, that will allow dry fly anglers to be way, way more successful when it comes to, you know, finding fish. And that's something, I mean, we can't...you know, for a podcast, we can't put up video or images that say, "Okay, this is what you're looking for." But I do think that there's some good stuff on the Orvis site with regard to reading water. Am I right about that?
Tom: Yeah, they're on the Learning Center, on the Orvis Learning Center, there's some. And of course, my latest book is called "Finding Trout," which is all about that subject. So, you know?
Todd: I think that anybody who does not consider themselves an expert...actually, check that. Let's say that anybody who wants to catch more fish should be picking up that book.
Tom: Yeah, I'm in total agreement.
Todd: And I'm not being facetious. Most people look at a trout stream and they're confused, right? They don't know. It doesn't make sense to them. They can't say, "Well, there's going to be fish here, but not there." And, you know, when you know, "What's the water depth I'm looking for? And what's the water speed I'm looking for?" And, you know, how do logs or rocks or riffles or runs come into those equations? You know, where the fish most likely to feed? Where are the insects gonna be? You know, I mean, if we're trying to fish dry flies, you know, I would rather fish some spots on the stream that's going to have more bugs rather than fewer because the fish in those places are probably looking to surface more.
Tom: Yeah, unless it's terrestrials and then, of course, they could fall in or get blown in anywhere. But for aquatic insects, yeah.
Todd: So, a question for you with regard to terrestrials. What's the most important thing? Is it the type of bank? Is it the wind direction? What do you think about terrestrials because you probably fish them more than I do?
Tom: Well, I wish I knew. I wish I knew. I mean, you'll have days where you'll have grasshoppers just, you know, all over the banks and the wind is blowing in the right direction and it should be blowing hoppers in the water. But will those fish take a hopper? No. And then other days, you know, there's no wind and fish will eat hoppers. So, I don't know, Todd. You can't expect them anywhere, you know? They're like the Spanish Inquisition, nobody expects them.
Todd: I've never heard that before.
Tom: You know, I mean, you might plop a grasshopper down...you know, the middle of a flat slow pool is not the kind of place where you're going to blind fish with a dry fly prospect usually, you're going to be in a raffle or moving water a little bit. But, you know, with a terrestrial, a beetle or a hopper or something, you can plop it down in the middle of a slow pool and have a fish come up and eat it. So, you never know where they're going to be but, you know, it is generally in the afternoon, late morning to evening, because those terrestrial insects are pretty dormant on mornings unless it's really warm. And they don't get active and moving around and falling in and flying into the water, you know, till the weather warms up a little bit.
Todd: Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. Here's a conversation I had down at Henry's Fork back in August. I was talking with a gal I had not seen in a number of years and she mentioned that she saw a big rising fish in Last Chance and she was fishing a hopper blind, she hadn't been seeing many fish and she said she decided to cast that fish without changing the hopper out. And what she did was she threw the hopper behind the fish so it landed, oh, kind of like a couple of feet behind where that big fish was rising and it heard the hopper hit the water and it made a U-turn and race down and just wolf that fly. Is that something you've ever experienced? I don't think I've ever tried to put a hopper behind the fish.
Tom: No, I have experienced that and I've heard people talk about it before and, you know, it's a good thing to do, plop it not too close to the fish. It could be upstream too, it doesn't necessarily need to be downstream, but plop it where they have to make a reaction strike, they have to make a decision. They don't get a good look at it, you know, and it excites them. So, yeah, it definitely can work.
Todd: So, I've got a pet peeve, and it's something that I have been paying attention to. I started guiding more than 30 years ago, and I got it for 5 years full time and then on occasion after that when friends would ask for help. But this goes back to my guiding days, but I think it probably bugs me even more now when I see it. And so, I'll just come out and say that folks need to figure out how to fish at an appropriate pace. Because I can't tell you how many people I've seen who fish over and over and over in one spot without moving 10 feet with the expectation that their success is going to change on that 40th or 50th cast when there's no rising fish and no indication that anything, you know, in particular, is going on.
And at the same time, I've seen folks blow right through a bunch of big rising fish, make a cast here, a cast there, and then they're on to the next spot. And so, I would say my seventh tip is to figure out the style of dry fly fishing you're doing. Are you prospecting? Are you fishing to rising fish? Do you have a pretty good feel for what's going on? And make sure that you're pace on the water, whether you're fishing upstream or downstream or whatever you're doing. I guess this probably wouldn't apply much to floaters because they're going to be just floating downstream sort of with the current speed. But if you're wading, fish at an appropriate pace.
So, you know, if you're fishing a hopper, don't cover the same exact piece of water or you're fishing, I don't know, a Royal Wulff or something else that you might use to incentivize that non-rising fish to come to the surface because we do not want to talk about attractors, we're not going there. But if you're fishing and you're trying to bring fish to the surface, it doesn't make sense to cover that same exact piece of water 20 different times with the same flyer or 30 different times with the same fly. Usually, if that fish is going to take that fly, it's going to do it in the first or the second pass. It would be unusual for success to come after...now, obviously, if you're having issues with your casting and, you know, you're not hitting the spot, that's something else entirely.
But if you're covering a piece of water and you've covered it effectively a couple of times, you know, don't feel like you need to hit that spot 10 times before you wade up or you wade down. And conversely, you know, if there's a really big rising fish that you want to catch and you know where that fish is and you feel like you have a pretty good shot at it, don't tend to cast and walk away, you know? You know? Say, "Okay, how am I going to do this?" And, you know, be aggressive with that fish in the number of casts that you'll put over it. I think back to a time 25, 30 years ago, I think I fished for eight hours to one fish and he rose the whole time and it took me that long to get him and I got...it was a really nice fish, I had like a size 24 or 26 midge.
Tom: Oh, my God. Wow.
Todd: And he ate the whole time, he was eating tiny stuff, and I always just determined and a little obsessed, and probably that says something about psychological issues that I should have looked at. But, you know, I don't think I would probably do that today but, you know, it certainly isn't anything, you know, to say, "Okay, this is really nice fish, I'm gonna spend a half an hour or an hour on this fish."
Tom: Yeah, absolutely.
Todd: I would tell people to fish at an appropriate pace. At the same time, that's a little tough for some folks because they don't know what that pace is. So, I don't know if you have a video or anything on that, where you can...or a book where you talk about that specifically where folks can sort of get that dialed in, but it is really important.
Tom: Yeah, I don't know if you can dial it in. I mean, certainly in a small mountain stream, the fish are either going to take on the first or second cast or they're spooked or they're not going to eat. So, you move on very quickly. And there's a lot of water to cover, right, because a lot of the water isn't any good, so you move very quickly. You know, if I'm fishing a small stream, I'm going to drive around or walk hopefully or check to make sure that I got at least a half mile of water ahead of me without anybody around because I'm going to cover that water pretty quickly.
Same thing on the Madison, actually, because I do a lot of blind fishing dry dropper on the Madison. And, you know, some days it's higher, but I'm going to look for a quarter mile of water where I can work up the bank and keep moving because I am going to keep moving, I'm not going to stay in one spot. Very seldom do you find a pod of rising fish on the Madison. You know, you can and it's cool, but you have to cover a lot of water. And you can't really fish the middle of the river and there aren't as many fish out in the middle of the river. So, you know, you got the bank, you got that stuff near the shore, and, you know, I'm gonna move on, I'm gonna move.
And if I can't move, if I'm boxed in by somebody, then I'm going to get out of the river and go somewhere else because I want to keep working up the bank. On the other hand, I get obsessed. Like you, I know I've spent three or four hours not often on an individual fish but if I've got, you know, a pod of maybe two or three fish rising and I don't spook them, I'll stay on them, you know, until I either spook them or catch them. But, you know, I think when you're prospecting, you really need to...you know, if you know they're rising, you really need to move fairly quickly and cover a lot of water.
Todd: Yeah, I agree completely, and maybe that's what people just need to understand that, you know, if you're fishing blind and you're out there trying to, you know, find the occasional fish who's gonna come up and eat you dry fly, keep moving right along. If you find rising fish, slow down. So, that's probably not a bad way to look at it.
Tom: Yeah, that's the way I handle it. And, you know, there's an old cliche, "Make your first cast your best cast," and it's so true because every subsequent cast, you take the chance of spooking whatever fish are up ahead of you or below you or whatever, depending on what direction you're going. And so, you know, each cast is going to be less productive.
Todd: That is absolutely true. Do you find that you spook a lot of fish if you're not paying attention to that first false cast, though, because your throwing line is spraying over fish?
Tom: Yeah, well, I think I spook a lot of fish anyways. I think all of us spook a lot of fish and I know I spook a lot of fish, yeah, if I'm not as careful with line spray. You know, if I got a rising fish, I'll make sure that my false casts go off to the side so that line spray doesn't land right on top of the fish. But, yeah, in, you know, blind fishing, I should pay more attention to that and I don't, and I know that I spook fish because of it.
Todd: Yeah, I think that's a good point. When I am blind fishing, I don't focus on making my first false cast or first two in a different direction, and I probably should. I think that spray is probably alerting...it would be fascinating to find out if...you know, to be underwater and, you know, see how those fish react to sort of random spray on a sunny day or that kind of thing.
Tom: Yeah, when you're blind fishing, you have to pay attention to where your line is landing, right? Because let's say you made a couple of casts and you move up, well, you need to move up and fish beyond where your line landed on the last few casts, right, because those fish are definitely spooked. You know, any place your line lands, it's going to be a dead zone. And I'm guilty of that sometimes of fishing over a place where I had already thrown my line on a longer cast a little bit earlier, but then I moved up and maybe made a shorter cast and now all of a sudden, I think, "Oh, Jesus, I threw my fly line on top of that spot, no wonder there's nothing there."
Todd: That's an excellent point. So, I think we are up to number eight on my list, which is people need to learn how to spot rising trout and it also helps to be able to interpret a rise form. So, if you see a rise, can you tell where the fish is? Which way it's facing? What he's eating? That kind of thing. And, I mean, we could do an entire podcast on spotting trout and interpreting rise forms. So, this probably isn't the place to delve into that. It's a pretty detailed subject and there's a lot to learn there. But the one thing I would say that will be applicable in most situations is that little trout tend to be splashy and showy when they arise. And there's nothing wrong with little trout, I don't mind catching little trout at all, I sort of enjoy it. But if I am hunting for bigger fish, I tend to be looking for slower rise forms that aren't showy but that move a fair amount of water. Would you agree with that assessment or...?
Tom: Totally, yeah. Yeah.
Todd: I'm sure you have stuff in all the different books you've written and the articles you've written and the videos you've made on understanding rise forms and that sort of thing, I would just suggest that folks, if they're interested in becoming a better dry fly angler, that they focus on spotting rising trout, and then interpreting those rise forms. Number nine is one of those things that it's sort of at the core of dry fly fishing, regardless of whether you're fishing to rising fish or not and that's just to get a great drift. You know, it's related to your casting because your casting will ultimately be one of the arbiters for whether you get a good drift or not.
But, you know, ultimately, we want our fly to float on the water as if it's not attached to anything, as if there's no line or leader influencing it. Because if we don't, then we ended up with...if that doesn't happen, we end up with something that's sort of, you know, the killer for pretty much dry fly fishing and nymph fishing, which is drag. Anytime our fly drags unnaturally, it's going to alert the fish that something just isn't right here. And if you've got a really nice fish that you're fishing to, if you walk up and you see a big trout rising, and you make one cast and that fly drags over that fish, the fish may well disappear.
It certainly probably won't eat that fly the next time you make that cast, even if your second cast is a good cast, which goes back to your, you know, "Make a good cast with your first cast." But, you know, you want that drift. If I think that...if I've made a cast and it might drift as suspect and I have room to do so, I'll strip the fly right out of there and say, "No, you're not going to see it this time. I don't think that's going to go well, let's try it again." I don't know if you have a technique that works well in those situations, but I mean, man, that fly should land on the water.
And depending upon, you know, how deep the fish is and how fast the water is, you know, typically, what, two to four feet maybe upstream from the fish because the fish will be facing upstream. And you want that fly to float down that distance, whether it's two feet or three feet or four feet, maybe occasionally five feet. And then as soon as it's below the fish, you can pick it up and get it out there. But that drift is essential. People with the skill to get a good drift are gonna just catch a lot more fish and that's just the way it works.
Tom: Yeah. I don't totally agree with you there because I'm more of a driller. I find that the longer I try to lead the fish, the more chance drags is going to happen, right, because your line leader on the water longer. And particularly if a fish is sipping, I know that they're close to the surface, I know that they can't see very far away, but when the bug is over them, if it looks right, they're going to eat it.
And if I get a fish sipping, I'm not going to put that fly more than a foot ahead of that fish unless I think I'm going to spook it. And it may be even shorter. So, I really tend to not lead him as much as some people do. And maybe I'm wrong, but I think that every individual fish is different and you have to plan your approach and your angle differently at almost every rising fish you see. You may want to come from below, you may want to quarter upstream, you may want to try to sneak above the fish. I mean, it all depends on the current and what kind of current situation you got there.
Todd: You know, you're right, and the depths of the fish has a ton to do with it. If the fish is three feet deep and coming up to the surface because there's something, you know, that's tempting that fish to move through three feet of water, then you have to lead them further. The issue I have with casting too close to the fish...two issues, actually. Number one, yeah, if I make a mistake, I'm gonna spook the fish. And the second thing is that I want that fly to float into the window of the feeding fish and for that fish to have time to react to it. And my concern is if I'm only a foot or 18 inches above that fish, will that fish see that fly and have time to react to it?
He may well or he or she may well see the fly but not feel like, "Okay, I've got time to tilt up and take it." Now, if the fish is only coming up through...you know, if it's right below the surface and tilting up through six or eight inches of water, then I think a foot or 18 inches is very appropriate. But, you know, if it's deeper than that...and it seems like a lot of times I'm fishing to fish that are coming up through, I would say, you know, 18 inches to two and a half feet of water, I've got to give them a little bit...I've got to lead them a little bit more or they just don't react to that fly. I'm not spooking them, but they just don't react.
Tom: Yeah, I would agree with you there. If a fish is deeper, you need to lead it more.
Todd: So, I'm amazed that this is the first disagreement we've had or maybe the second but it's...you know? So, what I would suggest is that folks play around with that, right? When you're out in the water, you know, say, "Okay, you know, do I want to try it three feet above the fish or four feet above the fish? Or even do I want to basically hit them right on the nose and see if I can get them to eat that way? It's fun. I mean, one of the great things about fly fishing is, you know, we can experiment. It's not like, "Well, I didn't catch that fish, my life isn't over." It's not like that's the end of the day or things are horrible, it's like, "I didn't get them that way."
And I'm actually going to jump out of order here and say...this was number 11, I'm making it number 10. Learn from your failures. Put yourself in a situation where...and obviously, I'm not talking to you, Tom, I'm talking to the listeners. Put yourself in a situation where you don't know if you're going to succeed and learn from what happens. And if things don't go right, "Oh, well, such is life. I learned something from that." I learned way more from my failures than I do from my successes a lot of times.
You know, I learned what not to do. And believe me I've had...I don't think it would be possible to quantify the number of failures I've had on a trout stream over the years. I mean, you know, it would be in the billions. But, man, I learn a lot from this stuff. And so, if something doesn't work, that tells me what I don't want to do again or what I maybe need to do differently. Do you see things the same way? Or are you going to disagree with me on that?
Tom: Well, I'm going to kind of disagree, in that I don't know where you can...I think that every time you cast a dry fly, you're not sure of success. So, I don't know if I can put myself in a situation where I can say, "Oh, I'm gonna be successful here." It doesn't happen with me. So, I think you're setting yourself up for a potential failure every time you go fishing, right?
Todd: Well, that one is certainly true and somebody, you know, who needs the affirmation of a positive outcome on every single cast is going to be hugely disappointed. At the same time, though, what I would say is that the highs, the good days, are so much better because of the slow days, right? I fished in Missouri a couple of weeks ago and I went down...for me, it's about a three-hour drive, and I drove down and I fished it on Saturday with a couple of friends and it sucked. It was terrible. There were no fish. I did everything I possibly could have. I didn't use that little streamer I'd mentioned to you I was thinking about using, that was the only thing I could have done different.
But I fished really, really hard and I think I had maybe one or two fish take soft hackles and didn't hook up. And I went back the next day, very similar conditions, and the fishing was incredible. I don't know how many fish I caught, but there were hundreds of big fish gobbling blue-winged olives. And it lasted for like four hours, it was, "Whoa, it was great." And what I would say is that that Day 2 was even better because Day 1 sucked. So, you know, if it was always good, if it was always great, it would be boring as hell. It would be like, "Oh, yeah, I'm gonna go out and catch 20 fish today," or, "I'm gonna go out and catch 5 fish and leave after 10 minutes." And, you know, the slow days really make the good days exceptional.
Tom: They're not much fun at the time but in hindsight, they make things seem better.
Todd: Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, I think that people need to be frank with themselves, that they need to be honest with themselves what their expectations are, what they enjoy. They should know. You know, know thyself, what do you like about fishing? And if you need that positive affirmation of catching your fish on a really regular basis, don't, for example, fly to northern British Columbia and fish for steelhead for a week because it may be, you know, days and days and days before that one steelhead comes along.
Tom: Or never.
Todd: Or never. Yeah, that's a real issue. And firstly, you know, some people don't care. If the hookup just isn't important, if it's more standing in the water and having a great time, then, you know, that opens up a whole different set of circumstances as far as, you know, what will you enjoy and what will you have fun with? Okay, so we're almost to the end of this thing. I wanted to talk about two more things. One is understanding how and when to set the hook.
Tom: Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one. I get that question all the time.
Todd: You know, and what I would tell people is that if I'm fishing upstream or up and across to a fish, I want to be as quick as I can. I don't want to set the hook hard with a dry fly. You rarely want to set hard but you do want to be quick because you're pulling that fly back into the fish's mouth. And if I'm fishing downstream or down and across...I don't typically fish straight downstream. So, if I'm fishing down and across, I need to slow things down a little bit, right? Because that fish is going to tilt up and I'm going to see the nose of the fish if he's eating on the surface.
And if I don't give him a chance to shut his mouth and start down before I set the hook, I'm just going to pull the fly straight upstream out of his mouth, which is a really, really good way to miss the fish and spook the fish. So, you know, just pay attention to where you are on the water in relation to where you're casting. And then, you know, I would say upstream or up and across, be quick, down and across, slow down just a hair. Let that fish dictate...where that fish is in relation to you should dictate the speed at which you set the hook. Upstream is quick, downstream is slower. Never hard. Am I wrong about that?
Tom: No, I was curious at what you were going to say, but I think that's pretty much what I do. I mean, I'm a little softer on a downstream fish because, you know, there's tension there, more tension there. So, I might be even a little bit easier on my set, I might be very, very subtle on my set with a downstream fish. Yeah, and you hear people tell you to strike to one side or the other on a downstream fish, but the issue is that usually you have enough line out, so it doesn't matter which way you move your rod, the fly is going to dart upstream, right? It doesn't matter. If you move it to the left, to the right, or straight up, the fly is going to move upstream.
Todd: Yeah, if you were close enough that that would have a major impact, you know, that would mean that you're sort of looming right in that fish's window, right? And you already spooked that fish. So, yeah, I would not worry about trying to set off to the left or to the right in the downstream fish, but I think you're absolutely right about that.
Tom: Yeah, we have to remember with dry flies especially that it's a small thin hook and it doesn't take much to set it. And if it scrapes across bone as it sometimes will with a large trout, it doesn't matter how hard you set, you're not getting penetrate. So, you need to just put enough tension on that line to sink that little, tiny hook.
Todd: No, you are spot on there. All right, well, I think we're just about at the end. The last thing I wanted to mention, the last sort of key to dry fly success I had for your listeners is that they should fish with the right gear. And the right gear is pretty subjective, right? It's one of those things that if...you know, what's right for me might not be right for you or might not be right for somebody else, but I will give you an example. I used to do a lot of guiding on the Railroad Ranch on the Henry's Fork, which is, you know, incredible dry fly water. It tends to be very slow, very smooth, you know, small intricate currents.
It requires, you know, precise casting and sometimes a little bit longer cast just because the fish can see people so easily. And I would have folks, back when I was guiding, show up with rods that were very appropriate for throwing a streamer 80 feet or maybe doubling as a wading staff but that were not very good dry fly rods. So, my suggestion if folks want to fish dry fly successfully, think about your gear ahead of time and don't go out with the fastest, stiffest rod that you can find. I wrote a couple of stories in the last few years about how I think that the fly fishing industry has sort of gone too far with fast action or stiff rods.
Certainly, some people are able to fish them successfully and maybe get a little extra bit of performance out of a rod like that. But for those of us who are mere mortals and for those of us who want to enjoy the casting experience, I would suggest that, folks, if you're fishing dry flies, you know, a medium action or a medium fast action rod is probably going to be a better choice most of the time and you want to use a line that is well matched to that rod setup. It's just one of those things. There's a very thin line between success and enjoyment with dry fly fishing, I think those things overlap a huge amount.
And part of the enjoyment of dry fly fishing is the enjoyment that we get from casting. You know, casting a good well-designed rod is a joy. And one of the things...one of the reasons I dry fly fish probably, I don't know, 85% of the time that I'm on the water is because I love casting so much. It puts a big smile on my face or depending on the situation, maybe a big...I don't know if I can say that right now, so I'm not gonna say that. A big grin, it would put a big grin on my face.
Tom: All right, all right. Never mind.
Todd: So anyway, you know, so I would say that the enjoyment I get from casting a medium or medium fast action 4-weight or 5-weight is 50 or 100 times greater than the enjoyment I get from casting a fast action rod in those sizes. And most of our dry fly fishing is going to be 4-weight and 5-weight. Back in the day, oh, you know, maybe 6-weights were probably were appropriate. But unless I'm out there throwing hoppers in the wind or salmon flies in the wind or something like that, I'm going to steer clear of a 6-weight. So, I would say just, you know, find rods that you feel really, really good about casting and I don't want to get into brands, other than Orvis, people should always buy Orvis, obviously.
Tom: Absolutely.
Todd: But, you know, buy rods and use rods when you're fishing dry flies that are well suited to the task at hand. I mean, you're not trying to cast 80, 90 feet with a dry fly rod, or you shouldn't be. You know, unless casting 80 or 90 feet with a dry fly is the one thing on this planet that gives you, you know, joy and solace, in which case go for it. But for most people, it's that 20 to 40 foot cast or maybe 45 feet and medium action rod or medium fast rod is going to handle that easier. You're not going to need to over line it, you're not going to need to push the rod harder, you just need...it's more enjoyable to make that cast.
And obviously, you want a nice balanced outfit, so you want your reel...whether or not you're using a fancy reel with a disk drag or you're using click and pawl or whatever it might be, you want the reel to balance the rod nicely. So, I would just suggest, you know, folks to put a little thought and effort into their gear and, you know, if I've been throwing streamers all morning and now it's time to switch over to dry flies, chances are I want to switch my rod. I don't know if you would agree or disagree with that.
Tom: Yeah, and I think there's a misconception about...you know, people say, "Is this a dry fly rod?" or whatever. And I think that if you like casting a rod and the line size is appropriate, you know, not too heavy, then it's going to be good dry fly rod. You know, I use the same 9-foot 5-weight for nymphs, streamers, swinging wet flies, dry flies, because I like that rod. You know, in the old days of bamboo, there was a difference.
You had dry fly action, which was, you know, for bamboo was a crisper or faster action because you were doing more false casting. And then you had wet fly action, which was, you know, slower bend, almost parabolic, and most of the time people were roll casting a couple or three wet flies and they weren't false casting very much. So, there was a difference in the age of, of bamboo, I think, but there's really no such thing as a dry fly rod. If it's a good casting rod, it's gonna be a good dry fly rod if you like casting it.
Todd: Here's my question for you. As you know, I used to do a little bit of writing about fly fishing gear, and I would review different rods and I know over the years Orvis has sent me a number of rods to write about as had many other companies. And it's been...oh, it's been probably five or six years, I have not done much of that. And so, I have not cast any of the current Orvis rods other than a couple of H3s that I bought for the School of Trout. So, my question for you is, if folks were going to go on the Orvis website or go into a shop that sells Orvis rods or an Orvis shop, what rods would be good dry fly rods based on your experience? Obviously, they may feel differently after casting it, but what would you recommend?
Tom: I'm recommending a 9-foot 4 or 5-weight, you know, depending on size of the river and how much wind and whatever. That's what I use, I use a 9-foot 4-weight. If it's not windy and I'm fishing small flies, then a 5-weight. If it's bigger water, I might be switching to a nymph or streamer. And that's what you need to know. I mean, the Clearwater and the Recon series, there's choice of one action and that's kind of progressive medium action. And then in the Helios 3, you have a choice of a D or an F version. And I would definitely go with the F, it's more moderate progressive. You know, the D is for throwing bigger stuff into the wind and getting real distance cast, which you typically don't need with dry fly. So, that's what I do.
Todd: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I agree with you completely on the 9 foot 4 or 9/5. If I was gonna fish a bunch of smaller streams, maybe I'd drop it down to an eight and a half or an eight. But I think, you know, for the majority of stuff we do...and, you know, there are times when the extra distance of a...or the extra length of a nine foot, you know, helps with mending. Whether that's aerial mend like a reach cast or, you know, whether we're actually mending when the line is on the water, but that extra nine feet can...or the extra length, you know, between eight and nine feet can be a little bit handy. I also want to apologize in case anybody's hearing whining in the background. It's not me. I have golden retrievers here and they are telling me it's time to go out, so it's probably about time to wrap things up, Tom. Anything else you want to cover before we...?
Tom: No, just one thing I thought of on the rod. If somebody's going to Patagonia and, you know, it's getting on wintertime and certain people may go to South America, I would switch my advice on the rod because there's two reasons. One is it's nearly always windy, and I mean really windy. I don't mean breezy, I mean windy. And you're typically fishing bigger dry fly. So, even my dry fly rod in Patagonia would be a 9-foot 6-weight and some days even a 7-weight, which I would never use anywhere else for dry fly fishing. But, you know, if you're fishing great big beetles and Chubby Chernobyl and 2x tippets on a windy day, 6-weight will help you push that.
Todd: Yeah. The other thing that's really important in those situations is that casting practice we started out with because...it's funny, I was up in BC fishing back in July for a week. And I was on the water...we were floating, actually, in the rafts and I was on the water and the only thing I had with me was a really soft, slow 9-foot 4-weight. And the wind came up and started howling upstream and, you know, you're making down and across reach cast most of the time in a situation like that.
So, I was literally trying to throw a size 6 fly into the wind with a super soft 9-foot 4weight, I have no issue, I have no issue. And so, what I'm gonna say is that all the time I've spent listening to John Gersack talking about casting over the years or Pete talking about casting has...somehow, it helped me that particular day. It was like, "Damn, it's not a hard thing." I had a 30 mile an hour wind coming upstream and I had no issues and it was like...I've been listening to really, really good casting instructors.
Tom: Yeah, you have. You and I both have, so we're lucky. We're lucky.
Todd: Yeah. And here's something, Tom. This is the last thing. It's not part of the 12 original things that I mentioned, but it's something that I've been talking a little bit about at the School of Trout in some of our classes. And I don't know if anybody else will take this as seriously as I do, but I've noticed that my success in this...it's not specific to dry flies, but it applies to my fishing. I know you did a podcast with Dylan a while back and I think the subject was like the spirituality of fly fishing or something like that. And I don't want to dive into spirituality right now, but what I will say...and this is sort of I truly believe this.
If I'm out on the water and I'm appreciative and I'm thankful for my time there, I catch more fish. And if I'm not thinking about those things, if I don't stop and just look around, you know, and say thank you to the greater universe and express that appreciation, I don't catch as many. I don't catch nearly as many. I don't know why that is. I don't even want to conjecture on that, but it is one of those things. Man, I do better when I take the time to slow down and just be appreciative of being out there on the water.
And I think that's something that, you know, maybe more of us should take just a minute every now and then and be like, "Damn, I am lucky, most people are not out here in a beautiful place like this doing what I'm doing today," and being thankful for that. You know, we're not all that far from Thanksgiving. I'm not sure when the show, you know, will air but, you know, being thankful isn't a bad thing.
Tom: No, no, and you're right, you're right. It does make a difference for sure.
Todd: All right. Well, Tom, I'm gonna go rescue my golden retrievers unless there's anything else you want to bring up.
Tom: No, I think you've covered it very well, Todd. And I just want to thank you for organizing this and convincing me to do this and taking the time to talk to us today.
Todd: Well, I mean, you know, one thing I can say is you showed poor judgment by bringing me back on again. But other than that, I'm truly thankful that, you know, we got a chance to talk about dry flies, which is something that we both love and we've both been doing for a long time. And, you know, I just don't think it gets...you know, it doesn't get the ink or the attention that it used to and from my perspective, that's a little bit of a shame.
Tom: It might come back around, who knows? Twenty years now, everybody might be fishing dry flies, right? Or 10 years from now. They might get sick of Euro nymphing and realize that fly casting is fun.
Todd: I would not complain about that. All right. Well, Tom, thanks a whole bunch for having me on again. I sure appreciate it.
Tom: All right, Todd. Thank you, and I'll talk to you soon.
Todd: All right, take care.
Tom: Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to "The Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast" with Tom Rosenbauer. You can be a part of the show. Have a question or a comment? Send it to us at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. in the body of an email or as a voice attachment. You can find more free fishing tips at howtoflyfish.orvis.com.