15 Years Ago Today - Reading the Water

Jamie: Hey everybody, this is Jamie. I'm the producer here of the "Orvis Fly-Fishing Guide Podcast," and today is the 15th anniversary of our first show, Tom and I recorded 15 years ago today. And we didn't think anybody would listen, so it's really short. It's only five minutes, which is really fun for me because now our shows top out at, l don't know, an hour and a half, sometimes up to almost two hours.
So, I'm gonna play today for you the first episode of the "Orvis Fly-Fishing Guide Podcast" from April 17th, 2008. And it's, like I said, very brief. It's on reading the water. But I wanna thank you all for your patience as we learned, years ago, how to do this podcasting thing. Some of the episodes are of much higher quality than the others, and some of the humor isn't as funny as we thought we were back then. But I appreciate all of you for listening. Thanks for all your memes, all your contact with us, all of your questions, and all of your tips for other fly fishers. What a great community we've built here over the last 15 years. So thanks to Tom Rosenbauer and thanks to all of you for listening. Talk to you soon.
Male Speaker: Welcome to the "Orvis Fly-Fishing Guide Podcast" with Tom Rosenbauer, bringing you tips, tricks, and techniques to help you get the most from your time on the water. Here's acclaimed fly-fishing author and lifelong fly-fishing enthusiast, Tom Rosenbauer.
Tom: This is podcast number one of the "Orvis Fly-Fishing Guide." And I thought it might be appropriate to begin this series with a podcast on reading the water or reading trout streams because it's something that people seem to have problems with initially and don't seem to understand or seem to think that they need more experience or more knowledge about reading the water. They walk down the river and they're faced with some moving water and a bunch of rocks, and they say, what's next? They don't know. They have problems figuring out where the trout are and what they should do and so on.
And I find that a lot of novices, in particular, worry about entomology and learning the insects. And I always tell people that instead of worrying so much about learning about bugs, learn a little bit more about trout because trout are a lot more interesting than bugs. And that's what we're out there to do is catch trout, not catch bugs unless you want to go around with an insect net all day long. And some people do that.
But trout are a lot more interesting than bugs. The problem is that trout are more difficult to study. It's tough to find books or magazine articles about trout except in the scientific journals, particularly trout feeding behavior. And it's a lot easier to study bugs. There's a lot of articles and books on bugs, and you can turn over rocks and poke and prod the bugs and put them in a jar of alcohol. But trout are more difficult. And the way you learn about trout behavior is to some degree in books. I've written a couple about reading the water and they include quite a bit about trout feeding behavior, but a lot of it's still in the scientific journals and inaccessible to most of us.
So, the way to learn about trout feeding behavior is to watch trout. And by watching trout and learning about their behavior, you'll then go on to learn how to read the water because you'll know what a trout needs and what they do. So, there's really only a couple of things that you need to understand before you begin your quest in learning how to read the water, and that's what a trout needs to go about their daily life. And also you need a basic understanding of hydraulics, what water does when it encounters a surface. And that's really all you need to learn to learn how to read the water.
So a trout needs food. They need food, they need fairly constant access to food, and then they need protection from predators. And they also need, for a brief period each year, a place to spawn, to pass their genes on to the next generation. But that happens in a fairly brief period of time and doesn't usually affect the way we fish for them. I think that protection from predators or overhead cover is overstressed a lot of times when we talk about reading the water. Trout need a place to go to when they're threatened. They don't need to live in a tangle of roots or they don't need to live under a rock all day long. All they need is a bolt hole is a place when an osprey shadow darkens a water or when a stumbling fisherman comes splashing through the water, when a merganser swims down through a pool, trout need a place to go to right away that they can get to in a matter of seconds. And they're fairly fast swimmers as we all know. And so they need a place to bolt to, but they don't need to feed right next to that overhead cover.
Now, if they can feed right next to that overhead cover, that's fine. And some people call that a prime lie, where you have a place that a trout feeds right next to a piece of protection, but they can be sometimes quite a distance away from a root wad or an overhanging tree or a big rock when they're feeding. So, what trout need for feeding is they need water that's coming to them fast enough to bring them a constant procession of insects and crustaceans and both aquatic insects and insects like grasshoppers and ants that fall in the water. And they pick away at this stuff as it drifts by, some things they reject, some things they eat, and it might be floating on the surface or it might be underneath. Trout don't seem to pay a lot of attention to whether it's floating or sunk. We pay a lot of attention to that, but they just pick at stuff that goes by in the drift all day long.
People have found that trout prefer to lie in water that's about one foot per second, and that's comfortable for them. They're able to maintain their position in this water, and they won't exhaust themselves by lying in water that's running about one foot per second. And then they like to feed in water that's a little bit faster, because obviously the faster the water within reason, the more food that goes by them all the time. And you wonder, well, how am I gonna tell how fast one foot per second is? How do I look for this water? Well, one of the ways you can do it is just put a yardstick down on the table and run your finger along it and count 1001, 1002, and see how long it takes until you get your finger to travel about one foot per second. That's the kind of water a trout likes to lie and feed in.
So, that's kind of the bare bones of what a trout needs to get their food, to get enough energy to survive, and to pass on their genes. And for our next podcast, we'll talk a little bit more about the hydraulics of moving water and how that affects trout, and how that helps you to read the water and hopefully have more fun when you're fishing. Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.
Male Speaker: Thank you for listening to the "Orvis Fly-Fishing Guide Podcast" with Tom Rosenbauer. Since 1856, anglers worldwide have counted on Orvis to help them get the most from their time on the water. To learn more and to shop the world's finest fly fishing gear, including the award-winning zero gravity Helios Rod, visit www.orvis.com/podcast.