Flymen Blog
Varying your technique and presentation to match the fishing conditions at hand is key to consistently catching fish.
The dictionary defines the phrase, “One trick pony” as “a person or thing with only one special feature, talent, or area of expertise."
I see fly anglers all the time who are one trick ponies — for example, only fishing with dry flies or dry and dropper rigs no matter what the stream conditions are. Even guys who nymph fish can get caught up in only euro nymphing or only indicator nymphing.
We've all been guilty, myself included, of sticking to a favorite technique or fly for too long when it’s not producing.
Fly fishing today has anglers targeting an array of species in pretty much every fishable location on the planet.
Generally speaking, due to the rise of social media and the seemingly insatiable need to snap that “epic fish pic,” there are not too many streams or locations that are secret fishing spots anymore.
There are probably many anglers who have stepped foot in the same run you fish regularly. If you are fortunate enough to fish a river system that doesn’t have much pressure, well, congratulations and please take me there.
The local waters where I live in Pennsylvania can be inundated with anglers just about every other day.
In cases like that, as an angler you have three choices you can make:
- Put your walking shoes on, find open water, and fish anyway.
- Go home and tie more flies waiting for a day where you have the stream to yourself (you’ll be waiting for a while).
- Alter your fishing approach, think outside of the box, and fish your fly with confidence behind people who just fished a run.
In my personal experience, finding open water and fishing usually works and is good for a fish here and there. To maximize your success, try altering your fishing tactics with an unconventional approach that most anglers wouldn’t use.
Believe it or not, this is actually extremely easy to do because most guys are using a Woolly Bugger/standard streamer, or tandem nymph rig. Fly fishing is entirely centralized on observation. Reading water, insect identification, flow rates/visibility, the list is endless. Take a minute, observe other anglers, and BE DIFFERENT.
Something about pulling a fish out of a big body of water makes you feel heroic.
Walking up to a big body of water, so big that your cast doesn’t even cover a fraction of the water, can be daunting and even downright discouraging.
You almost feel nervous to make your first cast. Where do I start? How do I tackle this water without a boat?
But when everything comes together and you hook into that fish, you feel like you won the lottery!
Here are a few things to help make swinging your fly rod feel a little more like fishing and a little less like… flailing.
Everyone has their own style of fishing whether it be with a spinning rod or a fly rod.
Those of us who choose to pick up a fly rod also have our little own niches in which we choose to stick with.
Unfortunately, we tend to put our streamer boxes aside during this time of year and stick to more traditional approaches.
Yes, it’s exhilarating to watch that giant brown trout come to the surface and take your size 18 dry fly as you fish a tail out of a pool or a nice steady run, but what is more heart pumping than watching that same giant fish chase your 4” to 8” streamer from bank to bank and demolish your fly on the strip or the end of your swing?
