Education
Roll Cast Instructions from the Dude with the Cool Accent!
Aug 20th
Fly Fishing Advice
Here is a cool video taking about the right way to do a proper roll casting. I really like this video. Great fly fishing advice with great instruction!
ENJOY!
Kelly Galloup Straight Shootin!
Jul 4th
Kelly Galloup – Slide Inn
I have always been a huge Kelly Gallup fan. He tells it like it is and usually adds some spice to it. I had also heard of his new ‘living’ flies and used the Sex Dungeon on the Henry’s Fork (Slayed a big brown BTW). He has always been really fun to talk to when the frenziers stop at his shop each year.
Well, I was reading Fly Rod and Reel and came across his interview. It was Great! He talks about his new living flies and how they work. I also like his philosophy when it comes to fishing. He doesn’t limit himself to just one way, but knows all the methods and tricks.
Thanks to Fly Rod and Reel and Greg Thomas for the great work.
Kelly Galloup
Ask the Experts
- By: Greg Thomas
There’s a lot of idealistic nonsense flowing through the fly-fishing airwaves these days—maybe it’s always been that way—and one of the most ludicrous pronunciations is that big fish and numbers don’t matter. Come on. On any given day I would much rather land a bevy of 20-inchers versus a pack of foot-long delinquents and I know most of you would, too.
One person who isn’t afraid to admit his fascination with giant trout is a fish-getter named Kelly Galloup, who lives on the banks of Montana’s Madison River and runs a fly shop and lodge called Slide Inn. His main interests are big trout, big trout, big trout and, fortunately for us, creating and thoroughly testing progressive streamers that catch those giants. Much of his work and theory is contained in the ground-breaking book, Modern Streamers for Trophy Trout. He’s currently working on a revised edition, which includes many new patterns and modified theory.
I recently visited Galloup, relieved him of a couple Kettle House ambers from his refrigerator that says, “No self-service” and queried him on the new wave of “living flies,” plus his theories on trout behavior and the new Streamer Express fly lines he developed with Scientific Anglers. Sit back with your own favorite libation, enjoy the ride and prepare to learn.
What are you trying to achieve with your “living flies,” and how do they perform differently than, say, a standard Woolly Bugger?
The articulation in my flies is based on a back-and-forth and side-to-side S-swim, which is the way prey-fish swim, and that is a trigger point for big trout. If you combine the side-to-side movement with tipping up and down it’s even better. I try to create flies that offer multiple trigger-points so a fish says, “I’ve got to ‘Eff’ this thing up.
You’ll still catch fish throwing Buggers and other streamers and you may get lucky and catch a good trout, but you won’t trigger a response from the really big fish that someone with a more aggressive multiple trigger-point fly would. You would be limiting yourself, missing an opportunity to see more and bigger fish by only fishing the standard streamers.
How, exactly, do you achieve that trigger-point movement?
I basically mimic a jointed Rapala. But the key to my flies is the articulation style; I run a loop of braided stainless off the front hook and attach it to the back hook, which has a flat ring eye. Originally, guys put a hook behind another hook to create the first articulated flies. It made flies longer, but it didn’t make them swim differently. When I added the flat eye back hook, everything came together.
Which pattern is your favorite?
The Boogie Man is my favorite. By placement of material, including the flank feathers, which hold water, and the weighted head, it articulates side-to-to side and up-and-down. What that creates is a fish that looks injured and is trying to flee. The Boogie Man is moo, moo, moo, money!
Why would the biggest trout resist nymphs and dries and only eat the “living flies” with multiple trigger points?
First, give me some money for that beer you pilfered from my fridge. Second, my entire theory developed years ago when I dove the rivers and watched fish. We (anglers) have been trained to think about fish food and match the hatch. The big fish don’t play by that. They are mostly nocturnal. They feed when we aren’t fishing. So, you go underwater and watch them and they have these baitfish around them all the time, and they’re not eating them. They’re like grizzlies; a lot of the animals walk past grizzlies and don’t get eaten, but you put an idiot in Yellowstone who runs from a bear and trips over himself and the next day you have a compelling headline in the Bozeman Chronicle. Big fish are like that; they are programmed to feed only at certain times so you need a bunch of trigger-points to get them to eat when otherwise they wouldn’t. For instance, I saw a brown trout a guy caught on the Boogie Man and killed and it had a 12 inch rainbow in its stomach. Do you think that fish needed to eat? It was triggered to eat.
How come these “living flies” work better than exact renditions of a particular food item?
I’m not as concerned about the visual exactness as I am about multiple trigger-points. I want it to be close enough to be eaten – that’s why I like two-tone colors that are nearly exact – but it doesn’t have to be super lifelike. I’m a marabou-and-hair guy. Think about the Sex Dungeon. The fly, Thomas. Not something else. I don’t have a clue if the Sex Dungeon is a sculpin, a crayfish, or a mouse running away. Who cares? There are many triggers built in and big fish eat this fly.
What do you think about the guys who wuld say that fishing streamers in general, and especially these new “living flies,” isn’t fly-fishing?
I don’t tend to listen to those people. They are the people who drive newcomers away from this sport. They want all the water for themselves. I find it perplexing to hear those guys say that because they fish dry flies they have ascended to the top of their sport. Most of those dry-fly purists couldn’t fish their way out of a hatchery raceway.
I grew up in the Swisher/Richards world. I love fishing dry flies and I wrote a book about it, Cripples and Spinners. I know what it is all about, but I don’t limit myself to one way or another. How boring. Why should any of us have to limit our technique. I hear guys saying that what I do is close to bait fishing. Great. Look at the kids coming into the sport wanting to throw streamers, versus those who want to sit on the bank with a thumb up their butt waiting for a hatch.
When was the last time these purists caught a 10-pound trout on a dry fly? When was the last time they caught a five-pounder on a dry fly? It happens, but not often. I say, if you can do that over and over with a dry fly, show me. If you can repeat like that I’ll quit streamer fishing. I can catch a fish like that every week or two and it’s just fun. It’s a blast to hammer big flies all day.
You figured out what type of fly line and taper would most efficiently throw big streamers and Scientific Anglers teamed with you to create the Streamer Express. What kind of advantage does the Streamer Express give you over other line styles and tapers?
The big misconception is that these lines are heavy. They’re made out of tungsten and they are not heavy, but they are skinny and fast. For the most part I fish in less than 18 inches of water, but these lines allow me, depending on the retrieve, to fish from four inches below the surface to four feet below the surface.
The heads on these lines are long, 40 feet on the 200 grain Streamer Express, which is designed for a 6-weight rod. That allows me to pick up these flies quickly and, ironically, the beginners who try these lines cast better than they do with floaters. In addition, that long head keeps the fly at the same depth, right where you want it, for most of the retrieve.
Which Streamer Express line would you fish if you could only fish one?
The 200-grain is the one I fish 90 percent of the time. I fish it on a 6-weight and I would fish it on a 7-weight, too. I keep a 250-grain with me, but only use it during super-high-wind situations or if I fish a heavy heavy fly. Nine times out of ten, though, it’s the 200-grain.
Kelly, thanks for the time and the great information for FR&R’s readers. But I’m not paying for those beers.
Then I guess you’re not walking out of here on two legs. You’re going to look like the Boogie Man after a 6-pound brown slams it!
Take That Boy Fishing!
Sep 7th
Traditions
Growing up I had a great older brother that would always take me fishing. I remember lots of hours on the Teton River, Henry’s Fork, and South Fork of the Snake. I can still remember the day my older bro came home and woke me up to show me the 18lb, 36 inch Brown Trout he had caught below Palisades Dam.
Those days hunting trout instilled the itch in me to get out and fish. I started with a worm, moved up to a panther martin, eventually a rapala, then ultimately fly fishing. I now tend to the prefer the latter 99% of the time. But, my passion for the sport probably would have never been fueled if it hadn’t be for someone taking me fishing as a lad.
Now that I am a father with 4 kids I want to do the same thing for my children. This summer I have really tried to focus on going out with my 4 1/2 year old and give him a taste of what fishing can be. I have tried to do it at a pace that he won’t get burned out, but give him enough exposure that he will want to continue these outings for years to come. Sometimes, my little fishing buddy is more concerned about the water snake (I hate snakes, so i steer clear) or the coolest looking branch he finds on the ground. Sometimes we only get a few casts in before he wants to venture to a different hole. That is all fine though, because I believe it is all about the overall experience with your fishing buddy.
I have always wondered about the age at which to take your child out and how much exposure to give them to the sport? Also, do you throw them right into fly fishing or do you start them with a worm or spinning rod? For me, I have just done what feels right to me. I would however love to hear from the Frenzy Nation on what they have done or plan to do with their little fishing buddies.
I have included some pics of this summer’s outings.
ENJOY!
Be the fish
May 5th
This is one of the coolest articles I have ever read. I know that every river is different and different types of trout are instinctively different as well but the results which you will read are a must to know for any fly fisherman. The article is over 2 years old so I am sure some of you have already read it but like they say we learn by repetition.
___________________________
By Kirk Deeter Photos and video by Tim Romano Field and Stream Mag
I am a 6-foot-long cutthroat trout, wallowing near the bottom of Colorado’s South Platte River. The water is perfect, not too high, not too low, 48 degrees and clear. I’m holding in the current with other trout, watching bugs float by. One is drifting right at my head. I turn for a closer look and-”foul hooked. I swim to the surface and spit the regulator out of my mouth. “Dang it, Bruce, you snagged me again.” I’m in the middle of an experiment to find out what trout really do under the river surface. The only way to truly understand the fish, I figured, was to be the fish, so I got out my scuba gear and jumped in. Here’s what I learned.
Lesson 1. False Casts Ruin Fishing.
I was able to slide right into a run without spooking trout. They weren’t bothered by a big bubble-blowing blob, so long as I moved slowly. But as soon as photographer Tim Romano moved the boom-operated underwater camera overhead, even ever so subtly, the fish scattered in panic. At one point, a shadow passed above and I saw fish slink away toward the rocks. When I surfaced to ask what had happened, they told me a blue heron had flown over the run.
More significantly, I watched from be low as my friend Bruce Mardick made several false casts over the fish. As he whipped the line back and forth, the fish went ballistic and hid against the bank. After allowing them to recover, he started limiting false casts, even using roll casts, and the trout seemed undisturbed. The point: You get one, maybe two, false casts before the fish are onto you. Try to direct these at an angle behind the fish; only your final cast should target the run.
Lesson 2. You Miss A Lot Of Strikes.
Jeremy Hyatt, one of the top guides in Colorado, fished a nymph rig. I observed the fish inhaling the fly and spitting it back out like a sunflower seed. Hyatt never saw his indicator move and certainly never felt the fish. The perfect “dead drift,” in which flies float with virtually no influence from the tippet and line, elicited more strikes, but the slack line caused more misses. Even the best anglers miss at least 50 percent of takes.
Just for grins, I suggested to my friend Anthony Bartkowski that he cast, mend the line and, once the drift was set up, count slowly to three, then set the hook. Sure enough, he got into a few trout that way. Next we tried a variation on the European style of nymphing. The angler uses heavily weighted flies, casts more directly upstream into the run, and essentially rakes the flies through the fish zone. I saw the fish eat the flies less often, but the percentage of hookups on takes improved.
I guess you have to pick your poison. A good compromise solution is to use that dead-drift technique but get in the habit of “mini-setting” the hook at the end of every drift. You’ll be surprised how often you’re buttoned on when you don’t expect it.
Lesson 3. Suspended Trout Rule.
You can improve your odds in sight fishing by casting at the right fish. What do I mean? Say you’ve spotted three fish in a run. Two of them are essentially glued to the bottom, not moving much, while the third is suspended halfway up the water column, weaving back and forth, eating naturally. That’s your player, and it should be your target.
In one situation, Mardick was casting at a group of several fish, but only one of them was visibly suspended in the feeding lane. Instead of dredging the run for the fish on the bottom, he lightened his weight so the flies would drift midway up the water column. Sure enough, that fish ate it on the first drift. This happened just a few feet in front of my face.
Too many anglers make the mistake of chasing the biggest fish they see. If that big fish is hunkered down, you’re wasting an opportunity. Catch the fish that’s eating, then add another split shot and frustrate yourself by chasing difficult-to-catch bottom dwellers.
Lesson 4. Small Tippets Aren’t Necessary.
I’ll never fish 6X or smaller tippet again. At least not in moving water, and certainly not on a nymph rig. I watched fish react the same way to a full range of tippets and flies, and dropping down in size on the tippet made no difference at all. Zip. I could see when the angler used 6X as readily as I saw 3X. Granted, I’m not a fish (just a writer pretending to be a fish), but I don’t think it mattered that much to the trout. At least that appeared to be the case when the water was moving at a rate of, say, 1 linear river foot per second or faster. You might as well have the advantage of stronger line.
Lesson 5. Current Speed Dictates Fly Size.
When the fish are focused on a certain insect type, you want to pick a fly pattern that best imitates its size, color, and so forth. It’s not rocket science. But when the trout are eating opportunistically, you can and should use larger flies in faster water.
Here’s evidence that we gleaned from observing two sections of the exact same run, the Bridge Hole at Boxwood Gulch Ranch in Shawnee, Colo. At the top of the run, the water moved quickly through a riffle and side channel. At the bottom, the water pooled and moved slowly.
In the fast water, we watched via the remote camera as Hyatt hooked several fish on a rig with a No. 12 San Juan worm and a No. 14 Prince nymph. The fish could see these flies well but had less time to scrutinize them as they pulsed through the swifter water; the trout therefore made impulse reactions and ate the flies. At the bottom of the same run, however, in the slow water, the big flies weren’t catching any fish. We had to use a No. 20 RS2 to get just one strike (and not coincidentally, we had a harder time positioning the video camera in a way that didn’t spook the trout).
Faster currents allow you to get away with more, and sometimes those itty-bitty bugs get lost in the flow.
Lesson 6: Attractor Flies Work.
I always fish two flies on a nymph rig. The first, suspended about a foot below my weight, is a larger attractor fly, like a pink San Juan worm or a Copper John. Then I tie another 12 to 18 inches of tippet to its hook shank and attach a smaller fly, a “morsel,” on the bottom. This is my standard rig in fast water and often in slow water as well. In really slow, clear water, I use two small flies.
In theory, the first fly grabs the fish’s attention, and when it investigates, it sees the second one and eats it. Sounds like a stretch, but I witnessed this playing out. I positioned myself on the bottom about 4 feet downstream and slightly to the side of a big rainbow trout. Mardick cast, and I watched the fish notice the flies, turn around and swim right past me, as if to say, I’ll be right back, I have to check this out. He followed them (a yellow stonefly and a small red Copper John), apparently decided against eating them, then went to the exact spot where he’d been holding before. On the next cast, the flies swung by me, the fish turned and trailed them out of sight, then came swimming up the run right to his original spot. After the third cast, the rainbow cruised by again, following the flies, only this time, he didn’t come back. I surfaced to see Mardick and Bartkowski netting the fish. He had eaten the bottom fly, falling victim to curiosity.
Lesson 7: All Strike Indicators Are Not Alike.
From my in-water perspective, it seemed that strike indicators made of yarn did not freak the fish out as much as the solid-foam bobber kind. The fish would scatter away from the latter after it hit the water. I don’t know why; maybe the noise from the piece of foam slapping the surface was an issue. Certainly the solid indicators were more obvious and foreign looking as they floated overhead. Yarn indicators solved both problems. They were silent when they hit the water, and from my perspective looking from the bottom up, the yarn seemed to blend in more naturally with the dispersed bubble patterns on the surface. It looked organic, not man-made. We switched colors of the yarn indicators, and none seemed to spook fish or stop them from taking the flies.
Lesson 8: Weight Is Pivotal.
Weight is an enormous part of the equation in nymph fishing, especially when you are “prospecting” by fishing attractor-type patterns like Prince nymphs and Copper Johns. If a substantial hatch is happening, or a prolific number of bugs are washing through a run, trout will key on those insects and make more effort to eat. When fish are just hanging out in the water column, however, and merely feeding on opportunity, you have to hit them in the head.
I saw the fish bob and weave left and right, a few inches at a time, picking off nymphs but flatly ignoring bugs that floated overhead. One time, though, we had the weight just right: Two flies floated by a trout on either side of its mouth, the tippet “flossed” it, and the current pulled the trailer fly (and stuck it) right in the corner of the fish’s mouth.
In another instance, we use the remote video to monitor a group of massive (20-plus-inch) brown trout feeding in a pool below a waterfall. Because the fish were feeding on the upwelling current, they were literally suspended in the water at a 45-degree angle, noses down. We over-weighed the tippet to “smart bomb” the flies straight to the bottom, then lifted them gently toward the surgacce. One of those big browns hammered a Barr emerger as it fluttered upward.
Here’s the point: You should change your weight three times before you change your fly pattern.
Lesson 9: Trout Love Change.
Places where you find changes in structure, changes in depth, and changes in currents are where you’ll find most of the fish. We found trout to be less spook in the more pronounced feeding lanes, for example, where a rock made a hard current seam and there was protective cover close by. I was able to approach fish in these situations much more easily than I could those that were exposed in open riffles and pools. You’ll do yourself a favor by zeroing in on spots in the river where you see pronounced changes in current and the bottom.
Lesson 10: Drift Matters Most.
Ask a trout guide “What are they eating?” and he or she will likely answer, “A good drift.” If you flies are dragging, the trout will not only refuse them but will often swim away,. We watched over and over via the video camera as we floated a large nymph through a series of pools and riffles. On purpose, we alternated ad drifts (in which the fly looked like a dog pulling on its leash) with good drifts (in which the fly floated naturally). We could not have choreographed a more graphic response: The trout shunned and swam away from the dragging fly and, conversely, slid over to check out the smooth presentations. Your cast is about one-tenth as important as your drift. Learn to mend your line and control your drift, and half the battle is won.
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Do fish feel pain like humans?
May 3rd
I was turned on to this article from one of my favorite blogs Cutthroat Stalker
Us Frenziers practice, %99 of the time, catch and release and anyone else that does the same should read this. It is an interesting read.
Science Daily (May 1, 2009) — Fish don’t make noises or contort their faces to show that it hurts when hooks are pulled from their mouths, but a Purdue University researcher believes they feel that pain all the same.
Joseph Garner, an assistant professor of animal sciences, helped develop a test that found goldfish do feel pain, and their reactions to it are much like that of humans.
“There has been an effort by some to argue that a fish’s response to a noxious stimuli is merely a reflexive action, but that it didn’t really feel pain,” Garner said. “We wanted to see if fish responded to potentially painful stimuli in a reflexive way or a more clever way.”
Garner and Janicke Nordgreen, a doctoral student in the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, attached small foil heaters to the goldfish and slowly increased the temperature. The heaters were designed with sensors and safeguards that shut off the heaters to prevent any physical damage to a fish’s tissue.
Half of the fish were injected with morphine, and the others received saline. The researchers believed that those with the morphine would be able to withstand higher temperatures before reacting if they actually felt the pain. However, both groups of fish showed a response at about the same temperature.
Because both groups of fish wriggled at about the same temperature, the researchers thought the responses might be more like a reflex than a cognitive reaction to experiencing pain. The reflexive response is similar to a person involuntarily moving a hand off a hot stove with which they had come into contact. The reaction happens before a person actually experiences pain or understands that they have been hurt.
Upon later observation in their home tanks, however, the researchers noticed that the fish from each group were exhibiting different behaviors.
“The fish given the morphine acted like they always had: swimming and being fish,” Garner said. “The fish that had gotten saline – even though they responded the same in the test – later acted different, though. They acted with defensive behaviors, indicating wariness, or fear and anxiety.”
Nordgreen said those behavioral differences showed that fish can feel both reflexive and cognitive pain.
“The experiment shows that fish do not only respond to painful stimuli with reflexes, but change their behavior also after the event,” Nordgreen said. “Together with what we know from experiments carried out by other groups, this indicates that the fish consciously perceive the test situation as painful and switch to behaviors indicative of having been through an aversive experience.”
Garner believes that the morphine blocked the experience of pain, but not behavioral responses to the heat stimulus itself – either because the responses were reflexive or because the morphine blocked the experience of pain, but not the experience of an unusual stimulus.
“If you think back to when you have had a headache and taken a painkiller, the pain may go away, but you can still feel the presence or discomfort of the headache,” Garner said.
Those with saline both experienced pain in the test, as well as responding to it, and were able to cognitively process that pain, thus causing the later fear and anxiety.
“The goldfish that did not get morphine experienced this painful, stressful event. Then two hours later, they turned that pain into fear like we do,” Garner said. “To me, it sounds an awful lot like how we experience pain.”
The findings could raise questions about slaughter methods and how fish are handled in research. Garner said standards of care could be revisited to ensure fish are being treated humanely.
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