Author: Steve

When fish do not take our fly we fly fishers have a tendency to firstly think “it’s the fly” that is a problem. While it can be, there are a number of reasons why it is often not the case.

At any time of year, though particularly during summer, fish can be challenging too tempt. Putting excessive water temperature aside ( as you should not fish in this case), key reasons for this include: —

• Plentiful food supply
• Good visibility
• High fishing pressure

ONE tactic to overcome this situation is creating a fear of missing out (FOMO) in the fish. How do we do this? If you’ve heard of “the induced take”, that is what it essentially does. This is depicted in the header image, where a nymph has been drawn across and upwards in front of a brown trout which is coming in hard to take it. The same effect can be created with any style of subsurface and surface fly.

If a dead drift does not elicit a take, twitch it, lift it, speed it up, slow it down, pop it, stop it, drop it. SHOW THE FISH SOMETHING DIFFERENT, for that is they key. Put the fly in it’s zone, then take it away from it. When fish are not feeding, this tactic will catch you bonus fish.

Best Fishes

SJY

If weighing your fly line sounds a little technical, it’s really not, all you need are some digital kitchen scales to get a good enough idea. Before we dive deeper into this, you can find introductory information on terminology here.

So what is this fly line weighing about? Helping you fly fish better!

Fly lines are rated using a specific scale historically, and remain so in most cases at the time of writing (see link above for further details). Basically, the rating received for a fly line is based on the first thirty feet of the “head” section. So (for example) if you match a rod rated as a five weight with a 5 weight line (that actually is a five weight line, more on that later) in theory it is balanced. If you then use that to make short casts with only two meters (around six feet) of fly line beyond the rod tip, you will be casting a very under loaded rod, making life difficult. 

The above example is typical of what happens fishing small to medium sized rivers for trout. One good way around this is to use a three weight rod with the same five weight line to improve the efficiency and enjoyment of your fishing IF you are making MOSTLY very short casts. 

However, manufacturers often do this job for you without making a big deal about it (it is often available in a technical information section about a fly line, often on the manufacturers website these days, though sometimes it comes with the fly line still). THIS IS WHY WEIGHING YOUR FLY LINE HELPS YOU! If you take that five weight line and weigh it according to convention, MOST will weigh one to three line weights heavier than standard. The reasons for this are varied and include: —

• Helps load stiffer modern carbon rods better.
• Makes casting in many situations feel easier.

The downside of this should you be unaware of it, is impairment of casting performance as your rod becomes overloaded AND a huge negative impact on your presentation. The bottom line of this is, you will catch less fish!

There are many permutations of this scenario, with associated pros and cons. I am not going to work through an exhaustive list here, but to introduce a concept for you to think about in your own fishing. In doing this, you will be able to see situations where Under Lining or Over Lining a rod provide you with positive fishing results!

Best Fishes!

SJY

Wondering if this whole piece is just about the topic of “bite indicators” as depicted in the header image? Let me put your mind to rest, NO! What I’m discussing here, is more about bite indication, the various forms we may use and important factors to consider in getting it right.

To put the importance of bite detection into perspective, take a look at this video (all links open in a new tab so you can come back here easy). Okay, the implications of the 1st cast are we miss a fish. The implications of the 2nd cast are “it ain’t taking that fly again anytime soon”. Add in this feature I wrote a while back and it may not be only one fish that ignores your fly! All of a sudden it’s glaringly obvious, how easy it is to blank, if we don’t change things regularly (I hope you can see, not always the fly). When water and light conditions prevent you viewing the fish, which let’s face it occurs on most waters, this whole scenario becomes compounded.

A general; rule of thumb for detecting bites is, the further away from a fly being taken bite detection occurs, the more bites are undetected/missed. So theoretically, whenever an angler can see their fly/fish, we have a potential for 100% bite detection (in reality that does not happen but we can get close with practice). From that perfect situation, bite detection performance falls off very quickly, especially if we don’t do anything to optimise for it (or at least try to). Remember the 2 links above?

So what can we do, when it’s not possible to see a fish eat our fly? I’m going to deal with this in 2 scenarios, 1st using a floating line, 2nd a sinking line.

Using a floating line, it makes sense in some situations to try and detect takes at a point in the leader as close to the fly as is practicable for how we are fishing. This is typically when we are fishing a fly very slowly (a fly moving faster, often hooks fish as they take). In some instances colouring and greasing sections of your leader is our best option. This is not just for euro nymphing rivers, it applies to many lake scenarios too! Another option, when fishing with more than one fly, is rigging a sunk fly under a dry fly. This approach has many names over time. Those that come to mind include wry fly, duo, New Zealand dropper, among others, it’s all the same. When a fish eats the dry, you see it, when it eats a sunk fly, your dry becomes an indicator! Multi fly rigs also have an added bonus which you can see here. Finally where you are restricted to a single fly, need weight in the rig, are fishing rough water conditions, have some form of physical restriction, a combination of the above and/or something I’ve missed, we can attach one of the many and varied buoyant indicators to our leader. Another simple rule of thumb for this is “use the smallest indicator that enables you to achieve the presentation you are aiming for“. The bigger the indicator, the more disturbance it makes, the more obvious it is (fish learn what they are, just like flies) and the greater resistance a taking fish may feel, leads to an increase in ejection speed (it can also act positively, increasing the number of fish hooking themselves at times). When any form of indication within a leader is impractical, e.g. often when using a faster retrieve with a streamer, we can watch the end of our fly line. Where this is not possible, watching the line loop off the end of your rod tip works, before we finally arrive at feeling a pull. By the time we get to this in most situations, you are not seeing/missing the majority of takes occurring.

Fishing a sunk line means for the most part, you won’t see a fish eat your fly or see a take in your line, until you get to watching a loop of line off the end of your rod. There are exceptions to that statement, and my initial rule of thumb for bite detection should be applied accordingly. Sometimes the only option, indeed the best option is to feel for a take. Does this mean we have to miss out on huge numbers of bites? No. Anglers have created many approaches and rigging systems over time to increase the potential for take detection and self hooking of fish through speed/ tension in the line. Rigs like the “washing line” for example. A lot of takes still go unnoticed, so knowing that is also a positive, keep changing what/how you are fishing to give them something different!

Hopefully this helps you think about “indication” to enhance your fly fishing. Can I also make a personal request, to consider ethics. With modern equipment, methods and practice, we can become efficient in the extreme. It’s not for me to tell anyone how they should fish or how many is enough. I would encourage everyone to periodically ask themselves some questions though. It’s healthy for both our sport and our own enjoyment of it!

Have fun!

SJY

The often quoted “KISS principle” (Keep It Simple Stupid) is as applicable to fly fishing as it is to anything else in life. Most of the time, it gets the job done. If not, THEN we can get a little more complex.

For the last 3 years, I’ve subtracted from the gear I carry while fishing AND from my fishing approach. Why? Simple, to see how little can be done to achieve the desired outcome! It’s made fishing more fun, adding a different type of challenge. If a certain situation needs something more, I can always bring it in. I’ve never carried a lot of equipment waterside, however, it’s now becoming less and less. For 2025 it will be stripped back further. Less choice, means faster, more effective, and focused fishing.

Remember, all we need most of the time is: –

• Know where the active fish are.
• Be able to get our fly there, without them knowing we did it.
• Successfully detect and convert the take!

To achieve this, you won’t need much. So, now ask yourself the questions, How do I achieve the above? What do I need to achieve it?

Have Fun!

SJY

One of the key skills to consistently catching, is “control of your equipment!” The effect is so great, it accounts for 30% of your fishing success. So why wouldn’t you want to hone it?

Control is just as important in executing any fly fishing technique as it is in the act of casting a fly line. Below are some examples of practically improving and associated benefits: –

Combining some Stillwater fly fishing outside the river trout season with home based casting practice drills. This process performed correctly will increase your overall casting distance through increasing control of your technique. This is a great achievement on its own. However, it’s also off season over-distance training for the river trout season to come. Your average casting distance on a stillwater is longer than that on a river. So having increased your casting comfort zone (the distances at which you can consistently make high quality presentations of your fly/flies), switching to the river is effectively tapering back to “race distance”. Net result, increased control, accuracy and consistency. Bingo!

Anglers planning a destination trip can find huge benefits in the above casting schedule too. Not just for river fishing either. For consistent success in saltwater fly fishing, many of the key skills required are those needed in various stillwater fly fishing situations. In addition to the casting example above, we can add fishing technique specific examples, such as maintaining tension through the line, hook setting, fish spotting, among others.

River fishing during winter for grayling, chub and pike enables you to practice technique specific skills, particularly nymph and streamer fishing techniques. For example, Euro nymphing methods are highly productive in catching winter grayling. Retaining contact with your fly(flies) is key to maximising takes and take detection (it’s pointless to deceive a fish, if you don’t know about it). Nymph fishing is often the mainstay of early spring success with river trout, when air and water temperatures can be low. So you hit the ground running!

Need some motivation to get you started? Remember the last time you tried to cast that heavy fly only to end up wearing it? Ouch! What about an outing when you knew fish were in front of you and feeding subsurface though you never had a bite? Well maybe you didn’t, however it’s probable you did and failed to detect the take.

Checkout this post and video on practice to help you get started. If you would like help moving forward, take a look at my services here.

Have Fun!

SJY

It’s a few months on from my last post on AI in fly fishing and things have continued to evolve at pace. Here I’m going to delve into how we can get the most out of historical fishing logs to benefit our future fishing.

I’ve previously talked about some benefits of fishing logs and modernising them. Moving forward you can use an AI like chatGPT to process a digital version of your fishing log (for example as a PDF), then ask it questions to gain better insights from your previous fishing to help you in future.

One example of this might be to ask “what 3 things are most common when I catch fish?”. Another example approach is to ask a version of “I’m fishing venue, during month, what techniques and flies should I consider based on previous catches?”.

My experiments with this so far, indicate significant potential to me as both an angler and coach. Most of the results are no surprise, but sometimes I’ve found a different way of looking at something, like organising fly boxes to flow through the season. This reduced the amount of patterns I carry by 30-36% making it easier to locate and select what to use. Something like this just helps me make better and faster decisions, by directing me to exactly where I need to look and limiting choice.

The above are only examples, this can be applied too much, much more. But what if you don’t keep a record of your fishing, what use is this? In addition to maybe encouraging you to keep some records going forward and indeed indicate what records may be most useful, you can also use other documentation. For example, some venues publish fishing reports and catch records. You could pull as many years worth of these as you like/are available into a document and analyse it as described for the personal fishing log above. It may help you decipher times, conditions and techniques among other things that are more successful.

It seems the options to improve right now are limited only by our own imagination and desire to do it. I hope this helps and inspires you!

Have fun!

SJY

Podcasts are what make driving tolerable. I listen to many, generally while traveling to work and back. Sometimes, I find switching off at night really challenging, particularly when we’ve done some really great work waterside with clients.

The evening of August 7th 2018 was one such evening. In an effort to calm my mind and chill out, hopefully get some sleep, I put my earphones on and listened to this iconic interview. Not only is the story great and well told, the work put in to achieve his goals was/is inspirational!

I did not fall asleep, I sat up in bed, switched on a lamp and wrote what the image above shows in my notebook at 38 minutes past midnight. That was enough that night. Enough to settle my mind to rest, knowing there was a lot of work to be done!

I recommend listening to the interview for every reason you can think of. April has conducted many fantastic interviews on the Anchored Podcast over years. Andy has gone on to create the Mill House Podcast with his son. Both tell many great stories and among them are true gems of information that can help you enjoy the wonderful world of fly fishing.

Have fun and thank you for your time!

SJY

 I talk a lot about fish location. To me it’s the most important thing in fishing period. Depth is a factor in that location process. It’s not enough to just know an area, knowing where in the water column fish are feeding is so often the final piece in the jigsaw, the switch that flips the light on!

In the video above (I’ve used it before and probably will again😁 but here I’m making a different point) the initial take is the important point.Watch carefully, the fish does not react positively to the fly UNTIL IT REACHES THE TROUT’S DEPTH!

So many times when fishing subsurface fish will be aware of and even track a fly that is not at there feeding depth. Only a small number of those actually commit to a take and it’s nothing to do with your fly being wrong. It’s everything to do with your fly being in the wrong place!

This applies equally to dry fly fishing. If your fly sits on the surface and the trout are feeding in the film, your missing out, period.

One year on from my initial experiments using artificial intelligence (A.I.), progress has been rapid in terms of what we have at our finger tips. What I’m focusing on here is A.I. use to help you improve knowledge acquisition. If you’ve not read the first part of this series, I’d suggest doing so . You can find part 1 here.

Recently I’ve been playing with Google’s A.I. Bard (now Gemini). One area of exploration has been writing prompts for general fishing advice, the sort of thing you might write when looking to progress. Here’s an example: –

My prompt was ” Give me 7 tips for finding feeding fish.”

Result: –

7 Secrets to Finding Feeding Fish

Finding feeding fish isn’t just about casting a line and hoping for the best. It’s about understanding their behavior, habitat, and the clues they leave behind. Here are 7 key points to turn you from a casual angler into a fish-finding master:

1. Know your water: Different fish prefer different environments. Research the species you’re targeting and their preferred habitats: shallows, weed beds, drop-offs, or rocky structures.

2. Time your fishing: Fish are most active during feeding windows, often at dawn, dusk, or during low-light periods. Consider water temperature and seasonal changes that affect their activity levels.

3. Follow the bait: Where there’s food, there are fish. Look for baitfish like minnows, insects, or crustaceans. Birds diving and feeding on baitfish are another telltale sign.

4. Read the signs: Look for surface activity like boils, splashes, or feeding frenzies. These indicate fish actively chasing prey. Pay attention to ripples, disturbances, and current breaks where bait might be concentrated.

5. Utilize technology: Fish finders can reveal underwater structures, fish schools, and even baitfish concentrations. Use them to target specific areas and adjust your approach accordingly.

6. Be mindful of the weather: Wind, rain, and barometric pressure can affect fish behavior. Observe how they react to different conditions and adjust your tactics.

7. Don’t be afraid to experiment: Different techniques work better in different situations. Try various lures, baits, and presentations to see what attracts the fish you’re targeting.

Bonus Tip: Observe experienced anglers. Watch their techniques, where they cast, and what they use. Don’t be afraid to ask questions and learn from their wisdom.

By incorporating these tips and adapting them to your specific fishing grounds and target species, you’ll be well on your way to consistently finding feeding fish and reeling in a successful catch!

My Notes: –

My prompt was very general and not specific to fly fishing. I did this because a good basic answer to this query should be equally relevant across various fishing disciplines and species.

Gemini’s results were really good high level answers. The draft I’ve included above was scripted in the most appealing way to me, however the results were broadly the same for all three versions the A.I. returned.

Some of the results include scope for further investigation. For example tip 1 includes the recommendation to “research the fish species you are targeting” and suggests preferences you should look for. This is great for drilling down further, to fine tune your knowledge.

Overall A.I. is at a point where for this type of knowledge acquisition, it’s very good. Your prompts have to be very relevant to what you are looking for. Though it’s easy to refine them as you go. Doing this you can get in very concise form, all the key information you would find in a good how to style book. The positive difference is results from the A.I. are optimised from a huge database with many contributors, rather than one or two people authoring a book. Yes, both are open to errors. However, on average, for foundation skill type knowledge that has a big fundamental impact, the wisdom of crowds is probably most reliable.

On the other hand I won’t be clearing out my library. Sitting in a favourite chair in front of a fire, on a cold winter night, reading a good fishing book, is one of life’s simple pleasures!

As I said in part 1, view A.I. as just another useful tool in your kit. Remember you are limited only by your own imagination! (The page header artwork was generated using a graphics generator called “Craiyon”).

Bonus Point: – If you found the fish location information in this post useful? You might also like to read this post!😉 (This is the sort of thinking you don’t get from crowds. It’s either a high value gem or a complete failure. I will let you decide which).

Thanks for taking time to read my work!

SY

It’s a fact that spooked fish are much harder to catch than fish that are feeding confidently. Key to maximising our opportunity is not being seen. In the header photo two anglers converse waterside. One is wearing a white top and shorts, the other more muted, natural colours. Guess which is more likely to be seen by a fish?

I’m not saying the act of wearing a white top and shorts will automatically scare fish (it depends on how knobbly your knees are😁). Light/bright, reflective surfaces simply make any movement you make more noticeable. Hence you are more likely to spook fish.

Travelling to fish during winter I left home early and it was cold. I put on my cosy padded jacket and loaded my gear in the car. Bottom line, I left my fishing jacket at home for some inexcusable reason. I had to fish this extremely clear venue in the bright blue jacket all day. Did I blank? No. However I did see rather more fish depart for the depths than usual, reducing my opportunities significantly.

Want to know more about remaining hidden from fish? Checkout this feature on footfall.

Ask me what really excites me about going fly fishing and I will respond with the term visual fly fishing. Asked to expand on this, I’ll say observation of the water, surrounding environment and conditions to locate feeding fish, stalk a selected fish I want to catch, then watch it eat my fly. That’s what does it for me!

So when I read “Chalkstream Chronicle” by Neil Patterson in my early twenties (an excellent book for many reasons including, highly entertaining and far from just a book for the chalk stream fisher), a chapter that shares the same title as this post stuck in my mind.You don’t need an actual shooting stick of course, just take up a position that gives you a great view over a good length of water best described as fishy (your watercraft tells you this), make yourself as unobtrusive as possible, then simply wait and watch. The longer you do this for, the more you see.

The above image shows me doing exactly this during a winter walk with my wife. I’m not exactly camouflaged, however I was warm, enjoying winter sunshine, fresh air and being close to water. We took our post lunch river walk to coincide with the best chance of a sparse olive hatch that might just get a fish or two to rise, even on a cold day in early February. All parties obliged and by waiting and watching over this long, flat glide, we identified the holding spots for some fine trout and grayling. All this is now logged for future use and it was fun to practice for the season to come.

Of course, on most waters there are many days when you see no sign of a fish and search tactics make sense. However, when feeding fish do offer clues to their whereabouts and what they may accept from us fly fishers, a shooting stick approach is generally more productive. Indeed if you found my initial paragraph of this post intriguing, you will probably derive far more fun from employing this tactic too.

Why not try a shooting stick philosophy this season? Have fun and let me know how you get on.

Best Fishes

SJY

The Mohican Mayfly (see image above) has featured in my mayfly box ever since Oliver Edwards released the pattern many years ago. For perhaps 3-4 years it’s popularity gained momentum, however it remained a pattern you could rely on with tricky trout, those that had seen ‘nearly’ everything. Then the fly was everywhere and lost its edge.

It remained part of my mayfly team however. The pattern is robust, needs little TLC when the hatch and rise are really on and is ideal for less experienced fly fishers, being nearly unsinkable. It’s nearly perfect, but fails my key rule of top guide flies, in that it takes quite some time (for me at least) to tie. For this reason, I pay someone else for that job. A fly that I’ve spent 30+ minutes tying, won’t get thrown into snag holes with quite the same conviction and when a client looses one, (as they inevitably will or they are not trying hard enough) it induces physical pain. Hence life is better this way!

This particular fly, had a rather special journey during May/June 2022. I fished or guided on days where mayfly hatches triggered trout to surface feed, from May 2nd until June 17th. The Mohican Mayfly produced fish throughout that time to the point where some ‘secret weapons’ were not called upon for duty. It seemed the pattern had recaptured some of it’s former magic! Perhaps it had lost favour with other anglers, I don’t know. It sure worked well for us.

This one fly is special. It was the first to be tied to my leader on May 2nd. I caught many trout on it, including my largest brown at mayfly time during 2022. It was also regularly tied to the leaders of clients, many of whom did well with it. Having been rescued from many branches, bushes, nettles (ouch), a client finally lodged it firmly in a tree branch on June 15th. I recover all the flies and leaders I can from snags, but I had become rather attached to this, not so little fly in particular. We were not going to part company and I would not leave it in a tree. I went into monkey mode and managed to rescue my feathered friend. However it had lodged deep into the branch and in freeing it, I snapped the hook at the bend. Part metal fatigue maybe, ham fisted clumsiness from me almost certainly.

So it now resides by my tying desk as you see it. This winter I will frame it with the picture of the brown trout, then it will take it’s place on my office wall of fame.

Tight Lines & Best Fishes for 2023!

SJY