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Fly Fishing

Best F&S Reader Tips

Here are the best hunting, fishing and camping tips from readers like you.

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FS First Shots Photo Collection

A collection of jaw-dropping hunting and fishing photos from Field & Stream's "First Shots" magazine section.

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Fly Fishing Articles

John Merwin's Top Fly Patterns for Largemouth and...

John Merwin's picks for the best new bass flies (and how to fish them).

Dave Whitlock Explains How to Tie His Most Famous...

Flyfishing legend Dave Whitlock explains how to tie a Dave's Hopper...


FIeld & Stream Picks the Best New Fishing Gear of...

Our field editors led test crews that fished with scores of...

How to Choose Leaders and Tippets when Fly Fishing...

When fish don't strike, chances are it's not your fly or your casting, it's your leader.


Pocono Mountain Trout Adventure: The Big Bushkill

How to Cast Lures and Flies in Strong Winds

Videos and magazines typically demonstrate casting techniques during days as pretty as...

  • May 22, 2012

    Scientists Develop Robot Fish to Improve Pollution Monitoring

    4

    --Chad Love

    Landing one of these babies is pretty much a catch-and-release-only proposition. I hear they're not good eating and extremely difficult to fillet. Not to mention the fact that they thrive in some pretty nasty water...
     
    From this story on therepublic.com:
     Robot "fish" developed by European scientists to improve pollution monitoring moved from the lab to the sea in a test at the northern Spanish port of Gijon on Tuesday. The developers hope the new technology, which reduces the time it takes to detect a pollutant from weeks to seconds, will sell to port authorities, water companies, aquariums and anyone with an interest in monitoring water quality...The fish, which are 1.5 meters (5 feet) long and currently cost 20,000 pounds ($31,600) each, are designed to swim like real fish and are fitted with sensors to pick up pollutants leaking from ships or undersea pipelines. They swim independently, co-ordinate with each other, and transmit their readings back to a shore station up to a kilometer away. [ Read Full Post ]

  • May 21, 2012

    Winner Announced in Name This Fish Contest

    1

    by Kirk Deeter

    Thanks to all you Fly Talk readers who chimed in with guesses on what type of fish this is, where it was caught, and what it ate.  To my surprise, many of you nailed the fish right away.  It is indeed an arapaima.  A good number of you also got the country right.  We caught it in the jungle in Guyana, near the Rewa River.  But nobody until the very end (and she is a ringer who no doubt heard me talking about this adventure on ESPN radio in Denver Saturday morning) got the fly pattern right.

    [ Read Full Post ]

  • May 18, 2012

    Video: 20,000 Trout in a Bucket

    4

    by Tim Romano

    The title of this post is a little misleading. While in theory these little guys are in a bucket, what you're actually seeing here is 20,000 freshly hatched cut bow trout (a hybrid between a cutthroat and a rainbow) in what's called an egg jar. 

    [ Read Full Post ]

  • May 16, 2012

    The Greatest Lesson in Fishing Streamers

    by Kirk Deeter

    Most of you who follow FlyTalk might realize by now that Romano and I are both shameless streamer junkies. We'll pound the banks from a boat, trying to turn big fish with blind casts, but we also like to wade and sight-fish streamers in low, clear water. Big flies catch big fish, to be sure. Yet in clear water, you have to make the right presentation for streamers to work well. While I've learned many valuable tips from streamer gurus like Kelly Galloup, who said, "You have to dictate the action, and not wait for something to happen," the greatest streamer lesson I ever learned didn't happen on a trout river, and it didn't even involve a true streamer fly.  [ Read Full Post ]

  • May 15, 2012

    Tie Talk: Tying the Banksia Bug (Step-by-Step Photos)

    2

    by Tim Romano

    Here's another sweet little bug from our friends at flyrecipes.com. It's called the Banksia Bug (formerly known as the Patchouli Pupa) and was created by my friend and warm water fly fishing guru Jay Zimmerman.

    "I began tying this fly to imitate the masses of free-living caddis larva in all my home waters here in Colorado and elsewhere in trout streams all over the West. 

    [ Read Full Post ]

  • May 15, 2012

    Sage Wins Small Company Business Award

    3

    --Martin Leung

    Sage Manufacturing, the company behind some of world's finest fly rods, was recently dubbed Seattle Business magazine's Manufacturer of the Year, Small Company.

    From this press release:
    The May issue of Seattle Business features the awards for 2012 and is the culmination of the publication’s Washington Manufacturing Awards. Each year Seattle Business honors companies whose work results in growing or advancing the manufacturing sector in the state. During an awards ceremony on Thursday night, April 26th, six winners were chosen in different categories. Representatives of roughly 270 manufacturing companies located in the state attended the event.


    [ Read Full Post ]

  • May 11, 2012

    Giant Lake Trout on the Fly?

    by Tim Romano

    This is a photo of my friend Russ Miller torturing himself with a 9-weight rod and full sinking line on Lake Granby last night. He was casting a double bunny fly that looked like a dead squirrel, so we decided to call it Bernie's Bunny.

    After shooting an episode of Hook Shots earlier this spring for giant lake trout on Lake Granby with uber guide Bernie Keefe, he asked if I'd like to come back up and try for the huge fish on a fly. It took me all of about one second to make my decision. [ Read Full Post ]

  • May 10, 2012

    Tarpon May be Ideal Tenkara Fish

    by Kirk Deeter

    Take a close look at this photo Tim Romano took of Oliver White battling a small tarpon. You'll notice something is missing... the reel. That's because there isn't one.

    We just came back from a gonzo jungle expedition (in a place I'll tell you about later) where we literally caught hundreds of trout- to salmon-sized tarpon every day. So to make things even more interesting, we decided to catch some on a Tenkara rod (Yamame). We landed over 50 tarpon on Tenkara, the largest weighed about eight pounds. [ Read Full Post ]

  • May 9, 2012

    Video: Trout Hatchery Feeding Frenzy

    4

    by Tim Romano

    Over the last nine months, I've been shooting a little underwater book project with my friend Geoff Mueller. We've seen and done some very interesting stuff, like hanging out with a NOAA biologist in Washington state, drift diving the Green River in Utah and visiting a state run hatchery here in Colorado to learn all about the life stages of trout.

    [ Read Full Post ]

  • May 8, 2012

    Photo Contest: Name This Fish, Win a Pair of Costa Sunglasses

    by Kirk Deeter

    The rules for this contest are simple: Tell us what kind of fish this is, where we caught it and what the fly this fish is chewing on looks like. Yes, this fish ate a fly.

    [ Read Full Post ]

  • May 7, 2012

    International Nymphing: The Irish Dibbler

    2

    by Kirk Deeter


    Not all nymph (or wet-fly) fishing should be confined to rivers. Using subsurface patterns for trout on lakes can be deadly. Fourth-generation ghillie (guide) Neil O’Shea recently explained to me why the traditional “dibbling” technique works well in places like Lough Currane in County Kerry. “The peat-rich soil makes these lakes acidic and less hospitable for mayflies,” he said. “So the migratory trout and salmon are window-shopping more than they are keyed in on a specific food source, like an insect hatch. Showing the trout and salmon bright, attractor wet flies with a slow, methodical retrieve will elicit a reaction strike. This is a technique for hooking curious, rather than hungry or aggressive, fish.”
    [ Read Full Post ]

  • May 7, 2012

    International Nymphing: The French Twist

    4

    by Kirk Deeter

    The French have won six world flyfishing championships by being masters of catching trout in the trickiest, most technically demanding conditions—clear, shallow water and slow-moving currents. When you find trout in these situations, and they are not eating dry flies, the best option is to throw light nymphs on a long, fine leader. The French have devised a rig for this scenario that works better than anything else.

    [ Read Full Post ]

  • May 7, 2012

    International Nymphing: The Spanish Combo

    0

    by Kirk Deeter

    Spanish nymphing blends characteristics of both the Czech and French styles. Like Czech nymphing, you’re using a heavy weighted fly on the point and leading the flies through a run with the rod tip pointed at the water. Like French nymphing, the leader in this technique is very long—15 feet or longer—and rather than feel, you are relying on a sighter that is relatively far from the end of the fly line to tell you when to set the hook.

    Spanish flyfishermen created this nymphing technique to help them catch the notoriously elusive fario (brown trout) in Pyrenees mountain streams. They found that the extra-long leader is the key to avoid spooking the fish.

    The Rig: The ideal rod for Spanish nymphing is a 10- to 12-foot 3-, 4-, or 5-weight. Use a weight-forward floating line and a 3X to 5X 9-foot tapered leader. Spanish anglers tie a two-tone sighter to the end of the leader. Make the sighter by splicing two 12-inch sections of Sunline Sig­lon F mono (fishusa.com) together with Uni knots or a Blood knot. Below the sighter, attach 4 feet of 5X... [ Read Full Post ]

  • May 7, 2012

    Video: The Strangest Fish Ever?

    7

    by Tim Romano

    You know I love to share some weirdness on Fly Talk every once in a while that has nothing to do with fly fishing. This is one of those times. You're either gonna love me or be a little grossed out with this one. [ Read Full Post ]

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