Tips & Tutorials
A hopper-dropper covers two levels. On a grassy bank it costs you the one that matters. How to fish a single hopper rig — placement, angles, rigging, and the eight flies that do it.
The lake looks the same as it did a month ago. It isn't. A complete guide to fall stillwater — following the water temperature, reading the shoreline, finding the depth, and the eight flies that cover a cooling lake.
A standard leech hangs nose-down under an indicator. A balanced leech hangs level — the posture a cruising trout actually recognizes as food. Learn how the pin-and-bead system works, how to fish it under an indicator, and which of seven black, brown, and olive patterns to tie on.
There are few takes in fly fishing quite like a brown trout eating a mouse after dark. You'll often hear the fish before you ever see it — a heavy splash or a deep slurp somewhere along the bank — followed by the unmistakable weight of a trout coming tight on the other end of the line.
Camp's set up, the kids are antsy, and it's finally time to get a line in the water. Here's the good news: nobody needs a perfect cast for this to go well. The first fly cast a kid ever makes is never pretty — a little sideways, a little short, maybe straight into the weeds instead of past them. And then — almost every time — something eats it anyway.
