1) Shooting Line Clarity – A must read to understand what you want to have attached to your shooting head.
2) Sink-Tips – The low down on the different tips you can fish and the situations that call for them.
3) What is a MOW tip? A simple explanation of intermediate and floating combo tips.
4) Winter Layering 101 – The title says it all.
5) Beaching your beautiful, wild steelhead is very tough on the fish. Learn the different ways we land fish to avoid it.
One thing I have often seen while guiding spey fisherman is that they just wont move. I’m not talking two-stepping here but simply working a run in a methodical and timely manner. Under most conditions I prefer to move three to four feet between casts which has several benefits.
1) By steadily working your way through a run you will cover more water throughout your day than the person who only moves a couple feet every few casts. Remember, we are looking for players, the fish who are aggressive enough to eat your fly on the first pass.
2) Constantly fishing new water it is simply more interesting and I tend to stay more focused as I move though a run.
3) We are not trout fishing – you will not find a steelhead river with 2-6 thousand fish per river mile, so covering water is the key to finding fish.
I do slow down for several reasons.
1) If I know fish are in a certain area and I feel that they are not willing to move far to a fly, I will slow down my pace and work the fly with different presentations.
2) If I feel a grab but don’t hook up I will cast back to the fish, trying a couple of presentations. If this does not work I will mentally note where the fish was holding and make another pass with a new, smaller fly.
By maximizing the amount of water you cover in a day you will swim your flies through more holding lies. When searching for winter steelhead covering water can make the difference, it only takes one fish to turn your day around.
Building your own sink-tips can seem intimidating at first glance, but its actually quite easy. All that you need is bulk lengths of the sink tip of your choice (we use Rio’s T-series), braided loops to fit and some 15 lb Maxima Ultragreen. The shop sells T-8 through T-17 in both 30 ft lengths of bulk sink-tip and T-11 & T-14 by the foot. Pick up some bulk sink-tip, braided loops, 15 lb mono and you’re ready to go. Here are two different ways to go about making your own tips. This will enable you to customize the length of tips you wish to carry, and assures the highest quality of craftsmanship completed by yourself.
When swinging for anadromous fish on the Kanektok, I carry two each of the following sink-tips:
Continue Reading “Building Your Own Sink-Tips”
MOW tips are a relatively new offering in the fly fishing world. They consist of a section of floating line welded to a section of sinking line. Most are ten feet long and come in a variety of styles with a popular choice being the “five- five” or five feet of floating and fivefeet of sinking line. From a casting perspective, these tips cast very similarly and enable the angler to change casting stroke little between tip changes. From a fishing standpoint, MOW tips allow the angler to change sink tips less often when fishing different water types throughout the day. They do this by reducing the amount of line in the water column and by creating a straighter, more vertical angle from the floating line to the fly. This means it is easier to keep your fly in the fish zone when there are boulders and other fish-holding structure in the way of a clean swing.
Continue Reading “iMOW / MOW tips”