Merry Christmas

Insects in Trouble?

I seem to be seeing few bugs on the water than in days past.  I thought it may just be my imagination and increasingly faulty memory.

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2017/10/oh-no/543390/

Another interesting perspective -

http://www.headhuntersflyshop.com/umowa-case-flushing-flows/

Fishing Older

When I started thinking about fishing as one grows older, I assumed that it wasn’t that much different, but frankly it is, because you are a different human being. I no longer fish the Middle Branch of the Ontonagon from five in the morning until eleven at night. That was when I was home from a far away job and the odor of a trout stream was highest on my ethyl index. It still is.
  -Jim Harrison

https://midcurrent.com/books/older-fishing/#comment-3526310163

Fly fishing and treating cancer: same, same but different!

Riffles

Riffles are one of my favorite places to fish using tenkara.

Check out Devon's excellent article

http://www.tacticalflyfisher.com/blog/summertime-tip-dont-forget-the-riffles/?mc_cid=4ab320ed66&mc_eid=25669a6320

Wet Flies

Euro Nymphing

Oops, wrong picture

I have to admit, I am a dry fly bigot.  That’s the way I like to fish, and more often than not, that’s the way I do fish.

That being said, I’m the first to admit there are methods which may be more effective, much more effective.  The folks who fish competitively, in international competitions, don’t fish with dries.  They fish with nymphs.

Perhaps to a person, they use a method that can generally be called Euro nymphing.  What is Euro nymphing?   It consists of using a long rod, and fishing nothing but a long mono or flouro leader.  Sound familiar?

I don’t suggest that all competitive fishers should switch over to a fixed length line rod (it’s probably illegal within their self imposed tournament rules).  What I do suggest that many of the techniques the competitive fisher folks use are directly applicable to our chosen way to fish.

Much of the time, the Euro nymph folks fish their extended leaders using a straight line.  No suspended indicator, no split shot, using a relatively lightly weighed fly.  They use a couple feet of bright colored line inserted in the leader to help manage the drift of their fly/flies and help detect takes.

If you’d like to pick up some tips to try, it’s worthwhile to read up on the systems and methods used by the competitive fishers.  You might pick up an idea or two to try next time you are wetting a line.