Featured Photo: Streamer Eater on the Clinch

Featured Photo: Streamer Eater on the Clinch

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Be Patient, Don't Cast Too Often

Today I'll share another quick tip. There are lots of things that I see as a guide, both good and bad, that tend to fall under the category of habits that anglers have picked up. Some of those things are personality driven. For example, I fish fast, often faster than I should in fact. Guiding has been wonderful for my own fishing in this regard because it has made me slow down and seek to understand. Often, a lack of success is not as simple as the fish not being hungry (hint: they are always hungry). A good angler or guide can find plenty of things to blame the lack of success on, but ultimately slowing down and understanding what the fish are trying to tell you will bring success.

Fishing fast in the Smokies is often helpful. There are plenty of fish around and eventually you'll find a few that will eat what you are throwing. In other words, one strategy is to simply cover water as fast as possible until you find those few trout that are a little less smart if you know what I mean. However, this approach won't help you grow as much as angler. Instead of blazing ahead to try and cover a mile of water, slow down and focus on just three hundred yards of water or less. The fish are there and can be caught with the right combination of technique, drift, and fly selection.

On tailwaters, this urge to hurry really starts to hurt your fishing. If you are satisfied with only catching smaller stockers, then hurrying will keep the numbers moving. Those stockers will hear your flies splashing down and come running to eat. So, cast away as often as possible, again and again. However, if you are interested in finding the monsters, the ones that you daydream about or have recurring nightmares about when they get away, those fish will require that you slow things down and be patient. 

Often, from the rowers seat in my drift boat, I'll watch an angler pick up their line and recast. The following cast often lands in exactly the same spot as the flies were when the angler pulled them out to cast. Every cast should have a purpose. If you are casting to reach another spot, that is one thing. However, if you are just casting because you are getting too impatient and can't stand to watch your flies sit there any longer, force back the urge to cast and wait a little longer. The very largest brown trout that I have hooked every year often come after an extremely long uninterrupted drift. When strike indicators and nymphs start raining down from the sky, those big fish immediately know something is up and won't react well. However, when the flies stealthily drift into the strike zone, the fish doesn't know anything is out of the ordinary and feeds readily.

So, in a nutshell, here is my tip for the day. On big tailwaters like we have here in the southeast and across the south, don't recast unless your fly will change positions by a minimum of 10-15 feet. That's it. If you are going to splash back down within a few feet of where you ripped the flies out, you are probably going to do more harm than good by recasting. Both pulling the flies out of the water and putting them back in will spook fish. That "spook" radius is several feet at minimum and can be as much as 20 or more feet on flat ultra clear water under a bright summer sun. Shoot, on the Clinch River, fish will spook from false casting at 40 or 50 feet or farther at times. 

Now, are there some caveats? Sure. I'm mostly talking about big flat water. Fast broken riffles and pocket water will have a different set of rules. I'm talking about suspension nymphing primarily as well. We blind drift a lot of flies through likely lies. That is the main scenario I'm referring to. I'm also not talking about sight fishing situations which is an entirely different ballgame. If you are on flat water on big tailwaters, however, just remember that the longer your drift, the more likely you'll catch a good fish. 

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