Troutbitten

Here are twelve tips for delivering a fly into waters that are heavily canopied, with greedy branches, ready to grab your fly and make life difficult. The best small stream fishing happens in these places. We call it brush fishing. Learning to cast a fly on small streams forces an angler into proper form. There is no forgiveness, and every error comes with consequences. But the reward is there. Sm...

Across the country, there are rivers, creeks and streams stocked by the state,  often referred to as put and take (they put trout in, you take them out). And especially early in the season, opportunities for stocked trout can be a solid choice. Other places stock fish under catch and release regs or delayed harvest. Also, some rivers, for various reasons, cannot support wild trout populations and...

What's your favorite fly rod? This most frequently asked question now has its answer in the Troutbitten Riverside Series. Riverside is a place for sharing and presenting stories and articles from the Troutbitten website. And one of the most popular articles at Troutbitten has been about the qualities to look for in a rod well suited for the Mono Rig. This past winter, I wrote the manuscript f...

This season has been all about options for moving the streamer. Our focus has been on the animations available to attract and then sell the trout on the streamer presentation. In this season finale, we talk about river scenarios and share some tips and strategies that help tie all of the previous episodes together. We discuss the following: How different fly designs suggest fishing them different...

The tight line dance is another collection of movements to the streamer loosely grouped together into a system or framework for covering many water types and gaining reactions from the trout. It's all about taking the advantages of a tight line, Mono Rig system to the streamer game and using contact to control every aspect of the streamer's course through the river. We use a visible stre...

With episode seven of this Troutbitten Skills Series, we’ve finally come to the point where we’ve covered all the different ways to move a streamer and give it some animation. Now it’s time to put all of that together. This whole series has been about what motions might sell the presentation. Because how we move the streamer fools the next trout. And there’s such a wealth of options that it can be...

Speed leads happen mostly in one lane, and they go faster than their parent current. Lane changes are exactly what they sound like — the fly is traveling in one lane, and then we deliberately bring the fly over to a nearby lane and travel down that one. The speed lead is a term coined by our friend, Josh Stewart. Way back in 2017, I published a few articles about low-riding streamer presentations...

We've covered many animations in these series. We’ve talked about the streamer head position and its direction, about cross current movement vs holding one lane. We've covered jerk strips, glides, slides, fast, slow, quick or smooth, we talked about drop rates and a lot more. And now, we're here to talk about one of the most basic movements performed on any fly, lure or bait — jiggi...

This steamer presentation is what streamer anglers probably do most — swinging the flies. From what I see on the water, what I read in articles and watch in videos, I think it’s fair to say, swinging is a pretty popular look. But it’s also fair to say that swinging is what we do the least. I think part of that is regional. Swinging streamers is a good tactic. It’s not our preferred method, but tha...

For us, streamer fishing is best when we actively and intentionally move the fly. But with glides and slides, our animations are often subtle, because sometimes these are the most natural or convincing looks. Rolling the bottom, gliding mid-current along a knee-deep riffle or slow-sliding off the bank — all of these maneuvers are just as enticing, and they catch just as many trout as flashy retrie...

The Head Flip is a pivot. It’s a simple change of the streamer's head angle, from down and across to up and across, or from upstream to downstream. This pivot doesn’t necessarily move the fly out of its area, but the motion might seem pretty dramatic to a trout. The Head Flip shows trout an opportunity for an easy meal, and it might signal a moment of vulnerability. It's one of our favor...

The ability to move the fly with the rod tip and not just the line hand is a fundamental skill that opens creative options for the streamer angler. Almost two decades ago, Kelly Galloup’s first streamer book changed the way anglers thought about moving a streamer. All these years later, the jerk strip isn’t just one way to move the streamer. It’s a technique for using both hands, in concert, synch...

This season is a ten-part Troutbitten Skill Series, all about Streamer Presentations. We've been looking forward to this one for a long time. We spend a lot of our time dead drifting dry flies and nymphs. But with streamers, we’re trying to make them look alive . Instead of no motion, we move the fly. And this is exactly why we love to fish streamers. Because we get tired of dead drifting. An...

We're talking about  how to shorten your time at the tailgate or the trunk. Just get your waders on, your boots laced, and get to the river. It  should be as simple as that, but it’s not uncommon for anglers to waste a half hour or more just getting ready to go fishing. Most anglers hate this wasted time. In fact, all of this preparation just to go fishing puts a lot of anglers off in the fir...

We're here to celebrate ten years of Troutbitten. December 8th was the tenth anniversary of the first article ever published on Troutbitten. All those years ago, I never expected this Troutbitten business — this media company — to become what it is. Honestly, I had no intentions other than to write and publish stories about fishing, simply because I love the process of writing and I enjoyed f...

This discussion is about the differences between trout species. How are the habits of brown trout different than rainbow trout? Where do brook trout tend to hold and feed vs brown trout? What about cutthroat? Do they have different tendencies or habits than their counterparts? Because the habits of these trout are different, our target water changes too, as do our fly patterns and our approach. Th...

For our Season 13 Intermission, my wife, Becky, joins me for a look at what's going on in the Troutbitten world. We talk about the upcoming leader sale in the Troutbitten Shop (December 6th). We talk about upcoming podcast and video plans, books, fly rods and more. Resources SHOP: Troutbitten | Category | Leaders   Visit Troutbitten Website Troutbitten Instagram Troutbitten YouTube Troutbitte...

I fished for two decades before I finally realized that not every river, not every creek or stream has big fish. For most of my early days of fishing, I thought there was a different class of fish in some of my favorite waters that I simply never encountered. And I liked to think that if I fished certain ways at certain times, I would finally catch those fish. But many years later, after more expe...

Tonight we’re here to talk about why we fish. It’s a simple question. Why do we commit so much of our free time and efforts, our thoughts and our daydreams . . . to fishing? Why, after all these years, do we keep coming back? Why, when we could do hundreds of other things — with three hours on a weekday evening or every daylight hour on a Saturday, from dawn to dark — why do we choose to lace up t...

We’re halfway through Season 13, and tonight we have a discussion that’s been on our backburner for quite a while -- barbed hooks or barbless, and does it really matter? Should we always fish barbless? Maybe not. The answer isn’t that simple. So the Troutbitten guys are here for a conversation and a few thoughts about barbs on hooks. Each one of us has fished for long enough that we’ve used both b...

Every angler needs a set of flies to call their own. Among the thousands of patterns, options and choices out there, eventually, we sort out a handful of confidence flies. Our faith in these flies gives us conviction when choosing them and tying the knot. We’ll fish THIS fly in THIS water. That’s what will catch the next trout. And if it doesn’t, then we’ll change something — maybe the water type,...

What's right and wrong? That's what ethics really boils down to. Certainly, there are nuances about how much space to give other anglers on the river or how long we should hold a trout out of the water for a picture. But doing the right thing and being an ethical angler is probably best achieved by asking ourselves one question: Does this action makes things better or worse? And are you...

The Troutbitten guys are here to talk about two flies. Why do we fish two dry flies, two streamers, wets or nymphs? Why don’t we? Why might we fish with just one fly instead? Multiple fly rigs are a common solution to fishing problems, but extra flies on the line can certainly create more issues than they solve. The one or two fly debate, across fishing styles -- this is our topic. What works, whe...

The full Troutbitten crew is back for season thirteen. In this fall and early winter season, our theme is casual conversations. After three years of podcasting, we've recorded many episodes that go deep into the weeds on one specific topic. We've also dedicated full seasons to the Skills Series format, where a topic like night fishing or tight line nymphing is broken into multiple episod...

For this final episode in the dry fly skills series, we work through some scenarios that anglers frequently encounter. Because, just like nymphing, fishing streamers and fishing wets, we fish dry flies for many different reasons and in many different ways. We addressed some of this in episode one, and in this final episode, we complete the bookend by thinking about how things layout and going thro...