Troutbitten

What’s the best way to carry your gear? Should you use a vest, a chest pack, hip pack, sling pack or something else? How you choose to carry gear is a personal and situational choice. It has everything to do with what you need to carry, and how far you like to walk. Do you need to carry extra layers and a raincoat, and how many tactics do you want to be ready for? Streamers, nymphs, dry flies and...

The leader might be the most important piece of gear that we have -- more consequential than the rod, the fly line, or even the fly itself. And of course, at the tail end of the leader is the tippet. All anglers must make decisions about tippet every day. What size and strength? What type of tippet? And how long should the tippet section be? Because, what might seem like a small decision, can have...

This podcast is about small stream fishing — specifically, what we love about the places, the fish, the tactics and the experience of fishing smaller trout waters. These are trout streams that are no wider than the dirt road that you drove in on. And for every blue ribbon trout river, for every destination water that is raved about in the guidebooks and makes every angler’s bucket list, there are...

This episode is about wading a river. Good wading. Better wading. Confident wading. Because, for a river angler, nothing is more important. Good wading is not just walking from place to place, it's an almost constant, fluid motion, and fly fishing requires great footwork along the way. I meet a lot of anglers who approach a river all wrong. They wade into a spot, set up, and then cast to ever...

What can we do when the rains come, when the snow melts, or when the floodgates open? Rivers rise in many different ways. From quick and heavy summer thunderstorms, to the steady light rain that remains for days at a time. There’s the gradual release of melting snowpack and then heavy rains on that same snow that pushes high volumes of cold water into the rivers. Then too, there’s the generation o...

We have a fun conversation for this episode, about what’s more difficult — nymphs or dry flies. This is not a talk about which tactic is better. And this discussion isn’t even about which one we might like more. What is more difficult? Nymphs or dries? This is a valuable exercise and an important discussion . . . Just because nymphing might usually produce more trout, doesn’t mean it is easier. An...

This is the second episode of our two part discussion on angler pressure. Last time, we talked about how fishing pressure affects the fish — how they respond to more fishermen placing more casts and drifts in the waters around them — how trout change, both short term and long term. And now, we’re building on those thoughts and offering some solutions. Because if trout are adapting their habits in...

Season 7 of the Troutbitten Podcast begins with a two-part discussion on angler pressure. This is a big one. It’s a topic that everyone in the fishing world loves to talk about. People complain about angler pressure, and they have theories about how it changes things. In this episode, we discuss how angler pressure affects the fish. And for the next episode, the topic will be how angler pressure a...

Troutbitten is about the pursuit of fishing tactics. It’s about discovering new techniques and improving our skills. We don’t want to hope something will happen out there. We try to make it happen. And that element of fly fishing, where there’s always something new to try, is what is so attractive to those of us who dedicate much of our lives to the river. But there’s another side to this love of...

Season Seven will begin on April 10th. But in between seasons, I want to catch you up on a few things that are going on with Troutbitten. Just a few years ago, Troutbitten was the website only. I wrote and published articles three times a week. Now it’s a multi-media company with many branches — there’s the podcast, the videos, the online shop, hosted events and, of course, the guide business. Her...

Here we are at the end of Season 6 -- the Troutbitten Winter Skills Series. This is episode 8 of the series, and I’m here with a full crew of friends to wrap things up, to hear some stories and dig into a few more tips for fly fishing in the winter months. This is a great conversation with my best fishing friends. And this discussion is a nice endcap on a full season dedicated to fly fishing in th...

My good friend, Austin Dando, joins me to address many of the troubles with winter fishing. In this Winter Skills Series, we’ve been through the tactics, with dry flies, streamers and nymphs. We've talked about how to stay warm out there, and we’ve saved this topic for last. There are a host of reasons that anglers stay home in the winter. Some are legitimate -- there's no good solution...

With this Troutbitten skills series on winter fishing. We’ve covered locations and expectations, where to find trout, and their wintertime habits. We did two full podcasts on staying warm from head to toe. We talked about fishing nymphs in these waters, streamers in these waters, and now we’re ready to talk about dry flies. Specifically, this conversation is dedicated to what is different or uniqu...

A streamer is not only a great change-up in the winter, it can be the best fly in your box - if you fish it well. There are some changes to make for a wintertime streamer approach, versus the warmer seasons. And those nuances in presentation make all the difference. In this episode my friend, Austin Dando, and I share our best tips for fishing streamers in the winter. We Cover the Following Why, w...

In this episode, we dive deep into winter nymphing strategies. Specifically, we highlight what is different and what is unique about nymphing in the winter versus other seasons. With fewer hatches and with trout that are less willing to move for a fly, presenting a nymph to winter fish is often our best strategy. But having success requires a refined approach, and winter nymphing can seem like the...

Here's a full podcast dedicated to staying warm, from head to toe. Because sometimes, staying warm and functional in the winter is far more important than the tactics. The cold becomes our biggest challenge. This episode is about keeping the cold out, the heat in and fishing hard — all day long, in even the roughest weather. More specifically, it's about regulating your body heat while o...

Cold. That is what defines winter fishing. We acknowledged in the last podcast that the cold — or really the inability to deal with it — is one of the main reasons anglers stay home. So that’s why I think any in-depth discussion about winter fishing really has to start with how to stay warm. If you’re so cold that you can’t function normally, you just won’t fish well. In next week’s podcast, we’re...

Season Six of the Troutbitten podcast begins. This is an eight part Skill Series about fly fishing in the winter months, and episode one is an overview of the series, along with details about where to find trout and in what water type we should expect them to eat. This episode is about our approach, with advice on time of day, fly strategy, covering water to suite the river and reading what the tr...

For the finale of Season Five of the Troutbitten Podcast and to wrap up 2022, we’re closing the curtain with an episode about fishing buddies — why we need them, how to find them and how to keep them for a lifetime. We talk about what makes a good, bad or great fishing companion and share some experiences about a few would-be friendships gone wrong. We Cover the Following What qualities are needed...

One of the most captivating aspects of fly fishing is the seemingly endless variety of approaches, tactics and strategies that are available with a fly rod in our hands. There are so many things to learn that put trout in the net. And we quickly understand that there’s a lifetime of education for us if we want it. So we combine our time on the water with conversations that we have with friends. We...

Wind challenges our cast and changes our drifts more than any other element. It forces us to adapt our presentations, and it makes some of our favorite styles impossible. But there is always a way to beat it. There’s always a way to make things work. And no matter how rough the wind, there are strategies not just for fighting through it, but for fishing well and catching trout. That’s what this ep...

The Troutbitten crew answers questions from podcast listeners. These questions range from gear talk to ethics, from fly selection to reading a trout river. And while most of our podcast episodes are narrowly focused on one theme, this one is spread out across topics. This is an entertaining conversation, with both stories and tactics. We Cover the Following How far do trout move for a fly? Stories...

The longer we toss around streamers, the more we realize that it’s the most subtle changes in presentation that make a difference. Faster or slower? Sure. But how about letting the fly free fall in the current? What about a slight cross lead before reestablishing a strike-zone path in one seam? Or let’s try sliding a streamer off the bank with a broadside look, because that often draws a strike wh...

The Troutbitten guys and I sit down to share a few stories — moments and experiences — from a life on the water. There’s no layout for this episode and not much direction other than to share some of the remarkable things that have happened to us while fishing — the things we’ve seen, places we’ve been and the stuff that has happened, simply because we were there, on the river, with a fly rod in ou...

In this episode, my Troutbitten friends and I talk about one of the toughest conditions we face — fishing in low, clear water. It’s something that can happen in any season and in any trout river. Many anglers shrink from the challenge. They walk away or never string up the fly rod, using the excuse that trout are simply too spooky or they just aren’t eating. But I promise you, that is not true. Tr...