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Fishing dry flies over gravel runs
Those long, featureless gravel runs that can be found on a lot of western rivers--and freestone rivers throughout the country--might often be trout "dead zones," but as Orvis' Dave Jensen points out in the video below, during hatches, these stretches of water can be very productive. https://youtu.be/yjZbz_L7rPc Otherwise nondescript habitat, these gravel shelves can be…
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Watch before you fish
You wouldn't tackle a math problem—even the simplest of equations—without first taking a second to figure out the variables and determining where to start with your efforts to solve it, would you? https://youtu.be/-_M1Pavj5hI Now, apply that logic to fly fishing. It's always a good idea to take a look at a stretch of water, just…
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The Rise of the River Herring
If you ever have doubts that ocean-going fish like shad, herring and salmon can recover with just a little help, take a quick look at the video below, produced by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. https://vimeo.com/216513412 In Maine's Damariscotta River, in the community of Damariscotta Mills, the restoration of a 200-year-old fish ladder has…
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The Girdle Bug
It's stonefly season in the West—the big, adult bugs will be popping on a river near you before you know it. And, while the dry-fly imitations are easily the most popular—and the most fun to fish—it's the nymph patterns that likely catch more trout. And there are some great stonefly nymph patterns out there. But…
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Use floatant and desiccant together
The news out of Ashton over the weekend was pretty encouraging. The big stonefly nymphs were moving around, heading to streamside rocks in anticipation of a little sunshine. Any minute now, the fabled salmonfly hatch on the lower river would start to pop. The big bugs that crawl out of the river in late spring…
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How to fish a boulder garden
Here's one for you western anglers who are wondering, with all the late winter snow and the spring rain, if we're ever going to see fishable water levels anytime soon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EWSL0H-old0 The answer is, the water's already fishable. We just need to find the places where trout are holding amid the near-constant temperature changes and…
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How to fish the upstream dry fly
'Tis the season. Just ask the folks back East who are enjoying the sulfur hatch these days. Dry fly season is upon most us (those of us who are watching their rivers run over their banks here in the West are the notable exceptions). And it never hurts to get a little refresher when it…
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