Developing the necessary skills to see fish is an essential part of fishing, especially when fishing the flats—whether they be ocean or lake flats, or just smooth flowing areas in streams. One watches for any movement, a broken surface, shadows, or just “nervous” water. My friend, Capt. Jake Jordan, sent these shots of tarpon. His web site (see link at right) is a good study on fish behavior as well as many heart-stopping shots of big fish being played well.

Yes, those are all tarpon (hint: it's a daisy chain)

Tarpon breaking the surface; one can see this from half mile away on a calm day

My friend Chuck Furimsky, founder and owner of The Fly Fishing Show, was recently fishing for tarpon in the Florida Keys with our mutual friend, Capt. Jake Jordan. They were up at 3 am to catch the outgoing tide, and were sliding the boat into the Gulf side of the bridge in less than an hour. Casting a floating deer-hair crab on a short line, they drifted the boat in the currents under the bridge and out on the Atlantic side. Chuck was instructed to hold the rod tip low and pointing straight down the line. Tarpon waiting to ambush drifting crabs and other food items would pick up the fly as softly as a trout sucking down a small nymph. When the hook went in, the fish went nuts, jumping and tearing around in the dark like a deranged water buffalo. The terror came from the potential interest that an unseen, monster hammer head might find in the fighting fish and attached boat.

All in all, Chuck landed three fish of 70, 100, and 120 pounds, fishing in the dark on his first day. Anyone wanting to try this most exciting fly fishing should have a look at Jake’s web site. Contact him for potential available dates.

Chuck obediently dead drifting his crab fly per Jake's instructions. Photo by Jake Jordan.

This is what short-line dead drifting at night for tarpon is all about. Photo by Jake Jordan.

Jason is working furiously,  faithfully, and fruitfully  to complete the art and final design layout for the first book in our Fly Fishing series. Entitled, “Fishing the Film,” it’s an in-depth look at the skills necessary to successfully take fish with dead-drifted flies and those fished with action, in the upper foot or so of lake, stream, or ocean.The book is illustrated both with Jason’s great art, and stories that enhance the reader’s understanding of the process of fishing the film. Here’s a story from Chapter 1 about fishing a fly with action in the film–a mouse fly, to be more precise.

Down and Dirty Mouse

Mice by the Mouthful

And then, there are the big brookies of the tundra. Ontario’s Sutton River headwaters in Sutton Lake and flows directly north through Polar Bear Provincial Park, dumping into Hudson Bay, a hundred and some miles from its source. There are both resident ands ea-run fish present in the stream all the very short summer long. And they eat any and everything they can get their lips on—including our old friend, the ever-present mouse. A mouse in the water does not float daintily on top. It is most certainly a creature above, in, and under the film. Only the rodent’s head and perhaps a bit of the back sticks above the surface as it swims hard for the other side. I doubt they know that danger lurks below, but nature has long-since weeded out any slow swimmers. As a result, our preferred mouse patterns are dressed of deer hair, but they’re not packed as tightly as most. On the Sutton, our technique was to cast the semi-floating imitation right on the gravel of the far bank, and then just let line drag pull it off and swim it rapidly back to our side. Those brookies would almost turn themselves inside out in pursuit of the motoring fly. Many times they jumped in order to take the fly on the way down, or they would slash and grab at it on the swing, until they finally hooked themselves in their eagerness. Their zest for the mouse made for some great sequences in our video, “Trout of the Tundra.”

Every Alaskan angler carries mice imitations—some four inches long—to lure the big rainbows of summer into such savagery as has to be experienced to be fully appreciated. I even had a huge king salmon rise to a mouse one time on the Kanektok, waking along after it and bumping it out of the water several times with its nose. It never took the fly, but I remember that fish more than all the others put together on that trip.

Atlantic salmon like mice, too, as a substitute for blocks of wood. Yes, wood. One year, fishing Russia’s Umba River in June for Atlantics, I was plying the home pool in the late afternoon hours and spotted a block of wood headed down current toward me. It was a chunk of a 2 x 4 that had found its way into the river. Only a couple of inches long, it made a suitable mouse (2 x 2 x 4). As the block neared my position, it drifted right down the seam I had been working.

To my utter amazement, a nice salmon rose and took the block off the top. The block popped back to the surface a few seconds later. I was stunned, but only momentarily. The next thing I recall is a fly box in my lashed it on as fast as humanly possible. I heaved the big imitation up and across onto the seam and added a Puddle Mend to eliminate any drag. On the very first drift, the fish came up just as it had before, and slurped in the dead-drifting mouse. I waited the mandatory pause (“God Save the Queen,” as they say in England) before striking. When the line tightened, sure enough, there was the salmon on the other end.

God save the Queen, indeed. God save all those big mouse eating fish, whatever and wherever they may be.

Jeff Currier is back from a trip to the Baja for rooster fish, and had a great time. Roosters are fish of the surf–as you can see in the photo below–and anglers walk the beach and cast a relatively short line to these brutes. Better have a big reel loaded with a half mile of backing–there’s no boat to jump into and follow a running fish. For more details, click on Jeff’s link to the right.

A really fine rooster fish--the back fin gives this fish its name.

My friends, John Beth,Dale Thompson, and Doc Zavadsky hit the ‘horn for a week starting on May 9th. They did catch some fish, but nothing like it has been in past years. As John reports in an email that he entitled, “The Good the Bad and the Ugly of the West”:

In spite of months of careful planning – the key is more critical with timing than ever before to hit this trip right. If we had gone a week earlier – a foot of snow, high winds and low temperature would have nailed us. A week later, the water would be twice the level we’d hoped for.

So, I guess we made the best of the poor spring weather and water issues that we could. For several years, Doc and I hit the flow around 2000cfs this time of the year – give or take a bit. This year, we had a decent Sunday afternoon on the 9th. then it got cold, windy and rained for 3 days and nights. The water started to rise and it was 2500 – 3500 – 4500 – 5000 – (and over 6000 cfs by today). Blew out all the surface activity and the river was a mess. Wade fishing was hopeless and even scuds and worms weren’t working. A lot of sad fly fishermen around as midge and baetis dry fly fishing is about the best of the years right now (typically). We caught some fish here and there and had one good BWO hatch for a couple of days before the water got too high.

A nice Bighorn bow taken during a week of high water and poor angling conditions.

OK, so you really don’t like the regular Clinch and need to tie the Improved Clinch. But before you do, the question is why does there need to be an Improved Clinch? Well (1) for those that insist on pulling the short end of the tippet, the improved Clinch will work. (2) When the wire in the hook is substantially larger in diameter than the diameter of the tippet. As a good rule of thumb we can say when the wire is 2X or more the diameter of the tippet. When this happens, the coils of the  Clinch Knot cannot adequately hold the short end of the tippet locked against the wire in the hook eye. But the Improved Clinch works all the time, regardless of the difference in diameters between the hook and the tippet. That’s because the Improved Clinch locks against itself.

So the question becomes, why not just use the Improved Clinch every time? The answer is, you may if you wish, but each time you tie it, you lose about 4 inches off the end of the tippet. Change the fly 3 times and you’ve lost a foot–time to change tippets. With the regular Clinch, the short end need only be 1/8 inch long, and the knot holds just fine.

I use the Improved Clinch when tying on heavy wire salmon hooks to a relatively light 2X tippet, for example. Of If I need to lash a hopper onto 5X, an Improved Clinch is the better choice. And once you know the regular Clinch, the Improved is just one step away.

Step 1. Tie a regular Clinch know but don’t’ pull it tight. Leave the short end longer than usual.

Step 1. Tie a regular Clinch and leave the short end longer than usual.

Step 2. Put the short end back through the loop of the Clinch. Now the short end will be locked in the loop of the knot rather that against the wire in the hook eye.

Step 2. Put the short end back through the loop of the Clinch.

Step 3. Pull the short end and the long end to get the knot started. Lubricate it with a touch of your tongue to the knot, then pull the long end to draw the knot completely tight. Stretch the mono of the tippet and hold it stretched out for a second or two. Trim off the short end, which you notice isn’t so short.

The Improved Clinch pulled tight. Trim off the short end.

Sorry I’ve been out of the loop for a few days. I’ve been occupied with any number of items that have drained my time like a mechanic draining old motor oil–in fact, I’ve felt a bit like that old motor oil that’s being drained.

But, here’s a knot that is so misused that it gets abused. I say misused because so many anglers tie it incorrectly, and then curse the day they every used it. For them, it’s on to the Improved Clinch. But, I will tell you right now that I use the Clinch Knot most of the time–I have for over 60 years–and I don’t ever have problems with it.

The difficulty with the Clinch Knot is in the way many anglers have learned to tie it. So, let me walk you through the knot one step at a time and explain the nuances that make this one of my favorite fly attachment knots.

Step 1. Step 1. Take the leader through the eye of the fly. Up through or down through? doesn’t matter. Just go through.

Step 1. Thread the tippet through the eye of the fly.

Step 2. Twist the short end of the tippet around the standing end 5 to 7 turns (Jason uses 6 turns as the average of 5 and 7). Note here: Just twist them together like I’ve done with the rope in the photo below; don’t try to wrap the short end in tight coils around the standing end.  By the way, when I use a rope kit for demonstrating knots (see my previous post on the rope kit), I only make three turns with the short end. Five turns don’t pull up well in the ropes.

Step 2. Twist the short end of the tippet 5 to 7 turns around the standing end.

Step 3. Insert the short end through the loop in the tippet just ahead of the eye of the fly. This loop was made when the short end of the tippet was folded back along the standing end before the two were twisted together. I often hold this loop and keep it extra large size when I’m wrapping the short end around the standing end. This makes inserting the short end into the loop ever so much easier.

Step 3. Insert the short end through the loop just ahead of the eye.

Step 4. HERE IT COMES. Do not, again I repeat for extra emphasis, Do Not, pull the short end. Hold it tightly, but do not pull it. Pull only on the standing end of the tippet. As the knot rolls over and slides down, touch it with the tip of your tongue to lubricate it with saliva. Pull the knot smoothly tight, and then continue to pull, drawing all stretch out of the tippet and holding it tight long enough to say something inane like “Now you’re tight enough to catch a big fish.” Again, let me remind you, do not pull the short end. This is the single critical mistake that everyone makes when tying the Clinch Knot.

Step 4. HOLD THE SHORT END. Draw the knot tight by pulling only on the standing end of the tippet.

If you pull the short end of the tippet while trying to tighten the Clinch Knot, the coils of the leader cannot invert and slide back to pinion the short end tightly against the wire of the hook eye. In the photo below, you can see that the knot hasn’t inverted and the short end isn’t locked firmly against the eye. In fact, it isn’t locked against anything at all. When tied this way, the knot readily comes untied during casting or worse yet, when you hook a fish. Sooooo, Tie the knot correctly. DON’T pull the short end. When tied correctly, lubricated with saliva, and pulled smoothly tight, the Clinch Knot works just fine, thank you. So well, in fact, that it’s been the standard, go-to knot for nearly all my fishing for over 60 years.

The Clinch Knot as it appears when the short end is pulled during tightening.

Forwarded to me:

Some fish are just outsized. It might be fun for the first 8 hours; after that it would just be work.

This is a darn interesting picture and story even if you aren’t into fishing,
But please show it to anyone you know that likes to fish.

FYI:  This sturgeon is still alive, just worn out from the fight.
As the sports fishermen they are, they turned him loose after the photo.

This Sturgeon was caught in the Missouri River, North of Bismarck, North Dakota two weeks ago.
It weighed out at over 1,000 lbs and measured out at 11’1″.

It was 56″ around the girth and took over 6 and a half hours, and 4 dozen beers, for the 4 guys taking turns at the reeling it in.

Any Sturgeon OVER about five feet has to be released unharmed and cannot be removed from the water.

They are brood / breeding stock and probably older than most of us.

Too Big for a Fly Rod

It’s been a very strange spring. Early on we had warm temperatures that seemed more like days of summer. Then suddenly winter was upon us again. Talk about confused. My flowers haven’t yet figured out what’s happening. Likewise for the trout. The up and down weather patterns have given them a good case of feeding fits–as in feeding one day, nothing the next. And guess who gets to go fishing on the “no feeding” days? This is what spring in Wisconsin looks like…

Spring Time in Wisconsin

On a brighter note, it looks like the bass have finally thawed out in Colorado–at least in the Denver area. My friend Mark Rayman sent me this note…

“Yesterday was our first outing to the ponds. It has been cold and windy lately  and not too good for bass fishing. Anyway, here is Barbara with her first bass of the year. Gotta love that smile.

Barbara--the real fly fisher in the family--with the first bass of the season.

These are also known as micro-rings because they are indeed micro. They’re called tippet rings because they are attached to the end of the leader body (butt section plus tapered section) as an attachment point for the tippet. OK, how micro is micro? Well, they come in 2 mm and 3 mm sizes (that’s about 5/64 and 1/8 inch, respectively. Very small. The 3 mm size works great for heavier leaders; for example in Czech Nymphing, there’s a short heavy, red or bright green butt section and then a very long tippet section (up to 10 feet, or even more in some circumstances). The 3mm ring goes at the end of the butt, and the tippet can be changed as needed. The 2 mm ring can go on the tippet to act as dropper connection points. In addition, micro-rings are the best choice of connection between a furled leader body and the tippet. And don’t worry, they’re plenty strong–30 to 35 pounds. They come in black nickel, silver nickel, and titanium. They work with dries, too (a touch of fly floatant will keep the ring on top).

These are an European idea and they’re great. I’ve found one shop that handles them–I’m sure there are others, or soon will be. Click her to get yours: Micro-rings.