Our guide felt that anglers are more successful if they stick to one type of water and fish it well instead of trying to fish all of the good-looking runs.
Hatches: Spotted Sedge
Spotted sedge (Hydropsyche), with at least 25 sub-species in the West, as well as Midwestern and Eastern counterparts (all very similar), could be considered one of the most important, if not the most important, insect to practitioners of trout spey and swinging wetflies.
Opening Day: An Ode to the Firehole
Of all the famed water available in Yellowstone, the Firehole is just about as pleasant as fly fishing gets.
Salmonflies: Swinging the Hatch
The memory of a Henry’s Fork rainbow cartwheeling multiple times over a waking muddler in the glow of a May sunset still has me grinning years later. And I can almost feel the warmth of the June sun as I recall working a flooded willow bank. The plump brown trout that I eventually landed nearly pulled my 3-wt. trout spey out of my hand on the grab.
The P.T. Slow Swing
So simple and so effective, I cannot say how often it‘s saved my day, from my rivers at home, to along the classic rivers in England, where Frank Sawyer invented and published it in his book Nymphs and the Trout in 1958, to the wide rivers in Montana, like the Bighorn and many more.
Speying the Hatch
The need to “match the hatch” was a facet of trout fishing with flies that intrigued me the most as a young angler and still abides as a source of entertaining and satisfying challenges. It’s an aspect of our game that separates steelhead and salmon fishing from trouting. Trout are actively feeding (more or less), a habit that adds quite a bit of nuance to our angle of pursuit, including presentations outside the classic step and swing salmon/steelhead approach.
Big Rods, Wee Flies
As Trout Spey continues to grow in popularity we encounter information outlining the applications of two-handed rods designed for trouting. This info is fairly sound, except too often we are told the lighter weight Trout Spey rods are most suitable for presenting wee soft-hackle flies, while the he… Become a member of Swing the Fly […]
What is Trout Spey?
As two-handed Spey casting has exploded in popularity over the last 20 years so, too, has the technology available in the manufacture of two-handed (Spey) rods. This allowed for the development of lighter, more limber rods making two-hand rods no longer restricted in use to larger game fish. Today, “Trout Spey,” is all the […]