Fly Fishing Techniques

IMPARTING MOVEMENT TO A DRY FLY is one of the most effective and exciting ways to fish dry flies, but it must be done under the right circumstances with special techniques that distinguish movement given to the fly by the fisherman from ordinary drag. Insects on the surface of the water move, no question, but when insects move they do it without creating a V-shaped wake that drag usually creates. When you purposely give movement to a fly, it should look like a skater gliding across the surface rather than a swimmer doing the crawl. If this is done properly, a skated fly will draw trout from six feet away, fish that might not be induced to take any other fly. It's more an active technique that you should use like a streamer fly to provoke strikes than a passive technique where you pitch a fly to a trout's suspected position and wait for him to inhale your fly.

Learning to Mend When learning to mend a fly line — throwing the line upstream or downstream after the fly hits the water to eliminate drag — start with your rod tip low and mend with authority, lifting your rod high. You want to move as much line as necessary to reach the point at which the current is pulling your line in the wrong direction.

Reach Before You Mend End any cast that you know you will have to mend with an upstream reach cast, presenting the fly downstream of the line. Perform a reach cast by sweeping the rod either right or left just after delivering the forward cast and before the fly hits the water. Even if the situation doesn't require a mend, the reach cast delays the onset of drag.

ONE OF THE RESULTS of winning big bonefish tournaments is that people are always asking me about the keys to catching giant bonefish. It's easy to understand; big bonefish are so difficult to fool that the frustration can become overwhelming. They are so different in "attitude" from small bonefish that I'd probably suggest you forget what you learned while casting to the schools of hundreds that are typical in parts of the Bahamas and the Caribbean. Legendary south Florida guide Steve Huff once said that if you can catch a big tailing bonefish with a fly rod, you can catch anything. And seeing a big bonefish tail sticking out of the water will make anyone's knees shake. There's no wonder that there's a mystique about these awesome fish.