MidCurrent Plus Live Event – June 24, 2026
Synopsis
This MidCurrent Plus live event pairs host Phil Monahan — former editor-in-chief, now ambassador for MidCurrent — with Tom Rosenbauer, one of the most recognizable voices in American fly fishing and a friend and fishing partner of Phil’s for many years, for an hour-long master class on dry-fly fishing. The two have spent countless days side by side chasing brook trout in the streams around their southwestern Vermont homes, and that easy familiarity gives the conversation its shape: less a lecture than two veterans comparing notes on the discipline they both love most.
A Sobering Note on Striped Bass — Before the main subject, Tom shares the discouraging state of his recent striper trip on Cape Cod: plenty of big fish on the days they found them, but almost no small ones. He’s gone two years without catching a schoolie, and reports that anglers are now posting photos of small bass to Instagram precisely because they’ve become the unusual catch. He suspects the problem is system-wide rather than local — overfishing, harvest, poor spawning in the Chesapeake, a winter fish kill — and is careful to say the issue deserves a scientist’s explanation rather than his own speculation, pointing curious anglers to the American Saltwater Guides Association for conservation information.
The Epitome of Dry-Fly Fishing — Asked for his favorite kind of dry-fly fishing, Tom tells a recent story from the Delaware with Simon Perkins, president of Orvis. On a bright, open flat over a slow silt-and-gravel bottom, fish began rising in the wide open — good fish, not badly spooked, the kind you can stalk, work, and change tactics on over repeated casts. Simon eventually fooled a steady 16- to 17-inch fish by changing patterns and dropping to 6X tippet, and Tom got to watch the whole thing unfold, rise to fight. That game — a visible, catchable fish you can problem-solve in real time — is, to him, what dry-fly fishing is all about.
Pattern Versus Presentation — Tom holds that both matter, but presentation trumps pattern: you can catch a fish on a good presentation with the “wrong” fly, but almost never on a bad presentation with the right one. He’s quick to add that there’s really no such thing as a wrong fly — only one the fish wants or doesn’t. Pattern matters most on technical water like the Delaware, Missouri, and Henry’s Fork, where you have to be in the ballpark; on the mountain brook-trout streams he and Phil fish, anything buggy that floats will work.
Rules of Thumb: Tippet, Leaders, and Knots — A set of hard-won habits emerges. When a guide hands you a tippet size, go one lighter — modern material is strong enough, and lighter tippet lands softer and drags less because it has less mass. Tom is a five-turn blood-knot man (surgeon’s knots cost him fish), an enthusiast of Scientific Anglers’ Absolute Fluorocarbon Supreme, and a believer that fish see your tippet no matter what — “they can see nine X” — so the point is not invisibility but behavior. He’ll fish fluorocarbon tippet off a greased monofilament leader, because he wants the leader to float, and he’s increasingly sold on long leaders: 12 feet to start, but up to 18 or 20 on spooky water, where even a heavy butt section lands lighter than fly line. Most anglers, he argues, fish leaders that are too short and spook fish with their line.
Pet Peeves and Floatants — As a fly tier, Tom can’t stand watching anglers cram beautiful, carefully crafted dries into foam boxes that crush them — a lure box from a big-box store, he says, would serve them better. On keeping flies afloat he runs “the double dip”: liquid floatant (Orvis Fly Dip), dried off, then ground into a fumed-silica powder. He carries four floatants and switches by situation — paste for dark flies, since the powder leaves a lightening film he doesn’t want on a dark imitation.
The Skills Worth Working On — When Phil asks what struggling dry-fly anglers should practice, Tom’s answer is blunt: accuracy of casting, above all. The majority of anglers he sees aren’t good enough casters — he includes himself after sixty years — and they should practice fishable distances of 20 to 40 feet, not heaving the whole line. After accuracy comes the reach cast: if you can’t do one, “you’re not in the game,” even for nymphs and streamers. He dislikes mending while dry-fly fishing because it moves the fly, and the reach cast puts the slack in before the line lands. Both men land on the same old wisdom — fish with your feet, read the currents, and plan where to stand before you ever cast, because most fish are caught inside 30 feet and a two-foot drift in the right spot often beats a long one.
Setups by Situation — Tom walks through three rigs. For everyday water — the Battenkill, the Madison, Yellowstone — a nine-foot four-weight with a 12-foot 5X leader, the lighter line landing softer and dragging less. For mountain brook-trout streams, a seven-and-a-half-foot three-weight (bamboo or graphite), a creek line built for short casts, and a short 7½-foot leader, because floats are measured in inches and presentation still matters even where fish rarely see an angler. For technical tailwaters and spring creeks like the Delaware, a 15-foot leader down to 6X off that same nine-foot four-weight, with shorter rods favored for accuracy over the longer “do-everything” ten-footers.
Working a Rising Fish — Tom would rather find a pod than a lone riser — pods lose their caution feeding side by side — but when it’s a single steady fish, he plans the approach deliberately: decide whether to fish straight upstream or get above and present downstream so the fish sees the fly first, read where you’ll get the least drag, watch to guess what it’s taking, then make the first cast count, because a single dragging fly can shut a fish down. He false-casts off to the side to find his range, tends to come up short rather than line the fish, then works through the patient iteration of flies and angles. He’ll change flies after a dozen good drifts or immediately after a refusal — fish can tell one fly from another, so the move is to a slightly different “attitude” of the same bug. And he’ll happily play one good fish for an hour, because hooking it on the first fly is no fun anyway.
Prospecting — On the subject he literally wrote a book about, Tom keeps it simple: when conditions are right — water above fifty, relatively low and clear — fish only the best, fishiest water rather than trying to grid the whole river, and give it half an hour before switching to nymphs or streamers. Favorite searching flies run regional: a Chubby Chernobyl or Fat Albert in Chile, a high-vis beetle (size 14–16) or parachute Adams elsewhere. He’s candid about his own hexes, too — he can’t buy a fish on a Royal Wulff, and long swore off the Yellow Sally until Colorado fish on the Eagle taught him otherwise.
Reader Questions — Emily fields questions from the audience. On tippet rings: Tom doesn’t bother (he likes tying knots and finds them fiddly), but says they’re perfectly fine and especially useful for joining nylon to fluorocarbon. On fishing a larger dry: only when prospecting, never in a hatch, where accuracy and drag matter too much — though Phil notes he’ll bump up one size in low light just to keep the fly visible. And on a windy day knocking hoppers off the bank into the water, Tom cheerfully confesses he’s not only seen it work but chased hoppers through fields to chum them in himself — fun, if arguably borderline.
Throughout, the through-line is the one both men keep circling back to: dry-fly fishing rewards observation, stealth, and a good first cast far more than gear or fly choice — and, as Tom’s eighty-year-old client who fished nothing but dries reminds them, it’s supposed to be fun. Play your own game. Next month: warmwater fly fishing.
