How to fight a jumping trout?

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tiptop		#21	[url]	[-]
Posts: 543 04/16/2009 16:29	Horton Creek wrote: 4x. I started using 4x tippet a couple years ago for the same reason. When I would hook up a nice fish, bow when jump, do everything right etc I would lose larger browns as they would bull their way to nearest logjam or structure. I remembered that several much more experienced fly fishers told me they fished with nothing less than 4x for most dry fly conditions. It has worked for me as I am much more comfortable putting the wood to larger fish now and have kept them out of structure allowing me to land them. TipTop is a VERY VERY good fly fisherman. I think your tippet was just weakening but it also may be worth trying 4x when fishing for browns given their fighting habits of an initial jump and then a bull rush for the nearest structure. Tippett diameters keep getting smaller and strength keeps increasing such that I use 4x all the way down to sz 20 flies no problem. HC PS On second thought..........TipTop already outfishes me anyway...........Forget what I said, you should start using 8x. Horton Creek -- 4X for everything, interesting! Sounds like a good subject for another thread. 5X is usually my standard dry fly tippet and 4X for nymphing although I will go up and down from there if I think it's necessary. Where I get in trouble is when switching from dry fly to nymph I'm sometimes too lazy to go down to 4X and I end up paying for it because I hook more of the big boys on nymphs usually. Thanks for the high praise of my fishing prowess but you out-fish me any day -- I fish 3 times as much as you and I don't tell you when I strike out! I think the consensus is that it's a good thing to relieve some pressure during a jump -- now if my old reflexes and attention span were up to the task! Thanks for all the input everyone!
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Eric Peper		#22	[url]	[-]
Posts: 219 04/16/2009 17:14	I fear 4X would not be a good option for me. On the smooth flowing, flat and complex currents of the Henry's Fork, I am usually fishing between 3 and 4 feet of 6X at the end of a knotless leader tapered to 4X -- and often wondering if I should go to 7X to get a smoother drift. Actually with the PowerFull tippet material I use (testing out at 4.4#), tippet strength is seldom an issue even with a very hot fish. I know each year I'll lose more fish to carelessly tied knots and/or hooks inexplicably coming unbuttoned than I will to weak tippets unless, as mentioned earlier in this thread, I get a bad spool. That's only happened once in ten years of using the Puglisi PowerFull, and I suspect it was my fault for leaving the spool in the sun too much. EP
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bearbutt	How to fight a jumping trout?	#23	[url]	[-]
Posts: 268 04/17/2009 18:26	I'd suggest a .410 gauge. If a trout wants to act like a bird, I'm predisposed to give him a taste of birdshot. Of course, since we're talking fine tippets here, it's only fair that we also talk narrow bores and tight chokes. As far as where to put the gun while wading--I haven't figured that part out yet. bb
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Blue Quill		#24	[url]	[-]
Posts: 109 04/18/2009 10:28	If a trout can see the details of a size 28 emerger or dry fly close enough that it will reject one pattern over another, it can certainly see an 8X tippet. A 4X or 5X tippet is more than fine enough if your leader is constructed correctly, your presentation is careful, and your drift is drag-free. Go to the most difficult trout stream you know, and to the most difficult pool on the stream. Take a 2-foot piece of .017 mono (thick leader-butt-diameter nylon), poke it through a grasshopper, and float the entire affair down into the pool from the head of the pool. The biggest trout in the pool will come up and take the grasshopper. The reason this works is that the free-floating piece of nylon, as thick and visible as it is, is drifting free with zero drag. The key is drag, not tippet diameter or leader visibility. By carefully constructing your leader in an appropriate length and taper, with a sufficiently long tippet, and presenting your fly in an appropriate manner, a 5X tippet will catch even the most difficult rout, and with a little more care a 4X tippet will work just as well. You'll hook just as many trout, land many more of them, and injure many less. Chuck
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Eric Peper		#25	[url]	[-]
Posts: 222 04/18/2009 11:50	Blue Quill wrote: If a trout can see the details of a size 28 emerger or dry fly close enough that it will reject one pattern over another, it can certainly see an 8X tippet. A 4X or 5X tippet is more than fine enough if your leader is constructed correctly, your presentation is careful, and your drift is drag-free. Go to the most difficult trout stream you know, and to the most difficult pool on the stream. Take a 2-foot piece of .017 mono (thick leader-butt-diameter nylon), poke it through a grasshopper, and float the entire affair down into the pool from the head of the pool. The biggest trout in the pool will come up and take the grasshopper. The reason this works is that the free-floating piece of nylon, as thick and visible as it is, is drifting free with zero drag. The key is drag, not tippet diameter or leader visibility. By carefully constructing your leader in an appropriate length and taper, with a sufficiently long tippet, and presenting your fly in an appropriate manner, a 5X tippet will catch even the most difficult rout, and with a little more care a 4X tippet will work just as well. You'll hook just as many trout, land many more of them, and injure many less. Chuck ok
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BlackHillsBill	Going by Contraries	#26	[url]	[-]
Posts: 2735 04/18/2009 20:50	"Speaking of contraries, see how the brook In that white wave runs counter to itself. It is from that in water we were from Long, long before we were from any creature." --Robert Frost, "West-Running Brook" Every seeming absolute or strict law, every irrefutable theorem or fixed mandate of our sport eventually, it seems, will be so shaken by exception that significant revision (or at the very least an asterisk followed by explanatory footnote) might be required simply for verity's sake--honesty being a highly regarded virtue among the fly-fishing tribe. I have found this to be so even with The Sacred Principle of Dragfreeness. For years I clung to it, working hard to achieve it in both my casts and in my prose, going to great lengths (of tippets) in the former and shorter lengths (of sentences) in the latter. Yet at the most crucial moments it somehow always eluded me. A case in point. There are a series of long, trout-rich glides below Isand Park Reservoir and just above Box Canyon. Most fish this water with streamers or woolly buggers or heavily weighted stonefly nymphs. But contrarian by nature, I often explored it with dry flies. Once while I was making a very dragful and miserable job of it, I started watching a caster downstream of me. He threw long casts directly into the downstream slicks, then stripped his fly back upstream quickly. About every fourth or fifth cast he was fast into a hefty fish. During a lull we introduced ourselves, and I told him he was making a grand job of it on demanding water. He told me, generously, it was after all home water so that he was fishing it homestyle and moreover using the state fly of Idaho. He showed it to me--a #14 Renegade, which, he said, he let float a short distance and swing a bit before starting the vigorous retrieve. So of course I tried it, too. And devil if it didn't work better than any other method I've ever used on that stretch. I realize purists could argue persuasively this case does not qualify as a true exception to The Sacred Principle of Dragfreeness because, essentially, the Renegade wasn't being taken as a dry fly, maybe not even as a wet fly, but likely as a small streamer. I won't be contentious about it or belabor the point. For the fish refused to say one way or the other. But maybe, if you're feeling generous as well, you'll allow an asterisk and a short footnote. BHB Last Edited By: BlackHillsBill 04/19/2009 10:19. Edited 2 times.
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Blue Quill		#27	[url]	[-]
Posts: 110 04/18/2009 21:09	Hi BHB, Why drag is or isn't important, and how to best manage it, is one thing. Speculating on why a trout takes a fly or what it takes it for is quite another. Regarding your observations in Box Canyon; only the trout knows if the Renegade was taken as a dry fly or not even if it was underwater. I'm pretty sure that is something even Eric and I would agree on. A Zen-peculiarity with fly fishing theories is that there are many that are in fact irrefutable most of the time. Chuck Last Edited By: Blue Quill 04/18/2009 21:11. Edited 1 time.
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bobbeegee		#28	[url]	[-]
Posts: 2586 04/19/2009 11:16	I guess there's something to be said for fishing the dry fly as a living insect. Bob Go Heels!!!
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riverwader	I agree.	#29	[url]	[-]
Posts: 8 04/19/2009 14:48	I agree with prev posters. Here, you are supposed to Bow to the King. Easier said than done however, in the split second heat of battle ass deep in water.With the heart racing blood through the veins.
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cyangler	Tippet The Scales	#30	[url]	[-]
Posts: 69 04/19/2009 16:28	The drag factor over the tippet size seems to be the case most of the time in freestones. The fact that tippet material is so strong and less prone now to becoming brittle from chemical, UV exposure, etc., leads me to suspect that breaks occur more frequently these days from severing on a rock, boat gunwale, oar lock, or material defect in a given spool, than fish actually breaking them off when using quality product. Don't get me wrong. It has happened to me when a fish hit particularly aggressive. But, I would tend to side with the bad apple in the bunch theory and get a new spool. Otherwise, as far as playing - I also go with the light drag on the first run or two, and play the fish with the drag just tight enough thereafter so that he, or his hen, can take just a few feet when they need too, then when you sense the fish is ready to net, bring it in as quickly as is prudent without horsing it. Tip up or down? I haven't found that dropping the tip helps much except when hooked into an Olympic-style high jumper. Cy Last Edited By: cyangler 04/19/2009 16:31. Edited 1 time.
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levertonhatches		#31	[url]	[-]
Posts: 570 04/21/2009 11:17	Tippit size -- can't tell you how many times a fussy trout has turned down my dry fly on 5X only to grab it when presented on 6X. Part of that may be the freshness of the tippet after the change. And the freshness of the fly, because I'll always dry the fly when I change the tippet. When a trout looks but doesn't take I sometimes have success taking the fly down a size (same pattern). Picking up the fly, changing tippet, drying the fly, perhaps changing the size of the fly -- all of this takes time, permitting the trout to settle down, perhaps take a natural or two; and letting the water go quiet for a few minutes may be more important that all of the above, except maybe for drying the fly. But, presentation: Bad tackle/good presentation will outfish the opposite every time, in my experience. Proper presentation is not always the same. Sometimes the trout wants a long time to look at a fly, so you must cast well up ahead. Other times, the trout grabs a fly dropped on its nose. Slow water is diffent than broken water. Sometimes the naturals are skittering on the surface, so we must do the same. A splashed fly can empty a pool; other times, the plop of the fly attracts the trout's attention. This is why we like it, yes? There are many moving parts, and nothing's ever exactly the same twice. Cheers, Martin
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trouting		#32	[url]	[-]
Posts: 355 04/21/2009 14:32	Very nicely written Martin. You make me feel as though I am on the stream right now. How nice! Lawrence P.S. for teaching children about the ways of trout, when a large one takes the fly it can be interesting to give it complete slack and have the child think about where the fish has gone, then put tension on the line and see where it has in fact gone. This only works with a barbed hook. It also works best in slow moving or still waters.
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Eric Peper		#33	[url]	[-]
Posts: 225 04/21/2009 17:21	trouting wrote: Very nicely written Martin. You make me feel as though I am on the stream right now. How nice! Lawrence P.S. for teaching children about the ways of trout, when a large one takes the fly it can be interesting to give it complete slack and have the child think about where the fish has gone, then put tension on the line and see where it has in fact gone. This only works with a barbed hook. It also works best in slow moving or still waters. It also works with a barbless hook; in fact, this was how I convinced myself to begin using barbless over 30 years ago. Give a fish total slack, and in my experience it will take a comfortable position in the current and ignore the fly. Generally, the force of the current against the tippet is adequate to keep the hook in place. EP
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Eric Peper		#34	[url]	[-]
Posts: 226 04/21/2009 17:27	levertonhatches wrote: Tippit size -- can't tell you how many times a fussy trout has turned down my dry fly on 5X only to grab it when presented on 6X. Part of that may be the freshness of the tippet after the change. And the freshness of the fly, because I'll always dry the fly when I change the tippet. When a trout looks but doesn't take I sometimes have success taking the fly down a size (same pattern). This is why we like it, yes? There are many moving parts, and nothing's ever exactly the same twice. Cheers, Martin My opinion is that the lighter tippet allows the fly to drift more freely. An argument can be made of course for a very limp tippet in a larger diameter, but I will always opt for the lightest I can effectively use. Your comments on the trout's responses to a variety of presentations are spot on with my experience. Ya never know what's going to be the right stimulus. EP
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cyangler	Right On	#35	[url]	[-]
Posts: 70 04/21/2009 23:36	I agree Lawrence, Martin's done an excellent job here, and wonderfully written. Eric is spot on. I've had luck skating Mayfly patterns when a Caddis pattern wouldn't work during a Cad hatch. The point about freestones earlier was directed more at fast water stretches and if the lighter tippet isn't needed then it only becomes a matter of pride in boasting privilege at the expense of the trout's ability to recoup from its sparring with us. In lime or still stretches of freestone, I often find that drag is still the primary factor but when I have put a fish down, I will move on to a lighter tippet and another fish before trying for the one that wasn't interested. Here again I believe it is associated with drag and agree that the suppleness is a greater influence than the ability of the fish to distinguish one size tippet from another. [Later, unless I get caught up in some action, I'll come back to the original fish. Another point well spoken to by Martin.] The point brought up earlier in the post about tippet material being thinner for a given test I think is valid. A 5x tippet is about the same diameter as a 6x was not too many years back. Bowing to The King is bit trickier IMHO in that the angle if too low results in exactly the opposite of its intended purpose. Though if one were to develop a reflex response, I could think of many more that would more often yield a negative impact on the result of ones playing a fish. Good stuff here. This thread could be used as a primer in landing trout.
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