Claim OwnershipTroutbitten
Subscribed: 237Played: 11,332
Subscribe
© 2024 Troutbitten
Description
Life on the water. Troutbitten is a deep dive into fly fishing for wild trout in wild places. Author and guide, Domenick Swentosky, shares stories, tips, tactics and conversations with friends about fly fishing through the woods and water. Explore more. Fish hard. And discover fly fishing at Troutbitten.com — an extensive resource with 1200+ articles about trout, friends, family and the river.
126 Episodes
Reverse
Our discussion here is about casting dry flies, and that’s where all good fly casting starts. With a dry fly, there’s no weight at the end of the line to help us out. No split shot, no tungsten bead, conehead or bobber. Refining the dry fly stroke truly teaches us what the fly rod is built to do.Ten and two. Acceleration and crisp stops between two points. Pause and allow turnover to happen. Feel the rod load and watch it all happen with the fly line in the air. Once you have that timing, you...
For our Season 12 Intermission, my wife, Becky, joins me for a lighthearted look at what's going on in the Troutbitten world. We talk about the upcoming leader sale in the Troutbitten Shop (August 21). We talk about the New Trail Troutbitten beer, the event and the video. And we talk about the Fish and Film series on YouTube.Becky and I also answer a bunch of fun questions from listeners.ResourcesVIDEO: Troutbitten | Fish and Film - One Morning For VersatilityVIDEO: Troutbitten | Beer and Fri...
The leader should match the moment and match the angler. It should match the fly, the river and the wind conditions. Adjustments are necessary, and when they're performed often enough they become intuitive.An objective look at real goals for the dry fly, along with the true capabilities of the leader materials at hand, will lead anyone down the path toward a great leader formula for dry flies.While many anglers might consider the leader as an afterthought, we believe the leader is the most co...
The drag free drift -- a high percentage of the time, that’s what catches trout on top. So aiming for perfection on a dead drift sets the baseline. And if you get those great drifts, but they won’t eat it, try some animation. Think slight, small and subtle for those movements to the fly, and you just might fool some trout that are keyed in on motion.Everything works sometimes. So we’re ready to try anything. But we spend the most time with tactics that produce with the highest rate of return....
Season twelve begins. It’s a seven-part skills series dedicated to dry fly fishing. My friend, Matt Grobe, joins me to build the framework — a method and a system — for presenting dry flies to trout.In this first episode, we ask when and why we fish dry flies. What’s the reason we might choose to fish dries over streamers, wets or nymphs?We argue that dry flies are the heart and soul of fly fishing. The visual aspect is fun and exciting. And the pleasures of top water fishing should not be mi...
Prospecting is a strategy for covering water. It’s about pace. A lot of what we do, day to day on the water, is searching. We’re looking for activity. We’re trying to find feeding fish. Sometimes we’re looking to find the fish themselves, and other times, we know the trout are there, but they won’t eat, so we’re faced with the choice to change tactics or change flies . . . or we can move on and look for the next opportunity.All of that can fairly be called prospecting. But for this disc...
The third annual Airing of Grievances on the Troutbitten Podcast has arrived. Some of this is playful and some is serious.Complaining’s not a bad thing if it accomplishes something productive -- or if it’s kinda fun. Or if it draws attention to some of the absurdities around you.Some things need to change. Because there are plenty of influences and influencers leading us all down a road to nowhere, or really, to a place that loses the depth of this fishing experience — of what we love about t...
There are many different ways to set the hook while fly fishing for trout, because there are many different ways to fish for those trout. One size does not fit all. So we adapt our hook sets to suit the situation.In this episode, we cover what is meant by a trout set. We address the differences between hook sets for dry flies, wets, streamers and nymphs. We talk about setting distance, setting speed, setting direction, whether we should pause before a hook set, and many other broad and finer ...
We're here for a tough conversation. This one's about fishing the pay-to-play setup of a club.These are the troubles with club fishing . . .One club leads to the next. One private stretch invites another down the road. So clubs lead to the loss of public water for the average angler. And that’s not good.The manufactured fishing scenario of most clubs can teach anglers the wrong things, with easier fishing that does not translate well outside of the clubs. That then leads to unrealistic expect...
There's an intangible quality built into the best anglers. It's about being comfortable and natural around the water. It's about having an instinct and a guiding intuition on a river that informs decision without even giving it much thought. It's an innate knowledge of the environment and what will happen next. Knowledge of the woods, water, weather and the trout comes together with ease and adds up to something that is hard to identify.In this episode, we call it woodsmanship, outdoorsmanshi...
We're here to talk about floating down a river, about why we like boats, how floating is so much different than wading, how some opportunities are uniquely available and how others are shut off too.It’s the companionship and teamwork, along with the effort and commitment required to get down the river. It’s about a good lunch and friendly banter as much as the novel approach to tactics and the pure advantage of accessing more water.From the put in to the take out, boating changes everything. ...
Like anything else in fishing, you can take the emerger concept just about as far as you want. You get technical, or you can spin up a couple wet flies, float them in the film, and keep things simple.I’ve often argued that you don’t have to match the hatch when fly fishing. I think it’s a fun approach, but having exactly the right shade of dubbing to match the most prevalent insect is rarely necessary. Most often, you can fish caddis imitations during a mayfly hatch and do pretty well, becaus...
My friends join me for a tough discussion. What are the benefits of guiding? What are the good things? How does it help anglers? Does it actually help people and make our sport or this fishing scene better, or does it just put money in the guide’s pocket and put more pressure on the trout?Also, what kinds of guided trips are there? Different types of guided trips are offered across the country. Some cater to the first timer, introducing new anglers to the fly rod. Other trips feature educatio...
Two years ago we did a full episode on Hatches. That discussion was a broad, overarching look at how the bugs — the insects that trout eat — dictate many of the habits of trout. We argued that knowing the hatches, following the emergence and being ready for these events is not only a lot of fun, it drastically improves your success on the water. Trout don’t miss the hatches, and neither should we.At the same time, none of us here think the pattern matters all that much — usually. While we all...
How many times have we heard the supposed stages of an angler? First you want to catch a fish, then you want to catch a bunch of fish, then you want to catch a big fish, then you want to catch the toughest fish, and then you just want to catch a fish again.This is a clever way to look at a life on the water. But is it really true? This is our topic.We also expand on some other stages that anglers go through, and we think about the beginning stage — why it’s so hard at first, how anglers get h...
1Here we are with our final installment, part seven of our series on critical nymphing concepts.Almost all of our focus throughout this series has been on achieving dead drifts. We aim for natural looks that imitate what the real bugs do most. So we try to stay in one lane, we try to find the right speed and the right depth. Most of the articles on Troutbitten about nymphing also assume we’re aiming for dead drifts. It's the same with the videos. Why? Because dead drifts usually work best.But ...
This episode is about tension and slack. It's about how we manage fly lines and leaders on the water while nymphing.Remember, each of these episodes — all of these concepts — apply to all styles of nymphing. So we might choose to lay line on the water with an indicator rig (and sometimes mend it) just like we might choose to float the sighter with a tight line rig. My friend, Austin Dando, joins me to walk through the tight line advantage of keeping line off the water and what happens when we...
This discussion is all about weight. It’s the fundamental factor in nymphing. Because as soon as you choose to leave the surface, once you clip off the dry fly and fish anything else . . . weight is necessary.Even wet flies have some weight. They’re designed not to float but to break the surface with at least the weight of the hook. With streamers, of course, weight is required to get the flies to whatever depth is necessary — and we do that with all types of weight, whether that’s a sinking ...
This episode features what might be the most important concept of nymph fishing. There are three different ways to present a dead drifted nymph to the trout -- three ways to imitate what trout commonly see from the naturals. While trout eat dry flies in one plane (the surface) the complexity of currents underneath introduces more difficulty, simply because trout might be looking for food in multiple ways.My friend, Austin Dando, and I break down one of my favorite topics in fly fishing -- the...
In the third part of this critical nymphing concepts series, we consider the advantages and disadvantages of fishing with a suspender. We cover the followingIndicator styles and why the type mattersNot all indicators are created equalChoosing tight line or indy, or combing bothWhat you lose by adding and indyWhat you gain by adding an indyComplications of an indy styleWhat is commonly missed when using an indyReading an indicatorA few more tips . . .ResourcesREAD: Troutbitten | It's a S...
Comments
Top Podcasts
The Best New Comedy Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best News Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New Business Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New Sports Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New True Crime Podcast Right Now – June 2024The Best New Joe Rogan Experience Podcast Right Now – June 20The Best New Dan Bongino Show Podcast Right Now – June 20The Best New Mark Levin Podcast – June 2024
Download from Google Play
Download from App Store
United States