What is in your ‘wheelhouse’ when it comes to fly fishing?
Where do you live and how do you fish?
I love fly fishing and I love reading/watching/listening about it as well.
Ben at the Huge Fly Fisherman just posted a video talking about several random thoughts while driving down a river he wants to start floating on to check to see if the boat ramps are clear of snow (he lives out west) and shared some observations about his own fishing limitations and preferences and I was inspired.
Living in Roanoke, VA I am very fortunate to have a lot of different options for fly fishing around me. I primarily fish for wild trout and this is a great place to live. Lots of small creeks in the mountains with my beloved native brook trout and wild rainbows and several tailwaters within an hour that provide wild trout fishing during the heat of summer and the cold of winter.
One of the things that Ben talked about was his ‘wheelhouse’…what he is good at. He was talking about how his nymphing game is bad because he basically doesn’t do it a lot…primarily dry flies and streamers.
Tight line nymphing is my wheelhouse and what I love to do. My expression of it is a combination of tenkara and troutbitten. I love to fish with a level line with a long tenkara rod or a mono rig with a 10’ or longer fly rod and reel. This allows me to fish all different kinds of flies and all kinds of different ways. The big limitation with both is distance. With the troutbitten mode with rod and reel I can always clip off my long mono rig leader and go with fly line to get longer distance if fishing dry flies for example.
I just love the ability to keep the line off the water when using those set ups…especially in my beloved mountain creeks and streams. This allows for much better presentations and more fish in the net (and back in the stream). I really relish the control I have with the longer rods and have become casting them in tighter quarters.
Friday I am taking my 10’ 2wt out on a small mountain creek and plan on putting in some hours seeing how it compares to my tenkara rods that perform so well. I am interested to see if the ability to have a reel to manage line will be an advantage in some of the scenarios that present themselves on that stream.
What is your ‘wheelhouse’ when it comes to fly fishing my friends?
All the best and tight lines,
Mike
Love this! This is why fishing is a lifelong sport. I split time between Western PA and Michigan. I'm a tight liner as well. I attempt dry-dropper stuff a lot, but whenever I'm frustrated with trying new things, I always go back to straight euro fundamentals. I was on a boat in Wyoming last year rolling through some shallows and tight-lined a rainbow on a streamer rod. Was a very proud moment.