Winter Fly Fishing Sucks, you probably shouldn’t do it.

I just got back today from a dream fly fishing trip guided by the one and only Domenick Swentosky of Troutbitten. We were up in State College, PA and the high temperature was going to be 31 degrees, windy with snow and I couldn’t wait!

Dom and I booked this trip a few months ago specifically hoping to get a day with really cold weather so he could spend the day helping me get my winter fly fishing game tightened up. Of course, any time spent with Dom is time spent learning and I have 4 specific things I am going to be working on until I get out with him again this coming June.

Where we met in the morning at 745 had a pretty good sized gravel lot on the banks of one of PA’s finest limestone creeks and there wasn’t a soul in sight. In fact, during the entire 8 hours we spent together we didn’t see a single angler.

I was dressed appropriately for the day as I had spent the past year implementing some of Dom’s suggestions for winter fly fishing clothing from his great website (www.troutbitten.com). I never got cold during the day and we spent hours in the water wading.

Within 5 minutes of entering the water I had my first wild brown trout on the line.

Dom and I smiled widely at each other and almost in unison said: “Nope, no good to fish here, everyone should just stay home.” We laughed and kept fishing. This refrain and similar versions of it, were repeated often.

I don’t often share numbers of fish caught. I will say that within the first three hours of fishing I had over a dozen fish to the net and had missed that many more or had them briefly on the hook. Clearly, winter fly fishing is a huge waste of time 😂.

Also, within that first hour I had my new personal best wild brown trout (14-15”) in the net. I have caught several larger brown trout but am convinced that they were stocked and possibly holdovers from a previous year. This made our day, both Dom and I whooped it up and high fived.

Do you see the frost on my chest pack? It was cold. The key I have found is combining a great heavy wool hoody like the Skwala Thermo 350 hood with nice wool fingerless gloves is a really warm option. You can see, on my left hand, how the hoody has a loop that my thumb went through that brought the heavy wool up and over the base of my hand. That coverage kept the big arteries and veins in my hand very insulated and I couldn’t be happier.

It truly was an amazing few hours as I was able to show Dom how much effort and time I had put in learning to nymph with the Mono Rig and had applied what he taught me this past summer.

Late morning, we relocated to a pretty famous stretch of water and shifted into specific learning mode. Dom had had enough time to observe some ‘holes in my game’ and we set out to fill in the gaps. First on deck was my backhand cast.

I realized really quickly, after Dom had me prioritize all water to my left that I hadn’t been fishing enough that way. My ability to do a tuck cast, absolutely critical in any form of tight line nymphing, with my backhand cast was to put it mildly, limited. With his expert coaching we got it more dialed in than before, but I have some work to do.

Additionally, Dom noticed that I was often lazily lifting my line out of the water at the end of a drift without purpose and actually lost a few fish that way. We then added in a short 5-10 inch ‘check set’ at the end of each drift and then an intentional back cast and right into an accurate front cast with no false casting. This was a game changer and is going to be another thing that I am going to do with purpose.

Then we did a short session on some slower water beginning the basics of streamer fishing with the mono rig. I got to watch Dom fish for about 10 minutes demonstrating the techniques and it was like watching a master craftsman…both inspiring and humbling. Then it was my turn to work on the first foundation of that type of streamer fishing: the jerk strip. Check out his website for more on that. Suffice it to say, that is going to take some work too.

Next was a discussion and application of how Dom uses split shot while tight line nymphing. I was very grateful for the ability to spend an hour talking about it while fishing under his experienced eye.

We finished up with a brief session on the drop shot technique and it was wild. I have never done that before and it is very different than anything else I have done. It totally has some great applications on some of the water I fish near Roanoke, VA and will be put to work.

Dom is an amazing guide and one of the best teachers in the world for anything. If you want to learn to be the most versatile angler you can in the fly fishing realm, there is no question that he is the top of the class. I already have June and September trip booked personally. The good news if you can’t find time on his schedule is that he has some other members of the Troutbitten crew that might be able to fit you in their schedule (looking at Austin and Bill).

I have some friends that don’t use guides as they value discovery highly in their fly fishing journey. I respect that and can see where they are coming from. For me, after 20 years out of fly fishing, I am in the get as good as I can as quickly as I can so that I can maximize my time on the water. Additionally, what kind of coach or consultant would I be if I wasn’t interested in working with other people that can coach me?

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed the blog today and want to encourage you, as the Troutbitten crew says “To fish hard and find your life on the water”.

All the best and tight lines,

Mike