We’re in the business of helping you catch fish. Simple as that. We love the river life and drinking a cold one with a buddy, but at the end of the day, we want to hook into a monster. That’s why we ship out the best flies we can possibly find every month to your door.
Even if you have the right flies though, there’s a chance that you might be lacking in some area of your fishing prowess and could go home without feeling a little fish slime on your hands. By working on your skills and paying attention to the right things on the water, you can start hooking up more right away.
Every Detail Matters
Fishing is a long list of tedious activities that we enjoy hour after hour, but there are a few that we just hate doing. Cleaning your leader or fly of any weeds or muck is something you should do after every single cast, yet many anglers don’t bother. Even if you’re fishing for bass, the smallest amount of crud on your bass bug will make your presentation useless.
Check Your Knots and Leader–Yes, Again
If you catch a fish, what’s the first thing you do after watching it swim away? If you said anything but checking your leader and knots, you’re wrong. Yes there’s a chance you’ll be fine and will keep catching fish after fish all day with the same leader. It happens most of the time like that, but what if it doesn’t?
The time you don’t want those odds to turn against you though is when you’ve hooked a true giant. Even the smallest knick, scrape or rough spot on your leader or a tiny weakness in your knot might let that fish go free. Since every angler tends to put a little more pressure on the fish right at the net or at the side of the boat that means you could lose it within an arms reach. No one wants that.
Pay Attention When You Hook Up
You can spot a great angler from an average or beginner angler right away by looking at what they do when they hook up. Some anglers will reel in the fish, maybe shout a few times in pure joy, admire the fish quickly and then let it go. An expert will start taking mental notes.
Quickly make a mental note of every piece of information you can gather while you’re hooking up. Make sure to remember exactly what you were doing when you hooked up, where your fly was in the water column, how fast your retrieve was, the time of day, the spot on the river, the barometric pressure, the distance the moon was from the Earth at the time. You never know what it could be that made you hook into that fish, but being able to replicate that again and again will increase your chances ten-fold.
It’s All About Confidence
It’s amazing what believing in your retrieve, your spot, and your fly can do for your chances of catching a nice fish. Seriously, this isn’t some voodoo magic or mumbo jumbo I’m hawking here–the way you feel directly affects how your fly looks in the water.
If you’re really feeling hot with your fly choice and you really believe there’s going to be a fish on your next cast, then chances are your retrieve is going to be 100% top notch for the next 20 casts, if you don’t hook up before then. On the other hand, if you’re hung-over, hungry, texting, eyeballing the dude creeping on your spot or just not feeling your fly choice, then your retrieve is going to be lacking that lively punch that’s needed to hook up. Don’t believe that you could hook up on that cast, you have to just know that you will hook up every single time you cast your fly. Then make sure to play up that confident smile when you’re holding the fish for your hero shot.
