Troutbitten

What’s the best way to carry your gear? Should you use a vest, a chest pack, hip pack, sling pack or something else?

How you choose to carry gear is a personal and situational choice. It has everything to do with what you need to carry, and how far you like to walk. Do you need to carry extra layers and a raincoat, and how many tactics do you want to be ready for? Streamers, nymphs, dry flies and wets . . . or just dries?<...

The leader might be the most important piece of gear that we have -- more consequential than the rod, the fly line, or even the fly itself. And of course, at the tail end of the leader is the tippet.

All anglers must make decisions about tippet every day. What size and strength? What type of tippet? And how long should the tippet section be? Because, what might seem like a small decision, can have a big impact on the prese...

This podcast is about small stream fishing — specifically, what we love about the places, the fish, the tactics and the experience of fishing smaller trout waters.

These are trout streams that are no wider than the dirt road that you drove in on. And for every blue ribbon trout river, for every destination water that is raved about in the guidebooks and makes every angler’s bucket list, there are numerous tributaries to th...

This episode is about wading a river. Good wading. Better wading. Confident wading. Because, for a river angler, nothing is more important. Good wading is not just walking from place to place, it's an almost constant, fluid motion, and fly fishing requires great footwork along the way.

I meet a lot of anglers who approach a river all wrong. They wade into a spot, set up, and then cast to every piece of water they can ...

What can we do when the rains come, when the snow melts, or when the floodgates open?

Rivers rise in many different ways. From quick and heavy summer thunderstorms, to the steady light rain that remains for days at a time. There’s the gradual release of melting snowpack and then heavy rains on that same snow that pushes high volumes of cold water into the rivers. Then too, there’s the generation of hydroelectric dams where...

We have a fun conversation for this episode, about what’s more difficult — nymphs or dry flies. This is not a talk about which tactic is better. And this discussion isn’t even about which one we might like more.

What is more difficult? Nymphs or dries? This is a valuable exercise and an important discussion . . .

Just because nymphing might usually produce more trout, doesn’t mean it is easier. And how many trout ...

This is the second episode of our two part discussion on angler pressure. Last time, we talked about how fishing pressure affects the fish — how they respond to more fishermen placing more casts and drifts in the waters around them — how trout change, both short term and long term.

And now, we’re building on those thoughts and offering some solutions. Because if trout are adapting their habits in response to us, then we mu...

Season 7 of the Troutbitten Podcast begins with a two-part discussion on angler pressure. This is a big one. It’s a topic that everyone in the fishing world loves to talk about. People complain about angler pressure, and they have theories about how it changes things.

In this episode, we discuss how angler pressure affects the fish. And for the next episode, the topic will be how angler pressure affects the fishing. One to...

Troutbitten is about the pursuit of fishing tactics. It’s about discovering new techniques and improving our skills. We don’t want to hope something will happen out there. We try to make it happen. And that element of fly fishing, where there’s always something new to try, is what is so attractive to those of us who dedicate much of our lives to the river.

But there’s another side to this love of pursuing trout. And I once...

Season Seven will begin on April 10th. But in between seasons, I want to catch you up on a few things that are going on with Troutbitten.

Just a few years ago, Troutbitten was the website only. I wrote and published articles three times a week. Now it’s a multi-media company with many branches — there’s the podcast, the videos, the online shop, hosted events and, of course, the guide business.

Here's what&apo...

Here we are at the end of Season 6 -- the Troutbitten Winter Skills Series. This is episode 8 of the series, and I’m here with a full crew of friends to wrap things up, to hear some stories and dig into a few more tips for fly fishing in the winter months.

This is a great conversation with my best fishing friends. And this discussion is a nice endcap on a full season dedicated to fly fishing in the winter months.

...

My good friend, Austin Dando, joins me to address many of the troubles with winter fishing. In this Winter Skills Series, we’ve been through the tactics, with dry flies, streamers and nymphs. We've talked about how to stay warm out there, and we’ve saved this topic for last.

There are a host of reasons that anglers stay home in the winter. Some are legitimate -- there's no good solution for the problem, and you l...

With this Troutbitten skills series on winter fishing. We’ve covered locations and expectations, where to find trout, and their wintertime habits. We did two full podcasts on staying warm from head to toe. We talked about fishing nymphs in these waters, streamers in these waters, and now we’re ready to talk about dry flies.

Specifically, this conversation is dedicated to what is different or unique about fishing dry flies ...

A streamer is not only a great change-up in the winter, it can be the best fly in your box - if you fish it well. There are some changes to make for a wintertime streamer approach, versus the warmer seasons. And those nuances in presentation make all the difference.

In this episode my friend, Austin Dando, and I share our best tips for fishing streamers in the winter.

We Cover the Following

• Why, when, where an...

In this episode, we dive deep into winter nymphing strategies. Specifically, we highlight what is different and what is unique about nymphing in the winter versus other seasons.

With fewer hatches and with trout that are less willing to move for a fly, presenting a nymph to winter fish is often our best strategy. But having success requires a refined approach, and winter nymphing can seem like the toughest of the year. Ho...

Here's a full podcast dedicated to staying warm, from head to toe. Because sometimes, staying warm and functional in the winter is far more important than the tactics. The cold becomes our biggest challenge.

This episode is about keeping the cold out, the heat in and fishing hard — all day long, in even the roughest weather. More specifically, it's about regulating your body heat while on the river.

In This Episod...

Cold. That is what defines winter fishing. We acknowledged in the last podcast that the cold — or really the inability to deal with it — is one of the main reasons anglers stay home.

So that’s why I think any in-depth discussion about winter fishing really has to start with how to stay warm. If you’re so cold that you can’t function normally, you just won’t fish well.

In next week’s podcast, we’re going to get deep into all...

Season Six of the Troutbitten podcast begins. This is an eight part Skill Series about fly fishing in the winter months, and episode one is an overview of the series, along with details about where to find trout and in what water type we should expect them to eat. This episode is about our approach, with advice on time of day, fly strategy, covering water to suite the river and reading what the trout want for the moment.

I'm jo...

For the finale of Season Five of the Troutbitten Podcast and to wrap up 2022, we’re closing the curtain with an episode about fishing buddies — why we need them, how to find them and how to keep them for a lifetime.

We talk about what makes a good, bad or great fishing companion and share some experiences about a few would-be friendships gone wrong.

We Cover the Following

• What qualities are needed in a great river c...