CJ’s Reel Southern Podcast #3 | Trophy Fishing, Summer Hatches, and the Dying Minnow Technique

Chad (2s): Welcome to CJ’s Real Southern podcast. I’m your host Chad Johnson, fly fishing guide storyteller and southern soul through and through from the front porch to the river banks. This podcast is gonna be about connection, friends, and maybe learning a trick or two about trophy fishing. So grab a sweet tea tie on your favorite fly and let’s go fishing. I am here with Morgan Gus of Diamond State Fly Shop to give us our monthly fishing report. And guys, just before I bring him on, I wanna make a small apology. Chad (44s): I am just getting into this podcast and realizing that with the editing and all that, we’re kind of a month behind on them, which means that your fishing reports have been a month behind. We have given you April reports at the end of April. Morgan (1m 0s): Good information, just late. Chad (1m 3s): Great information. Just a little too late for you guys to use it. So anyway, we’ll push you on and what we’re gonna do is we’re just gonna skip May and we’re going to jump right into June to just kinda get it on track. So that’s what’s going on with that guys. And this is Mr. Morgan to bring us June’s calendar. Morgan (1m 20s): Yeah, well May has been great coming outta May going into June. So we’re gonna start seeing that transition, especially on the White River, Norfolk Rivers. We’re gonna start seeing that transition from ca to sulfur. That’s gonna be our big player in this area, in those arcs right now. So with that, usually we, we start to see a little bit higher water coming in as we start getting those summer months, those sulfur tend to like it and the dry fly fishing can be really, really good. A lot of those fish tend to pot up. We can see lower water in the morning, which actually I Chad (1m 54s): Like, it’s not bad. But just to hit a note on what you’re saying, just so people know is guys, when y’all see that high water during our sulfur hatch don’t freak out like we want that high water. They seem to come off better in the high water. Right. Morgan (2m 12s): I agree. I agree. I like, I like that. Like if we did a little bit of low water in the morning, great ing and then I like to see that push of water coming. Those fish really tend to key in and caught up. And Chad (2m 26s): Guys that’s just like today we had on 10,000 and we were dry fly fishing with Catis. We’re gonna have on big water during the summer and we’re gonna be dry fly fishing in that. It’s really odd. I know it’s hard to kinda wrap your head around a little bit fishing dries and freaking 15,000 CFS, but we really get a scenario where these fish push to the soft water and pot up for us. So it makes it very doable. And instead of having a fish to throw to, you have a pod a fish to throw to. Right. Okay. So what size do those typically tend to be and what’s kinda one of your favorite patterns? What are you kind of fishing for? That? Chad (3m 5s): Because me personally, I have found that in my cadi fishing I can put on one cadis dry and I can catch every fish with that particular cat dry. But when it comes to sulfur, I found myself changing tons. Yep. So talk to us a little bit about the bugs we’ll be using. Morgan (3m 26s): Okay, so what you’re saying about the Cass, you can pretty much get away with like an EC Cass or an easy cadi and that’ll pretty much do you right. Elk care cas work pretty good too, but with the sulfur, you do see a little bit of size discrepancy as they go through. I’ve seen them anywhere from 18 to 14. I found, and this is what I’ve seen on the river myself, is the earlier sutures tend to be bigger. Chad (3m 55s): Yes, I’ve, yes I can. Yes, I agree with that. Yeah. Morgan (3m 59s): So like I start big Chad (4m 2s): Yep. And go small, like as big as a 14. 14. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Early season fourteens guys and Morgan (4m 8s): They’re, they’re easier for my ankles to see and those fish tend to be less picky about it as we go on. And those fish have been fished too. I’m going down to an 18. Right? Yes. Way more common. And even twenties at times, Chad (4m 26s): You’re getting down into the actual size of them later in the season, but at the same time, it seems like they’ve been beat up with the big ones so much that the smaller you fish the better. Yes. I even find that in my ca Yes. By late. I agree. By late seasons I moved from my sixteens to my eighteens, you know, because they’ve just, they’ve just been beat on. Okay. So I have found that I do decent on cripples Morgan (4m 56s): The film critic. Chad (4m 57s): Yes. I have not done well on straight shank parachutes. Morgan (5m 4s): I have days Chad (5m 5s): Okay. Morgan (5m 6s): Where they want that parachute. Okay. Chad (5m 8s): But Morgan (5m 9s): The cripple does seem to work, Chad (5m 12s): But You end up changing a lot. So I, I even kinda said I wasn’t gonna give this little tip away, but I’ll go ahead and tell you. I, I found something that’s, it’s really odd to me, but if I will tie my parachute on a scud hook Yeah. Where the tail is actually tucked in just kicking down versus on a straight shank Sure. World of difference. Sure. Yeah. Like daylight and dark with that butt hanging down in the water. So that’s, guys don’t negate that. Like take a look at that, try a couple of them before you negate it, like it matters. And I feel like those cripples, you know, they’re the same way. So much of their body is still down in the water Sure. Chad (5m 54s): That it looks completely different than the total dry. And so I think we get that a lot. Morgan (5m 59s): Yeah, I agree there. I mean, very rarely do you find that sulfur sitting completely flat on the water. Yeah. When they’re emerging. I’ve actually used a, like an extended body where that tail kicks up and that seems to work really good for me. And then Yeah. And the when they’re, when they’re coming back down and laying eggs and then they’re, they’re cripples. Yep. Then yeah, having something like the, like the film critic, like that film critic sits down Chad (6m 29s): Something that we’ve probably not gotten into as much here as we should and it’s really guys, it’s because all this dry fly fishing’s really new to us down here. I mean, our river’s young, you know, our river was made in the fifties, so our, when I got here, our river was only 50 years old and in the beginning it was a small mouth river, so it had warm water bugs and once it turned to cold water, it has taken a period of time For those bugs to establish themselves. And so we really haven’t had that in the past to play with. It’s kind of a new thing for us. Morgan (7m 7s): Yeah. I mean having some experience coming from Western rivers and playing with those different patterns on especially emergent stage, I felt like has given me a little bit of an advantage and having a fairly wide variety. I mean I was throwing like that extended body was actually A PMD, Chad (7m 24s): But Yep, yep. Well, I mean I, I was just out there talking to somebody about that just now, like that is, knowing about the emerges is, like I say here, it’s new to us. Having that merger program before the hatch starts is a big deal. And to be quite honest, I mean I, I don’t feel like I have it worked out as well. Like, hey, any of you guys out there killing it on mergers, like, talk to me, you know, I mean it’s, it’s just been something, I mean I’ve, I’ve tagged some soft tackles and different things below dry and, and got some eats and made some things work, but I’ve never really felt like I had the merger pattern worked out. Morgan (8m 10s): Yeah. I think on this river it can be kind of weird, especially when you’re getting 10, 15 grand. Yep. It is like you see the two extremes. It’s either people on the surface or people really deep. Chad (8m 22s): Right. Morgan (8m 24s): We, Chad (8m 25s): I seen Mr. Larry McNair today, I, I seen the guy had set the hook, he brings it up and the guy is standing as tall as he can, rod up as high as he can, looks like the statue of Liberty. And I watched Larry reach down and grab the line and I thought, okay, he’s gonna have to pull it up this extra foot. Dude, it looked like he was pulling somebody out of a dang ditch. He made like four pulls on that thing before he got it up. They might had to have been 14 foot deep, you know? Yeah. 15 foot deep. Morgan (8m 58s): And I mean I’ll, I’ll admit I don’t, I haven’t played with the emerge stage nearly as much as I have out west where you have maybe a three foot river. It’s a little bit more like Chad (9m 9s): Little more conducive for it. Yeah. Yeah. Morgan (9m 11s): But it can be good for sure. It can be good. But I mean overall the sulfur, the sulfur fishing out here is really, really fun. It’s, I think it’s some of my favorite fishing out here. Yeah. I Chad (9m 21s): Like June is a good time man. June, you know, it it’s, it’s changed for us because it used to would’ve been like that in between copper time season. Yeah, right. Kind of shoulder season. Yeah. And you don’t really have, the hoppers aren’t really going good and the Cass are way gone and now all of a sudden like we’ve got this InBetween bug and it’s not just a bug. It’s kinda coolest bug we got. Well Morgan (9m 46s): I mean, and I think we’re starting to see stuff like with guys like you tad four that transition a lot between small mouth and trout. It can be, I know I’ve talked to Tad about it, it’s a struggle time for him that year because there’s two really fun things to do. Yeah. Chad (10m 5s): There there’s so yeah, there’s so much going on in the Ozarks. It’s like, okay, which direction do I head today? Right. And so that’s really cool. And to touch on that note a little bit, I mean guys we’ve got some phenomenal little small mouth streams around that all of May and June are just wonderful to fish in. Yeah. So like at any point in time that you want small mouth May and June is definitely the two months you want to be here. Morgan (10m 35s): Yeah. I, I like June because you might still have a little bit of floatable water in there. Yeah. It might be coming down where you can start getting out on foot a little bit more. They’re still eating minow patterns for me. They’re the elite crawfish patterns. They are still starting to get a little bit more finicky I found. Chad (10m 53s): Yep. You can start getting some on some finesse poppers at that time. And so like the smallmouth stream is really cool at that time. I also, another thing that starts happening in June for me on the creek is I’ll begin to catch some carp. Oh yeah. I don’t tend to get those carp until the water warms up. Yeah. It’s like they are very, very lethargic until that. Morgan (11m 13s): Yeah, for sure. For sure. Once that, until that water warms up, once it warms up, you start seeing a lot of those, Chad (11m 17s): A lot of those car all all along we’re, we’re fishing a bank, say we’re fishing rip bank into these big boulders and catching small mouth. You look over your shoulder and over on the the 10 inch deep sand side, there’s one nose and then mudding and Morgan (11m 32s): Oh it’s so fun. Chad (11m 32s): Yeah. It’s so much fun. I mean Morgan (11m 34s): We, we give Vince a hard time a lot because he, he goes out to Crooker Creek just to cart fish. Yeah. Where it’s like it’s a creek small mouth fisher buddy and he, but he’s eating up with the carp. Chad (11m 44s): Well and I would suggest like if anybody’s into carp, go watch Dave Whitlock’s Carping video, you’ll learn a lot. Dave Gabe was a lover of carp. Like he loved the way they fought, he loved the way they ate, he loved the way he caught ’em. He is like a Ozark bonefish, you know? Yeah. Ozark red fish, you know. Yeah. Because their nose down you’re freaking target shooting to ’em, sight fishing to ’em and it’s just, it is a really, really cool fish. Morgan (12m 14s): And they can be tough too. Oh they can be really tough. And Chad (12m 18s): I think if you wanna test your skills, Morgan (12m 20s): Yeah. I think that’s what’s fun about ’em is it’s like, it’s a challenge to get one of those suckers to eat. Chad (12m 24s): If somebody goes to the creek and they come back and they tell me they’ve caught 10 small mouth, I go, oh cool. If they come back from the creek and they tell me they got three carp, I want go, oh, like that’s feet. Okay. You done it. Yeah. Like, I mean you you, you go out there and get those dudes, feed those dudes, I they are finicky. It’s Morgan (12m 45s): Close to salt water fishing as you can get nails. Chad (12m 47s): I, I believe that’s right. I think that’s, that’s a good way of looking at it. So last question. I guess, does the shop have anything going on in June that people need to know about? Got any new gear coming in? Anything going on that you want to want to spread the word Morgan (13m 6s): June, we’re looking to do a open tying night. So we will have an open tying night. Chad (13m 12s): Oh sweet. You gonna let me come? Yeah, Morgan (13m 15s): You can come. Chad (13m 15s): You let me come dude. So they let beginners in. Guys you’re hearing that Morgan (13m 20s): You know, through April and May. We’re so busy here. Oh’s so hard to line up. Yes. Enough people to come in and you know, Chad (13m 28s): Everybody’s busy. It is wild. Morgan (13m 30s): Yeah. But June is kind of when we start to settle back down a little bit right in and shop wise Chad (13m 35s): Things get back to normal. Yeah. Morgan (13m 38s): We got, you know, people are on summer break, stuff like that. So it’s a lot easier to to do that. So we’re gonna be doing open tie night. Chad (13m 45s): Okay guys, so that means keep up with Diamond States still. Where do they get your information? I mean obviously you have a website, but where are you like putting out like daily little? Morgan (13m 56s): So most of our stuff is on Instagram. Instagram and Facebook. If you follow us on Diamond State fly Co on Instagram or Facebook, that’s where you’re gonna find most of our like pertinent information that’s gonna come out a lot on our website. We have an events page, so it’ll be on our events page as well on the website YouTube. But we use that more for like tying demos and stuff like that. So you probably won’t see much on YouTube, but Instagram, Facebook, if you follow us on Instagram and Facebook, you’ll see. Okay. Chad (14m 26s): And then I do know that y’all also on, on YouTube, y’all do have like y’all done a lot of 32nd time tips. Yeah. And things like that. I mean that’s where on YouTube, where would they look? Morgan (14m 38s): Just under diamonds. Everything’s, everything’s Chad (14m 40s): Under Diamond State Co, Morgan (14m 42s): Diamond State, fly Co, Chad (14m 43s): Diamond State Fly Co. There you go guys. So get touched in base with him there. He’s doing some cool things. If you need anything, anything come to Diamond State, they’ll take care of you before your fishing trip. You need any guides, gimme a ring. Other than that guys, we’re gonna move on into our segment. Hello all you fly heads, let’s just jump right In. Today we’re gonna do a podcast and I’m not gonna have a guest. We are just gonna talk some techniques and tactics, some things that I’ve done over the years that I feel like have put trophy fishing in my boat. And I want to stop right there and talk about just trophy fishing for a minute. Chad (15m 26s): We discussed in the first podcast that the podcast was gonna be about trophy fishing. And in a lot of people’s minds that jumps immediately to streamers. That’s not the case. I mean today I fished and what I caught my trophy fish home was the size 16 elk care cat. And so it doesn’t always mean we’re throwing seven inch streamers, right? There’s, there’s a multitude of ways of catching trophy fish. And when I say trophy, I think this is where a lot of people’s minds go Anyway, I’m not just talking about a 30 inch trout, I’m not just talking about a 10 pound bass. Chad (16m 7s): When I say trophies, trophies can be per watershed. If I go to the buffalo and the biggest fish I can catch is 18 inches, that’s a trophy there. That’s the trophy, right? However I jump up to Wisconsin and 18 inches is not a giant, you know, 2021 is a giant. And so that’s the trophy on that watershed. And so you can go to any given fishery on a day and I feel like you have the option of either catching lots of small ones or targeting the trophy fish and only catching a few. Chad (16m 50s): And I find that to be the same in a lot of scenarios. I mean, do you want to go to the pond and catch 30 brim or do you want to go catch five nice large mouth, you know, do you want to go to the creek and catch gole and sunfish or do you want to catch the big small mouth, right? So you, you are almost always, heck I go to Turks and Caicos bone fishing and we can go to the backs and get on the bigger bones and we’re only gonna catch a couple. Or we can go out on the outsides and we may, I mean I have been, me and Max Wildrick were in the back of a flat and we caught nice fish in the back, just one or two. Chad (17m 35s): But then on the way out, once we come to the outside where all your average bonefish were, heck I caught five on the way out just walking out of the big fish hole. And so like do you wanna spend your time back in that back hunting that big one or do you wanna sit out on the outsides and catch the average ones? So I think this is like do you want to come to the White River and catch 30 rainbows or do you want to come catch 22 inch, 28 inch round trout today? It would’ve been very easy to put on San Juan worm split shot, get that dude down catch pile of rainbows for these two ladies and send them home a happy camper. Chad (18m 23s): Or I can go out with my dries and I can hunt heads and only throw to the big fish and we caught brown trout all day long, but I can’t go catch 30 of them. I went and caught 14 of them. You know, if I want to go for the smaller fish I can go catch more of ’em. Tarpon, you want to go catch one giant migratory tarpon or do you want to go in the backs and catch 10 10 pounders? You know, it’s just when I talk about trophy fish, for me personally, what I mean is the bigger fish in that water column. I mean don’t get me wrong, I kinda set myself up in positions where I go to places that I think have the bigger trophy, right? Chad (19m 10s): But trophies aren’t always 30 inch fish. You know, the all day long these ladies went, oh man, we’re catching the good ones. You know? So just be mindful that just because you’re not catching 30 inch fish doesn’t mean you’re not catching trophies. And so I just kinda like the idea of wrapping your mind around each fishery, study the fishery, talk to people on the fishery, find out what’s actually being caught. I remember back in the day, me and Alex Lez used to be, we used to get so frustrated because people would catch 25 inch fish and call ’em 20 eights and 20 nines to where we are going, dude, I don’t legitimately know what’s on the river if you’re not being honest about the size of the fish, it’s not, I could care less what size fish you caught. Chad (20m 11s): I wanna know what size fish is coming out of the river on that given technique. So if you catch a 25 inch on a hopper and you call it a 30, I’m blown away, I go a 30 inch on a hopper. Oh my god, I’ve never seen that before. Well it wasn’t a 30 inch or it was a 20 fiver and I’ve caught 25 inches on a hopper. So like when we’re going and doing this trophy fishing, you could also do you and all of the other guys around you a favor by being honest about your catch. Dude, if you catch a 25 inch trout that is a giant, why do we need to call it 28? Chad (20m 51s): Right? And then down the road you’re gonna catch a true 28 and you’re gonna go, oh well it’s another 28. No it’s your personal best. You called the 25 a 30, right? So just it’s great for everybody involved both the fisheries so that people see what’s coming off of them in true size and form with each given technique. And the reason I say it like that is with each given technique is because I may go out with a streamer and catch 30 that’s a giant on a streamer, but I may go out and catch a 20 fiver on a hopper and that is a giant on a hopper. If I go out and catch a 23 on a size 16 ca, that is a giant. Chad (21m 38s): So for a size 16 ca. So you see what I mean when I say I wanna know the technique as well, right? Because we can also begin to break that down where we go, okay guys, they’re getting, they’re only getting those fish over 25 on streamers. So if we’re going there and we want to get something over 25, this is the way we’re gonna have to do it. And so you’re gonna help the guy behind you know, what’s coming off of it, how to target it. And then you yourself, when you start looking up these fisheries, if everybody’s doing it, then you’re getting the right information as well. And I just think that’s really cool. I know I always say that God only allows you to lie twice in your life. Chad (22m 23s): It’s when your wife asks you if her ass looks big in that dress or when you’re fishing and that’s the two times he’ll allow you to to lie. So I know as fishermen we tell some lies and some gigs, but like it’s just something as a trophy fisherman over the years that has just frustrated me a little bit, right where you’re going, not because you’re going, oh man, he got a 30 inch injury and I caught a 25. It’s not that. It’s, I wanna know what really came off of the fishery that day. Holy cow, you got in and caught a 30 inch or today in 3000 CFS with the sun shining on a freaking woolly booger. Chad (23m 5s): Well holy crap. You know what I mean? So like that’s gonna help all of us guys. So just as you’re growing up in your fishery, if you’re just getting started, that type thing, yeah, we like to brag that type thing. But just remember that is a trophy fish that you’ve caught already. If you caught a 24 inch trout, that’s a trophy. It doesn’t matter if there’s been a 28 there caught before your 24 is a trophy, you don’t have to call it a 28. There’s very few men in the world that are gonna catch a two foot trout in their lifetime. So anyway, just, I kinda went on a little rant there, but just kind of keep that true for us guys because as we go through and we are sharing with y’all as trophy guys, as fishermen we’re sharing with you guys, we want you guys to be able to come and do what we do. Chad (23m 54s): We’re not trying to hold it tight the best and go, oh no, I’m doing this and I don’t want them to know how I’m doing it. Right? If I can pass something on to you guys and it helps your trophy fishing and you pass that on to your kids, that means what I know doesn’t die with me. I think that’s cool, right? Let’s do ourselves justice and help the guy behind us by just being honest about our trophy fishing. So one of the things I’m gonna do first is tell a little story kinda how I, I kinda came up on this. I was, I was already playing the dying minnow game with some of my swimmers, but not to the same degree. Chad (24m 38s): So okay, we were on the creek one day small mouth fishing and I had told my ex-wife, I had quite a bit of paralysis in her hands from some surgeries she had and she was really struggling to hold a fly rod. So I just told her we would spin fish. And of course she said, yeah, well you’ve always told me if it’s on a spinning rod it don’t count. Like well things are different now. And so anyway, we’re fishing and oh my god, she is whooping my butt. Like, I mean she now has, you know, poor small mouth over 16 inches and I don’t have a fish yet. Chad (25m 19s): And I’m going, man, what in the world? Like she can’t even hold her hand on the rod. How’s she whooping my butt? And so I just stop, put down my gear and I start watching her and paying attention. And what’s happening is she is throwing onto the bank, we’re throwing a little jig with a soft plastic paddle tail and she is throwing over on the bank, she’ll make one good jig off and then her hand would fall off of the reel and the very next time she would go get her hand back on the reel and make a crank she would have a big fish on. So I start realizing what they’re doing obviously is they’re eating it as it’s falling to the bottom. Chad (25m 59s): And so of course ding ding ding and I start fishing mine that way and I start producing fish circle back two months later. I’m on the White River with this kid and we’re streamer fishing and it’s lower water, so we’re fishing smaller streamers and he has this streamer he wants to fish. And I just kinda looked at him and was like, man, that ain’t gonna work. And in my opinion at that stage in my game, it was too flashy and I seen the disappointment on his face. Chad (26m 39s): He had tied this for this trip. And so I just said, you know what man, let’s just, let’s just tie it on and let’s fish for a little bit. We get down the road not far and he has brown trout in the boat, I’m shocked. And I’m going, okay, that was a fluke. And we get a little bit further down the river and boom, he catches another one. This kid ends up getting five nice brown trout on this fly that I did not think was gonna work well. I love being wrong, it means I can get another tool in the arrow in the quiver so to speak. And so I go back to the shop and I find the flashiest bug we got, which was a CX and I go to the river and I catch a couple of nice fish on it, nothing crazy, nothing to brag about. Chad (27m 26s): And then came into the shop, the sparkle minnow and I started fishing that sparkle minnow and same thing, I’m still catching a couple of nice brown trout on it, but You know, nothing crazy. Some 18, some twenties and one day I’m going down Kotter Bank, I’m getting to fish, I’m just off in the afternoons, make a pitch over by a rock. My dog Tucker does something. I turn around and look at Tucker, turn back around to see my fly fluttering to the bottom with a 25 inch trout eating it. Ding, ding, ding ding. I went, oh my god, are they eating it on the fall as well? Chad (28m 12s): And I started playing a dying minnow game with that sparkle minnow where I’m literally jigging it up to the upper water column and letting it flutter all the way to the bottom. I mean I made dead drift at 10 foot, like literally letting it flutter back to the bottom and then another good hard jig up to the top and letting it to the bottom because if you don’t bring it to the top of the water column, you don’t have that much fall. If you’re in three foot of water and you jig it six inches, it can only fall back down six inches. I want you to jig it to three foot so it can have three foot of fall because that’s when they’re eating it. Chad (28m 54s): So it’s giving them more time to eat it. Also what we’re doing by playing that game as well is we’re not bringing it out of the strike zone as fast because I’ve made a big hard motion, but the motion is up and down, not back to the boat. And so I’m leaving it in that strike zone for a much longer period of time where they don’t have to make that split second decision that they’re gonna chase it out. It’s the same way when you kick over to the, like my swimming flies are more of a wounded minnow tie where I throw that sluggo in or the Big Johnson or the party crash or whatever and I’m hitting it once or twice and letting it kick sideways and sit in that column and not race out of that strike zone like we do so often. Chad (29m 49s): And the longer I’m in that strike zone, as long as I’m playing dying minnow, they’re reacting to it. And so it become very aware to me where I felt like before I was playing that wounded minnow game by. So let’s break down the sluggo real quick. So if we look at the sluggo, we’ve got a deer hair head, a buck tail collar and slap and tail, you know, we, we want very little material on it. Well what’s happening with that bug is when you stop your fly, when you’re on your retrieve back in and you stop your fly, that fly should turn 90 to you every time you pause. Chad (30m 33s): If it’s not turning 90 to you, then you’re not making a sharp enough strip. It has to actually lunge forward with just a little bit of slack to allow that deer hair head to want to float up. And then the sinking line is pulling it back down. And those two struggling against each other is actually what’s making it kick 90 and what’s giving it the wounded minnow action. And so that’s where I feel comfortable where we say a minnow would never stop in front of a predator. Well a one, a wounded fish doesn’t swim well. Chad (31m 14s): Plus if I stop stripping but my fly is still moving, did I ever really stop or did I just make it move another direction? ’cause I paused my, my swimming flies and they are still turning into a 90. I stopped my jigging flies and they are fluttering to the bottom. And so both of those are still moving even though I have stopped stripping. And so I would even go to say that if you still are of the opinion that a fly shouldn’t stop in front of a predator, it’s not stopping, it’s just going up down our side to side when I pause. Chad (32m 1s): And so it’s still getting those follow throughs. So I’m never really stopping that bug and I get 80% of my eats when I have paused or stopped my fly. And that’s because I’m presenting that kill shot. I have done this on things as big as I’ve got a buddy’s lake that I go fish at in Alabama that has giant large mouth bass in it. And I will take a eight inch fly dressed very sparsely so that it will have the sink rate a set of heavy lead eyes or cone head on it and I’m jigging it in 15 foot of water for bass, an eight inch bug, almost vertical gigging nose and producing giant fish on about a six foot fall. Chad (33m 1s): I’m probably giving it six foot a jig at that point. I think that when you’re in a lake, if you’re fishing 10 foot of water and you jig at five foot, that’s plenty Split your water column. Now I don’t mean if you’re in freaking 30 foot of water, you gotta jig at 15 foot, but kinda split your water column if you’re in, you know, if you’re in six foot, give it at least a three foot jig. If you’re in 10 foot, give it at least. And I’m saying at the very least a five foot jig and that way it still has half the water column to fall through. That’s probably a, just a pretty good idea of what it is. Chad (33m 41s): And then as far as how far down, it really depends on what fish you’re talking about. I generally don’t let ’em fall all the way to the bottom with a trout because I mean, not that a trout won’t eat off the floor, but it’s not its favorite thing to do. However, if I’m fishing for small mouth or large mouth bass, they love it to touch the floor. If you’ve ever got a small mouth bass that’s following your fly and you’ve run outta line to twitch and jerk and try to make him bite, try just letting it fall and hitting the floor and the second that fly touches the floor, they’ll pick it up. Chad (34m 23s): That is a huge trigger for my small mouth, which really come apparent to me when I started doing this vertical jigging. Being able to actually watch them in that column and see what they’re doing and see that that small mouth bass will sit there and watch me jig it three times and not eat it and then I can touch the floor with it and he crushes it. That is the dying minnow. And so I would just venture to say that if we have locked in our heads that like there’s one thing you need to do or one way you need to fish, I think you’re limiting yourself and you’re limiting your quiver. Chad (35m 4s): And what I would say is all of that, whether you stop it in front of a predator, whether you’re playing a live minow game, a dead minow game really depends on where you’re at and what their habitat is. There’s a lot of trout across the country that do not want you to stop that bug. However, here ours eat loads of dying rainbows. And so they are used to eating a dying fish game. And I think that makes maybe our trout maybe a little more acceptable to the paws than maybe in other places. Chad (35m 46s): But as soon as we’re not talking about trout, like I catch most of my fish on a paws, just don’t negate it. Start trying it. Make sure that when you’re making this pause, if you, if you’re trying to make these pauses and you’ve got a bug that’s just hanging there in the water column like a wet sock and it’s not turning 90 for you and it’s not diving to the bottom for you or making some sort of action once you’ve stopped, I would say you’re gonna see limited success. So I’m not just saying pause your bugs, make sure you’re pausing the right bugs and that they have the right action for you to, to be able to fish ’em that way. Chad (36m 30s): One of the things is is you know, for all of my sinking flies, if they are overdressed, they will not sink correctly. And so hollow ties different things that you can do to make that bug just a little lighter or materials that you can use to shed water on your back cast so that that fly can sink appropriately is, I mean stuff like Russ Madden, circus Peanut, I mean everything, all the materials are tight to hook. There’s very little on it to keep it from sinking a nice set of heavy lead eyes. Chad (37m 13s): That is a wonderful jigging fly. I’ve got some that aren’t out yet. I’ve got a couple of difference that that are gonna hit. I’m not gonna bring them up yet, but I do have a couple that are fixing to hit that are gonna play this dying minnow game as far as the jig style. And we’ll come out and introduce those on maybe the next ca podcast. But make sure that your flies that you’re trying to do this with are the appropriate flies. And what that would mean to me is a medium sink rate. I find if it doesn’t sink fast enough, you don’t get enough jigs in the zone and the heavier you have it weighted, of course the more you’re gonna be able to keep it in that zone. Chad (38m 4s): That bug’s gonna come straight up and straight down. But if it’s weighted too heavy and it falls too fast, then you don’t have the fall time. So a nice medium fall is kinda what you’re looking for. I’ll fish a, most of these jig flies on a floating line. Obviously you can’t jig a sinking line. So when I’m talking about streamers and I’m talking about jig flies, I’m also talking about floating lines and long leaders. The long leaders are what’s gonna allow you to get it down because now you can sink 10 foot before you have the struggle of pulling down the fly lines and that allows you to get that appropriate jig. Chad (38m 49s): So we’re definitely gonna need to go to floating lines on that as well. So I know we, we talk so much about our big bugs, right? I mean our 6, 7, 8 inch bugs and we do, I mean I went on a tear for about 10 years where I threw nothing under seven inches. I mean it was pretty ridiculous if I had my time off, I didn’t throw anything under seven inches for an extended period of time. I can go back through my books and look and through that extended period of time I caught bigger fish than I’ve ever caught in my life. The big bait big fish thing is legit. Chad (39m 29s): However, I was sitting and talking all this with Dave Whitlock one time and I was showing him pictures of the fish that I’d caught off of the White River, which I’m gonna throw this in if, if you guys don’t know Dave Whitlock is the reason that there are so many big browns here on the white. Dave Whitlock from 1980 to 1990, planted over 500 virum boxes both on the Norfolk, the Little Red and the White River since that point in time, each one of those rivers have produced a world record. Whitlock got bitterroot brown trout eggs, so that’s our bloodline is the bitterroot strain. Chad (40m 15s): And so I kinda was coming and showing him pictures of some of the big fish that I was catching and kinda going, Hey, I really appreciate you putting these in there in here. And I kinda told, talking to him about how I’m catching them and all, and he just kinda told me something I wouldn’t, I mean he goes, Chad, I love what you’re doing. Don’t stop doing it. I love these pictures you’re showing me. He goes, and I love these bugs you’re tying. I always, when I’d bring him over a picture of one of his fish, I would bring him over, I would tie one and bring him over the fly that I caught it on, you know, and give him one of ’em and go Here Dave, this is, this is what I caught him on. Chad (40m 57s): And so he had several of my big bugs or whatever and he just kinda, he goes, Chad, I want you to know something. He goes, I like what you’re doing, but it takes a special fish on a special day to eat that big bug. And I just want you to remember that every one of those fish that you’re catching will also eat a three inch minnow. That was a hard pill for me to swallow, even though, I mean I knew in concept wise, obviously they’ll eat a minnow, but it just had not been what I had seen up to that point. Chad (41m 38s): And then as I started playing this jig dying minnow game with some of my smaller bugs and I started producing some of these bigger fish on it, I started kinda realizing what he was saying. But I also think that this is what I found to add to, they will all eat a three inch minnow. I feel like a lot of the eats that I get from bigger fish are territorial. I’ve pissed them off, I’m in their zone, they want me out a three inch minnow swimming through their house does not bother them at all. Chad (42m 18s): They’re not gonna be aggressive to that three inch minnow. However you put a seven eight inch bug in there, they’re liable to run that off. They’re liable to get pissed at that. That seems that seven inch mark for me, for my most of my fish, unless we’re talking Muskier pike, a seven inch fly is enough to get into that territorial zone where they don’t want it in there. And so that’s where that seven inch mark has came in for me. So big is just, I feel like that’s what it takes to get the aggression bite. So I definitely believe, and I preach and some people like some people don’t, but I think there is a huge difference in the fish that we get off of a reaction bite versus the fish we get off of a feeding bite. Chad (43m 9s): Those are just two totally different bites. And sometimes I feel that like I just can’t frustrate ’em enough with it. And so that’s why I’m, most of the time when I’m trophy hunting, I tend to fish those bigger flies. I don’t mind catching a fish a day or fish every other day or that kind of thing. But there are a lot of times when those big bugs are not working, you’re on the wrong day, you’ve got the wrong water, you’ve got the wrong light, whatever the condition may be that they are just not gonna eat your big bug. Those are the days we need to downsize and we need to go to that three inch bug. Chad (43m 53s): And what I have found is just because you can’t, just because they’re not aggressive that day or it’s not a day that they’re all riled up, that doesn’t mean that they won’t eat that three inch minnow. And so there’s times where, you know, downsizing and play into that feeding bite versus trying to get the reaction bite is the right thing to do for the day. And so I just really want you guys to mix it up. I was talking to a guy at Sal Bug and I kind of told him that story and was kind of telling him about my jig flies and I could like almost see all the happiness run out of his face, you know, ’cause he was like, dang dude, you know how long I’ve been working on my swimming flies and now you’re telling me I got to start tying some jig flies. Chad (44m 46s): Like almost distraught, right? Because it’s for us guys, us big streamer guys and all jig fly. I mean like you’re trying to produce these swimming flies, you know, these type things that just swim so good and move so good and not necessarily that same up and down action that that we’ve used forever and that type thing. They, we wanna make ’em swim and look good and, and so we’ve kinda, over the years we got into that aspect of it. So that’s kinda why I talked about it because it was even for me is such a new thing. And the funny part about that is it’s probably the oldest technique in fishing is fishing jigs. Chad (45m 33s): I do not know this. I would almost venture to be that that’s probably one of the first artificial lures would be a jig. And so, I mean it’s not like they haven’t been doing it for years, but we kinda walked away from it. And we also don’t pay attention to it as fly fishermen. As fly fishermen. We put that bug out there and we want to see it rip and strip back and turn and do all of these things. But you’re also going on those streamer trips and not catching a lot of fish at times. So at times it’s not just about changing the color guys from one swimming fly to another. Oh I need a four inch, or oh I need a seven inch, or Oh I need a olive. Chad (46m 15s): Oh I need a white. It’s simply you need to change styles of bugs, get off of your big game and start playing the feeding game because they may not be giving you the reaction bites that day. If I don’t have a little cloud cover, a little something going on to help give me that day, I may not get that aggression bite. And I know you guys aren’t out there getting those aggression bites every day. I’ve thrown streamers long enough to know. And I’m just telling you, if you would add this to your repertoire and another error to your quiver, I believe some of those really hard streamer days that you’re having could be lightened up a little bit. Chad (47m 2s): You could put a few more fish in the boat. Heck, I got it on the creek today. And that is all that we fished. Think about this guys. When you’re fishing these little creeks and you’re fishing a sinking line and you’re throwing over to the rocks, you’re throwing over to the structure and you’ve got a five foot liter on, by the time your fly gets down, you are seven foot out. When you are seven foot out, you are already out of the strike zone. Now I was guiding, I was fishing small mouth, so you’re already out of the strike zone. So I need to fish jigging flies so that it actually gets down in the rocks and then I can jig and work it out. Chad (47m 53s): And every fish we caught today except one was on the jig, on the dying minnow. I see this a lot where we want to fish streamers so bad that we may not be fishing appropriately for where we’re at and the conditions we’re in. So anyway guys, just add this to your quiver. Go give it a try. If you have any questions and you can’t figure it out, call me and book me. I’ll show you. I’d love to teach you the technique and show you the bugs. And guys, I was just gonna say at the end of this podcast, if you guys are friends with me on Facebook, I would really like you to, what y’all are doing is y’all are looking at my personal Facebook page and there is nothing on that that y’all want to see. Chad (48m 50s): That’s all family stuff and things like that. I have a fishing Facebook page, CJ’s White River Outfitter. Y’all need to go friend that page instead of my personal page. If y’all are wanting to see what we’re doing, keep up with the podcast, keep up with the fish, keep up with the new stuff I’m putting out, go check me out. CJ’s White River Outfitter, my website’s the same. You can go on there to hear this podcast and look around to see what I got. All right guys, I hope I didn’t bore you, just kinda rapping about by myself here. Next week we’ll have a new cool guest. Chad (49m 31s): I’m not even gonna, not even gonna tell you who he is yet, but we got a really good one for next month. Thanks guys. I appreciate y’all listening to me and go get ’em, boys.