729 | Stillwater Fly Fishing Myths Debunked with Denny Rickards

Dave (2s): Steelwater fishing has always had a special place in my heart. And at the same time, there’s been plenty of challenges and misconceptions around fishing steel waters. Today we have one of the most knowledgeable steelwater anglers who will take us on a step-by-step through finding big fish on steel waters. At the end of this episode, you will have a framework to understand what to do and what not to do. So you can apply these to your home waters this year. This is the Wet Fly Swing podcast where I show you the best places to travel to for fly fishing, how to find the best resources and tools to prepare for that big trip, And what you can do to give back to the fish species we all love. Hey, I’m Dave host of the Fly Swing podcast. I’ve been fly fishing since I was a kid. Dave (42s): I grew up around a little fly shop and have created one of the largest fly fishing podcasts in this country. I’ve also interviewed more of the greatest fly anglers and Stillwater anglers than just about anyone out there. Denny Rickard’s, author, show speaker, and Stillwater Guru is going to share his wisdom today on the show. You’re in for a big treat today ’cause you’re gonna find out about feeding fish and how to know when they’re moving, when they’re not moving, and when they’re feeding. You’re gonna find out why you should be casting to the edge of the lake, to find big fish, and also how to find the exact depth for holding fish. And why fish take on the paws. This one is loaded with so many tips and tricks that you’re going to have trouble keeping up. So let’s get into it. Here we go. Danny Rickards from fly fishing stillwaters.com. Dave (1m 25s): How you doing, Denny? Denny (1m 27s): Good. Nice to talk to you Dave. Dave (1m 28s): Yeah, yeah, it’s good to have you back on the show here. It’s been quite a while actually. I, I’m, we’ve connected at some shows along the way, but it’s been since 2019, I think, early 2019. So it’s been about five years or six years now, episode 64. We’ll put a link in the show notes to that episode so people can listen. But we’re gonna do a whole nother round of this steel water fishing. You’re one of the biggest names out there in the country, so we’re gonna focus on just what you teach and you do a lot out there. You’ve been around for a long time. So does that all sound good to you? Denny (1m 56s): Sure. Far away. Dave (1m 57s): All right, let’s jump into it first. Maybe episode 64, like you said was five, six years ago. What have you been up to the last few years? Are you still doing clinics, schools? Like what’s keeping you busy throughout the year? Denny (2m 7s): I’m not getting quite as much time on the water as I used to. That’s because I need to be here with my wife more often. She’s not getting around as well, so it’s cutting the time down. And the worst part, and the main reason is here in Oregon where I guide the lakes are either very low and they close because of no water. And another one that is a trophy fishery couldn’t get fish. So, oh wow. And I’m finding a lot of the private lakes are having trouble getting fish from the private guys out there that grow ’em. And I think the state, it’s kind of an erroneous thing, but they’re clamping down on ’em for some phony thing about something that they’re afraid might get into the public waters and so they’re shutting ’em down. Denny (2m 54s): So other than that, no. I’m still getting a hundred, 150 days on the water, so, oh Dave (2m 59s): Yeah, you’re still getting a lot. Okay, well let’s break this down. Today we’re probably gonna talk about a few things, some common myths, some you know, misconceptions about Stillwater fishing. But let’s just take it just generally because this will apply to anybody around the country, right? Anything we’re talking about today. Denny (3m 13s): Yeah, it’s a lot of guys, Dave think because of they have a favorite lake that they go to all the time ’cause it’s close to home or whatever, but, or they’re gonna travel to another lake. And a lot of the information that these guys get and the methods that they apply when they’re on the lake come from either a close friend, family member or a guy behind the counter on a sporting goods store. And what I found over the last 56 years that I’ve been doing this on lakes, there just aren’t a lot of guys out there that really understand what’s going on in Stillwater and the reason for it’s, they don’t spend the time to learn it. So when it comes to myths, as we talk today, I’m gonna get into some of the things that people may tell another guy, and the information that these guys get on, what flies to use lines, where to go, what to do, that sort of thing. Denny (4m 7s): There’s just, it’s a trial and error approach. And when you use a trial and error approach, you’re gonna get into trouble because you really don’t know. And I always ask myself when I get the strike, I want to know why did I get it right? When a fly’s working, I wanna know why. If it’s not working, I wanna know why. So, you know, there’s one of the big myths out there. And when guys are fishing, you know, they, and I’m gonna put 90% of the guys in this category, when they select the fly to start their day, what they do is they try to think what the fish are eating and they try to take a fly to match it. Well, that comes from our days when we first start fly fishing on streams and rivers match the hatch. Denny (4m 51s): And it’s usually associated with dry flies. But 90% of what a trout eats is below the surface, not on top of it. And that comes from fish and game studies that they’ve done forever. So when you’re thinking about the fly that you’re gonna use and trying to match up, most of the flies that are sold or tied or guys having their fly box will work. But that’s not what happens when they’re on the water. If they’re out there casting away and they don’t get a strike or they don’t land a fish in the first 15, 20 minutes, they’re gonna get that fly box out and they’re gonna look at it and they’re gonna think, Hmm, they’re not eating this. And when they make that statement to themself, they’re making an assumption that they shouldn’t make. Denny (5m 36s): And the assumption is that the fish was there and saw it. Well how do you know he was there and saw it? You don’t. No. So you know, you can’t blame the fly for it. On the other hand, if you’re catching fish after fish after fish, you’re getting strike after strike, you aren’t gonna change the fly. Nobody does. I mean, I’ve gone through this for years with guys, they don’t want to change the fly when they find what works Well, you’re having a lot of fun, but the learning curve stops right there, right? You know that fly works, you’ve already proved it. So think about when you go back to that lake two, three days later or the next day or maybe in the afternoon and you were fishing in the morning and now all of a sudden you’re not getting the strikes you were getting. Denny (6m 19s): Didn’t you just prove that the fly and the method that you used, a presentation worked? Of course you did. So why did it work three hours ago and it’s not working now, not working a day later or a week later or a month later. There’s a reason for it. And guys don’t know what that reason is. It’s like everybody knows that when people make the statement that you learn from your mistakes, Dave, on Stillwater, you don’t learn. You don’t learn anything. You don’t from what you’re doing wrong. You learn from what you’re doing, right? ’cause that’s what you’re gonna repeat. So if you’re in a, in a spot that you’re catching a lot of fish, you aren’t moving. Denny (7m 0s): If you got a fly that’s working, you’re not gonna change it. If you have a retrieve and a line that are working, you don’t change those. So you learn from what you’re doing, right? So guys suddenly build in this sense of confidence, okay, this fly works. That’s why guys have favorite flies and favorite colors. What they don’t know is most of the flies you have in your fly box will work is just there are certain styles and types of flies that you should use under certain conditions and others that you should use under different conditions. And we’ll get into those today. Dave (7m 36s): What is that when? Let’s just start right there on the lake itself. So you come up to a new lake, where does somebody start? You know, let’s just say they’re fairly new to it. They’ve heard a lot of misconceptions about stuff. Good Denny (7m 46s): Question. Yeah, good question, Dave. Here’s the two things when I’m guiding this is the two things that I always make sure that guys get answers to. And the first one is, when you get on the water, whether it’s a lake, you know, or it’s new to you, when you get on the water, you have to know where the fish are. Yeah. In other words, where are you gonna put the fly? And the second thing you need to know is how far down are they? If you don’t know the depth of the fish, then you’re gonna go to that trial and error. And where I see guys go, and my last book Stillwater presentation, there’s a chapter in there called positioning. And the first sentence in that chapter is, this may be the most important chapter in a whole book. Denny (8m 28s): Because if you go someplace, and guys don’t know this, and here’s a myth that guys think, and I learned it God, 40 years ago when you put a fly in front of a fish and he says no, he’s not saying yes in the next cast. Watch a guy and I, I did this 40 years ago, I’m going up one of the channels in Upper Klamath Lake and I make a cast over by the brush along the shoreline, and I see this huge boil behind my fly. Didn’t hit it, but he boiled on it. So I know he’s there. Where are you gonna put the next cast? You’re going right back in there. We all do. Yeah, that was 40 years ago and I’m still doing it. And here’s what’s interesting, Dave. Denny (9m 9s): I’ve never caught a fish on the next cast. Never. Not one, really. So what does that mean? What it means when I’m guiding guys is that you put a fly out there. If you get a hit, he’s not coming back and hitting it a second time. They don’t do that. Another fish might, but not the one you just hit. And if you see a boil and you recast to it, there’s for some reason, I don’t know if it’s the angle or what, but they don’t come back. So why waste the time and make that second cast? It’s the same thing when a guy goes out, puts an anchor down, and he’s fishing a 360 around where his boat is. There’s certain fish within your casting range that are gonna see that fly. Denny (9m 50s): You’re gonna spook half of ’em with your cast. There’s others that it’s the wrong angle and they won’t go near the fly. And you might catch a few fish. And guys, if they catch a few fish, they stay there. Well, one of the things that I teach guys, the guy that moves always out, fishes the guy that stationary because the fish haven’t seen you fly yet. So if you keep casting to those same fish, you’ll notice that the strike range is gonna start dropping. And So if you keep moving and put the fly in front of the fish that hasn’t seen it yet, your strike increases because it just has to do with the presentation of it. So you need to know where you’re gonna put the fly and you need to know how far down the trout are. Denny (10m 33s): And when we talk about miss, here’s one of them guys think that when a fish, and before I get into that, let me present something else here to guys to help ’em on where to fish. I’ve done in my lifetime, somewhere between five to 700 lakes around the world. No two lakes are the same. And I’m talking about whether I’m in Argentina, Chile, New Zealand, Italy, France, Germany, Scandinavian countries, Iceland, Alaska, Canada, Western states, wherever I’m fishing, all of those lakes are different in size, shape, the altitudes, the habitat, no two are the same. Denny (11m 16s): It’s like a snowflake. They’re all different. But one thing that I learned about every one, and it comes from my logs that I keep when I’m fishing, is that where fish feed is where you need to be fishing and where trout feed in those lakes, there’s only two places where fish feed anywhere in the world. Shoreline edges is number one. And in the top foot of the surface is number two. If trout aren’t in those one of those two places, they’re in one other spot. And that means they’re down. Yeah. And the depth that they’re holding, if it’s deeper than six feet, the myth that guys don’t understand, maybe they’re in 10 feet of water and guys using indicators and putting an indicator with a chron or something down on the bottom and they’re catching fish. Denny (12m 8s): They’re thinking, well fish are down 10 feet and that’s where they’re feeding. No, you can catch ’em, but that is not where they go when they feed. So the myth is when a fish is deep, what guys don’t know is the trout doesn’t move. And I learned this from biologists in the fish hatchery. I got a fish hatchery about a mile from where I live. And I spent a lot of time down there talking to guys about things about water and pH and things like that. These all oxygen. And when a fish is deep, they don’t move, they don’t eat, they don’t do anything. They lay there like a brick. If they wanted to eat, they would go where the food is concentrated and it’s concentrated on the shoreline edges and near the surface because the insects that emerge from the bottom and come up through the water table, when they get to the top, they stop. Denny (12m 58s): Guys see this all the time when they see rings and they see fish feeding up near the surface. Okay? That tells you that you need a certain line, a certain fly and a certain form of presentation to fish for those fish. It’s different when you fish a shoreline edge. You can use the same flies, but why would you go to a shoreline edge of a lake? Because that’s where the proto plankton and zooplankton is located. That means that’s the food stuffs for the aquatic insects and other food sources that live there. And it doesn’t make any difference what we’re talking about. Take anybody’s fly box, open it up, and they’re gonna have all kinds of flies. They’ll have imitation of mayflies, cataly, dams of Midges, what leeches, scuds, minnows, all of the different food sources that we see in lakes. Denny (13m 48s): And of the all of those food sources, that’s where they’re found. So when you fish a shoreline edge, the reason they’re so productive is the bigger fish in the lake. Let’s say the lake that you’re fishing is got 500 fish over four pounds and it’s 200 acres out of that day that you’re there. Maybe only 50 of those four or 500 fish are feeding that day. The others have already fed or what they ate, they haven’t digested it yet. So the fish that are going to eat that day, and I’m talking about the ones that you want to take a picture of when you catch ’em, those are the fish that are gonna move into the shoreline itch. And for a guy to be effective, you need to be there when the trout are gonna be there. Denny (14m 33s): So the big fish that you want to catch is not going to enter shallow water because trout are really skittish when they get into water. It’s very shallow because they know they can be seen by predators. So a fish that comes in there, and I’m talking about the big ones, big ones, and little ones don’t share the same space. When they move in the shallow water, they need some form of cover to for protection. And the cover comes in the form of darkness or wind. If you don’t have one or the other, you’re not gonna find fish on the shoreline. But when they do come in, like for me, I always start my day before the sun hits the water and I’m gonna go in there and I’m I’ll. We’ll talk about how to fish it a little bit later here. Denny (15m 16s): But when you put your cast in there and that big fish sees your fly, those big fish they don’t miss. They’re there for one reason and that’s the eat. So when they see a fly, it’s an imitation of food. So how you present it becomes very critical. And I see a lot of guys doing it wrong. They don’t do it right. And I’m not gonna run over and tell ’em that. But if it’s a client, I’m gonna tell ’em. In fact, I tell ’em even before we get there, here’s where you position yourself, here’s what you do. And here’s what I’m referring to. Never face a shoreline edge where you cast straight in, turn your boat sideways so you can kick. And I’m talking about a boat that you can use your feet to move. Denny (15m 59s): Yeah. Or you could use an electric motor if you can control the speed and angle. What doesn’t work is a boat that has an anchor and oars and a motor. Because if the wind blows and you’ve turned the motor off, what are you gonna do? Right? Guys will tell. Well, I’ll put an anchor down wrong when I’m guiding, we’re leaving all the anchors in the trucks. Guys, we aren’t taking ’em out. 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No, no anchors at all when you’re guiding Denny (17m 19s): Not for the way I’m gonna fish. If you’re going to indicator fish, yeah, then you’ll need an anchor. Yeah. It’s not that they don’t work, it’s just that you reduce your chances of hooking fish because you’re gonna be fishing the same spot. Right? How far can you cast? If you did a 360 around your boat and you cast 50 feet, draw a circle around your boat, all the fish within that circle, those that are gonna eat, you’re gonna catch in the first few casts. After that, you’re wasting your time. But if you don’t put the anchor down and the wind is blowing, you’re gonna move and you’re gonna move in the direction that the wind is blowing you. So you can’t row and cast at the same time. Yeah, you’re gonna be drifting and that’s not a good idea. Denny (18m 2s): So your only other option is to put an anchor down, but you’re gonna have to put it down, move, put it down again, move and continue to do that. That takes time. It’s so much easier if you’re in a pontoon or a belly boat and all you have to do is kick with your fins casting in, right? So when you cast into the shoreline, you need to reach the as close to the edge as you can possibly get. The reason for that, you’ll find if you do this enough, you may only catch three, four fish, Dave, but they’re gonna be the biggest fish you’re gonna catch all day, huh? They are on the trophy size because the little ones aren’t around. And if you are catching little fish go somewhere else that tells you the big fish aren’t there. So anyway, when you do it, just position yourself so you can kick and move parallel to shore. Denny (18m 47s): The fish that you’re fishing for is also moving parallel to shore. And one of the things that guys don’t understand about Stillwater fly fishing. Anytime you can get a presentation that shows the fish to profile view of your fly, you have the advantage. And you’d be surprised how many fish you’re gonna catch. And here’s what I mean, since the fish on the shore are moving, ’cause in Stillwater a feeding fish is always moving. He’s never stationary. They don’t go out and find a spot where they hunker down unless it’s midday and there’s enough cover to seclude themself from predators. And what they do is they’ll hide in that, whether it’s brush down, trees, rocks, whatever, any place that they can seclude themself. Denny (19m 31s): When a prey comes by out there, they’ll run out there, grab it and go right back in. And that’s what I do when I’m fishing upper klamath in the upper channels, I’m casting tight to the shoreline, but I’m always moving. I’ve got an electric motor in the front of my boat. I sit in a chair and I can steer it with my foot, the direction and the speed while I’m casting into the shoreline. And I catch a lot of fish. And 90% of them are in the four pound and upper range. They’re not little trout. So when you’re fishing a shoreline edge, no matter what the lake is, the more cover that’s in there, the better protection for those fish. But not just for the fish, but for what they’re feeding on the fish is gonna be moving parallel. Denny (20m 12s): Dave? Yeah. So when you cast in, you’re showing the fish the profile view because you’re gonna be pulling it out to you as the fly lands. If the fish is coming toward it, he’ll see it. Head, tail, body, color, movement, everything. And here’s the thing that you cannot do when you make your cast, don’t bring it out to you more than about oh five feet. The reason for that, it took me years to learn it, but a fish doesn’t turn and follow it out to. You want to talk about another myth? Here’s another myth. Yeah. 99% of the fish guys catch if they’re trolling a fly and they hook a fish, they think the fish came up from behind the fly. Denny (20m 53s): Mm. Not true. When you cast and retrieve and, and you hook a fish, you think the fish came up from behind it. They don’t do that. Fish that take a fly come in from the side and how you’ll know what I just told you is true. When you hook the fish, look and see where the hook is, you’ll see it’s in the corner of the mouth, one side or the other, and that’s it. 90% of the time, the only time that’s not true is if you’re casting where you see a fish roll and you cast to ’em, what direction are you gonna cast? You’re gonna put it out in front of him, three or four feet. That’s what everybody does. When you do that, you show him profile view because you’re retrieving it back to you and the fish is moving to where the fly landed. Denny (21m 36s): So he sees the head, the cut of the body and all that. The closer you get to him, if there’s a hatch going on and you don’t know the fishes there, but you just cast blindly and as the fly lands the fish sees it and takes it. Right now, that’s when a fish might get hooked in the upper or lower jaw. But when you’re trolling or cast and retrieving, you won’t find that truth. Yeah, just see how many fish are hooked in the upper lower jaw and it’s almost zero. Hmm. And I had a biologist tell me that 30 years ago. He says, no, they don’t come up from behind. They come in from the side. So when you’re trolling and you hook a fish, there’s a reason where that fish came in from the side. There may be more there. Denny (22m 17s): So turn around and go back to that area again. And the closer you are to shore, the more fish you’re gonna hook. And here’s why. If you’re fishing a shoreline edge early in the morning and you’re hooking fish, you’ll notice that as you move along when you cast an air, the strikes are very vicious. You’re not gonna miss any. So the fly that I use for that type of fishing is gonna be a bugger, a leach or a minimum imitation. One of the three. Would the small stuff work? Yeah, it will ’cause it all imitates food. But fish want a mouthful. They want as much protein as they can get. Reason for that. Another myth want a fish is inactive. He doesn’t want to burn the cow. Denny (22m 58s): He is swimming around looking for food. He’s gonna go where the food is concentrated when it’s safe to do it. That’s what a trout does every day. The only two times that a fish moves in still water is when he’s either hunting for food or avoiding danger. That’s the only thing that moves him. If the shoreline edges and you have a window on this, I start at first light, I’m usually done by 8 39 o’clock. ’cause the sun is up high enough that the fish have lost their cover of darkness. So they’ll move off into deeper water. Where do you think they’re going? If you’re 40 feet from shore cast, an end fish isn’t going out a hundred feet from you in 10 to 15 feet of water, why would a fish waste all that energy, burn all those calories to go out to the deep water and wait to come back later and burn all those calories to come back again? Denny (23m 50s): Where he is going, Dave is usually an eight to 10 feet right about where you are. All right? And they’re gonna be underneath you. But that means when you cast in, if you were hooking fish along the shore and the strikes will be instant, the fly lands fish doesn’t swim up to it and trying to see, you know, let me see what color the tail and how long is this? They don’t analyze any of that stuff. They react. Yeah. So when a fish leaves that area, he is gonna go out to eight 10 feet and that’s where he is gonna hanker down. So what you do later on, when the sun rises, if there’s no hatches started yet, what you can do is continue to fish along the shoreline edge. Denny (24m 30s): But now instead of fishing tight to the shore, you bring the fly out away from it. So as you make a cast, say it’s 50 feet, you retrieve about three or four feet of it, then pause up to 5, 6, 7 seconds. When you pause, the fly drops, you pull again, it moves parallel. You pause in your retrieve and the fly drops. So it’s slowly following the contour of the bottom. You will get hit eventually as you come out to you. If you’re in eight feet of water and you’re 40 feet from shore. I can remember a lake up in Wyoming last year when I was showing another fellow how to do this. And we were retrieving, we were hooking fish tight to shore early, but now we’re out maybe 30, 20 feet from the shore in about three four feet of water. Denny (25m 17s): And that’s where the strikes were coming. There’s a reason for it. All you have to do is go if you count the number of poles back to you. In other words, I do it all the time. I’ll strip line from my reel before I start. And as I cast into the shoreline edge, I want to know how many strips of the line, if it’s about a 10 inch pole, how many of those 10 inch poles does it take to get the line back to the point where I’m ready to pick up and recast. And if it’s halfway, and in this case it just happened to be halfway. So I said, okay, let’s go find out what the depth is. We’re getting hit halfway back. So we went to about the spot, put the rod tips down into the water and we found it was four to five feet. Denny (25m 57s): That’s where the fish were holding. They had moved off the shore. What’s interesting is if you go around the lake, it makes no difference where you go. You’ll find them in four to five feet of water everywhere until there’s one thing that’s gonna change the whole thing. And we might as well talk about that before we talk about the other spot where fish go. Water temperature is the number one thing that move fish daily, hourly, seasonally. It’s the one thing that moves fish. And the water temperatures like on reservoirs. Reservoirs that are drawn down late in the fall and after refill in the spring do not fish well in the spring. Denny (26m 40s): Reason for it is the nutrients have to settle. So the chemistry of the water is out of sync. Fish are stressed because the oxygen levels haven’t built back in yet. And if you think that’s wrong, what happens when an lake is drawn down, all the proto plankton, zooplankton, the weed beds and all that, they’re all shore. They’re gone. Hmm? They’re sitting up there on on dry land and that stuff will eventually decay and you have to start all over again because in the spring when the lakes are being refilled, water’s gonna be off color and it’s gonna be cold. And until that proto plankton and zooplankton build back in the lake does not have a way of regenerating itself with dissolved oxygen, which is what a fish needs in order to breathe, to hold at different depths. Denny (27m 27s): When that happens, it’s gonna be more like August, September, October, before you’ll start noticing change in the bite. So that’s reservoirs. Yeah, that’s not natural. Like that’s reservoirs. If the reservoir is not drawn down to any great degree, then it may not, it’ll have less of an impact. It won’t be as serious. And the only way you’re gonna find it out is go fishing in the spring. Although spring fishing, I just, I avoid reservoirs as much as I can unless they haven’t changed water that much and wait until in the late summer or fall. But as the proto plankton, zooplankton build back in, photosynthesis takes place. That’s mother nature’s way of taking dissolved ox or carbon dioxide out of the water from the plant life and kicks out carbon or dissolved oxygen, which is how a lake oxygenates itself as the layers begin to set. Denny (28m 22s): Because in the spring water’s gonna be cold. Yeah. And where is it coldest on top? ’cause lakes freeze from the top down. Where’s the warm water? In the spring it’s on the bottom. So fish go down to where they’re more comfortable. But on a reservoir, the bottom is acidic. All the plant life that died down in the winter, it takes bacteria to break it down and it’s acidic and there’s no oxygen there. So fish don’t go there. And where they hold is somewhere between four to six feet from the surface. If you’re in 10, 15 feet of water, it’ll be consistent amongst lakes. But that narrow belt at the top will be too cold and the oxygen of the water is gonna be very thin because the water’s cold. Denny (29m 7s): So guys need to wait. So the question always comes up, well what’s a good temperature that fish feed under? That temperature ranges somewhere. And it’s a wide range relative to the lake that you’re fishing as far as water quality. But it’s somewhere between about 55, 56 to about 62 degrees. That’s optimum. And you’ll get the most activity on plant life and insect life if it stays in that range. But it won’t because as you get into your July and August in the warmer months, the sun as it comes up heats the upper layers. And this takes us to another condition that guys will recognize when I tell you about it is that when you make a cast and you’ve been catching fish in the top foot, maybe for the first two hours of the day, you’re out there at first light and you’ve hooked eight or 10 fish and you just making a cast and or trolling and you’re hooking fish, then all of a sudden you’ll notice that the strike ratio is starting to drop off. Denny (30m 5s): This is what the fish is telling you. Do you think that they got full, they don’t want that fly anymore? No, that’s not the problem at all. What they’re doing is they’re dropping down in depth, they’re moving from the top layer and they’re going down to maybe three or four feet. I had a biologist here from the fish hatchery and he really knows water and and conditions and habitat and stuff like that. What he didn’t know is how to fish. So I took him over with me and where fish is like, and he had some of his instruments and this is what was happening. We had got some fish, nice big rainbows on one of the lakes that I guide on. Denny (30m 45s): And in the early morning it was pushing 9 30, 10 o’clock and the strike ratio was drastically dropping off and for both of us. And I said, what do you have in the way of instruments to find out? We gotta find out why the fish aren’t hitting. And he says, well I can tell you right now. He said, did you check water temperature when we got here? And I said, yeah, it was around 55. He says, well it’s 58 now. And I said, what does that mean? And he got his instruments out and put ’em in the water. And he says, Denny, for every degree that the water drops or increases from 55 to 56 or 56 to 57 as it goes up, the parts per million. Denny (31m 29s): And I don’t understand this part of it, but he says the parts per million of dissolved oxygen is dropping. So what the fish do to adjust to the warmer water on top is they drop down in depth where the water’s cooler. Yeah. So where you find the cooler water, you find the heavier oxygen levels. So the fish were holding four to five feet below and that was about the limit that they would hold and still feed. So as the guys out there casting, this is what we noticed as we brought the fly across, we’re moving the fly parallel in the water. We’re making 50, 60 foot cast and bringing it back. We are not getting any strikes in the first 40 feet of the retrieve ’cause we’re high in the water where it’s a little bit warm and the fish have vacated those areas, they’ve dropped down. Denny (32m 15s): As we get to the back end of the cast, the line is now changing angles. It has to come up to your rot tip as you get to the back end. ’cause you’ve retrieved almost all the water that you just, or all the line that you just cast out. So as you reach that, the line is now coming up instead of moving parallel. Yeah, well the fish hits right at that point right in front of your feet. And everybody this fish lakes has had this happen to ’em and they know what I’m talking about. Yeah. Okay. What did you do to cause that strike? You didn’t do anything intentionally. But I had a guy tell me 15 years ago, and this is how I learned to fish pupa in a lake, is based on this theory. Denny (32m 57s): He says, Denny, remember when you get to the back end of your retrieve and that fish takes, he says, fish never take on the pole. I said, what? What are you talking about? And he says, they don’t take on the pole, they take on the pause. Well, I didn’t put two and two together yet. I said, okay on the pause. I said, how long do you pause between polls when you get to the back end? He says, I’ll count as much as seven seconds. He didn’t tell me why. He just told me that’s what he did. So that was in a show in January in the Bay Area. Come June of the same year, I’m on Hebgen Lake just outta West Yellowstone. And I fished the first three hours with my buddy and we each caught three or four nice fish on seal buggers. Denny (33m 42s): And then the strike was really dropping off and I’m starting to see fish roll. And then I thought about it, you know, I’ve gotta try this new line that I had Cortland make for me to fish the small stuff up high. And then I remember what he told me. He says, remember the take on the pause. What he was trying to tell me, Dave, is that what happens when you pause on the retrieve, when your fly’s coming up, when you pause on the retrieve, what does your fly do? Goes down. That’s right. It drops. Yeah. So what the fish does when you reach their zone as you’re coming up, they merely open their mouth and suck it in. They don’t strike it, they just suck it in when you go to pull on the line to pull more line toward you, right? Denny (34m 25s): Okay. He feels the resistance in any bolts. And you think it was on the pole and it wasn’t. It was on the pause. And that is so critical. So when you’re doing this on that lake that day, I counted 20 strikes in 18 of the, of those 20 strikes, I hooked the fish. And most of them I did not know the fish was there. It wasn’t until I went to pull again that I could feel the line come tight. And I said, I’m not in weeds, tell ’em just below the surface in 10 feet of water. So I would set the hook and sure enough the fish would be dancing, he’d take off, go aerial, whatever it might be. So that’s what was happening. So I learned that’s how you fish the pupa form. Denny (35m 6s): So let’s talk about what happens with insects when they’re coming up. If the fish were on the shoreline early in the morning and you fish that and we’re running at nine o’clock and now all of a sudden you’re not getting the strikes that you were, the reason for it is the fish have left the area and they’re moving into deeper water. They’re telling you this is not a productive area to fish unless you get a wind or ripple. Then they’ll come back in and feed in there because that’s their protection against predators. So if the hatches begin somewhere around 9 30, 10 o’clock on the lake you’re at, that usually occurs around weed beds in shallow water. Shallow water being eight feet or less. Denny (35m 48s): So I’m on a lake down in Wyoming with my body. We’re fishing out there using seal bug, we’re we’re sticking big fish and lots of them. And around nine o’clock the bite was starting to drop off. And I looked at him and I looked at my watch and he says, what are you looking for? And I says, well, I’m gonna go over by that weed bed where those calaba are gonna start coming off around 9 30, 10 o’clock. And he says, oh, you want to go do that pupa thing, aren’t you? And I said, I gotta figure out what the hell I’m doing wrong because Dave, I couldn’t catch fish that were feeding on Pupa. Well stop and think. What is a pupa? Let’s look at the insects on any lake that’s rich enough to have aquatic insects. Denny (36m 32s): There’s four insects that go from the bottom to the top. And those four insects are mayflies cataly, dams of flies and Midges. Yeah. Those are the only four that go from the bottom to the top out of those four insects. We match those insects in three different stages. Those insects go through three stages before they become the adult. And that’s from the egg to the larvae stage. The larvae stage, the insect is doing nothing more than scrounging for food on the very bottom of the lake. It’s the same in a stream or a river. They move around the rocks and that’s what they’re looking for is the little minute stuff that they feed on. Once the oxygen and the temperature, we get back to this temperature thing. Denny (37m 16s): And I didn’t really go into that, but I’m gonna do it after I tell you about this because it’s really important that guys understand what temperature does to the trout’s feeding behavior. But when the water temperature and the lifetime of the insect, let’s say the insect lives three years before he emerges and becomes an adult, most of his lifetime is gonna be spent in a larva stage on the bottom. But when the the time like a woman reaches nine months, she gives birth. Whoa. When the insect reaches that magic time, it’s waiting for the water temperature to reach a certain degree. And when it does, it starts its journey to the top. And if there’s a, it’s a rich lake, then there’s a lot of insects, you’re gonna see a lot of insects coming up through the water table. Denny (37m 59s): When they reach the surface, that means they’re emerging. So those last second cast we were just talking about, that stage is different. It’s a larva insect stage that you’re fishing when the insects reach the top out of the four, only one heads to shore. Do you know which one that is? Dave (38m 20s): The only one that heads to shore. I’m just guessing. Damsel flies. Denny (38m 23s): That’s it. Yeah. The dams will head to shore about four or five, six inches below the surface. So a guy who makes a cast and retrieve is matching that insect to a T. If he’s got an insect that looks like a damsel. Before Lee Wolfe passed away, he wrote an article on Fly Fisherman magazine and his article was on the Madison River. Maybe it was a big hole, it was one of the two. But he showed a picture and I have the the magazine article still here that I go back and look at. And he took a picture of a mayfly, a caly, a midge, and a stonefly. And he shows he turned them upside down and took the picture and the the caption to the picture was, guess which one was the mayfly? Denny (39m 10s): Hmm. Dave you couldn’t tell. ’cause they all looked the same. Oh wow. Dave (39m 14s): From underneath they all looked the same. Denny (39m 15s): That’s right. The only one that you knew wasn’t that was the stonefly. ’cause the body was longer. Yeah. So when the insects reached the surface, what are the other three doing? The dam’s gonna head to shore. But what is the mayfly ca and mid doing? They hang in the surface film. As they reach the surface, as they’re coming up through the water table, they have to break through the surface film to become an adult. So they get a running start at it. If they don’t make it, they hang in the film and they drop down a little bit and get another running start and try to break through again. Eventually they’ll make it may take ’em three or four tries, but they’ll eventually 90% of ’em will break through and become an adult. Denny (39m 57s): Once they get on top, they open their shuck and become the adult. And that’s what you fish with a dry fly. Yeah, because it’s the adult version of that insect. But what about the other stage? The other stage is the pupa stage and the pupa stage. I learned when talking to different guys and I had Cortland build me that seven foot intermediate sink tip, the fish pupa. I wanted to keep the fly in the top foot. And here’s one of the things we talk about erroneous things and thoughts about fish. You cannot anybody listen to this broadcast when you’re fishing the lake never, never allow the fly to drop below the, the level of the fish are holding or feeding at. Denny (40m 43s): ’cause a trout never looks down for food. He only looks up. Right. And he’s looking at the surface. And when you see rings on the surface, that means that the fish are on pupa. Could you still fish a bugger or a leach or a minow? Sure. Yeah. And you’ll catch the occasional fish. But the fish are telling you what they’re looking at right now. They never remember this. They never get selected to the insect. They don’t care if it’s a may fly, a cat, a midge or a damsel. There’s some lakes where all four insects will be active at the same time and the fish can pick and choose. Does that mean they’ll say no. Let me give you a little example of what happened on a school that I did 10, 12 years ago in Montana. Denny (41m 29s): I had these guys come to this private ranch and I picked this time in June because I knew the damsels would be coming off. And we went in and did the clinic in the lodge. And right around noon they’re all in eating lunch. And I walked outside and went down to the water on one of the lakes there. And there were damsels everywhere. There were fish popping in the water everywhere and all along the shoreline. And I went back and told the guys, I said, you guys, you better get out there ’cause there’s fish popping everywhere. I didn’t tell ’em what they were coming up to. I think some of the guys knew it anyway. Yeah. But they finished their lunch, they got their rods and reels and went down. There were 12 of ’em all together. Half of them were fishing from shore and the other half got in pontoon belly boats were out there and all of ’em are catching fish. Denny (42m 12s): And one of the guy comes over to me and he says, Denny, the damsel is headed to shore, right? And I said, yeah. So if the damsel’s coming into shore, if you stand on shore, cast out and bring the fly back in, you’re matching the same direction that the insect is moving. Is that correct? And I said, yeah, but I said, A damsel will go to any port in the storm. He says, what do you mean by that? I said, if, if you are there or there’s a log there or a tree sticking up, they’ll go to that. They won’t go to shore, they’ll go to the closest thing. And so he says, well, he says, everybody’s catching fish. I says, which proves my point. So we get on our boats and we go out in the water and I’m out there and he comes over to me after about a half hour and he says, I gotta see your damsel limitation. Denny (42m 56s): He says, you’re catching more fish than anybody else. And so I flipped my rod around and threw the fly and landed on his apron on his boat. And he looked at it and his eyes got as big as dinner plates. He says, you’re using a black leach. I says, I know. He says, well how come you have everybody using damsels? I said, I didn’t tell him to use damsels. They chose that because that’s the insect that was out there. So the thinking about the angler when you’re in a Cali beta hatch or a damsel hatch is to match the insect. Well of course you’ll catch ’em because when the fish becomes selective, it’s not the insect, it’s the stage of the insect that they’re selective too. So I just wanted to prove to ’em Yep. Denny (43m 36s): That a black le will be eaten just like the damsel. It’s just a question of getting in front of a fish. And that’s why I was hooking fish. So to tell you that you have to match the hatch, you gotta remember 90% of what they eat is below the surface. They don’t care, Dave. Yeah. They don’t care what the insect is. Yeah. So it’s presentation. It’s how you make it appear. Gotcha. Dave (43m 57s): Do you fish dries very often? I Denny (43m 60s): Do. And it’s a ton of fun. Yeah. But fish in the dry is very selective. Yeah. Let me give you an example. When you see rings, yeah, let’s say you’re out on the on the lake and you’re over in an area where the hatches are coming off and the fish that are feeding on him. Remember I told you a feeding fish is always moving? Yep. He’s not stationary like in streams and rivers where a trout let the current bring the food to him. He’s out there moving around looking for food and he knows where it is. It’s a question, will he go there? The big fish are gonna lay low in the water not to feed because there’s no food down deep. One because of sunlight, depending on what the depth is, will not reach two, you got nutrients in the water. Denny (44m 41s): Three, you gotta deal with water. Temperature, time of day, time of year. You gotta factor in those things because that’s what’s gonna put a fish where you find him. And when the food is not there, they aren’t gonna stay there. They’re gonna go down. So if a fish is not feeding up near the surface or on the shoreline, he’s down. And if he’s down deeper than six feet, I had to do this on a lake where I was teaching, not teach him, but I wanted to find out. I designed some lines for the Cortland line company that were sink tip lines. And I wanted to get the, I wanted to see how the line, the angle that it was when it was sinking, how the fly acted and so on and so forth. But what I really found out is I was in six feet of water. Denny (45m 26s): I used a a garden hose to breathe through and had a mask on. And I could see fish five feet in front of me laying on the bottom. As I looked out across the water, I could see the boat, him casting, putting the fly down there. And the fish that were attacking his fly were in the top two, three feet. Yeah. The fish that were deeper than six feet we’re stationary. Right. What does that mean? This is gonna affect every guy listening to this program right now when you’re on the water and the fish is deeper than about six, seven feet, they aren’t there to eat. They’re there because of oxygen and temperature and they want enough water over their backs for safety. Denny (46m 6s): Does that mean that they won’t take a fly? No. They’ll still take it if if you get it in front of their mouth because they’re not gonna move. We could put a fly down on the bottom, come within a foot of the of the fish, and Then we know they see it, but they wouldn’t move to it. So a fish that’s deep is basically telling you he’s not eating. Can you catch him? Yeah. Yeah. But you’re gonna play, you’re gonna spend a lot of time making a lot of casts for a few fish. They will be big. You won’t get small fish. They’re gonna be big. But you gotta find them. You gotta find them. But here’s the big point about fish pupa, and I think this is really critical to anybody that’s fishing. Like in the summer months when the hatches begin, when you see a ring on the surface, the fish that’s making the ring is cruising between 10 and 12 inches below the surface. Denny (46m 56s): And he’s looking for insects. When he sees one, he comes up, whether it’s the adult or the pupa, it’ll be one or the other. It won’t be both. And he’ll take the pupa. You can tell by the rise type. So if you see a ring and you do not see the fish, guys, all of you that are listening to this, remember what I’m gonna tell you now because I see so many guys making this mistake and not getting hit and they don’t understand why I went through this for 10 years and couldn’t figure it out. But here’s what’s going on. When the fish comes up, if it’s the adult he’s taken, you’ll see a ring and you will not see the fish. Denny (47m 40s): You might see his nose, but that’s all what the T trout’s doing is he’s sucking the adult underneath the surface. If it’s on the pupa, you will see him porous and you’ll see his back and his tail. That means he’s moving very slowly. They don’t move fast. The fish feeding on dry flies or the adults on top. Once they take it, they zip forward. It’s a totally different motion or movement. So you have to look at the rise type. If you’re in doubt, go to where you see the ring and you will see a bubble in the middle of it. The bubble indicates that the fish got air as well as the insect. Denny (48m 20s): If you see the fish porus, then he is on pupa. That means you have to fish below the surface. Okay? The insect that reached the top, as the fish is cruising when you see him porus, here’s what I learned. And I learned that fish in the lake in Wyoming. Oh boy. When I was with my buddy up there and I said, I’m going over by those weed beds ’cause that hatch is gonna start. And he says, oh, you’re gonna do that pupa thing? I said, I gotta figure out what I’m doing wrong. I had the flies, I had the line, but I still couldn’t catch ’em. Yeah. And then I remembered what my buddy had told me. When they’re coming up in the water, they never take on the pole. They always take on the pause. Denny (49m 1s): And what I realized then the fly drops when you pause, so the insect laying on the surface will drop down maybe a half inch to an inch, Dave. Yeah. And then he’ll wiggle and take a running start. All right. Go for it to get through the film. So here you are, you make a cast three or four feet in front of where you see the fish purposing. He’s moving slow. In that time, what I did is when I made my cast, I didn’t do anything right. I just started counting the five seconds. Thousand 1002, about 1,003. The fly will position itself in a 45 angle because the tip holds the head of the fly up. Denny (49m 42s): The bend of the hook is down at a 45. At about four to five seconds, the whole thing begins to sink. It only has to drop a quarter of an inch. When the fish sees it dropping, he opens his mouth and sucks it in. So as I saw this, I made my cast and I started counting the five. I never got the five fish. Picked it up and hauls ass across the water and goes aerial. And I landed him, and Garth says to me, he says, what did you do different? And I said, well, I’m not gonna tell you I’m gonna try it again and see if it works again. Well, three for three, I make the cast. I hook three fish, and I never got the five count on all three. So I had him try it. When he made the cast, here’s what happened. Denny (50m 24s): I watched the line back up and I know the fish had it, and I said, set the hook. And he says, well, I haven’t felt him yet. And he didn’t. He didn’t feel the fish take, but I saw the line back up. So finally he sets the hook and he missed him. Yeah. So what we’ve added to that, we do a five count and then do a strip very slow, about 10 inches pulling the fly toward you very slowly. Yeah. The reason for it is when the fish sees your fly, if he comes in there, because every cast you make, you’re gonna have some slack in that cast. And when the fish picks up your fly, you won’t feel it because he’s removing the slack as he swims away, but he’s moving very slowly. When you pull on the line toward you, you tighten it when he feels the resistance, then he bolts. Denny (51m 8s): Yeah. So a combination of a five count and a strip, another five count and a strip. The combination of the two. I’ve gone from about 5% success to about 80 to 85%. Wow. Success. It’s really easy. And it’s deadly when you see ’em. You gotta remember, if you see the fish rolling and you don’t see ’em, they’re on the adult and they will not pick a pupa. So yeah. What I was doing wrong, and most of you guys listening to this are doing the same thing I did. When you make a cast and you start stripping and retrieving back to you, you’re moving the fly parallel. Just below the surface. The insect you’re trying to imitate isn’t moving at all. Denny (51m 49s): And the fish know the difference. Hmm. So that’s why the pause. So what I’m telling you is there’s a retrieve that isn’t even in the books. You won’t find it online. You can go to the computer, you can look at books that are out there, articles that are written. Dave (52m 6s): Yep. So that’s not in your books. So the five, no, Denny (52m 9s): I learned it after I wrote my last one. Gotcha. But that’s why I wanted to tell everybody. That’s what I learned about Fish and Pupa. But you won’t find it out there and out. I canceled my subscription to Fly Fisher Magazine. Yeah. Because they’re a one dimensional magazine. They talk about streams and rivers, right. Salt water and salmon, steelhead, and where to go. But they don’t do still water. Dave (52m 33s): Trout routes is the most comprehensive mapping app for trout anglers. With over 50,000 trout streams, 350,000 access points, public land maps, and more trout routes is the number one resource for navigating, researching, and exploring trout streams. And it deserves a place in every anglers toolkit. I was in New York fishing recently. My first time in New York fishing. I had the Trout Routes app, and I was able to check out and access public access points through the maze of private property on the rivers we were fishing. And after I got into the stream and was fishing down through a run, I wasn’t quite sure. I saw a house down below. I wasn’t quite sure where the property lines ended. Dave (53m 13s): But given that I had trout routes, I was confident where I was fishing, and I was able to assure that I wasn’t trespassing. You’ll be fully prepared with offline maps. You can get driving directions to points of interest. Drop pins, add your notes in the app, all while keeping all of your data private to your account. Only you can visit trout routes.com right now to learn more and download the Trout Routes app for free in the app store today. That’s Trout routes. T-R-O-U-T-R-O-U-T-E-S. Start exploring today. Yeah. Why do you think that is, Denny? Why do you think the The Stillwater, I mean, I’ve always loved still water fishing. Dave (53m 55s): No, yeah. The magazine. But just in general, why do you think there’s not more still water fly anglers? Or do you think that has changed? Denny (54m 1s): Well, let tell you guys, Stillwater fly fishing is the fastest growing segment. Oh, it is. Of fly fishing in the country. Yeah. Oh, by far. Go to a lake and look at all the pontoon belly goats. Yeah. Those stores love selling those things ’cause they’re high, you know? Yeah. Items. But here’s something a lot of guys don’t know. If you compare a streaming river to a lake, this is coming from fish and game estimates that I talked to these guys about it. They said, for every fish 20 inches or better in the stream, there’s four times as many in a lake. Yeah. So in a stream, if it had a hundred fish that were 20 inches or better, there’s 400 in the nearby lakes. But if you go to a fish eight pounds and up that number jumps all the way to 45 to 50. Dave (54m 46s): Oh wow. No kidding. Denny (54m 47s): That means for every fish that’s eight pounds or better in a streamer river, there’s 40 to 50 in a lake. Geez. So the chance of you hooking a big fish are far greater than a lake. The reason, Dave, the guys struggle on still waters because they don’t spend enough time. So what I’ve been talking about today are things that I’ve learned that will help the guys be successful. But we need to get back and I need to talk about the temperature thing. ’cause it’s so critical. Dave (55m 16s): Yeah. Let’s hear that. And before you get there, just tell us, what was the pu a, what was the pupa fly you would be using potentially on that example you just described? Denny (55m 23s): Good question. Yeah. Open your fly box and look at everything. That’s not a bugger leach or, or minnow. They’re all pupa imitations. But no one’s gonna tell you that. And a fly shop, it doesn’t say, you know, there might say may fly pupa or pupa, stuff like that. But the difference between the larva and the pupa is so minimal. One has a wing case and one doesn’t. That’s the only difference. That’s it. So on my flies that I’m selling on my website, the only difference between a midge larva and a Midge pupa one has a wing case and one doesn’t. And it’s such a simple fly to tie and fish. God, I can’t impress upon the guys listening. Denny (56m 4s): Yeah. I use the midge larvae, what I call midge larva or Midge pupa has bailed me out of more instances. And guys say, well, you don’t use indicators, do you? And I said, no, ’cause I don’t have the patience. I can’t sit there and stir that stupid little ball all day. Yeah. It’s very effective. But when I find guys in my group, when I’m guiding, I’ll say, well, when you’re fishing with an indicator, I said, do you use one or two flies? And most of the guys will tell you two. And I said, well, when you put it down, let’s say you’re in 10 feet of water. I said, how far down do you set your indicator? And he says, oh. So it’s about nine feet down. So a foot off the bottom. And they’ll tell me, yeah, and this is the majority of guys. Denny (56m 46s): And I said, okay, when the strike comes, my question for you is that the depth you’re fishing or the fly. And then they look at me kind of funny ’cause they don’t know. Yeah. They just know that the system works and it does. So I said, well what you imitating? And they said, well I, I think it’s the depth. I said, well, I’ll tell you how to find out real quick. If they’re taken, they usually take the bottom fly, don’t they? Yeah. That’s why I think it’s the depth. ’cause it’s the bottom fly and it’s nine feet down where the other one’s eight feet down. I says, then switch flies. Yeah. The ones that eight feet put it down on the bottom. If you continue to catch, what does that tell you? The fish don’t care what the fly is, then it is the depth. Yeah. Denny (57m 26s): But sometimes you’ll find you can catch fish six feet under in 10 feet of water. Sometimes seven, sometimes eight. Why the difference? Because of water temperature. It’s where the fish are holding. So with this midge larva, Dave, here’s why this fly is so effective. I can use any fly line and we’re gonna talk about that next. Yeah. I can use any fly line. I can fish any depth. I can fish it tight to as shore or five, six feet in 10 feet of water, eight feet of water. When I go out the deep water, I’ll cast it and I’ll count. I’ll do a 10 count. If I’m not getting strikes in the first half dozen or so cast, then I’ll go to 20 and then I’ll go to 30. Denny (58m 7s): But I don’t go over 30. And I’m using an intermediate fly line when I do this. So I means I’m dropping one foot in 10 seconds. Eventually I’ll find the depth that the fish are holding. And then it’s one right after the other. Is that any different? But what I’m doing compared to the guys with the indicators, when you’re fishing an indicator, what are you imitating? Is it the larva, the pubic? Right. And you know what they tell me? Most of ’em will say, well, I think it’s a larva, larva, larva. Live on the bottom, not a foot off the bottom. Well then it’s gotta be the pupa. I said a pupa. When he starts up, he doesn’t stop, he doesn’t hold. He keeps going. Well, I don’t know what it is, but I just know it works. Denny (58m 48s): And that’s fine. It does work. We don’t, it doesn’t matter. Understand the system. But as long as you have ripple on top, the fly’s moving. Yeah. Now here’s the one thing that guys do not understand that they need to understand about the flies that they fish. When I fish a shoreline edge, I use the big stuff. My seal buggers or a leach or a minnow. I don’t use the small stuff because the big stuff, trout looking for protein in a bite, large food source or whatever. When they take the takes are hard. When I go to a pupa that takes and the whole thing is different. Mm. Fish do not strike the small stuff that way they suck it in. Denny (59m 29s): Yeah. Which means you won’t know it until you pull tight. And it’s an up and down thing when you’re fishing, those flies. But what do we do? We cast and retrieve and move the fly parallel. If it’s in the top foot and a fish is moving, he’ll see it. But he’ll come in from the side. And it works. When a fish drops down to a depth and he holds it’s ’cause of oxygen and temperature. And when you reach his depth, the pause, it’s an up and down thing, not a parallel pole that makes the difference on the numbers of fish that you will catch. So when we’re talking temperature in the water, here’s what a guy needs to remember. If the water temperature is below 40 degrees, the fish is gonna be very lethargic. Denny (1h 0m 9s): When is the water in those water? Temperature ranges. Spring and fall. Yep. In the winter, you’re coming out of a cold water situation, warming. In the fall, you’re coming out of a warm water situation, cooling. So the fish are going to be at certain depths relative to what the water depth of the lake is. That’s why reservoirs in the fall are excellent choices. Because what the fish will do, they’ll find the old channels or they’ll find the deepest part, but they’ll feed more early and late. And not as much during the daytime unless there’s sufficient water out there. But if you can find that water temperature that isn’t changing drastically, you should find a consistent bite. Denny (1h 0m 51s): What you gotta remember is when the water is 40 or below the fish’s metabolism is in slow motion. Meaning there is no advantage to go into that lake and fishing early in the morning. Yeah. Water’s too cold. Fish are gonna wait for the water to warm, which will be somewhere between 10 30, 11 o’clock till about two. So when I’m on a lake, and depending on time of year, I’m putting in my log what time I caught those fish. And I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone at 8, 9, 10 and I’m going for a boat ride. Yeah. I’m not getting strikes. I’m not hooking fish. Around 10, 30, 11, I start to hook fish ’cause the water’s warmed up enough. Denny (1h 1m 32s): Fish know this. And they will adjust to the water. Temperature increases around one 30 to two o’clock. It starts going the other way. As it starts to cool down, they’ll go off their bite. I mean, just like flipping on a light switch, they just, they won’t take nearly as the same as they do when the water’s warmer. So when the water temperature, if it’s gonna reach its highest point, whatever that might be, may only get to the high forties. You need to fish the lake more midday. And you will find could be some hatches that’ll come off, usually Midges at that time. And they’ll be more in the midday timeframe. They won’t be earlier, late. So water temperature controls everything that a fish does. Denny (1h 2m 13s): It controls what they eat, when they eat, how much they eat, when they spawn, where they go, the depth they hold. Everything that they do is controlled by water temperature. And as a guy learns his lake and learns the water temperature, of course if you can do it when it’s in the summer months, when it’s warmer, you’re gonna have insect hatches to deal with. And all the big stuff will work too. It just fish the big stuff early and late and the small stuff midday and you usually will do well. Dave (1h 2m 42s): Okay. You mentioned a little bit on lines with groin line. What is the line you’d recommend if somebody wanted to go buy a line? Do they need one line or a bunch of lines? Denny (1h 2m 49s): Really good question, Dave. And that’s critical. I use three lines in my approach. I use the dry line for dry fly fishing on top, or if you find the indicator fishing, which you won’t. But if I have to, and sometimes if the fish aren’t on the shoreline and there’s no hatches coming off, then I’ll use an indicator and ’cause it’s the best way to go. And it does catch fish. But you just kind of make sure there’s fish underneath where you cast. So that’s a floating line for those two forms of presentation. The intermediate covers the top six feet and sinks one foot in 10 seconds. Yeah. I use a seven foot tip, which is my pupa line, and I fish the top foot. Denny (1h 3m 32s): I need to keep the fly as high as I can for as long as I can. So when you find a zone, let’s say the fish are down three, four feet. As long as you’re above ’em, you’ve got a chance of catching them. The minute you go down below ’em, you’re in trouble. Yeah. So there’s another fallacy misunderstanding out there about sink tip lines. Yeah. A lot of guys have ’em, but don’t understand how to use ’em. They don’t cast as smooth as a full sinking line. But if you are fishing a lake and you want to go down 10, 12 feet, a lot of guys will use a fast sinking line that’s a 3, 4, 5, something like that. Yeah, maybe even a six. The number of the line is relative to the number of feet and 10 seconds that it sinks. Denny (1h 4m 14s): So a three sinks, three feet and 10 a five sinks. Five feet and 10 seconds. Let’s say you’re out on the water and you check the depth and it says 12 feet. And you find the fish holding 10, 11 feet down. What do guys do? They take a fast sinking line and they may that when they cast, let’s say it’s a number four, so it’s sinking four feet and 10, you count 20 seconds, you’re down eight feet. When you get to the level where the fish are, how do you stop the descent? Dave (1h 4m 43s): Can’t, you Denny (1h 4m 44s): Can’t, every time you pause, the line’s gonna drop and it’s gonna drop quickly. So you start catching moss, weeds, snags on limbs, who knows rocks, whatever it might be. Dave (1h 4m 55s): Is that how you know? How do you know what depth of it is? If they are at five feet or four feet deep, how do you know that they’re there? Denny (1h 5m 1s): Depth finder. Dave (1h 5m 1s): Oh, it’s just depth finder. So you can see the fish. Denny (1h 5m 3s): Yeah. But you remember, yeah. The fish that’s down underneath you is straight underneath you. That’s what the depth finder’s reading. All it’s telling you is where they’re holding. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can go anywhere on the lake and find them all because you’re not gonna find, find lakes. They don’t do that. They pick certain spots. And where there’s one, there’s gonna be others. And there’s a reason why fish hole in certain spots could be an indentation, could be an oxygen thing, whatever it is. But when you find them, here’s the mistake the guys make. And it’s not that a full sinking line won’t work because when you cast it and you get to there, if you increase the speed, which you should not do, fish don’t like flies moving fast, deep, they like ’em moving slow. Denny (1h 5m 47s): So the slower you can move the fly, the more of a chance you have of hooking that fish. So let’s take a sink tip. And I designed these lines for Cortland, which they have since stopped making those minis. They, they shouldn’t have done it, but they did. I think the guy that’s running that outfit, he stopped making all of their most of their sink tip lines. And I know the reason they did it is because the sales weren’t there. Well, the sales weren’t there because the guys who were selling ’em don’t know how to use the line. And most of the boxes that I looked at Corless putting out, I worked for Cortland for almost 20 years designing the Stillwater side of all the products. Denny (1h 6m 27s): And we put lines and flies and DVDs and I was doing a lot of that stuff for ’em and promoting their products. And they had good stuff. But it’s since changed hands a couple of times. And the new owners, they’ve eliminated a lot of these lines. But here’s the big thing, Dave, about a sink tip line. You can use a type two or three. What you do on a sink tip line, you have to know what the sink rate is of the sinking portion. And how long is that tip? Sometimes it’s five feet, sometimes it’s 10, sometimes it’s 15, whatever the length is, that’s fine. My seven footer for pupil fishing sinks very, very slowly. Denny (1h 7m 8s): It’s an intermediate tip on a floating line, but it keeps my fly right where I want it to be. And I use it more than I’m using my intermediate now. Plus it’s a good line to use in streams and rivers for nipping. But anyway, if we take a type two, that means it’s gonna sink two feet and 10 seconds. Let’s say we’re in 10 feet of water and a fish hole and nine feet. If I cast this line out, it’s 10 feet long. The sinking portion, I’ll have to count 40 seconds to get it down eight feet. But remember, it’s sinking very slowly. Here’s my question for all the guys listening in. If I could line ’em up, every one of ’em would give me the same answer. Because I asked this question when I’m Kevin talks. Denny (1h 7m 49s): Yeah, the shows and groups and everybody says the same thing. When you pull on the floating portion of the line toward you and you have an angle down to your fly, which way does the fly go? Do you know? Dave (1h 8m 4s): I would say the obvious that you’d say it comes towards you. But that’s probably not the right answer. Denny (1h 8m 9s): That’s the right answer. Dave (1h 8m 11s): Oh, it is. Denny (1h 8m 11s): What everybody thinks is it pulls the fly up. It doesn’t Dave (1h 8m 14s): Come up. Oh, it folds it up. Right. Denny (1h 8m 16s): It drags coming. So if it’s at eight feet, it’s gonna move parallel across. Now stop and think, Dave, if you’re down eight feet and you’re stripping, you’re moving the fly parallel. And you can keep it just above the level where the fissure, which is exactly what you want. So a sink tip line to fish deep is far better than a full sinking line. There’s one exception to that that I’ve learned. If the bottom has small rocks or pebbles and not something she’ll snag on, you can bounce it down on the rocks and sometimes getting it on the very bottom. If there will be some fish that’ll be laying on the bottom and if you cross it in front of their nose, they’ll react to it. Denny (1h 8m 57s): You move it a foot from ’em and they won’t react to it. And we’ve done this in the hatcheries to on some of the big bro stock, I’m telling you, they won’t move to it. So anyway, it’s just something to remember If you fish deep. Okay. But it’s a last resort for me. And I think the last thing we really need to cover. Yeah. ’cause it’s a part of the presentation is leaders and tts. Dave (1h 9m 18s): Oh yeah. Leaders and tippet. That’s good Denny (1h 9m 19s): Leaders. Most guys use too short a liter for Stillwater, they use nine or 10 footers. I don’t use anything shorter than 12 feet. 12. Okay. What I do, and here’s the leaders that I sell that I designed, and I’ve had several people tell me, I had an attorney about a month ago, call me and tell me tinny, I used that new leader you told me about. And he says, my God, why haven’t you done something to get the, an exclusive on this? Right? He says, someone’s gonna copy you. And I says, I know, but I at my age, I don’t need the extra money. But he says, God, it’s really good. And what I do is I take a monofilament leader, I go to the store, or I order ’em from Cortland or whoever the company is, nine feet. Denny (1h 10m 3s): And I’ll go OX one x two x three x four x. I’ll get all four sizes on a nine foot OX. It’s 1213 pound test on the end of the line. I have a guy up in Portland, Oregon that does this for me. We take fluorocarbon Tippi material and tie three feet of fluorocarbon to the end of the monofilament line. So a nine foot liter is now 12 feet. When you add to a nine foot liter, you do an increments of three feet and you have to come down one X. So if the package says nine foot OX, you add one X to the tipt. Denny (1h 10m 43s): Yeah. ’cause it already has a tippet on it. So you’re adding to it. If it says nine foot two x, then you put three feet of three x on the end. So you have to come down one X. And the reason for that is it balances the liter so it’ll turn over. What guys don’t understand about short leaders. Short leaders are okay if you fish deep, but you can’t fish up near the surface because a floating line, and I’ve got a guy who I’m gonna talk to today tells me he uses mostly floating lines. A floating line causes surface disturbance. Yep. So you can’t retrieve it. And it’s not a good line to troll. It’s up on top. It’s good for pupa and it’s good for dries, but it’s not the line to use if you’re gonna strip it. Denny (1h 11m 26s): Yep. So anyway, the liter that I’m using is never under 12 feet. If I wanted to go to 15 feet, then my nine foot OX liter that I put one X for carbon tippo on, I would have to add three more feet of two x to the end of it to get out to 15. And every time you add, you have to come down one, as I mentioned. But a lot of guys will ask, why do you use monofilament leader? Because monofilament reflects light and leaves a shadow. Fluorocarbon doesn’t do either one and has a density almost the same as water, which means it’s almost invisible. So that’s what I use. I don’t use anything but fluorocarbon. Denny (1h 12m 7s): But the fluorocarbon that I use and sell is the smallest diameter I’ve found. And the reason I use it’s ’cause it’s got the best knot strength. But I can get one X through a size 12 fly on the I And guys think, God, it’s pretty thick. And that’s what where they run into trouble. Because you learn your dry fly stuff on streams and rivers and we use long liters, light tempts and little flies. Yeah. I still do that when I’m fishing. My creek that runs through my ranch here, I’ll use an 18 foot liter down to six x. But it’s fluorocarbon on the end. ’cause when the fluorocarbon is, you don’t want it float and you want it underneath the water. Denny (1h 12m 48s): So that’s what I do. I put fluorocarbon tip on a monofilament leader. And the reason for the monofilament leader is it has memory. Mm. What does that mean? That means when I start my day and I pull the line off the reel, I pull the number of poles I think I’m gonna cast when it comes to the liter and tipt, I can straighten it by stretching it. Memory means it stretches. And if it stretches, you can straighten it by merely pulling it. Pulling it. Gotcha. You cannot do that with fluorocarbon. So I don’t use fluorocarbon liters, I use a monofil liter. And with that extra three feet, all the fish is gonna focus on when he sees your fly is what’s on the end. Denny (1h 13m 28s): Yeah. So there isn’t any reflection. So that’s pretty much the game we play, pal. Well, Dave (1h 13m 34s): Well the one thing we didn’t talk about today, and we talked about on the last one, but give a shout out. You’ve got a bunch of flies that are like, you know, well known. And one that I know that I’ve used in the past. I mean, you talked about what haven’t you talked about from your flies. Maybe just give us a heads up on some of the The flies. Okay. Denny (1h 13m 49s): There’s Dave (1h 13m 51s): The steelwater nph. The Steelwater NPH was the one I was thinking of that like was really, it’s really effective. Denny (1h 13m 56s): Number two cellar out of all Dave (1h 13m 57s): Of Yeah. Maybe just give us that. Why is the steel water such an effective pattern and what is it imitating? Denny (1h 14m 2s): The Stillwater Nim. Yeah. Has to do with the approach. You gotta remember when a fish sees your fly. What does a trout see when it, when you drop a fly in the water, what do you think he’s gonna focus on first Dave (1h 14m 14s): When you drop in the water? Probably size, silhouette. Oh, silhouette. Silhouette. Denny (1h 14m 18s): Yeah. It’s gotta look like food. Yeah. Then how it moves. You see, we cannot, Dave, no matter how hard you try, you cannot match what a trout season eats every day. Dave (1h 14m 29s): Yeah. Denny (1h 14m 29s): You can come close, you can clone the fly and it look like it, but you can’t make it act like it. So the key, and God, I’m glad you brought that question up. ’cause it remind me, there’s one of the main things about the other flies the guys don’t know about that they need to know about. And I’ll tell you in just a second. Yeah. So the Stillwater n the silhouette is what they’re keying on because it looks like a dam damsel. Dave (1h 14m 52s): Oh, damsel. Yeah. Denny (1h 14m 53s): I can fish that fly in the middle of December when there’s no damsels around and just kill Dave (1h 14m 58s): ’em. Right. Denny (1h 14m 59s): It’s got a bu tail that wiggles and breathes. Dave (1h 15m 1s): Gotcha. So you could use it like January, February, March, you could use that fly. Denny (1h 15m 6s): I doesn’t make any difference when you use it. That and the mid larva are just two deadly deadly flies. The others that were some of the first patterns that I used religiously is a CTA nmp. And there’s seven varieties of that Stillwater Nmp. There’s nine different color variations of that fly. And the PM merger, both the ap, ap and and CTI are excellent pupa patterns for may flies. Stan, it doesn’t make any difference to fish like them because they have moving breathing parts. So one of the things that I wanted to tell the guys that I almost forgot, if you hadn’t asked me that question. When you’re using big flies, I refer to the big flies, the Midges, or not the Midges, but the, the buggers. Denny (1h 15m 50s): Leeches and minimum imitations. Those are suggestive flies. Meaning that they suggest food to a trout. What do you think a fish thinks when he sees a bugger? Because there isn’t a guy fishing that I’ve talked to in the last five years that doesn’t have bugger in a fly box. Right? Everybody does. Yeah. Everybody’s got it because they catch fish. Yeah. But guys don’t know why they catch fish. And the reason for it, and if you go to a fly shop for you guys listening, go to your local fly shop and see if I’m wrong on this. Go to where they have buggers and you’re gonna see tails that are too short, too bushy. The hook shanks are too short, they’re not weighted. They have Chanel bodies or some other kind of material in there. Denny (1h 16m 34s): I put seals, fur, and it’s placed, make it more suggestive and translucent. I linked them the tail and made it more sparse to give it more movement. And the hackle is soft and I only put four turns and no more than four. So that one is not bumping into the other. Yeah. And as I strip it through the water, all of the parts of the fly are breathing and moving. So I had a guy tell me this, geez, how long ago was it? I can’t remember. Probably 20 years, 30 years ago. He said, Denny, remember when a fish sees your fly, does it look like food? Yes. What is it that makes him react? Because trout are reactionary creatures. Denny (1h 17m 15s): So when you guys are using buggers or leeches or a minnow imitation, minnows being their number one priority, by the way, because of the protein value, they’ll take a minnow and they’ll chase it and burn the calories to do it because of the protein value on a bugger a leach. They’re not really sure what these things are. So when a trout sees them, what is it that makes the fish react? And the answer to that question, guys, is movement. Movement. I build it into the fly when you buy it. Yeah. That means the bu tails are gonna give you maximum movement. Sometimes it’s the wings, sometimes it could be underneath the fly could be on top. Denny (1h 17m 58s): But anyway, all of those materials breathe and pulsate what that says to a fish when he sees it is it’s alive. Yeah. Stop. And think about when you guys fish your chron, Midges underneath an indicator. If their water is flat on top and your fly isn’t moving, what fish is gonna swim over to a fly hanging upside down and want to eat it if it, there’s no life to it. Right? But if it’s rip on top, the fly is bouncing up and down, which tells the fish it’s alive. So fish don’t eat dead things. They eat things that are alive. So when you move it, whether you troll it or strip it, you’re putting movement to it. I build it into the fly. It’s up to you to activate it with your retrieve. Denny (1h 18m 39s): So buggers and leches should be stripped a little harder. And some guys will think, well fish, you know when you’re fishing a leach, they’re really good flies. And they are, they’re one of the deadliest patterns we can use. But the reason for it is a maroo leach is total movement. A hundred percent. Yes. And when you’re using it and it’s fluttering through the water, you gotta remember, and I’ve watched this Dave on my home lake. Yeah. I’ve probably seen a thousand leeches swimming in the water. I’ve yet to see a single fish come up and eat one that’s swimming in the water. What they do is they go to where the leeches are feeding and they feed on vegetation and they’ll go over and they’ll take their tail and slap the thing and knock the leches off a leach that lays on the bottom, looks like a scallop. Denny (1h 19m 27s): It’s round. And when it swims and goes to eat it elongates like a worm. And that’s what we see. And it wiggles up and down as it moves through the water on my seal. Bugger. They’re weighted what? 20 turns of oh two oh wire, which is too amp at the head. So when you pause and you retrieve the head tips doesn’t drop. I don’t use beads on my flies. I don’t even know how to put a bead on a hook. Right. No beads. Okay. Because I don’t want the fly to drop in an unnatural manner. Or drops too fast. Bead headed flies are really designed for streams and rivers. Yeah. And guys that are using bead headed flies. What’s the point in using a bead when you’re trying to keep the fly in the top two feet and it drops below right? Denny (1h 20m 9s): Very quickly. So whatever line you use, the fly still has to pass through the top two feet. If it passes through too fast, the fish says no. If it goes a little slow and you move it a little parallel, you will get far more action. Because what you’re selling the fish on is what’s on the end. Your line is alive, they don’t care what it is. Yeah. It must be food or it wouldn’t be in the water. And their way of finding out is they go in and they try to kill it. That’s what they do. The leeches and buggers, they try to kill ’em first and they use their tail and slap ’em. So how many times have you guys snagged the fish? Yep. You ever wonder why the fish hits it with the side of his body? Denny (1h 20m 51s): Fish game guy had to tell me this is ’cause they have membranes there that are like their sensors, it’s their way of detecting movement and speed. So they slap ’em with their side. And when we snag them, you know, I’ve come back where I see this big scale on, on the shank of my hook, and I know exactly what happened. I had him snagged. I didn’t have him in the mouth, and he come unbuttoned and I got the scale. There you go. So anyway, that’s just the way this, so when it comes back to lines, Dave, yeah, a floater, floater and intermediate and a seven foot tip. I can cover most of what I’m doing. And if I have to go to a sink tip line and go deep, it’s my fourth line, but it’s my last resort that I’ll do that. Denny (1h 21m 32s): I’d probably go to an indicator and fish down deep rather than take a full sinking line. But there are some lakes that guys, they know the drill and they know how to do it and it works for ’em. Dave (1h 21m 41s): Yeah. This is awesome. Well, I think we’ll leave it there, Denny, this has been amazing. We will send everybody out to fly fishing stillwaters.com or they can just connect with your phone number on your website there. Want to appreciate, hopefully we’ll be in touch with you again sooner than a few five years because this has Denny (1h 21m 56s): Been, I look forward to it. Dave (1h 21m 57s): You’re always a wealth of knowledge here. So appreciate all the wisdom today and looking forward to catching you on that next episode. Denny (1h 22m 2s): Thanks a lot for the opportunity, Dave. Dave (1h 22m 6s): All right. If you haven’t yet connected with Denny, please check in with him. Fly fishing stillwaters.com, send him, he’s got his phone number right there on the website. If you have any questions, please check in with Denny. He’s always got some good stuff going. He can always help and obviously he can hold a good conversation. If you haven’t yet, please follow the show. Click that follow button so you get this next episode delivered right into your inbox. And we have a big episode coming up on that next episode. You don’t wanna miss this one. I’m just gonna give you a hint right now. It has to do with streamers and the southeast part of the country and a new podcast series we got coming up. So you’re gonna wanna stay tuned for that. We got a big one, a big one coming this week. So I don’t wanna draw out any more than that. Dave (1h 22m 47s): And just let you know, stay tuned this week if you’re ready for something big. Wanna also let you know the co clinic also starts next week. We’ve got a big week next week, so next week the Coho Clinic’s gonna be starting and we’re gonna have Waters West on here to talk about this upcoming coho clinic and what you can do to get involved in this. The best way to get involved in this is check in with me if you’re interested and, and I’ll get you connected with Wetly Swing Pro if you’re not a pro member already. That’s the best way to get first access to some of these upcoming clinics and schools and things we have going this year. All right, thanks for checking in today. I hope you are having a great morning. Hope you’re having a great afternoon or if it’s evening, hope you’re having a great evening wherever you are in the world, and even if that’s down in Northern California or Southern California, maybe you’re down there as well. Dave (1h 23m 32s): Hope things have recovered if you’re down in that part of the world. But I appreciate you for sticking in all the way till the very end and and look forward to checking with you and talk to you very soon.