Fishing Tips

This page provides a list of fishing tips broken up into the following categories and subcategories.

Fishing

General

Fly Fishing

Patterns
River Tactics
Stillwater Tactics
Tactics

Lure Fishing

Patterns
River Tactics
Stillwater Tactics
Tactics

Bait Fishing

Patterns
River Tactics
Stillwater Tactics
Tactics

Fishing

General

When handling fish you plan on releasing, try to keep the fish in the water while removing the hook. For pictures, wet your hands first, and limit the time the fish is out of water to 15 seconds. Never touch the fish's gills.
If you're going to fish, always use polarized sunglasses. They make an incredible difference in being able to spot fish in rivers or lakes, plus you can spot your floating flies or small indicators/bobbers more easily.
Keep a fishing log! A web-based or written journal will help you remember when you fished, how you did, what the weather conditions were like, which patterns worked, and more.

In rivers, nymphs tend to feed and be more active at certain times of the day. As a result, higher concentrations of nymphs are available in the drift to feeding fish at corresponding times. Here are the nymph feeding/activity cycles:

Nocturnal Cycle:	mayfly nymphs, stonefly nymphs, free-living caddis larvae
Diurnal Cycle:	case-building caddis
Steady 24-hour Cycle:	midge larvae

When using the clinch or improved clinch knot to attach flies to your tippet, make sure you make enough turns for the knot to be secure. As a general rule, use 2 turns plus the tippet size. So 5X tippet requires 2 + 5 = 7 turns, 6X requires 2 + 6 = 8 turns, and 7X requires 2 + 7 = 9 turns. For 4X tippet and larger, 5 turns should suffice.
When choosing a streamer color, keep in mind that trout react more aggresively to colors of its own species. Brown trout respond to yellow; rainbow trout respond to silver with perhaps some electric blue; brook trout respond to red.
On sustained windy days, fish the down-wind side of a lake or pond. The wind pushes forage such as drowned insects to this side of the lake. Fish will congregate here to feed and are usually active.
Try fishing deeper water on high barometer pressure days and shallower water on low pressure days. On high pressure days, fish's gas bladders compress from the pressure, making it harder for them to suspend themselves high in the water column. Also, bright sun usually associated with high pressure days tends to push fish deeper.
While spinning reels are great for lightweight fishing, they have a disadvantage over other reel types because they eventually twist the line, creating loops, knots and tangles. To help prevent line memory and tangles, submerge your spool in a glass of water the night before you go fishing and let it soak overnight.
When fishing lures or flies around cover like rocks, tree stumps, or other abrasive materials, check the line above your lure or fly regularly for fraying and nicks. Any abrasion can significantly lessen the strength of the line. If any abrasion is found, cut the affected line off and retie on your pattern.

Fly Fishing

Patterns

Use brightly-colored bee and wasp patterns after quick afternoon summer rainstorms. The heavier and more sudden the storm, along with a good population of bees in meadows near the stream, the better. The rain and wind will knock flying insects into the stream or river.
Fishing a large, flashy streamer in deep pools on rivers can result in big fish. If you get a chase or a strike on a retrieve from a big fish but find the fish won't hit your streamer on subsequent retrieves, try switching to a smaller, more plain pattern. Now agitated, the trout might be willing to hit the "safer" pattern.
When fishing flies that have mylar or wire ribbing, try the following advice: on sunny days or when fishing shallow water, use silver-ribbed flies; on cloudy days or when fishing deeper water, use copper-ribbed or gold-ribbed flies.
During the summer, most anglers fish grasshopper patterns on top and get occasional hits from occasional fish. To get more consistent hits during the afternoon, try fishing a weighted grasshopper pattern as a nymph. Fish are accustomed to seeing plenty of terresterials drift by in the current, and may be more willing to hit a drowned grasshopper than a dry. The pattern will need to more exactly match the color and size of the predominate insects.
Based on Gary LaFontaine's Theory of Attraction, choose bright attractor patterns when fishing flat water, and choose dull attractor patterns when fishing rough, broken water.
Based on Gary LaFontaine's Theory of Attraction, choose wide dry fly patterns for rough water, tall patterns for broken water, and bulky patterns for slower water. For example, patterns like the Chernobyl Ant or Madam X are wide patterns and work well in rough water. For tall patterns, use more heavily-hackled flies with large wings.

River Tactics

When working a group or pod of rising fish in a river, try to approach the pod from below. Focus on catching individual fish from downstream to upstream. Once a fish is hooked, try to steer it downstream away from the pod. This will allow you to catch more fish.
In general, try fishing two flies instead of one when you are searching for active trout in a river. Two flies allow you to try different patterns, sizes, colors, and water depths at once.
When fishing tandem fly setups, have the first fly be either a larger, brighter, or both pattern. While it might not catch fish, it will attract fish to inspect the fly. Have the second fly be a smaller, more realistic pattern. If the fish refuses the gaudier fly, it might take the more realistic fly.
At the end of drifting nymphs through a run, let the line tighten and straighten in the current. The sunken flies will swing towards the surface and may incite a strike.
The size of your fly should generally correspond to the speed of the section of river you are fishing. When fishing rapids or swift water, use bigger flies to quickly attract fish's attention. For slower water where fish have more time to inspect what drifts by, use smaller, more realistic patterns.
The roll cast should almost always be used to pick dry flies off the water after a drift. If the line is simply ripped off the surface into a backcast, a spray of water droplets will rain down on the fish, potentially spooking them. A roll cast pickup minimizes the amount of spray generated from lifting the line off the water.
When presenting a dry fly to a fish in a river, if the fish refuses the fly, wait until the fly drifts well below the fish before picking up line and recasting. Also, if you make an inaccurate cast to a fish, let the fly and line drift well below the fish before picking up line. If you try to pick up the fly when it's near the fish, there's a good chance it will be spooked and stop feeding.
In the winter, fish will still feed actively if the conditions are right (i.e., warm, sunny days). They will congregate in slow pools and deep back-eddies along faster runs - places where they feel safe and can feed while expending minimal energy. Midges/chironomids constitute most of a trout's diet in the winter, so patterns like Griffith's Gnats and Zebra Midges are the best bet.
If you're nymph fishing, you generally want your flies near the bottom of the river. As a general rule, position your strike indicator 1 1/2 to 2 times the depth of the water being fished. Add splitshot 6" to 12" above your fly. If your fly isn't ticking the bottom (causing your strike indicator to stutter occasionally), or you're not hanging up every 4 or 5 casts, your flies probably aren't deep enough. Add additional splitshot or move your indicator up 6" to 12" until you occasionally hang up or find weeds on your hook.

Stillwater Tactics

When it's windy out, don't fight the wind, use it to your advantage. Try a technique like the Hang and Bob. In summary, suspend two to three bead-head flies 3' apart on your leader. Attach a strike indicator above the top fly. Fish the line straight down wind from you, so the wind will keep the flies in the same location. The strike indicator will ride the little waves, essentially jigging the flies at a constant depth and location. Vary the location of the strike indicator to fish various depths until the correct one is found.
An effective windy-day tactic is to "wind-drift" flies on a lake or pond. To do this, tie on a couple patterns a few feet apart that mimic midge pupa, suspended mayfly nymphs, scuds, etc. Attach a strike indicator above the first fly. Simply cast the pattern out and let the wind drift the patterns over prime areas. Vary the distance between the indicator and the first fly to vary the depth fished.
When fly fishing for trout in a new stillwater, try flies in the following order until you find something that works: Chironomid, Scud, Leech, Dragonfly/Damsel, Terrestrial. In general, that's the order of dietary importance to fish. High-elevation/sub-alpine lakes will have a different order.
In general, avoid fishing stillwaters when: 1) the barometer is dropping because of an incoming cold front, and 2) during a full moon. However, incoming storms tend to increase fish's feeding activity.
The pause is the most important part of a retrieve when stillwater fishing. When insects are rising in the water column in preparation for hatching, they will tire and pause momentarily. Trout will key in on this and dart in on paused insects.

Tactics

In windy conditions during a hatch, focus on using cripple, emerger, or floating nymph patterns since the fish will be less likely to take an unnatural looking dun that's getting blown across the surface.
When scouting a river or lake, pay attention to birds. If you see a flock of swallows over a section of water, they're likely there because insects are hatching. If insects are hatching, fish are likely to be active. On stillwaters or on the ocean, birds can signal where schools of small fish are near the surface; larger fish are likely to be in the vicinity.
As you approach a river or lake for the first time that day, inspecting the riparian grasses, bushes, and trees will give you important clues as to what has happened recently. You'll often find adult maflies, caddisflies, or other insects that could tell you what hatched earlier that day or in the days previous. This is a good starting point for fly selection. On windy summer days, you'll also find the prevalent terrestrial insects that are worth mimicking.
If you're fishing a small fly that you can't easily see during, say, a midge, bwo, or trico hatch, there are a couple approaches that could help you. Try fishing the small fly as a dropper below a slightly larger, more bouyant dry fly. Or, add a small pinch-on float to your leader a couple feet above your fly. Both of these methods will give you an indicator for where to try to find your fly. And if you see a rise near your indicator, set the hook!
When fish are feeding on or near the surface during a hatch in either a river or a stillwater, try fishing an adult pattern and an emerging or nymph pattern. This allows you to target multiple stages of an insect hatch at the same time, for the same fish. First, tie on an adult pattern. Attach 12" to 18" of tippet to the bend of the hook, then attach the other end to the emerger or unweighted nymph. Look for rises to the adult, or for the adult to disappear when a fish takes the nymph.