365 Fly-Fishing Tips for Trout, Bass, and Panfish

Introduction

If you’re new to fly fishing and you read through this book—just one time through—you’ll turn the last page a much better fly fisher than you were when you turned the front cover. You’ll have improved, I’d estimate, by half again. And that . . . is huge. An investment of only a few pleasant hours for a leap of half. (I hope and pray they’re pleasant. I did everything in my power to make this book an enjoyable read.)

Imagine how much you’ll improve if you read through it twice. Imagine . . .

Even if you’ve fly-fished for decades, I believe you’ll still pick up a heap of fresh, practical information and ideas here.

These are bold claims, indeed. But in case you mistake my boldness for arrogance: nope—it’s just me being realistic. Look, I’ve spent several decades making a living in fly fishing—writing about it (this is my 19th book, and I’ve published over 300 articles in the fly magazines), teaching it, speaking about it at fly clubs and events, and also fishing with many fly-fishing writers, guides, and experts while asking them lots of questions. I’m bound to be loaded with great information.

If you did all that, don’t you think you could come up with a few hundred excellent tips, many that would give even a seasoned fly fisher a happy surprise?

Bet you could.

I believe I did.

The tips, all of them, are tips you’ll actually use. The kind that, once you apply them, make you blink and go, Wow—why didn’t I think of that?

The illustrations and photos make this book much better than it would be without them—some things just show better than tell. And for many things, a combination of telling and showing is ideal. This book contains lots of telling-and-showing tips.

When the book was finished, all 365 tips researched, written, and polished, I had some left over. The leftovers were excellent tips, but they could be expressed well in so few words that they didn’t fit in with the others. Besides, the other, longer tips were gems—I couldn’t let any of them go. So I checked with my editor and she let me add these dandy little leftover ones in, here and there, and call them Bonus Tips. That’s right, they’re extras, a gift to you.

There’s stuff in here on selecting flies wisely and making sense of all the various fly types, on improving your casting and adding new casts (casting—so important. How else do you get your fly out in front of a fish?). There are deadly fishing techniques of all sorts clearly presented, there’s info on how to find fish (usually fish gather only in certain places), there’s instruction on how to make up effective rigs, and on and on the list goes. As I said: stuff you’ll use.

So read, learn, understand, improve, and, most of all, enjoy. Enjoyment: that’s really the main reason for taking up fly fishing. These tips will make your fishing go smoothly, provide insight so that you know what to do and why, and put more fish on your line—what’s more enjoyable than that?

CHAPTER 1

MEET YOUR FISHES

Before you go out to catch them, you need to know the fishes this book will help you catch. Here’s an introduction.

Tip 1 Meet the Trouts

All trout are similar, but definitely not the same. The brook trout isn’t actually a trout at all, but a close relative called a char. There are more trout (and char) species than the four below, but these four are by far the most common in North America, and the rainbow and brown are now common all over the world.

RAINBOW

Almost as inherently cagey as the brown, and just as cagey when conditions are right. Loves streams, including quick water, but like all trout loves lakes too. Often a wild leaper and heavy on speed and stamina. Green back, silvery flanks. A red stripe may run broad and vivid down each of its flanks or be entirely absent.

BROWN

Born smart, then grows smarter. Tends to like quiet currents but will hold in swift ones. Loves lakes too. A fair to good fighter. Truly brown (to tan) along flanks and back, some red spots, belly is yellow.

CUTTHROAT

Slow learner (but it can learn), prefers moderate to slow currents or the still water of lakes. Good fighter. Green back and gray or yellow flanks. Always some sort of orange, pink, or red slash along both sides of the jaw, sometimes faint but sometimes a big, vivid splash.

BROOK

Sometimes moody. Under the right conditions, perhaps even cagey. Prefers lakes and slow water in streams. Modest fighter. Its fall spawning colors are striking. Green back and flanks. There are always wormwood markings on a brookie’s back.

Tip 2 Meet the Basses and Panfish

The basses and panfish (with a very few exceptions) prefer warmer to much warmer water than trout can tolerate. And don’t think that warmwater fishes are just misshapen trout—you can be a fine trout fisher yet fail to catch many, or any, bass and panfish.

LARGEMOUTH BASS

Found in every state but Alaska, and in Mexico and Canada. Loves warm water but does fine up north thanks to summer water temperatures. Leaps and fights hard (though briefly). Tolerates only very slow currents—a true lake fish. Has a smudgy black horizontal stripe along each flank.

SMALLMOUTH BASS

Looks something like a largemouth, but has vertical stripes (if it has stripes at all) in place of the largemouth’s horizontal band. Likes quick, rocky streams but does just as well in slow, weedy ones and in lakes. Needs warm water at least a fair chunk of the year but can’t handle the largemouth’s upper limit. Fights hard and long, and sometimes leaps. All over the United States and well up into Canada.

PANFISH

Bluegill

The most common and beloved panfish in North America. Fights hard for its small size (a 10-incher’s a dandy), rarely jumps. Prefers lakes but does fine in lazy currents. Needs warm water. Often schools. Does have powder-blue gill covers.

Crappie

Crappies, both black and white, really bunch up (especially black crappies) for mating in spring. Run large for sunfishes (often a pound and a half, even two pounds). Crappies are rounded and flat-sided like other panfish, but silvery with dark markings.

Other Panfish

The list is long: redear, pumpkinseed, warmouth, green sunfish. . . . They’re all well worth knowing and seeking. Use the bluegill as your model, or at least your starting point, for exploring most of the panfish. A few (yellow perch, rock bass, etc.) don’t follow the bluegill model.

A yellow perch

Bonus Tip Fish Don’t Like Meeting Expectations

Fish often act out of character. Brown trout are supposed to be smarter than rainbows; rainbows are supposed to fight harder than browns. Yet for three days on a creeping stretch of Montana river, I watched rainbows turn down flies and presentations the browns happily accepted, and watched the browns outleap and outrun the bows. All were wild fish. So although the descriptions in tips 1 and 2 are solid, don’t expect fish to always adhere to them.

CHAPTER 2

STRATEGIES AND TACTICS

Now that you’ve made their acquaintance, it’s time to learn how to catch trout, bass, and panfish.

Tip 3 Know How Fish See and Hear and You’ll Fish Unseen and Unheard

Question: How do you sneak up on a fish when you don’t understand how it sees and hears? Answer: Poorly. So . . .

Fish see in nearly every direction but mostly seem to pay attention to what’s in front and to the sides of them, not behind. In a current, they’re forced to face upstream. So, for example, if you approach a trout or smallmouth bass in a river from downstream, angling your cast upstream and across, and if you’re far enough away, you won’t likely be seen. If you need to present the fly downstream, so that you’re upstream of the fish, you’d better be well upstream, and probably crouching.

The underside of water is a mirror. Fish see things above the water through a clear little circle in that mirror. Draw two lines down from the opposite edges of the circle to the fish’s eyes, and you have a near right angle. Immediately above the water, the angle changes to low: just 10 degrees. Both angles are consistent, so the deeper the fish holds in the water, the wider its view—a fish holding 3 feet down will have a better shot at seeing you than a fish holding only inches below the water’s surface. (Don’t get cocky, though—the fish inches down is also extra skittish, knowing it’s up where predators can snag it.)

Casting upstream and across presents your fly to a rising trout without presenting yourself.

Crouching, in a spot close enough to this tree trunk that I could blend in with it, hooked me a 14-inch cutthroat trout rising only a rod’s length from my feet.

My wife, Carol, cast with her eyes barely topping that pale boulder to hook a rising trout that was facing upstream. Had she stood tall, she’d have ended the rising, and with it her chances of a hookup. SKIP MORRIS

A trout sees above the water within two angles: a medium-wide angle from eye to surface, and a much wider one from the surface out. Note how the deeper trout sees the entire head and shoulders of the angler on the right bank, while the trout holding very near the surface of the water sees only her hat. And note that the angler standing tall on the left bank may as well be carrying a hello-there-I’m-here-to-hook-you sign. (And, since you’re already busy noting anyway, note too the size of these trout—they’re freaks. Personally, I never wade in water where the average trout exceeds my body mass.)

How well a fish can see you, of course, also depends on how flat or choppy the surface of the water is. Smooth water’s like a window of very clean glass.

Fish hear vibrations in the water, and vibrations—sound—travels much better through water than through air. The crunch of a wading boot on gravel, a dropped pop can in a boat: These and more are heard by fish as noisy alarms.

Bonus Tip Pick Your Fly Up Quietly

If you try to yank line, leader, tippet, and fly off the water all in one violent motion, you might succeed, but you’ll also panic every fish nearby. (Yes, I’m referring to the fish you intended to catch.) So instead of just heaving on everything, get the line moving slowly, pick up speed until the line is coming up off the water and everything following it is in motion, and only then pick the fly off the water in a backcast. (Or use the roll-cast pickup—see page 120).

Tip 4 Beware the Full Moon

Carol and I returned just a few days ago from a glorious fishing trip. The weather was mostly mild and pleasant; the rivers and creeks were easy to work, running clear and unhurried in their light autumn flows—and mayflies hatched for hours each day as trout rose steadily to them. Well, not every day. Not that angry day of wind and downpours, which makes sense. And not on our last day.

That few trout rose on that final day, it just didn’t add up. It was a calm day of sun mixed with happy white clouds, the same conditions that had brought us good fishing all along. And on water that by then we knew well.

Then we got home.

I looked at my calendar, sighed, and slumped: Our last day of the trip fell on a full moon.

The theory I’ve heard most often about full-moon fishing is that the fish—trout, bass, whatever—use that soft illumination to feed all night, then relax throughout the following daytime with full bellies and shut mouths.

Look, you’re going to run into all sorts of opinions about full moons. Some anglers will even tell you they improve daytime fishing. I can only tell you that the majority of seasoned anglers seem to agree with me that a full moon (and sometimes the day or two before or after one) typically offers slow fishing days.

There’s night fishing, of course, where it’s legal.

A full moon . . . uh-oh

My solution? When I get my new annual wall calendar each year, I find the full moons and write full moon in pen on each date, then swipe the letters with a yellow highlighter. Then I find something other than fishing to do around the full moons.

Tip 5 Fish the Close Water First

I once watched a man wade straight out into Colorado’s South Platte River, right through the calf- to knee-deep water I knew the trout were holding in, until he was up to his waist. He then made some long casts to the center of the river and, finally, left—to my utter disbelief—without hooking anything.

My point, though, isn’t that you should try the shallows before you cast your fly farther out (though that’s related to my point, and an excellent strategy). I want to talk here about not letting some seeming-fish-magnet foam line or downed log keep you from first fishing all that potential holding water between you and it. A matter of restraint.

You want to work the nearest water of any promise first, then the next farthest such water and on out in this way. You do not (or at least should not) drop your alarming line over a fish you could have caught, or scare off nearby fish with a hooked fish going wild way out there and then thrashing its way in.

Sometimes, of course, there really is dead water between you and the fish, as when you’re working a lake shoreline with a floating hair bug for largemouths, and the fish are in among weeds and fallen timber and such. The water between your boat and the shoreline cover is fishless, or at least too deep for a floating fly. So in this case you shoot straight for the shallows.

It’s all quite logical.

Tip 6 Big Fish Prefer Big Prey

The logic is inescapable: A 22-inch smallmouth or brown trout going after a mayfly nymph may wind up with little or no profit in terms of fuel invested versus fuel acquired, while a 9-incher grabbing that same nymph hits the jackpot—to that youngster, the nymph is a mouthful; to the big boy, it’s barely a taste. But a meaty 3-inch sculpin? That 22-incher can chase it down, burning off considerable fuel while doing so, and still close the deal with a hefty payoff.

These Morris Minnows imitate little trout (specifically, a rainbow and a cutthroat) to catch big trout.

I offered this juvenile largemouth advice that, thus far, I’ve never given a human: Beware your parents, your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, all their friends, and all members of your species bigger than you are—they’re out to eat you! Flee!

A baby trout—an enticing bellyful for an adult trout

Consequently, size 8 and 6 nymphs and dry flies tend to hook bigger trout than 14s, size 2/0 hair bugs and streamers tend to hook bigger largemouths than 8s. Smallmouths, panfish, same deal.

Of course, big flies also tend to cut average and small fish out of your catch—large hooks, and the flies tied on them, make a difficult fit for little mouths. So if you like lots of action, don’t fish big flies (at least not the biggest flies).

As I said, exceptions to this rule are legion. For example, sometimes (more than sometimes in certain places) big fish will focus on small feed (feed, usually, that’s easy to catch or that drifts right up to them), ignoring mouthful-size prey nearby.

Still, in the end, a small fly will likely catch you small to medium-size panfish, bass, and trout, while a big nymph or streamer will provide the best odds you’ll hook a giant.

Tip 7 Big Fish Do Take Smaller Flies

A 20-inch rainbow taking a size 12 nymph or size 4 streamer is common enough (where there are 20-inch rainbows), but a 20-incher on a size 22 dry fly? Well . . . it happens. Mostly, it happens on a relative few very rich rivers with heavy hatches of tiny insects. And there’s the rub: Big trout take modest-size flies with fair regularity, but it usually requires a special situation for them to take tiny flies (or just luck).

So why does a big trout take a middling-size fly? Because it’s so close and so easy that the trout will expend little energy to do so. Why does a big trout take a tiny fly? Usually because the fly imitates one among hordes of tiny insects also close and easy. As usual it’s about fuel spent versus fuel gained—with bitsy midges coming down the river in helpless abundance, our 20-incher can hold easily in a soft current and shovel them in. A hundred midges is a bellyful of protein.

All fishes, including the basses and panfish, are looking to come out ahead when it comes to feeding. But it can go beyond that.

In waters where fish are constantly pestered with flies, or lures, they can grow suspicious of the big stuff. On a gravel-pit pond near my college, I finally convinced the big largemouth who hung out in a particular corner by showing it not a big streamer but a dinky bluegill fly. Big fish do prefer big prey, and therefore big flies, but you always have a shot at big fish with smaller flies. And sometimes, little flies are your best shot.

Tip 8 Don’t Just Fish for Fish—Hunt Them

Your average fly fisher goes to a largemouth lake and looks for docks and fallen timber and fishes them dutifully. Your average fly fisher goes to a trout stream and looks for riffles and runs for the dry fly or nymph. But don’t be average.

Those are examples of standard-procedure fishing, following the rules, doing everything correctly. That’s fine, but you can do more. I find that I increase the action when I think of myself as a hunter of fish.

Recently, after tramping down a dusty fishing trail by a bridge by a Montana trout stream, I noticed some deepish slow water back up almost under the bridge. I gave it a long look, and then tossed my big dry fly up where the slow water rubbed against the quick. Up came my biggest trout of the day.

Easy spot to miss but, obviously, not to be missed. There are lots of such places most fly fishers never notice because they’re looking for standard holding water. You’ll tend to notice them when you’re looking for fish.

I take my time to give each piece of water a long look, letting my understanding of what fish seek—cover, comfort, food—and my experience and my gut, reveal fishy spots anglers seldom bother.

It’s not just about trout either. A couple of years ago I pulled my drift boat over to investigate a seemingly too-slow, too-shallow channel off a large smallmouth stream. Nothing much at first. Then it deepened . . . Smallies were all through it, wherever weeds made shade, wherever the bottom dropped off a little. My best fishing of the whole day.

You’re more likely to hook a 22-inch brown on the huge Double Bunny streamer at the top of the photo than on the much smaller Brick Back October Caddis in the center. But the Brick Back certainly could hook a trout that large. A 22-incher on the Dinky Smith’s Black Cripple at the bottom? Could happen . . .

A hefty Lahontan cutthroat trout showing off the little chironomid-pupa fly it couldn’t pass up.

Trout, bass, panfish: Don’t be average, do more—hunt them.

Tip 9 Read Those Rises

A slash at a caddisfly scurrying across a lake; a soft dimpling rise in the calm of a pool; a trout’s dorsal fin, but not its nose, showing above the water—if you wisely play the fly-fishing detective (as I suggest elsewhere in these tips), these all become valuable clues. Stream or lake, doesn’t matter—the way a trout rises can suggest a lot, and help you determine how to catch it.

Fuel is the key: Trout burn it in the effort of feeding; the things they eat replenish it. No sane trout expends fuel unnecessarily—that’s the path to starvation. So our rise-clues are based on the principle of minimal feeding effort.

Smallmouth, most panfish, and even largemouth will feed on top, so all of this can apply to them too. Here are the four basic rise types (according to the author):

THE QUIET RISE

When trout make hardly a stir while gently nosing down insects, those insects are likely tiny, helpless, or both: dying mayfly spinners, miniscule just-hatched midges, and such.

(Note: In quick stream currents or choppy lake surfaces, trout never rise too calmly, regardless of bug size or bug behavior.)

THE EARNEST RISE

When trout take insects with a mild fuss on top, neither manic nor solemn, the insects are probably of at least fair size, matching, say, a size 16 hook or larger.

THE SLASHING RISE

The wild charges of trout are for scurrying caddis, darting water boatmen, mammoth stoneflies—for something big, vigorous, or both.

THE NEAR-RISE

Looks like a rise, but it’s really not. See tip 10 to learn how to identify near-rises and what to do about them, and also to see one.

Tip 10 A Trout Rise Isn’t Always a Rise

Once, I watched cutthroat trout rising all over a lazy stretch of an Idaho stream, considered, and then proceeded with beaming confidence. Yellow Sally stonefly adults were fluttering all about, and I caught samples and matched them very closely with dries on size 18 hooks. Then: nothing (or maybe one strike in an hour). When those failed I tried other sorts of floating fly patterns. Again, nothing.

A quiet rise

An earnest rise

A slashing rise—see the water it splashed up to the right?

The dorsal fin of a trout that’s not quite rising. When trout feed this way, the best approach is likely a fly fished below, but not far below, the surface of the water.

Finally I stopped, watched again—closely. Moments later I groaned and slapped my cheek with a palm. The trout weren’t rising. They were taking something down just short of the water’s surface. Anything floating, an insect or artificial fly, was of no interest to them. The light nearly gone, I put up a little nymph and swung it quietly across the fish. In a dozen swings, I hooked eight fish.

It’s easy to mistake a near-rise for a rise, but it’s important you don’t—otherwise, you’ll squander a fine evening as I did.

I look first for a bubble left by a rise to determine if it really is a rise; no bubble suggests it’s not. No exposed trout nose confirms it’s not. Ed Engle, in his book Trout Lessons, says that porpoising riseforms where you can see the trout’s back, dorsal fin, and tail are a surefire sign that trout are feeding on emerging nymphs just under the surface. He adds that the key is to watch the newly hatched adults on the surface and see if the trout are consistently taking them.

A dry-and-dropper rig can work on near-risers, as can a nymph just below a small indicator. A swung soft-hackle or wet fly, though, is the standard solution and a fine one.

Tip 11 Hook More Smallmouths

Of all the fishes covered in this book, the smallmouth is the quickest at taking in and expelling a fly. I’ve watched them do it in both streams and lakes—fly in, a flutter of the jaws, fly out, all in a heartbeat (my heartbeat, not the smallmouth’s) or even quicker. I’ve never seen or sensed that largemouths or trout or panfish come even close to such efficiency and speed. This makes smallmouths tricky to hook.

Trickier yet because they like to grab a sunken fly on the pause—that moment when your connection with your fly is light or nonexistent. You needn’t trust my experience. I read that this annoying smallmouth personality defect has been confirmed—in a laboratory study.

Here’s how I’ve learned to deal with the smallie’s inconsiderate fly-taking habits: (1) keep the rod tip to the water, so there’s no line sag to kill your sensitivity to the fly; (2) always keep at least a little tension on the fly—never a tug on the fly followed by a fully limp line; (3) stay alert, reading every nuance you feel or sense; and (4) if you even suspect a take, set.

Of course, sometimes a smallmouth just slams your streamer or crayfish fly. That makes hook setting a cinch.

None of this applies to floating flies, obviously. Smallies take them in plain sight, so you know exactly what’s going on and when to set the hook.

Tip 12 Low Light = Good Fishing

The terrifying awareness that a loon’s beak or an otter’s jaws could clamp onto their fleshy bodies at any moment provides fish with excellent incentive to avoid bright sunshine—sunshine illuminates their meaty, delectable selves in the water, inviting predators to take a bite. Consequently fish tend to stay hidden, inactive, or both during bright daylight hours. But when the light’s dim and predators can’t get a good fix on prey—game on!

Under cloudy skies or around sunrise or sunset—low-light conditions—trout, bass, and panfish often make up for lost feeding hours by loading their stomachs. This loading they may accomplish as daintily as a debutante nibbling on a tea cake, as when trout gently sip down floating insects, or as violently as a cage fighter slamming his shin into an opponent’s neck, as when largemouth bass slam down hair bass bugs in the shallows.

A trout stream running a good level and dense, still clouds overhead—a combination that can drum up serious action

Bass can feed quietly too, of course, and trout can really slash at insects—low light isn’t really about how fish feed, it’s about how earnestly they feed. Expect fish feeding from calmly and steadily to straight-up ravenously when cloud cover, sunset, or sunrise frees them to do so (often, your expectations will be met). And if you can, fish at those times.

Tip 13 Low Light = Good Hatches

There’s another angle to that fish-like-low-light business we explored in the previous tip: Insects like low light too. Caddisflies, mayflies, midges, and other freshwater bugs that swim to the surface of the water or climb out of it along shore to hatch, hatch best on cloudy days.

This strikes me as a bad choice for the bugs—they wind up exposing themselves to trout when trout are really out on the prowl. Sunshine, often driving trout back under banks and down into the depths, seems a wiser time for an insect to hatch. Still, for us fly fishers, the bugs’ folly and the trout’s aggression coming at the same time is a blessing.

Example: a slow-moving Montana trout stream filled with Pale Morning Dun mayfly nymphs and fussy brown trout. I was standing at a promising pool when a dark cloud slid in front of the sun and . . . boom! Mayfly duns began popping out all over the water. I hooked several trout over the following 15 minutes or so. Then the cloud slipped away and the sunshine returned. The bugs halted and the trout stopped rising. Until . . . another cloud moved over to block the sun and everything came alive again: mayflies popping, trout rising, me tying into fish. Then sunshine and a lull, then cloud cover and action, and so on, back and forth over the next hour and a half. I’ve had this same experience on trout lakes with hatches of Callibaetis mayflies.

So, hope for strong hatches and surface-feeding trout on cloudy days. It’s possible, even likely, you’ll get both.

Smallmouths and panfish also feed on hatching bugs, and once in a while so do largemouths. So all this can apply to them too.

Tip 14 The Light’s Always Low in the Shade

By now you’re aware that trout, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, and most panfish often go deep under bright sunlight but tend to feed in the shallows and on top in the diminished light of sunrise, sunset, and cloud cover. But what about the shade under that tree over there? Isn’t shade diminished light?

Yes indeed.

Last month I was fishing for large bluegills in a farm pond of around two acres. Its banks were mostly open, just tended lawn, but one tall leafy tree leaned its trunk and half its branches out over the water. I gazed into the shade beneath and eventually made out the dark bodies of chunky bluegills quietly holding just a few inches down. From then on, one bluegill after another. My friend and I must have caught and set free easily three dozen of them on rubber bugs and poppers before we, and they, tired of the game. Outside the shade of the tree, fishing was slow, one here and, eventually, one there.

When clouds showed up, so did these mayflies. That’s normally the case with hatching insects: They like clouds, dislike sunshine.

Late-afternoon tree shade—I’ve seen trout rise in such shade and completely avoid all the sun-touched water.

Bonus Tip Stay Fairly Close to Your Fish If You Can

Don’t overdo—if your fish runs and you stand there letting it, and it doesn’t appear there’s a risk you’ll run out of backing, stay put. But if your fish is already 40 yards away and not even slowing down, chase after it—if you can do so safely. If you can’t, well, good luck. And if you hook a big fish in strong current and that fish goes off downstream, you’ll probably need to follow until you both come to slower water where you can land it.

Shade isn’t just about panfish, though. I’ve seen trout in a river rise only in the shadows of tall trees, and large trout hold in alarmingly shallow water in the shade under grassy banks. Largemouths under docks. Smallmouths under bridges. And so on . . .

Yes, shade is low light, so all the rules about low light apply to shade of any kind. Sometimes, if you’re quiet long enough, they apply even to the shade under your boat.

Tip 15 Sunshine Fishing Can Be Good

Midday, clear sky, a yellow sun hammering down on you, on the water, on everything—if mayflies or caddisflies or midges decide to hatch under these conditions, they’ll probably do so briefly, and the trout may not be willing to rise for them. Does this mean the trout are deep in a river or lake sulking and ignoring whatever feed comes along, just waiting for the sun to drop? Perhaps, especially if the water’s uncomfortably warm and the day’s a scorcher. But most likely, no.

Probably, the trout are down near the bed of the river or lake, feeling comfy there, and happy to grab an errant mayfly or scud. They’re feeding down there—they can be caught.

This is not just about trout. Under a high, exposed sun largemouth and smallmouth bass and panfish may go deep, but they too may feed down there. None of this is to say that all these fishes can’t be caught on the surface or in shallow water on bright days; it’s just that the odds are poor.

The solution, then, is to go down to the fish. A nymph below a strike indicator in a trout stream or trout lake, a nymph on a sinking line for bluegills and other panfish in a lake, a crayfish pattern on a sinking line in a smallmouth stream, a streamer on a sinking line in a largemouth lake—and there are a lot more variations than these. But all are about getting a fly down to fish trying to keep