Fly fishing tips you can use:
January.

Fly fishing advice from one of the top fly fishing guides on the Grand River in Ontario. Fly fishing tricks and fly fishing tips which you will use, not only on the Grand River in Ontario, but across Canada. This is the original fly fishing Tips and Tricks Page on the Internet. Don't be fooled by imitations.

Here are the fishing tips:

Czech Nymphing
No doubt about it, this style of fishing is catching on. In October of 2006 I had the great pleasure to fish with Mr. Charles Jardine, on the White River in Arkansas. Not only is Mr. Jardine a well respected angling authority and artist, but the man can fish. While he is well known across Europe for his wet-fly techniques what most anglers do not know is that his Czech Nymphing is nothing short of astounding. I picked up a whack of pointers from watching him, the biggest of which is that you need to get the flies to the bottom as quickly as you can. A heavy point fly is a must. Tungsten beads and several wraps of lead on the underbody will help to get the flies down quickly. The faster you can get them down, the more fish you will catch. It's that simple.

Swing Baby Swing
If you are fishing a subsurface pattern like a nymph or a streamer, let it "go Saddam," i.e. hang, at the end of the drift. I've watch countless fly fishermen work like the dickens to get the perfect drift but when they get to the end of the drift, they haul the fly out the water like a Humpback whale coming up for air. No, no, no. At the end of the drift, let the fly hang and swing in the current for a few seconds and you will get more fish.

Clean It Up:
Those of you who have been around kids will know this scenario quite well. You ask the munchkin to clean up something and they reply by saying, "I didn't make the mess so why do I have to clean it up?" Years later, many years later, it would appear that this attitude still prevails within the angling community. Most fly fishermen support conservation by attending fundraising banquets, by purchasing raffle tickets to win something-or-other and by actually getting into the river when clean-ups are required. Hey, what's more fun than standing in a river with a chain saw. However, it amazes me that each time I take a trip to a river I continually have to pick up empty pop cans, monofilament and discarded packets of tippet material. Yeah, tippet material. You would think that ... never mind. Hey, try this will you. Take a plastic garbage bag and stick it into the back pocket of your vest. At the end of the day on your walk back out the car, if you see some trash, just pick the stuff up. It will take you a few minutes, which is about the same amount of time you will spend waiting for a bucket of chicken in the drive thru on your way home. If other anglers see you making the effort, maybe, just maybe, they will catch on. Then again, they are probably too busy adjusting their bobber (see below) to take any notice. Picking up one empty tippet spool, one beer bottle or one chunk of discarded monofilament dose make a difference. Don't be shy. Just go for it.

Fly Tying Tips
Here are a few tips which will reduce the amount of time you spend sitting at your vice.
1. Buy your flies.
(Sorry, that was just too easy.)
2. Seriously.
I had a chap out on the river who makes a living by going into offices or homes and showing folk that by removing clutter, and by putting things away in the right place, they will save time and be more productive. He said to me that if it takes you more than a minute to find something, it's in the wrong place." So, I decided to clean up my fly tying bench. He was right. It took about a week for me to actually get into the rhythm of knowing where I had put stuff, and I had to fine tune the system, but I must say it's a vast improvement over what I had been doing. He told me that most folk do not put things away because they are just a bunch of lazy sods. No, what he actually said was that they don't put things away, because they have a fear of not being able to find them again. I guess that's why my beloved Maple leafs don't score too many goals. They are afraid that if they put the puck in behind the goalkeeper into the net, they may not be able to find it again.

Buy A Hook Sharpener
Now I know I am starting to sound like a broken record here, but there are still far too many anglers out there who do not use a hook sharpener. It's frightening. You need a hook sharpener, and you need to use it on every fly you use. The biggest error most fly fishermen make is that they fish with a dull hook. I use one of those Ez-Lap sharpeners. They do a great job. Pick one up, use it and you will land more fish. Actually, you may want to pick up two, so that if one happens to go "pop" when you drop it in the river, you have a back up with you. I have yet to find a hook sharpener which will float.

Mix-up Your Retrieve
Most anglers are just so gosh-darn-happy that they managed to get the fly out to where they wanted it to go, they neglect to actually fish the fly. If you vary the retrieve, you have a much better chance of catching fish, because you may manage to manipulate the fly in a manner the fish finds appealing.

Mix-up Your Patterns
Most anglers are just so gosh-darn-happy that they managed to hook a fish, they continue to stick with that pattern all season long. Just because a pattern worked last Wednesday, it does not mean that it will work again next Wednesday. Be prepared to mix things up. Be prepared to take off a productive fly and for at least an hour, try something different. Sometimes this won't work out all that well, but sometimes you will be surprised at what happens. Even if fish are popping off dry flies, you need to remember that for the other 90% of the time when they are feeding, they will be munching down on subsurface snackies. Last year on the Grand River several folk hit very big brown trout on deerhair mice patterns tied on size #1/0 hooks. What's new about that? Well they were fishing on bright sunny days during the afternoon. Who knew?

Cast Away Thy Bobber
Bobbers, more commonly known as strike indicators, will dumb-down your fly fishing skills very, very quickly. If your idea of a day on the river fly fishing is chucking out a size #10 Hare's Ear Nymph about 6 feet below a bobber ... great. However, if you make 2007 "Bobber Free," by the end of it you will have markedly improved your angling skills. Here's why. One of the common threads I have seen in "skilled" fly fishermen is their ability to change their flies and adapt their fishing techniques to changes in conditions they are faced with. These folk have the knack of switching things around to produce fish. It's not often I hear them saying, "Well the fish will be all over streamers to day." What they do say is more along the lines of, "Usually on a day like this, streamers will produce, so I'll start with those and then I'll change up." There is a huge difference in these statements and a huge difference in their approach to fishing.