The elcare catis is one of the most famous flies on the planet. It floats high, it's easy to see, and it's a favorite snack for trout all across the world. The elair catis has been around for almost 70 years. And I bet all of us have at least one or two in our fly box right now. But do you know who, when, or how it was invented? And do you know that you can do more with this fly than just dead drift it through good-looking water? This week on Untangled, you'll learn all about the history behind the Elcare catis and some surprising ways you can use it to catch more fish. This is Untangled fly fishing for everyone presented by Ventures Fly Co. Hey everybody, welcome to it. This is Untangled and I am your host Spencer Durant. Today we're going to learn all about the elare catis. One of my all-time favorite flies. I love this little bug a ton. And to do that, we got to go all the way back in time to 1957, and we got to meet an angller by the name of Al Troth. Now, Al lived in Pennsylvania, and his local water was this little piece of water called Loyal Sock Creek. That's where he spent a lot of his time fishing. and he decides one afternoon that he wants a fly that's going to be a better match for the green catis hatches that he's running into on Loyal Sock Creek. So, he heads home, he goes to his vice, he starts playing around with ideas, and he comes up with what he thinks is going to be this wetfly that he can use uh to swing through the riffles to imitate those emerging catis as they're completing that part of their life cycle and turning into adults. So he heads out of the river and he's fishing this. And again, he thinks it's going to be this beautiful wet fly. And once he starts fishing his new creation, he realizes that the elair wing he put on the fly actually helps it float like a cork. And he accidentally created this really stellar dryfly that we're all fishing here almost 70 years later. cuz I I bet just about everybody listening, unless you are brand new to the sport, has an elkare catis or two in your fly box somewhere that they're just that ubiquitous. Now, what gets a little bit more interesting though, because he comes up with this 57, but he keeps it pretty quiet. Didn't really tell a whole lot of people about it apparently because it's not until he ends up moving to Montana in the 70s and then he runs into Bud Lily in West Yellowstone. For those who don't know, Bud ran this, uh, fly shop in West Yellowstone, uh, very successful shop, uh, had fly cataloges and everything. Uh, but he runs into Bud and tells Bud about this little catis fly that he's got. And Bud ends up selling them in his shop and they get a big regional following. And it gets big enough to the point that Al Troth finally writes an article about the Elcare Catas for Fly Fisherman magazine in 1978. And that's when the fly really took off. And folks everywhere just start using it at that point. And nowadays, I don't think there's a fly shop in America that you're going to run into that does not have an Elcare Catis or two for sale. I mean, if you're down in the Florida Keys, yeah, they're not going to have them down there. But in trout country, it is hard to go wrong with an elkare catis and just how effective they are. And trroth, he actually invented a few other flies, too. He he wasn't a one hit wonder like Chumbo. Uh he he came up with the uh gulper special. Uh it was a it was a fly design for the gulping trout on Hebggan Lake there in Montana. And if you've never heard about them, there's this big calabatus hatch on Hebggan Lake. And Calabatus is a type of mayfly and the really big trout in the lake will come up and they'll gulp the flies so loud you can hear them gulping. You don't just see them, you can actually hear them. And if you don't have the right imitation, calabetas hatches can be a pain in the butt to fish. Uh, and the gulper special was designed for those very large, very picky fish that live there in Hebin Lake. So Al knew what he was doing. So when he set out to create the Elcare Catis, yeah, there was a little bit of accident in there, but he had a good idea of how to put a fly together. He was a very, very successful angler. Uh, after moving to Montana, actually, he ended up settling down in Dylan, which is in southwest Montana, and he started a guide service and an outfitter there. He was guiding on the Beaverhead and the Big Hole. Uh, so he he was around fly fishing. He was involved with this stuff his whole life. And unfortunately, he did pass away in 2012 from Parkinson. So, Al Troth is no longer with us, but his flies are. Hey there, it's Alex. You ever find yourself standing in the river staring at your open fly box wondering what the heck do I tie on? Yeah, it happens to all of us, especially if you're not quite sure what bugs are active. That's why we've put together our year round hatch chart. It breaks down the major hatches that happen across the US so you can understand what's happening in your neck of the woods and pick the right fly with confidence. Snag a free copy by scanning the QR code on the screen or hit the link in the show notes. All right, back to Untangled. Now, what's really interesting to me about the Elker Catis is it's one of the few dry flies I can think of off the top of my head that can really pull double duty as an emerger uh without too much effort. You don't have to change anything about the fly. You don't have to cut the hackle off. It can just pull double duty uh just by virtue of its design. And that's what makes it such a unique pattern is that I don't think a lot of anglers realize just how versatile the LCAR catis is. And when I mentioned in the open to this show that you can use the LCAR catis in a lot of different ways to catch fish, this is what I meant. It's not just a fly that you dead drift through the riffles or in a pool or on a seam. There's a lot of different ways to fish it. So to explain that, let's take a look at the Elcar catis and then the halfbaked catis emerger here at VFC. Uh they look very similar, these two flies, the adult and the emerger. And if you're watching the video podcast, uh you'll see those popping up on the screen here in a minute. If you're not, the halfbaked catis, it's an emerger pattern we have here at VFC. Uh it the big difference it still has the LCAR wing on it and then it's got the the flat body so no taper to it. Uh the big difference is there's no hackle on the halfbaked catis and then it's got a little bit of a tail that's meant to imitate the trailing shuck. So other than that they look very similar. Same size, same proportions. Just ditch the hackle and add a trailing shuck and that's your halfbaked emerger. It's a very simple emerger pattern. Thank goodness. So when I talk about how Alroth originally developed the Elcare Catatus to be an emerger, you can see why he thought it would work that way. When you compare these two flies side by side, they look so similar. Uh it really makes sense. It kind of clicks in your head when you see them. So how does that help you on the water? Like cool story, Durant, but what does this do for me? Well, if you're out fishing and the cats are hatching, but the fish don't seem like they're really all that interested in the adults, what you can do is you can go ahead and sync your LCAR catis with just a bit of split shot, like the tiniest split shot that you have in uh your pack. And then you can fish it like an emerger. Just get it a couple inches below the surface. You can let it drift under another dryfly. Uh you can put it under an indicator if you want. You can fish it a little deeper. uh you but at that point once you sink it you've got a fly that looks an awful lot like the emerging catis that are that are swimming up through the water column to hatch into the adults. It it's really again you look at the halfbaked catis and the elcare catis the similarities are very very obvious between the two. So now that's just one way that you can tweak the elare catis to work in a different situation. Another option you've got is you can actually just swing your elair catis like you would with a soft hackle or a wetfly. Uh, and this works because catis flies move quite a bit when they're hatching, especially when they're emerging. They're coming back up through the water column to get to the surface. There's going to be a lot of movement with that. And I bet if you've been out fly fishing this summer, you've been fishing some catis hatches, I would be willing to bet that at the end of your drift, if you've let your catis dangle or swing a little bit at the end of the drift before you make your next cast, I bet you've had a fish or two come up and try and eat it or you felt the tug or maybe you even caught a fish that way. And again, that's because that lift right at the end when you're swinging it. That lift imitates that natural movement and the elair looks so much like the emerger that the fish are just going to go snack on it. So, you can you can try swinging them through pools and whatnot. Uh, and you don't have to do anything to the fly, right? It just boom. It'll just work that way. And I actually, just to drive this point home, I was out fishing last week with a buddy of mine, Jean. We were out on the local creek here and he uh he was fishing a shorter rod and he was trying to high stick through some of these little pools and because the rod was a little bit shorter, he was having a hard time getting all his line off the water before the current would grab it and start pulling flies. And that actually worked in his favor because it would start to swing his flies a little bit quicker right at the end of the pools. and he caught two or three fish on the swing right at the ends of pools like that as we fished all night. So, it it will work. It is an effective tactic uh that you can use if the fish aren't eating the adults, but you do see catis moving uh or it's just the time of year that catis should be hatching. Boom. Try swinging them. That little bit of movement might just be what gets them to eat. Um, another trick again with the movement is you can skitter. you can kind of skate the catis across the surface, not just underneath the water, but on top of the water as well. Because if you take a few minutes to watch catis flies when they're hatching, uh, or when they come back to the river to lay their eggs, what you're going to notice is they really don't spend a whole lot of time on the water. They want to get out of the water as quick as they can. Uh, because they know they're easy food. I'm convinced of it. I don't know if they actually know that, but probably deep down in their little bug brain, there's an instinct saying, "You're going to get eaten. Fly away. Fly away." And they're like, "Okay." So, they're wanting to get out. They they they want to scamper. And they do move. They do wiggle. They're not just sitting still like mayflies. Mayflies have that tendency to they'll move a little bit too, but may flies really have that tendency to just kind of sit there and look very graceful. Catis, not so much. There will be some movement on the water. So, if you're fishing catis without much luck, you've see you've seen fish come up and eat off the top. You know they're eating the adults. Give it a little bit of a twitch. Just move your rod tip back and forth just a tiny bit. Let it skitter. Let it skate. Let it swing at the end of the drift across the top of the water. That might just be enough to trigger the fish to come up uh and eat it. And in that same vein, if you go back to what I said about when fish or when fish when the catis come back to the river to lay their eggs, what you're going to notice is they'll come down and they'll they it looks like they're bouncing off the water cuz they'll they'll buzz above the water. They'll hit the water to lay their eggs. They'll chill there for a second and then they'll shoot right back up, fly up into the air, come back down to the water, lay some more. and they'll do it so much it just looks like they're bouncing on top of the water. And what you can do, and I actually saw this technique, uh Gilbert Rolley put a film out about it. And this is the first place I saw this technique, but it make it made so much sense when I saw it. It was like a light bulb click. I thought that's brilliant. I don't know if Gil came up with it, but he his video was the first one I ever saw this technique displayed in. But what he did was he put an elker catis on, just tied it onto the end of his line, and then put a nice heavy nymph as a dropper, something that'll sink very quickly. And you're going to cast those two out. And once you've cast them out, you're going to high stick it so that you've got a direct connection to that catis. You want to be able to move that catis with hardly any any work at all. And then you're just going to barely twitch the top of your fly rod. Just barely barely move it. And that's going to pull that catis up off the surface a few inches. And then that heavy nymph is going to drag it right back down. And this is going to mimic that bouncing movement that the catis make when they come back to the water to lay their eggs. And a few years ago, it was not too long after I'd seen that video from Gil. Uh, Alex and I, we were out on a river full of brown trout and there were catis hatching, but the fish really weren't committing to the dries. They were probably eating the emerggers, but me being me, I I wanted to catch them on dries, and I I'd seen this video, so I thought, I'm going to try it. So, I rig it up, I throw it out there, and I just start bouncing it. And it I caught three or four off the bounce like that. They were coming up and crushing the catis. really was a unique interesting way to fish. I don't know that it's going to be a go-to technique for me. Uh it seems like you've got to have a pretty big swarm of mating catis coming back. Uh and then the fish have to be willing to jump out of the water to eat them. But it's just another way to fish it, another way, another tool in your box to use uh to to do something a little bit different with a fly that again, we really just get dead set on just dead drifting it through good-looking water. We don't add a lot of the movement to it that we should uh or that we can with these cats. So, when the dead drifts don't work, when everything else doesn't work, that's when you bust out these other tips and tricks and and see if that's what'll get the fish to go ahead and commit to an eat. Uh, and then I'll also add that the elkare catis is one of my go-to searching patterns. So, what that means is when I'm on water that's new to me, uh, and there's not much hatching, if it's during catis season, and that's basically any anytime from June through October in most places where there's trout, uh, I'm tying on a catis because it's just buggy enough that fish will respond to it. Even if the catis aren't actively hatching, they'll still come up and eat it. Um, and then catis are so abundant anyways that the fish recognize it. They'll come up and and snack on it. And it's just a great way to kind of look for where the fish are, see if they're willing to come up and eat. Uh, again, it's just a really solid searching pattern. And, you know, I believe in it enough that when I was in Alaska last, it was last year. I I try to go up every year, but I don't think I'll make it this year because of the baby. Um, apparently when you have a baby, you can't travel as much anymore. I wish someone would have told me that beforehand. But I was in Alaska last year. We were fishing uh this little just a bunch of random trout streams uh down there and there wasn't a whole lot hatching. It was one of the many overcast just kind of drab days in Alaska. So I just tied on an elkair catis and I think I had a pair going on as my dropper. That's all I fished. And I caught plenty of fish coming up and actually crushing the catis. Nothing huge, nothing really to write home about. Not the giant rainbows that that you see on Instagram all the time, but it was still wild rainbows in their native habitat, which was really really cool for me to do. Uh, so that that's how much faith I've got in it is I'll I'll tie it on in a place that far-flung and just use it and it works. So hopefully you can take something from this uh and and apply it to your own fly fishing. Uh and that's actually going to wrap up all our discussion on the catisfly today. So if you learned something brand new uh or you have another tip or tactic for fishing catis flies, definitely let us know in a comment. I would love uh to hear all about it. So but we're going to go ahead and move on into the Q&A section of the show today. We've got a great slate of questions. uh about how to find fish in rivers during different seasons, how to downsize your fly collection so you're not carrying 8,000 boxes to the river. Uh and then detecting those really subtle bites that trout are famous for. So we've got a lot of great stuff coming up. And it just in case you're new here, every week at Untangled, we spend half the show directly answering questions from listeners and viewers just like yourselves. And often the questions you send in become the basis for the open of the show as well. So, if you've got a fly fishing question that you would like answered, you can go ahead and send those on in. There's a link to do that in the show notes or right here on the screen if you're watching the video podcast. Our first question this week is from Philip from Nevada. Writes in and says, "Hi, Spencer. Just got done watching another episode of Untangled about fly selection. My question is about rivers here in Nevada/theastern Sierra region. The rivers are slow inflow and get warm. During the winter, the trout are in the lower elevations, and then at the end of spring, I go from catching trout to smallies. Where are the trout going when it starts to warm up in these lower elevation areas? Should I focus on moving up river or fishing deeper spots? I love your podcast and watch it leading up to every trip to get amped for the day and to get some tips to try out. Can't wait for my VFC flies to arrive, too. I'm watching the mailbox. Thanks again. Hey, Philip, good question and thank you uh for the kind words. Appreciate hearing that. Uh fish definitely move around throughout the year to seek their preferred habitat. They they move a lot more than I think most of us realize. Uh they're also going to move around to access spawning grounds throughout the year. uh you they'll they'll run up usually into the headwaters to the smaller streams where the water is the coldest and the cleanest uh to do their spawning. Um I think a lot of anglers imagine trout as kind of these like static critters that that don't really move too much, but they really do kind of get around. So, without knowing the exact streams that you're talking about here, um it's hard for me to be sure what exactly is going on, but my gut tells me that your initial assumption is right, that the fish are moving up river, and they're doing it because they want to get to cooler water. Trout thrive in water that's in the high 40s to the low 60s. So, that's their window when trout are going to be at the happiest. below or above that, the trout really don't want to be there too much. So, if the smallmouth bass are showing up, that's definitely a sign that the water is probably too warm for trout at the very least to be feeding, to be doing much of anything because smallies really love water temps between 69 and 79°. That's their sweet spot. Um, and that's from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources who put that out and they they know a thing or two about bass up there. Um, and we know that once the water temps get past about 68 degrees Fahrenheit that the trout just kind of shut down. They don't they'll still eat. They don't just completely stop, but there there's a lot less dissolved oxygen in warmer water and the trout need a lot of that. Um, so when when there's less oxygen, the fish are going to move a lot less because it's harder for them to breathe. So, they're just going to do less when that water gets warm. And if it warms up too much, the trout will actually suffocate and die because they don't have enough oxygen. Um, now the the bass can obviously handle that. They they thrive in that warmer water uh more so than the trout do. So when uh the trout when you go from catching trout to smallies, it's possible the trout are still in the rivers that they're just in the deepest pools where the coolest water is. Um, but you you still don't want to fish for them at that point. You want to leave the trout alone. Um, but I I would reckon they're probably going up river. They're probably seeking out uh the cooler water and they probably make that their way up river to spawn and then hang out there all summer and then wait until everything cools down and then they come back down uh in the winters to hang out because up in the uh high country a lot of that stuff's going to ice over or it's going to get so low there's not going to be much food at all. So they'll follow the food too. That's the other thing is the fish are going to follow the hatches around. Um, and that's why that's one of the reasons why you find fish in pools during the winter, you don't find them in the riffles because the bugs that hatch in the riffles aren't active during the winter. But midgetes, uh, which will hatch in the pools, they are. So, the fish follow them to the pools. Uh, again, I definitely wouldn't, um, be fishing for the trout. Uh if you're catching a bunch of smallies, I wouldn't try to catch the the trout if they're still in the river because chances are again they're at the bottom of those deep pools where the coolest water is and they're just trying to to make it through until the water temps calm down. Uh so I would just say get up into that high country, get up into that Sierra Nevada stuff. Uh it's gorgeous up there. Go chase the trout up there or go play with the smallies, too. Small mouth from a river is a lot of fun. And it's something I don't get to do nearly enough and I want I want to definitely do more of it to be completely honest with you. So, uh, good question though. Thank you so much for sending that in. [Music] Ray from Alberta has our next question. Writes in and says, "I'm a guy that likes to be prepared, maybe too prepared. I slam all my fly boxes into my sling bag before I head out to make sure I'm ready for anything. This sacrifices room for snacks and keeps my bag pretty bulky. I love your practical tips and videos and maybe you've already posted something on this, but my question is, how can I narrow my flies down to maybe two or three boxes for a day trip? Ray, I have been there. Uh, I used to have like eight or nine fly boxes in my vest. It was a was a problem. I I went out there looking like the Michelin tire man. Just huge. Not that I need any help to look huge, right? the wings and the the diet coke do that for me. Uh, but I I understand the problem. Um, I've actually done some episodes around this idea before. Most recently, it was episode 102 where I talk about my top 15 trout flies uh in the the real life insects that they imitate. Uh, I'll go ahead and link that in the show notes for you or on the screen if you're watching the video podcast. Uh, but those are the 15 trout flies that I would take with me uh on a day trip. And those are usually all I really have in my box anyways. Um, during the spring I add a lot more mergers and a lot more done patterns. Just it's nice to have different options to switch it up when the fish are getting pressured heavily in the spring. Uh, other than that, I I go with that that group of flies. Um, but I I'll walk through this those concepts, though. They're worth revisiting. Um, I I've realized over the years that I catch like 90% of my fish on the same 20 patterns or so. Uh, if I travel somewhere new, I might need to pick up local flies that I don't have, like MSA shrimp on the Frying Pan River in Colorado, for example. um I I don't have those tied up, but if I go down to the frying pan, I'll I'll pick some of those flies up. Uh but again, for most of the trout fishing that I do, those same 20ish patterns catch most of my fish. Uh and that really holds true for just about anywhere. You're going to need some midgetes, some mayflies, some catis, some stone flies, some scuds, some s bugs, worms, and a leech or two, and and you're in business. Uh so that that's really all you would need to take to be prepared for anything. But the flip side of that is also think about what time of year it is. Okay, it's late summer right now. Do you need mayflies and stone flies in your box? Do you need your big streamers if you're just going to the local creek to fish dry droppers for a few hours between work and when you got to go home and do dinner? Not really. Right. And I know that there's it's kind of like a safety blanket where uh you feel like, "Oh, I've got everything I need." And so you feel a little bit more confident going to the river with all that stuff, but if you never pull it out, if you never use it, then there's really no point in carrying it with you. Um, and I know it's a lot more convenient to just leave everything in your packs. You're not constantly sorting through it. Uh, but I'll do this a lot where when I'm heading to the river, I just leave behind the fly boxes that I I don't need anymore. Um, and I I've got my boxes sorted to where I've got all my parachute dry flies and emerggers are in one box. All of my hackled dry flies and foam bodied flies are in another box. And then I've got two boxes of nymphs. I've got one that's got my smaller mage and mayfly focused imitations. And then another box that's got my bigger stone flies, my attractor nymphs, uh my worms, my scuds, and my sa bugs. So, I I can really just grab the one that I need uh and and go with that. Um and then just, you know, the other day I was out fishing with a buddy on a local creek and it's the sort of place where you really can just fish a catis with a zebra mage dropper all day and and do just fine, especially this time of year. So, I don't I don't need my stone flies and my worms with me. There's not going to be an instance where I'm I'm going to need those flies. They're just not on the menu right now. A worm's going to work, but the the zebra mage and the elk catis have me covered. And maybe I need to switch to a paragon to get a little bit deeper. Maybe I need to change the size or whatever. I've got variations of that in the box, but I don't need my stonefly ns. I don't need all that other stuff with me. Uh it's just overkill. So, I just left those in the truck and just took the two boxes that had my dry flies and then the smaller nymphs and that's all I needed. So, that's one way to do it. The other thing that you can do is you can also just buy another box that's just your day trip box. So, you fill that with a few of the flies that you think you'll need that day. Um, and then you can pick what flies those are just by paying attention to how many different flies you've used next time that you go fishing. And then you can just put those patterns in the box. And I guarantee it's going to be fewer flies than you think. Unless you're on some kind of crazy pressure water where you've got to switch flies out pretty consistently. Um, you'll end up using a lot fewer flies than you think. So if you keep track of them, then you can just stack those patterns in a little day trip box and boom, you're good to go. So, my takeaway is I wouldn't worry too much. I wouldn't fret too much about being prepared for anything because you don't need to be prepared for anything at every time of the year because things change. The the hatches change, the fish the fish key in on different things. So, you don't have to have everything all the time for any variability. You can you can just keep it simple. And that that's something I really have been trying to do the last couple years is how do I simplify this? How do I make this as easy, enjoyable, and simple as possible for me? And just going easy on the fly selection has been uh a huge game changer for me in that regard. So hopefully those tips help you out. Uh thank you so much for sending that question in. [Music] [Applause] Christopher from Arizona has our next question. writes in and says, "I was recently fishing pheasant tail nymphs. Though I was catching several fish, I found it was difficult to detect the bite. Most of the fish I caught, I didn't realize were on the hook until I went to recast. Always a fun surprise." My question is, what are some strategies for detecting the more delicate bites? Thanks for the response. I love listening to the podcast and becoming a better angler by using the strategies you provide. put a fly in front of a fish and make it look real. Uh, I love it, Christopher. Thank you. And yeah, that that really I I love the fact that you quoted that, man. That that made my day. Um, I'm going to get that on a t-shirt and here at VFC at some point. It's going to happen. So, you didn't mention if you're fishing with a dry dropper rig or if you were fishing these under an indicator, those pheasant tails. So, I'll try to address both those situations. uh just depending on how you were fishing. It's not going to make a huge difference to it, but we we'll still go through both those anyways. Um the key thing that you're looking for whether you're fishing nymphs under an indicator or uh in a dry dropper rig is you want that bobber or that dryfly to do something unnatural. That's the key that a fish has gone ahead and eaten it because you want that dryfly, you want that bobber to get a nice drag-free drift when you're fishing nymphs under them because that is telling you that, okay, everything is being pushed by the current. It's looking and acting natural. So, when the fish see this, they're not going to see something that makes them think, oh, that's fake. Because that fly is moving across the current way too fast. They don't move like that. No, it's just drifting naturally and normally the way that it should. That's your goal. You want that good natural looking drift. So, if some kind of movement happens that isn't natural, if that bobber or that dryfly pauses or even hesitates just barely before continuing its drift, that's often going to be a sign of a very subtle bite from the fish. as an example. Couple winters ago, in fact, it was the first winter uh in this part of Wyoming. I used to live down in southern Wyoming and now we're up a little bit further north and it was the first winter here. We were out fishing one of the tail waters and it was stupid. It was like 14°. It was stupid cold. I should not have been outside, but I'm all bundled up. I'm wrapped up in eight layers of Gortex and wool. and we get to the river and it was the kind of place where your guides ice up after almost every cast because it was so cold outside and I had a couple of nymphs under an indicator. I don't even remember what all I was fishing but I throw that indicator out into some fishy looking water and I let it drift and that indicator didn't stop. It just hesitated. Just briefly hesitated. So, I set the hook and I set that hook into a 23in brown trout that ate a size 16 olive zebra mage, which blew me away. It was amazing to catch a fish like that, especially in those circumstances. It it was just incredible uh to to run into a fish like that. But that bobber barely barely hesitated as it was going down the river. Just paused long enough for me to say, "Hey, that doesn't look right." set the hook and boom, it was a fish. So, I I really can't hammer home that point hard enough here. Any unnatural movement to your bobber or to your dryfly if you're fishing dry dropper is an indication that a fish has either eaten your fly or your flies have gotten hung up on something. So, you've got to set on those. Um, so you've got and you've got to pay a lot of attention throughout the drift. You've really got to be dialed in on that so you don't miss anything. Um, so just paying more attention. And I'm not trying to tell you you're doing something wrong or I'm not trying to come down on you, right? Uh, I'm just you've got to pay really close attention. You really got to watch it. Um, something else you can do though is if the water's clear enough and you're in the right spot, um, you can actually watch the fish as your flies drift past them. if you're able to see the fish because often trout are going to move to eat the nymph and you'll see the white of their mouth open and close around the nymph and you're going to see that before a lot of times before your dryfly or your bobber ever moves and sometimes the fish are so fast that they will grab it, spit it out before your fly before your dryfly or your bobber uh stops moving entirely. It's kind of crazy actually when you when you get to see that. You'll watch fish suck your nymph in and your dryfly never moves. It It's kind of disconcerting because then you start thinking about how many fish you never even get the chance to catch because you never saw your dryfly or your indicator move. And that's one of the selling points of tight line nymphing is you feel a lot of those. So you end up catching more fish that way. So if you're able, watch the fish as your flies drift past them. And if they're getting close and you see that fish move, wait until you see its mouth open and close and then set the hook. Or if you can't see its mouth opening and closing, maybe you're behind it. Um, wait until you see the fish move back to its original feeding line and then set the hook. Um, this happened to me just a couple weeks ago. was out fishing the local creek and I got to this beautiful little pool and there was a big rainbow parked on the bottom and it took me a few casts before I could get the flies. I had to cast far up ahead of it so the fly would have enough time to sink to this fish cuz it was right at the tail of the pool. And once I got that fly to sink and I was directly behind this rainbow. He couldn't see me, but I could see him. And I'm directly behind him. And I finally get that fly to drift. And I knew it had drifted and sunk to the right spot because I watched the fish move to the right. And my dryfly never moved. I just watched the fish move to the right. And then when he started moving back to the left, again, my dryfly never moved. But once he started moving back to the left, back to his original lie, I set the hook. And uh he actually ended up running downstream, tangling himself around my leg like three times. And I was with a buddy and he's watching all this going on and I'm trying to untangle myself while keeping the fish on and not fall into the river. It was this most embarrassing trout rodeo that I've ever been a part of. And somehow that fish stayed on the line the whole time. Blew my mind that that happened. Uh but it was a nice like 15 16inch rainbow. Nice and fat. Really big for that creek. Um it just blew my mind that I caught something like that and held it on. But when you get to be actually watch the fish like that, it's really cool. And it just drives home again this point of any unnatural movement on your flies. Make sure that you're setting the hook. Okay. Uh and bottom line, you've got this down because you understand, put a fly in front of a fish and make it look real. So if anything about your drift doesn't look real, set that hook and chances are you're going to start catching a lot more fish. So, thank you a bunch for sending that question on in. And that's going to do it for the Q&A section for us this week, folks. But don't go anywhere because we've got the live a life moment coming right up. [Music] [Applause] Every week here at Untangled, we end the show by sharing a story and some pictures from folks out in the audience who are living real life, getting out there and having fun on the water. I love to read these stories and see the pictures and get a taste for the adventures that y'all are having. So, if you've got a live real life moment you would like to share, you can send yours in at the link in the show notes or right here on the screen if you are watching the video podcast. And this week's live real life moment is from Tommy. After a couple of months of research and a couple planned trips that didn't work out, I finally got the chance to go try my luck at trout fishing with my fly rod. It was a very cold morning, but with crystal clear skies and a beautiful sunrise. There were no bugs on the water, and I wasn't about to get my hands wet turning over rocks to see what bugs were crawling under them. So, I went with a double nymph rig with a Frenchie on top and a zebra mage as my bottom fly. After an hour with a couple missed bites, I decided to try a deeper pool a little further down. As I approached the pool, I saw several brown trout jumping completely out of the water, so I knew there were fish in the pool. I adjusted my indicator for the deeper water and made a few casts. Just as I was about to change rigs, the indicator gave the slightest wiggle and I set the hook. As I started to fight the fish, it jumped out of the water and began to swim downstream. I continued to fight the fish and after two more amazing jumps, I managed to coax a nice rainbow into my net where it made one last attempt at freedom with one quite impressive headshake that threw the zebra mage out of its mouth. But it failed to escape the net. Not a trophy in size, but will be a treasured memory for sure. Tommy, that's awesome. And that doveetail I didn't even realize until I read your story just now that it dovetailed so well with that previous question about just the slightest wiggle, right? Just those tiny little indications that a fish eats it and you did the right thing. You set the hook and boom, you get into a fish that you're never going to forget. That's what living real life is all about. You exemplified it there. great story and thank you so much for sharing it with us. I appreciate it a ton. And with that folks, we're going to wrap the show up this week. Thank you so much for being here with us, listening, watching to the whole show. It really makes more of a difference and you understand. Uh if you'd like to help out even more, you can rate and subscribe to the show wherever you're listening to it because the more ratings and subscriptions we get, the more folks we can help live real life, which is our entire goal here at VFC. We want you to have experiences like what Tommy just had. So, I'm going to quit talking so you can get out on the water, go have some fun, and until next week, live real