Fly Fishing Trout Streams

We’re thrilled to share a clip of our Fly Fishing Trout Streams Master-Course with you! The full, in-depth course is available at our Patreon site:

This course is literally everything at the foundation of what we do on small to medium trout streams and breaks everything down in chronological order to (hopefully) have that trout of your dreams hit your net. We’ll publish the new chapters monthly. 

CHAPTERS:
1 – Introduction & Gear & Equipment – Everything we use & choose and why. Our theories on fly selection; back pack; nets/attachments; rods; reels; line; leader & tippet setup; accessories like pliers, clippers, carabiners, tippet rings; hooks we tie flies on; fly boxes; floatant; wading boots; hat; sunglasses; buff; jacket; pants; socks; layering; chafing & Soove; hook sharpener; indicators; split shots.

2 – Casting – We look at the casting clock on small streams; energy transfer through short lines and long leaders; narrow casting opportunities; timing & accuracy; false casting; casting while respecting the small stream environment to deliver your line & fly without spooking the trout!

3  – Casting – A DEEP DIVE into the Bow & Arrow Cast. Approach, timing, leading the trout, respecting the environment, setting the hook after a bow & arrow cast through bush, and how to to maximize your bow & arrow cast accuracy and distance while also tempering how your fly, line, leader and tippet land. This is a key unit!

4 – Casting Over – Casting in heavy bush begs us to make things up but it’s imperative to have a solid starting place. This unit looks at these scenarios and how best to tackle them.

5 – Casting Lanes – The hardest part about fly fishing small to medium-sized trout streams is finding a casting lane in the heavy bush to actually be able to back cast, roll cast, or to shoot your bow & arrow cast. We look at how to identify the best lane so you can deliver the fly with confidence.

6 – Lateral Line Part 1 – We look at what the lateral line is, how trout use it and how we use it to our advantage to draw the trout to our fly. We also examine how we can induce and somewhat control directionality of trout eating our fly in aiding our hook set and to draw it out far enough from cover to have a chance at landing it.

7 – Lateral Line Part 2 – Real life situations of its effectiveness.

8 – Finding Your Trout Stream – The eternal question we get 3 or 4 times daily on our social media channels is “WHERE???”  or “How do you find these streams???” This 3 part chapter is dedicated to answering exactly that!

9 – Finding Your Trout Stream Part 2 – We continue our discussion of how to talk to land owners, what questions to ask, how to maximize the information you need without inundating land owners or leaving them feeling “used”.

10 – Finding Your Trout Stream Part 3 – We look at using Google Earth and how Dave has used his Forest Service background to identify interesting locations and how to use ground truthing association to extrapolate what a piece of water and the riparian habitat experience might be.

11 – Developing A Mindset & Plan Part 1 – We discuss what we apply before we even leave the house. What has the weather, water flow, hatches, temperatures and in-stream temperatures or angling traffic likely been prior to your arrival? Use the evolution of your knowledge & skill to improve your plan.

12 – Developing A Mindset & Plan Part 2 – We discuss prospecting to understand the fish on new water – what’s there, how do they behave, what do they look like in the water? Spooked fish or refusals to a prospected beetle or a streamer gives you heaps of information.

13 – Position – If you can’t be in the best location to cast in a manner to control the hookset or the fight, you simply will lose trout unnecessarily. Note that the choice of position comes before the discussion of approach.

14 – Approach – Getting into the right position takes time. Doing so while respecting the small-stream environment is a make or break proposition.

15 – Hook set – We look at how he can get a good hook set by dictating a few variables to our advantage – since we understand trout behaviour, have observed its feeding cycles and forage we can use this to our advantage in timing the cast to lead the trout to where we want it to eat quite often so we can set the hook in our chosen direction, etc

16 – Fighting Trout in Small Streams – Big trout in small streams can appear to be chaos, but if you know their tendencies and where they’re likely trying to go, you can use offset angles, folds, pauses, etc to your advantage at key times of the fight to slowly win the small battles so you eventually win the tug of war.

Dave & Amelia Jensen