At Fort Smith Fly Shop and Cabins, our Bighorn River Guides have collected several lifetimes of fish stories.  Here are a few of our favorites from over the years.

Master fly fisherman, guide and outfitter Michael Mastrangelo has develped a keen sense for Bighorn River hatches.  Accurate fly selection - "matching the hatch" - can be critical for success on the Bighorn and many otherlegendary Blue Ribbon trout rivers.  While Michael saves some of his "secrets" with clients and friends, he's out to gether a chart that will help prepare fly fishermen for a float down the Bighorn.

There are occasions on the water when you may not have the correct fly that the fish are feeding on. Many people don’t want to carry a fly tying kit with them while fishing. Something that you may want to carry are permanent marking pens and a small, sharp pair of scissors. These can be used to change color and or alter the shape of certain flies while on the stream. Examples would be trimming Dun wings, top and bottom to make a spinner. Or trimming an adult pattern to make it look like an emerger, floating nymph, or stillborn. Making a light elk hair caddis darker or into a yellow sally. Coloring a light colored streamer to make it dark, etc. It is amazing what you can do with a few snips and color changes.

In my own personal fishing, I always use two flies, whether it be nymphing, streamer fishing, or dry fly fishing. The reasoning is two fold. The first is obviously to give the fish a choice of two different flies. The second is that the front fly is either an attractor or a strike indicator. Examples: With streamers, both a light fly and a dark fly or a big fly and a small fly can be used. With nymphs, the top fly can be used to get the attention of the fish while the bottom fly is the catcher. Dry flies, during a hatch use a Dun followed by an emerger or a spinner. Or use an attractor fly on top with a nymph dropper 4 to 12 inches under it. Experiment with this and you will come up with your own deadly combination.

One of the more interesting techniques we have used is the two handed strip retrieve. By that we mean casting a streamer or streamers up and across, putting the rod under your arm and stripping smoothly and evenly hand over hand. Most tailwater trout never really learn to become good predators. There is so much food in the river that most browns and rainbows don’t learn to become predatory. Therefore, when a streamer is presented it should move in as straight a line as possible without herky-jerky movements. Give it a try and let me know how you do.

At times winter nymph fishing requires some different tactics. When the water temperature gets very cold, trout metabolism naturally slows down. This means that the fish don’t have to eat as much and when they do eat, they won't move very far for the fly. You have to put the fly right on their nose. Therefore, it is necessary to slow your drift down. We want the drift to be about one-half the current speed. You can accomplish this by adding more weight to your leader and by using a bigger strike indicator. Because the take will be subtle you will also have to adjust your indicator. The distance between your flies and the indicator should be about 30% greater than the depth of the water that you are fishing.

The fish are extremely healthy averaging 17-18 inches and tough hombres! Good fish fighting tactics are critical to landing fish on the Bighorn. 

I have never seen so many fish lost as I have this year. This is attributable to both the size and tenacity of the trout and poor fish fighting and hooking techniques. The answer is to set the hook the moment that indicator does absolutely anything, and I mean anything! And set it with authority.

After that, point your rod butt at the sky and let the fish fight the full flex of the rod. Next is to point the rod downstream and make the fish fight the side pressure. That sounds pretty simple and it is but you have to watch the fish and react to what he is doing. You have to watch the fish, react to him, and use the current or lack thereof to your advantage. By that I mean make him fight the current and your rod as well as use the current to get him in. Keep him off balance.

Ted Williams (the baseball great) was quoted as saying, " The direction and angle of pressure is more important than the amount of pressure. You want that angle to be against their lateral line.

The thing about dry fly fishing on the Bighorn is accuracy is imperative.  You must get the fly upstream of the fish in its feeding lane with a slack line.  Taking your time and being stealthy is also part of the equation.  It is better to think about positioning yourself and how you will present the fly than to just get excited and start making multiple casts at multiple fish.

My suggestion is to get across from the fish or downstream and across and cast upstream of the fish with an upstream reach cast and let the fly drift drag free over the fish.  Slack and accuracy are what catches fish on dries.

I generally use boot foot waders in the winter because they are a lot warmer than stockingfoot waders.  I also make sure that I get the boot foots that are a little larger in size than what I need, in order to wear extra clothing and socks under the waders. This also applies to stockingfoot and wading boots, even in the summer because as you know the water is very cold all year.  If the boots are too tight, your feet will get cold.

In the winter time when the water is very cold, the fish don't move very far for the fly.  You must put it right on their nose and then they will eat it.

Here is a little tip on the reach cast.  A reach cast is used primarily in dry fly fishing but it can also be used in nymphing to get a drag free float.  The reach cast provides two things: 1) So your fly line and leader does not go over the fish, only your fly does (it keeps the fly line and leader out of the fishes vision), and 2) it also allows for better drag free float.  

In making the reach cast,  most people do their normal cast which is pretty high line speed.  This does not give the angler time to make the reach.  A tip I received from Lefty Kreh many, many years ago was to cast slower, almost in slow motion and keep your backcast low and your forward cast high.  This allows more time to do the reaching.  Also, when doing it this way, when you do reach you want to let slack line go out between the reel and the first stripping guide in order to not pull the line back towards you when you are doing the reach. 

Remember, give yourself time to make the reach before your fly lands on the water.

As many of you know, this past season we had an unbelievable grasshopper year.  I have heard by talking to local farmers that we should have another good hatch of hoppers this year. As the season wore on and the fish became more picky, those people that could put slack or create slack with a cast in their presentation obviously hooked more fish. 

Those people that couldn’t, caught some of the dumber fish. In thinking about this, I have gone back to a different leader design for dry flies that I used to use in the past. The principle behind this is “if you can’t create slack with the cast, you must create slack with leader design.” Basically I use the old George Harvey slack line leader formula. Which combined with a good stop on the forward cast creates a lot of slack in the presentation. 

I found that with people that had difficulties catching fish on hoppers I used an extremely long soft tippet. Anywhere from 3 feet to 6 feet of 4x tippet with a big air resistant hopper fly. In most cases this caused the leader to collapse and the hopper to land last on the water after the leader lands.

This sounds counterintuitive but this creates a tremendous dead drift, especially when casting across different current speeds. A good example would be when fishing from a driftboat and casting toward the bank, you might have 4 or 5 different current speeds between you and the bank and the slowest water could be right on the bank where you are trying to put your fly. With all this slack in your system, it will allow your fly to float for a long time near the bank edge without dragging.

Naturally, with this much slack line on the water, you have to be quicker with the hook set. Keep your rod tip pointed at the fly and when the trout eats, set the rod downstream and haul with your line hand.  This is called the accordion hook set.