Brown Trout Blog

Holiday Gift Certificates: Everything is Included!

SalmoClaus

Many non fly fishing spouses or family members want to purchase the perfect fly fishing gift for their trout crazed significant other, but lack the confidence in their own fly fishing knowledge to select the perfect gift.  The one thing every angler can use is more time on the water and less time dealing with their own tangles.  If you buy a half day or full day guided fly fishing gift certificate from us you don’t have to worry about what gear your angler already has.  If they don’t have gear we can provide anything they need free.  We can always show them a new technique, a new fishing location near Asheville, or simply make their day on the water easier by handling preparation and detangling for them.  Just pick a fly fishing trip from either our wade trips page or our float trips page and you can pay by calling us 803-431-9437 or pay two %50 deposits online to be paid in full.  We will then email you a gift certificate for the trip you want.  As always if you have any questions please email or call and we will be happy to help you figure out which trip might be best.  For an additional $20 we will mail you a hat with a printed gift certificate so you have something neat to wrap!  All the gift recipient will have to do is call us to schedule their trip.

FLOAT TRIPS

WADE TRIPS

Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine: Brown Hobson Top 5 Gear Items

By Graham Averill from Blue Ridge Outdoors Magazine

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Photo by Beth Grant Photography

Brown Hobson likes to geek out on fish. The Asheville-based fly fishing guide spent several years managing an Orvis store in Jackson Hole where he fished often, but not often enough. “I wanted to be on the river every day and see how trout react to different things. I wanted to nerd out on the trout stuff.” And that’s exactly what he’s been doing since he moved to the Southern Appalachians and started his guide service, Brown Trout Fly Fishing, six years ago. Brown, an Orvis-endorsed guide, is also a member of the U.S. National Fly Fishing Team.

Yes, we have a national fly fishing team; fifteen of the country’s best anglers compete nationally and internationally (they won silver at the most recent World Fly Fishing Championship in Bosnia), catching fish for points. The trout he’s catching here in the South are generally smaller than what he was catching in Wyoming, where the rivers are wider and support larger fish, but Brown says size isn’t all that matters in the world of fly fishing. “Yeah, the water here is smaller and the fish are generally smaller, but everything in the Southern Appalachians is green and moist. It takes more effort to fish around here. It’s more physical, and I like that.”

We asked Brown to detail his five most essential pieces of gear for fishing small Appalachian streams. Here are his picks, in his own words.

To see the full article and the 5 products go to BlueRidgeOutdoors.com

Come Learn Advanced Tactis at our ORVIS 301

Dates

11/8, 11/15, 12/5, 12/6

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Guides

Brown Trout Fly Fishing LLC

 

2015 ORVIS Guide of the Year Brown Hobson

Jake Chiles

 

 

Trip Layout

Each angler will receive 3-4 hours of guided fly fishing instruction with one other angler and 3-4 hours of unguided fishing in proximity to Brown Trout Fly Fishing Guides.  Lunch and Drinks included.  Waders, Rods, Flies not included.  Consult your local ORVIS store fishing manager for appropriate flies and equipment.

 

Sample Itinerary

 

7:00 Meet at ORVIS Asheville and follow guides to river

8:00-8:30 Rig Equipment

8:30-10:00 Fly Fish with a guide

10:00-11:30 Fly Fish on your own

11:30-12:30 Lunch

12:30-2:15 Fly Fish with a guide

2:15-4:30 Fly Fish on your own

 

Cost

$150 per angler

 

Not Included

Lodging, NC fishing license and Trout Privilege, fly fishing equipment, and transportation are not included.  BrownTroutFlyFishing.com has a full list of recommended places to stay.  Payment must be made in full at the time of booking and is non-refundable.  Call Brown Hobson at Brown Trout Fly Fishing to book your trip.  803-431-9437

 

 

What is Delayed Harvest?

Delayed Harvest SignMany of our fly fishing wade trips take place on Delayed Harvest streams around Asheville, but many of our clients don’t know what that means.  These are generally trout streams that are easy to access(close proximity to roads/parking areas).  As of the writing of this post there are 33 Delayed Harvest streams in 18 North Carolina Counties.  Our favorites are The Laurel River, Shelton Laurel Creek, The West Fork of the Pigeon, The North Mills River, The Green River, The Tuckaseegee River, and The East Fork of the French Broad.  These waters offer catch and release fly fishing, artificial only from Oct 1 until the first Saturday in June.  The North Carolina Wildlife Resource Commission stocks these streams with brook trout, rainbow trout, and brown trout the first week of Oct, Nov, Mar, Apr, May.  They give us great opportunities to teach beginners to fly fish and sharpen skills for intermediate anglers in areas with a very high trout density.  They aren’t always easy, but they are some of our most productive streams in the area.  We mourn the arrival of bloody Saturday every June, and as I write this in August I can’t wait to get out on some of these rivers come Oct.  If you are ever unsure of trout regulations in NC just look at the trees along parking areas and if the land is public you will see plastic diamonds similar to the one above.  They represent different regulations and are color coded.  If you don’t know the colors yet look at the fine print.  It will be out lined for you.  To book your trip visit our Book a Trip Page.

Explore Asheville video Asheville: Return Again

The Asheville Convention and Visitors Bureau released the video Asheville:  Return again on their tourism site Explore Asheville.  We were bummed fly fishing didn’t make the video, but though that this video does a great job of showcasing what your fly fishing trip to Asheville will include.  The CVB does get some great footage of rivers and we hope it makes you want to get in them with a Brown Trout Fly Fishing LLC Guide.  You will see in this video that while fly fishing may be the focal point of your trip, making Asheville your location affords you access to awesome food, incredible craft brews, and unique southern mountain town culture.

Click this Link to submit your Fly Fishing Trip Request

Book a Trip

Brown Trout in Garden and Gun Magazine Online

BrownWhalesbackfallsBethGrantPhotographyJared Sullivan included Brown Trout Fly Fishing LLC and the Davidson River in his Garden and Gun Article:  Five Top Southern Fishing Spots.  Click on the link and give it a read.  Photo Credit to our friend Beth Grant at ORVIS Asheville.

The Davidson River is one of the few Fly Fishing only Catch and Release streams in the Asheville area.  It is our main fly fishing wade trip option for trout during summer in Pisgah National Forest and one of the best places to catch a large trout in North Carolina.  There are three very different sections of the Davidson River.  The first is what we call the main river and it runs from the National Forest Boundary up to the Bobby N Setzer Fish Hatchery.  Here you will find both quality and quanitites of stocekd Brook Trout, wild Brown Trout, and wild Rainbow Trout.  They are also the spookiest fish on the river so angler be ware.  The second section is the Hatchery section.  It is only a half a mile long, but boasts the highest fish/mile count in our area.  The fish are not super spooky, but are very selective.  All three species of trout here are often caught on midges size 24 and smaller.  The third section is above the hatchery.  You may have to bushwack and hike a little/a lot, but trout up here receive less fly fishing pressure and behave more like the North Carolina trout you expect to find in our many other “blue line” streams.  Call us and come see why the Davidson is listed as on of Trout Unlimited’s top 100 trout streams to fly fish.

 

Brown Trout Guide Brown Hobson wins ORVIS Guide of the Year!

Brown Trout Fly Fishing LLC guide Brown Hobson won ORVIS’s prestigous guide of the year award for 2015.  Brown was nominated in 2014 and finally won in 2015.  ORVIS has been awarding guide of the year honors for more than 20 years.  We are proud to have Brown as one of our team members, and while he was the guide recognized this year all of our guides deliver this kind of service on a day to day basis.  Check out our reviews if you don’t believe us.

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Are You Using Enough Split Shot?

By Brown Hobson

 

What size split shot do you typically use when you are nymphing for trout?  A #1, or may be when the current is ripping do you go for the BB shot you never use?  I found myself using four AB weights on trip the other day.  I know that is crazy, 2.4 grams of weight if you are using the ORVIS assortment weights

Split Shot

from Anchor Tackle.  It was absolutely like casting a medieval flail, but it produced fish.  We were nymphing an egg with a small mayfly nymph and using a thingamabobber indicator.  We were fishing  a pool about 8 feet deep with a very swirly current, and I was adding weight until we started to get strikes.  The luxury of fishing an egg in semi clear water is that I can tell where my fly is floating in the rivers current.  As soon as added the fourth weight the egg started rolling across the rocks and bam, the first fish ate.   We caught eight fish out of that hole using the massive weights, and didn’t have a bite until we got our flies down deep enough.

I know that is an extreme example.  Deep pool and a giant fly that would rather float than sink, but I often find my clients on wade trips remarking on how much weight we are using.   The bottom line is, when fish are glued to the bottom, like they are in the winter, if the fly is now down there they won’t even look at it.  When the fishing is good as it will be this May fish will be suspended and moving all over the water column to chase flies.  Their metabolisms will be running full speed and they will be as well.  More fly fisherman fish during the spring when fishing is the best than during the winter and therefore when they decide to try winter fishing they often expect fish to be feeding in the middle of the column because that is where their experience tells them trout will be.  When I am fishing a pool with an indicator set up I continually add weight until I either start getting bites or my flies start to hang up on the bottom of the river.  If before I hit the bottom I get a few strikes and then they stop I assume I am almost into the pod of fish and start adding weight again.  Think of this approach as gridding your water vertically.  If you start with little weight and add more every few casts you will have covered all layers of the river’s water column.  While getting down when fish are on the bottom is critical conversely if they are suspended and you get below them you are still missing out.  Trout prefer food at their level, but will come up to take flies.  I almost never see them move down to feed.  Be sure not to go straight to the bottom.

I have included a photo of two different size weight assortment packs from ORVIS Asheville.  The small pack doesn’t have big enough weights to fish the deepest pools, or even shallow pools on a heavy flow day.  If you have not been using the AB or AAA weights go buy a large size shot assortment and fish every pool by adding weight until you find the bottom.  I have even found myself using the weights “you never use” size SSG and SA in extreme situations.  Keep this article and mind and try bigger shot if you aren’t getting strikes.  I even recommend tying on a brite pink egg just so you can see where your flies are going.

Brown Hobson is the owner and one of the guides at Brown Trout Fly Fishing LLC.  Brown Trout Fly Fishing LLC is based in Asheville, NC and is ORVIS Endorsed.  To ask questions about this article or to book a day of fishing with Brown call or E-mail.

(803)-431-9437

brown@browntroutflyfishing.com

www.browntroutlfyfishing.com

Arabian Queens

By Brown Hobson, owner Brown Trout Fly Fishing LLC

 

Over the Christmas Holiday my wife and I visited family of mine living in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.  For those of you who don’t know where in the world that is it is a small country on the south eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula with a coast line on the Arabian Gulf.  The UAE is best know for its famous city Dubai, and for the crazy amount of oil they produce.

UAEMap

(The UAE is bordered to the West by Saudi Arabia and to the East by Oman)

My family has been over there for three years so the region has been on my radar, and last winter I read about Jeff Currier’s experience fishing out of Dubai on his way to the Sudan.  Jeff fished with Nick Bowles of Ocean Active, and reading about his experience peaked my interest.  Once my wife and I planned our trip I contacted Nick to see about setting up a day of fly fishing.  We got the date worked out and he prepared me to fish for Talang Queenfish and Yellow Trevally.

We landed in Abu Dhabi Christmas Eve at 3:00 am local time and enjoyed family and touring Abu Dhabi until December 27 when we headed to Dubai.  My Guide Cameron Mundy texted back and forth with me the night before to get everything set up. We switched our trip from a full day to a half day because the queen fish were disappearing after 12:00 and that was our primary target.  We met the next morning, 7:00 am, at the Jebel Ali Golf Course Marina and drank coffee while got acquainted with each other waited for the boat to be readied.  The marina was about 15 km south of Dubai and immediately north of the new Palm the Emirates are building.

DubaiMap

(The Jebel Ali Golf Course Marina is between the palm and the Port)

Cameron is a native of South Africa, but spends 11 months a year in the UAE and Oman.  Ocean active mostly operates out of a couple of locations in Oman and the fishing looks spectacular.  They catch a wide variety of fish there including different pelagics and some large Giant Trevallys.  I would love to go back sometime and fish with them in Oman, but I didn’t have time on this trip.

Our boat was ready at 8:00 sharp.  Ocean Active isn’t currently running their own boats in Dubai so we had a captain from the marina and that freed Cameron up to guide me from the bow.  We left the marina and turned slightly east after we passed the palm.

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(Leaving The Jebel Ali Marina)

The gulf around Dubai doesn’t have a ton of underwater structure so Cameron had us head for the shipping channel because it had a 5 m drop.  We cruised the edge of the channel looking for birds and didn’t see any for about an hour.  Our plan once we found birds and fish was for Cameron to cast a hook less top water plug and tease the school close enough for me to make a cast with my fly, bait and switch.  I had an 8 wt with an intermediate line and a size 6 pearl gotcha.  We cruised up the channel headed for a couple areas a few miles out that Cameron had been finding fish in.

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(One of the many container ships we dodged during the trip)

About 9:30 we arrived at a spot in the channel where we saw dozens of fish trap buoys, a good sign.  We slowly cruised around watching the birds.  They were flying around in a manner that made us think they had seen bate moments earlier.  Cameron was blind casting his plug and I was warming up.  Suddenly we noticed a school of good sized queenies charging toward the boat.  One fish did look at Cameron’s plug, but they were gone very quickly.  I probably had a shot at the fish, but it was my first shot and happened in fewer than 5 seconds.  We spent another 10 minutes waiting for the school to surface again to no avail.  We continued up the channel and finally found another school of fish.  These queenies were pretty small.  We weren’t being picky at this point so I shot my cast in there and started a roly poly retrieve.  Nothing was following the plug, but because we were only 60’ from the school I kept shooting casts in there.  On the fourth cast I hooked up.  The fish instantly dove straight down.

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 (The runs were short but pretty powerful, and after about 5 minutes I landed my first queenfish)

It was small and a little misshapen, but I was psyched.  By the time we finished the photos and resumed our hunt the fish were gone.  That would be the theme of the day.  The fish would not stay on the surface for very long at all.

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About thirty minutes later we found another promising school of fish with lots of birds working.  No fish would follow the plug, but I was able to get my fly into the school and about halfway back to the boat a mediums sized queenie hit my gotcha.  I saw the fish nail the fly and even if I hadn’t I could tell he was a larger fish.  Instantly all my line was ripped of the bow of the boat and into the water.  This fight lasted closer to ten minutes and this fish’s power was pretty impressive.  Again no crazy long runs, but there was no turning or stopping when he did go.

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(Queenfish #2)

My third queenfish followed quickly.  The school we were on only moved a few hundred yards and by the time we were set up again there were several hundred queenies busting bait simultaneously.  We stopped the boat and I made a cast, but because the boat was still moving I couldn’t strip fast enough to set the hook when the next fish ate.  Luckily they were so happy that my second cast into this school was a success.  It was a really cool sight and the third fish was on my fly within a second of it hitting the water.

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After landing my third fish the school disappeared and we spent another hour looking for more queenies to no avail.  We had about 45 minutes left so we decided to head back toward the marina and fish some of the rock jetties along the palm looking for yellow trevallies.  We set the boat up so we could drift down the rocks blind casting as we went.  I did get a bump from something, but no hook up.  A second species would have been cool, but I was totally content catching a few fish of a new species in a totally new place.  The UAE is a really neat place to visit and if you are there I highly recommend calling Cameron at Ocean Active.  He is a cool guy with a neat fishing background who will put you on fish.  If you have any questions about the trip I will be happy to go into further detail.

Loch Style Stripping in the Wind

By Brown Hobson

Strip speed is often confusing to anglers because there are very few rules that always hold true.  The possible retrieval styles are endless.  Are trout  eating flies best on a finger crawl(inches of movement at a time), rolly polly(feet per second) or one of the many speeds in between?    As a former conventional bass fisherman I view lake stripping as I always have fishing a plastic worm.  On any given day they might want any number of retrieves and there is no retrieve that won’t work in a specific situation.  I have found one big factor that limits retrieve options more than anything is wind.  For those not yet familiar with Loch Style Stillwater fishing, it is a method of lake fishing in which the boat is set up wind of a target area and a drogue(wind sock) is used to slow boat movement so anglers can methodically work the area infront of them.  Anglers refer to that area downwind as our drift.  In no or very mild wind a drogue is often kept in the boat so that movement down the drift is not totally stalled.  In moderate wind the drogue keeps the boat moving at a slow pace.  In a high wind the drogue slows the boat, but at some point the wind is so high that boat is flying down the drift even with the drogue out.  At the last two Americas Cups I have seen high winds on both Sylvan Lake and Dillon Reservoir.  On Sylvan in 2013 trout were eating my flies on a very slow retrieve with short burst of speed in between.  Winds were variable from dead flat calm to high.  When winds were dead flat calm I noticed my retrieve was catching more trout than my competition.  When the wind kicked up I was missing fish, while my fellow competitors were adding fish to their scorecards.  I am a head case when I start missing fish in a competition, so I went crazy for about 30 minutes.  Luckily when I go crazy on a lake my clouded brain’s defense strategy is to gomer strip hard.  Gomer stripping is long steady, but firm, strips in a rhythmic fashion.  While that strip doesn’t always work it did in that situation and I started to hook my fish at an improved percentage.  What I found was fish wanted a six inch movement with a short pause.  When the wind was dead I accomplished that with six inch strips and a pause.  When the wind kicked up the boat was moving at lets say a foot per second.  When the boat is moving towards the files at 12 inches per second a 6 inch strip allows 6 inches of slack to form in the line, almost no fly movement is created.  I was creating some movement, but when fish ate I couldn’t feel the strike early enough because of my slack.  Once I started the 2 foot gomer strips I was able to move my flies and keep slack out of the line.  I started catching fish, but it was too late to catch the field.  It was a hard lesson learned.

On Dylan Reservoir this year we experienced white caps.  I don’t know what wind speed was, but it was high enough we could barely move upwind to set a new drift.  We started drifting in an unproductive area.  I had a blank with an hour left.  We pulled the plug and ran out to some under water structure I had done well on the year before.  It was fully exposed to the wind, and I knew from my experience on sylvan that I was going to have to strip very fast to keep slack out of the line and move the flies.  The boat was moving several feel per second and I was making the longest cast I could and stripping 3 to 4 feet of line with no pauses.  I caught 3 rainbow trout on the first drift and another 2 on the second.  Time was up, and again I made adjustments too late to catch the field, but saved the blank and finished just a few places out of first.

When the wind is soft or moderate, finding the right retrieve can be very difficult and can drive you crazy.  I can quickly think of a couple dozen possibilities.  While high wind presents many challenges I believe it does simplify the strip.  Generally I strip long and fast, but anglers can really dial it in if you can find a way to time the speed of the boat.  Pick some bubbles out on the side of the boat and try to figure out how fast you are moving past it.  Then make sure your flies are moving at least slightly faster than the boat.  That will keep slack out of your line and ensure that you are moving your flies enough to produce the action needed to entice trout to strike.