A video encyclopedia of fishing tips.
Hello, I'm Mel Hardman. This videotape of fishing tips is the result of many years of not only fishing experience, but of helping other people enjoy fishing more.
Before I introduce my good friend and longtime fishing companion, Gene Snow, let me tell you a little about him.
Gene has been helping people get more enjoyment out of the great outdoors for many years.
In fact, most of his adult life has been spent selling fishing tackle and giving freely of his knowledge and experience.
He's won casting championships and he's fished the world over. He's caught everything from bluegills to black marlin.
But he still gets almost as much kick out of taking a catfish on bait as he does a trout on a dry fly.
He loves fishing and his enthusiasm is contagious.
Look, he's right up against the boat now. Look, watch, I'll tease that biker. Look at this.
I'm trying to leave him. Woo hoo!
His favorite fish is the one he happens to be fishing for at the moment.
I don't know of anyone better qualified or who would have more knowledge about fishing that we could share with you in this tape than Gene Snow.
We've designed it so that you can easily look up any particular subject you might want to review.
Simply locate the subject on the back of the box by number and then fast forward your VCR,
watching and counting the subject title boards as they go by until you reach the tip you want to review.
Each tip is labeled and numbered.
Hello, I'm Gene Snow. You know, it's said that fishing is the number one participation sport.
Some 60 million men, women, and children enjoy the many pleasures of this wonderful recreation.
After fishing with all kinds of tackle and catching over 70 different species
and talking about and selling all kinds of fishing tackle for more than 40 years,
if someone were to ask me, why do you like fishing, my answers could probably fill a book.
To most people then, fishing is what they've been exposed to.
It might be just plunking down on a folding chair on a lake shore, I've done that myself,
and waiting for a fat catfish or a bluegill to pull your bobber under.
Yes, you bet. That's fishing. You bet it is.
On the other end of the spectrum, you could be riding four-foot ocean swells,
waiting for the slashing strike and the indescribable thrill and work from fighting a huge billfish.
Or you may like the challenge of figuring out where the bonefish will come on the next tide change,
or even trying to thread a leader tip through the eye of a size 22 fly so you can match a midge hatch on a trout stream.
Whatever your choice, fishing offers all of these and plenty in between.
To me, the main attraction in fishing may actually be its complexities
and the never-ending challenge of learning something new.
The variety of several hundred species can make fishing an endless quest.
Each fish has its own peculiarities in feeding habits, food preferences,
and not to mention water conditions, the weather, the barometer, and even the phases of the moon.
It can be as simple as catching a bluegill on a worm and a bobber in a farm pond
to, well, taking a thousand pound black marlin off the barrier reef of Australia.
Throw in a vast array of rods, reels, lines, knots, and an interminable amount of lures,
and you get some idea of just how complex and challenging this sport of fishing can really be.
And of course, the main actor is the fish. Each species has its own special attraction.
It might be its beauty, its fighting reputation, or its table qualities.
Or maybe it's just that we like the kind of places where fish choose to live.
Pursuing him gives us an excuse to escape our own humdrum environment for a few hours or days.
Yes, fishing certainly is one of the most interesting sports.
A multitude of variables only seem to add to its charm.
So whether your approach is casual or serious, we hope you'll find in this video some ideas and techniques
that can increase your success and your fishing pleasure.
Mel and I have been fortunate enough to have been deeply involved in this arena of learning because of our occupations.
Most of our lives have been closely associated in many ways with fishing in the outdoors.
These experiences have enabled us to gather a wealth of valuable fishing information from others,
as well as develop many of our own special techniques.
In assembling this video, we've drawn from all of those sources.
Over the years, I've noticed that many fishermen do not know how to tie a correct connecting knot.
I've seen hooks tied on with, believe it or not, shoelace knots, granny knots, overhand knots, double half hitches,
and knots that I, well, not even the tire himself could duplicate a second time.
Just about every way imaginable.
Now this may sound simple, but the knot between you and the fish, many times, is the difference between landing and losing them.
So we will put a big emphasis on knot tying.
Thanks to the modern VCR, you can learn any knot just as easily as if I were right there in person coaching you.
Before I show you the most frequently used knot in fishing, however, I'd like to show you a very startling thing about monofilament line.
Modern chemistry has given us lines that are nothing short of a miracle compared to what our forefathers had to fish with.
Those small in diameter, they're tough.
We can land fish many pounds larger than the so-called pound test strength of the line.
200 pound marlin have been caught on 20 pound line and even lighter.
But there's one enemy that's totally devastating the monofilament line.
I'm going to take this 17 pound test top grade line and this cotton handkerchief and watch what happens.
Just a few rubs with this handkerchief generated enough heat to totally melt that 17 pound test line in two.
Now the reason I showed you that demonstration was to impress on you that damaged heat can inflict on your fishing line.
Tying an incorrect knot or drawing one up too fast, running your line over the edge of your boat or a number of other things can generate heat and excessive heat.
And heat, remember, is totally devastating to monofilament line.
Did you ever wonder why you lost that big lunker last summer unexpectedly?
Well, you can just about bet that one of the major reasons for those kind of unexpected losses is improper knots in your liner leader systems.
Tying a proper knot is one of the most important parts of fishing.
Yet, surprisingly, a lot of fishermen don't know how to tie a good knot.
A good knot can return 95 to 100 percent of the strength of your line back to you while an improper knot may reduce your line strength as much as 50 percent or more.
Here's an example of that situation.
Here's a four turn knot that we've tied.
We're going to pull it on this scale and this is six pound line.
That broke it about three pounds.
Here is a knot, proper six turn pinch knot tied to the same weight of line.
And you notice we get that right up to about six and a half pounds before it broke.
We're going to be learning several knots.
There's 15 or 20, but the three or four basic ones are the ones we're going to deal with.
And if you learn to tie three or four good knots, that's all you need.
Are knots important?
Remember, the wrong knot or even an improperly tied correct knot can reduce your fishing line by as much as 50 percent of its otherwise normal strength.
The clinch knot is one of the most popular knots used today and it's a good knot.
It'll return 95 to 100 percent of your line strength when properly tied.
It's a relatively easy knot to tie, but you must observe a few simple rules while you're tying it to make sure that it gives you top performance.
We're going to start demonstrating here with this cord so that you can easily see it rather than thin monofilament line.
We've threaded the line through the eye of the hook and now we're going to, with our thumb and forefinger of our left hand, we're going to maintain a space there.
And we're going to wrap the tag end of the line around the standing portion of the line six turns.
Not four or five, but six. Count them.
That's important, the amount of times you wind it around.
Now after we've wound six turns around the standing portion, we're going to take the tag end and slip it through the space we maintain with our thumb and forefinger.
We're going to gently tug on a line. Sometimes this cord doesn't pull up as well.
We should lubricate it as if we were tying with monofilament and slowly draw the knot up.
Slowly draw it until all of the segments are jammed together in a nice tight knot.
You can trim this knot very close.
Leave about a sixteenth or an eighth of an inch is all you need of a tag end.
And you have a knot here that will return 95 to 100 percent of your line strength and relatively easy to tie.
The improved clinch knot is a very good knot.
It's very similar to the regular clinch knot, but it's extremely useful when you're attaching a finer diameter line around a larger object.
The improvement on the clinch keeps the item from slipping.
We're going to tie that improved clinch knot right now.
We start the same way we do with most of the clinch knots.
We maintain a space here at the end of the eye where the line passes through the eye and we wrap the material five times.
Not six this time, but five. This is called a five turn improved clinch.
Five times around and then we come down and pass the tag end through the aperture here just ahead of the eye.
We come back up and start the knot down and we pass it through the loop above there.
That's the improvement of the clinch knot.
Then we cinch it down. This is a little hard to pull down, but we pull that knot together and we end up with a very compact knot with that improvement in it to make sure that it doesn't slip.
The finished knot tied with monofilament looks like this. Nice and snug and you can trim the tag end very close.
This is a 95 to 100 percent strength retention knot.
In this segment we're going to talk about tying and show you how to tie the blood knot.
The blood knot is a very good knot for connecting two pieces of monofilament as long as there's not too much disparity in the sizes you're trying to connect.
It's a very good knot for connecting a tapered leader to a leader bud or connecting two pieces of line in case you get a breakage or if you want to extend the line.
Very good knot for that kind of use and it's about 90 percent or 95 percent the strength of the line when it's properly tied.
A lot of people have trouble tying the blood knot. I'm going to show you one key why they do and then we'll go on with the knot.
The key to tying the blood knot easier is when you cross these two pieces of line, which is actually the first step in tying the knot,
cross them at steep angles and trap them between the thumb and forefinger of whichever hand you're holding them with and maintain that pressure throughout the tying of the knot.
So that's what we started with, that's the first step. We're going to take the under section of this line, the part that's underneath where we crossed them,
we're going to take that and wrap it five times towards ourselves. One, two, three, four, five.
And you always count these, you count the turns in these knots, it's very important because you can put one turn too little, one turn too many can change the character of the knot.
We've wrapped that towards ourselves five times, now we're going to slip the tag end through that aperture or the little gap that we maintained by our thumb and forefinger holding it snug there.
And we're going to slip that, I always use my teeth, now your dentist won't get mad at you for this because there's no pressure, you're not doing any biting or anything,
I just hold on to that tag end so I can reach in with my other hand and recapture that space and maintain that space.
Now I've done that and you can see the space there, and this is the key to tying this knot, this is where everybody makes it difficult for themselves by not maintaining that space.
Now I'm going to take the over section and I'm going to go the opposite direction, away from myself, five times and be sure and count them, there's four and five.
Now I'm going to come around here and put that tag end through that aperture that I trapped by maintaining that space, the opposite, or that is the opposite way I did the other one,
but the same way I wound, I wound away from myself, that's the way I'm going to put the tag end through.
And with this knot you need to be a little careful to hold on to these ends, especially with monofilament which is a little bit stiffer than this material I'm using,
which I'm using this cord so you can see it easier, but you hold on to that sometimes just until you get the knot started.
Then as with all knots, and this one we haven't lubricated, but with monofilament you lubricate it either with saliva or water or whatever was available,
and then you draw the knot up slow to avoid friction and to keep that all important heat, that enemy of monofilament heat from occurring.
We slowly draw this knot up and as you see it's going into a nice compact knot, and of course as with all knots you draw it up tight, slowly but tight, and you draw it until it's completely brought together.
Now you have a completed blood knot and you always know if you've tied it right because you'll see those ends opposing one another,
one that's sticking out the opposite directions. This is a knot that'll give you, as I mentioned, 90-95% strength to your line and also can be trimmed very close
so that if you're using it in the middle of a line it'll slip you through your guides easily, or if you're using it to tie a leader to a leader butt,
you can trim it real close so it doesn't have any catching ends and will slip through the guides easily.
We use the surgeon's knot two ways in fishing. First of all, it's an excellent knot to make a loop in the end of our leader,
which we sometimes use for if we want a loop-to-loop connection, and also we use the surgeon's knot to connect two pieces of monofilament,
particularly when we're trying to put a tippet on a fly leader or anytime we're trying to attach two quite dissimilar pieces of line,
the surgeon's knot is a good knot to use and maintain as much strength as you can possibly get out of that kind of a combination.
You know, we tied the blood knot before and that doesn't work if there's too much disparity in the diameters of the two pieces you're connecting,
so the surgeon's knot is a good knot to know for that. But first let's talk about the surgeon's loop. It's quite simple.
It's the only loop to tie really because it retains about 90 percent of the line strength.
You merely double the line and tie an overhand knot through once, through twice, and pull the knot together.
And of course, as in all knots, as we've been talking all the way through this knot series, be sure and lubricate and draw the knot up slow.
But that's all there is to tying the surgeon's loop. You have a good loop connection, which is about 90 percent of the strength of the line.
It'll return that much strength to you. Easy to tie, just doubling the line, going through twice, tying a double overhand knot.
The surgeon's knot is the same kind of a knot when we're connecting two pieces of line or leader,
but we tie it just a little different because we lay the two items we're trying to tie together alongside of one another.
But the basic knot that we tie is the same process as we use in the double surgeon's loop,
and that is we tie an overhand knot and go through it twice. We go through once.
Here again we're pulling this tippet through, if it was the tippet of a fly leader that we're trying to connect,
and we go through one more time with both pieces. We've merely tied an overhand knot and gone through it twice.
Then here again, using lubrication and pulling the knot down, snug and slow, then trimming the tag ends,
you have about an 85 or 90 percent connection, and one which allows you to connect fine material to heavier material
with quite a bit of strength maintenance.
Here is how the knot looks in monofilament. Makes a nice clean knot. That's the surgeon's loop.
And then I've tied up one here to show you a relatively thin piece of line.
I think this is 12 pound that I've attached to 25, and makes a nice clean knot and a very strong knot.
The surgeon's loop, the surgeon's knot, both useful in fishing.
Spin fishing with light tackle has become one of the most popular fishing sports in the USA,
and the use of lighter line that the spinning tackle allows gives us better casting performance than the old conventional casting reels.
However, because of the light line, we have to be careful with our drag adjustments,
and when playing a fish, you should exert maximum pressure on the fish at all times within the limits of your tackle.
Adjusting the drag properly will assure these advantages to your fishing.
The way to adjust the drag on a spinning reel is to assemble a rod, thread the line up through the guides,
tie it to some object or have someone hold it if you've got a helper,
and adjust your drag knob up to about midway point or a little tighter.
Put some bend in the rod and get a nice healthy bend, maybe a 30-35 percent bend in the rod,
and that's about all you should do to any rod. You should never overtax a rod.
Then at that point, back the drag knob down until your drag moves, until the spool turns.
Try it a couple of three times until you get the right combination.
You may have to adjust up a notch or two or back off a notch or two until you get just the right combination
that you can put a lot of pressure on the fish with the rod and yet it will give line before the breaking point of the line arrives.
When you've adjusted your drag properly this way, you will be able to put the maximum amount of pressure on the fish without breaking your tackle.
You know bait fishing is one of the most popular forms of fishing across the country.
In this segment, we're going to go over several bait rigs, some of which you may be familiar with, some you may not,
to help you add some dimension to your bait fishing.
The first rig we're going to look at here is a special dropper rig with two hooks.
We've got this one set up with a simulated salmon egg on the dropper with a little gold hook,
and on the bottom here a little treble with a little piece of cheese on it.
We use this on a cross-line swivel, and we use a sliding weight with it.
This is a bubble which we would fill with water. If we were using that as a weight, we also use a sliding egg sinker.
The double rig is a pretty effective rig for reservoir fishing.
Another rig that we use, this is a standard, maybe the most popular type of reservoir rig,
I've got this hooked up with two things here, a larger bubble which we would fill with water,
or a large egg sliding sinker. You don't use them both together normally.
Then we put 18 to 24 inches of line below that. We have a swivel to stop the bubble or sinker from slipping down against the hook.
An 18 to 24 inches of line with a night crawler or whatever bait you're using.
It's a very, very good method for reservoir fishing mostly.
Here's a common method that's used some in reservoirs, but mostly in streams.
A couple or three split shot according to how much weight you need to get down,
and no more than 12 inches from your offering. In this case, you notice we've got a night crawler.
Notice I've threaded that on there straight. When we fish night crawlers, we like to have them straight with the hook exposed.
Incidentally, going back to this sliding sinker, one of the reasons that we use that sliding sinker,
or sliding weighted bubble, is so the fish, they're sitting on the bottom in the reservoir,
and the fish can pick the bait up and run aways with it without feeling the weight of the sinker.
This is sometimes very effective when you have spooky fish.
Another method we use quite a bit is a fixed bobber with an appropriate length of line hanging down.
In this case, I've got a minnow, and I like to fish a minnow this way,
just hook it through the cartilage on the head so it has something, the hook has something to purchase against,
and two, three feet or whatever is the necessary depth that you need for the conditions you've got,
and a fixed bobber, this is real good on a windy day or a breezy day when you can,
the wind will blow your offering across the wide area of water and cover a lot of ground.
Very effective, particularly for channel catfish. I love this for channel catfishing in shallower water.
Another rig that is quite popular, and this is also used in streams with flies, we use this a lot with nymphs.
This is a rig where we tie a dropper by tying a five or six turn blood knot and leaving one end long.
This then became our dropper off of a blood knot, and we cut the other side of it off.
Then the main line continues on down here, and we have our sinker right on the end.
The idea of this is the sinker goes along the bottom, keeping the bait just off the bottom,
but free and swinging in the current so it's attractive to the fish.
You can get down and have more control and more feel with this kind of a rig, particularly in streams.
Some people like to use it in reservoirs too. They'll put a very heavy weight on the end,
I mean like a three ounce or two ounce bell sinker, and then they'll reel their line tight
and have an attitude like this to their rod, keeping the bait just at the bottom or just off the bottom.
Very effective with flies also when you're fishing spinning nymphs or fishing with a spinning outfit
and fishing with nymphs or something you want to get close to the bottom of the stream.
This is a very effective way, and you adjust the weight of course always to the conditions you're trying to meet.
Well that's some bait rigs that we use, and I hope some of them were new to you
so that they'll help you increase your pleasure in fishing.
This segment we're going to talk about spinning tackle, how to cast with a spinning outfit,
the proper casting technique.
The spinning outfit, spinning reel and rod has become the most popular type of a fishing equipment
in the world I guess. The reason why it is so popular, it's relatively easy to use,
and you can cast a wide variety of baits from light to heavy weight baits and lures on the spinning outfit.
The action of a spinning outfit is a little bit different than that of a fly outfit.
You'll see in our fly segments where we don't use the wrist very much, the spinning and bait casting action is all wrist.
You take a comfortable position with your forearm and shoulder in fairly close to your body,
and you move the wrist in a motion like this.
What this does, when you move back with that wrist movement, it actually makes the weight of the lure,
bends the rod or cocks it.
And then you let go on the forward thrust of the rod, letting the rod do most of the work.
And here's what it looks like when it's done right, you bring the rod back like that in that motion,
and on the forward motion you let the line go like this.
Just with a little light flick of the finger, or the wrist, we made about a 75 or 100 foot cast there,
we let the rod do most of the work.
Now there's two or three ways, spinning of course is a stationary spool with no moving parts,
the line just flows off the end of the spool here, and so there's very little chance for backlash,
in a true sense of the word, a backlash is a thing that happens on a revolving spool reel,
where the reel spool is revolving, we're going to talk about that in the next segment,
and then it overruns, that's a true backlash.
A spinning reel, since the line just flows off the spool in that manner,
you cannot have what was called a true backlash, but you can have tangles.
So we're going to talk about the proper way to hold the rod, you should take the spinning rod,
and according to how big your hand is, split the stem of the reel with either two or three fingers,
whichever is the most comfortable to put your finger in a position to pick this line coming up off the line roller on the bail.
And that's most comfortable, it balances the reel right under your hand,
it also puts your finger in a position, your forefinger, in a position to pick that line up.
When you're in that position, you're ready to open the bail and you're ready to cast.
And you know, just with a little wrist action, just allowing the rod to cock with the weight of the lure cocking the rod,
and then on the forward cast, let the line go, and after you make the cast, as I said,
you can use this forefinger to control the line, where it's going, how much comes off,
or when the lure hits, you can stop the line to keep excess line from coming off the reel like this.
That helps to avoid tangles.
When you do that, you can just reel your finger right out of the way and start your retrieve.
Now you notice we have a practice plug on the end of this outfit, a little rubber practice plug,
and I would get either a plastic or rubber practice plug, it's good to practice with and you don't snag things up with it.
It's a good thing for you to practice at home or anytime you're practicing.
It's a good idea to practice a little bit with your outfit too.
Nobody would ever think of going out to the golf course without hitting a bucket or two of balls and putting,
and yet people leave the rods in the closet all winter and want to go out and perform good come fishing season.
So it doesn't hurt to practice a little bit.
I'm going to show you, we talk about letting the rod do the work, and that's what we do with this wrist action.
You don't have to put a lot of effort into this yourself if you let the rod do the work.
I'm going to show you a little underhand cast here just with a flick of the rod.
We've got a 75 or 80 foot cast out there.
We're just letting the rod, we just kick the rod down, and then on the upstroke we let the rod propel the plug out there.
So let the rod do the work, control your line with your finger so that you don't get over excess line coming off the reel to give you tangles,
and it'll help your spinning.
Spin tackle, one of the most popular types of fishing in the world.
We're going to talk about how to avoid line twists with spinning tackle.
You know, I don't think it's any of us that's fished with spinning tackle that hasn't had line twists from one time or another,
and it can be quite irritating and sometimes it can almost spoil a trip.
There are two basic reasons for line twists.
One is that the line overpowers the swivel when you're fishing revolving lures in a stream or trolling a lure behind a boat.
To avoid this twist or negate it to a great degree,
move the line out behind the boat without the lure or downstream from you without the lure for a minute or two every hour or so.
This will take out most of the twister in the line.
You can reattach the lure and go back to fishing.
The second and perhaps the most unknown cause of line twist is reeling against the drag.
When you're bringing a fish in, you should never reel when that drag sounds.
Either your drag's too loose or if your drag's set right, you've just got a big fish on,
but you never reel against it because the head revolves around the spool,
the multiplication factor of the reel which may be four or five times and puts four or five twists in the line every turn of the handle,
resulting in what I'm sure you all recognize or most of you do as this.
And sometimes we blame the line and sometimes we blame a lot of things, but it's because we reel against the drag.
So to avoid line twist, be careful and take the twist out of your line when you're trolling or fishing on a stream and try not to reel against the drag.
Let's talk about playing a fish with a spinning outfit.
The best way to bring any fish in is by exerting the maximum amount of pressure that your tackle will take.
Of course, this requires a properly adjusted drag and knowing what you should be doing with the rod and reel.
It's also better off for the fish if you're going to release him if he didn't have to fight too long in a taxing battle.
And on the other hand, if you're going to eat him, he didn't have enough time to wear the hook hole and get off or fray the line with his teeth and so on.
So we're going to bring that fish in the correct way.
I can't budge him. He's just going where he wants. Look at it. Look at the drag. I give him all the sweat I can.
By using our rod correctly, you exert the power on the fish with your rod. You use that levering action.
That's what the rod's for. And you move the rod away either upwards or sideways, depending upon how you're stroking the fish.
A few feet, you move it with power, two or three feet. Then you drop the rod tip and reel the line that you've gained.
You again lift the rod and exert pressure on the fish. If your drag makes a noise, it doesn't hurt anything because if you've got the drag set properly,
you're exerting the maximum amount of pressure you can exert without breaking your line.
But you do that stroke action again, then you drop your tip and regain that line.
With this levering and reeling action, we'll get that fish in the least amount of time without danger to our tackle.
That's the way to bring a fish in with spinning tackles.
You know, a bait casting reel is a very useful tool. It'll do a few things that a spinning reel won't do.
Spinning tackle is by far the most popular kind of tackle on the market.
But the bait casting reel is very popular in areas where there's bass fishing, where you have to throw heavier lures, and where it's necessary to use a heavier line.
A bait casting reel will handle weights of 10, 12, 14, 20 pound line a lot better than a spinning reel will.
And for certain applications, it's a better tool for fishing.
The one thing that keeps a lot of people away from bait casting is you do have a revolving spool, whereas with a spinning reel you have a fixed spool.
In other words, when you make the cast with the bait casting reel, the initial energy starts the spool spinning,
and the centrifugal force of the spool flows the line off of the spool to keep up with the lure.
You must maintain a little light pressure on the spool, therefore, to keep the spool from overrunning and get what we call a backlash.
People are shying off, or sometimes they shy off, of using a bait casting reel because they're a little afraid of using that because of the backlash problem.
However, we're going to teach you today how to learn how to cast with a bait casting reel, and it's not that hard.
It just takes a little practice, a little bit more practice than a spinning reel.
Here's how you do to correctly learn and start using a bait casting reel.
The first thing you do is this little adjustment knob on the side of every reel adjusts the tension of the spool.
And to start with, you want to adjust that up to where the lure will not take the line down by itself.
You have to jiggle it a little bit.
This helps us. It slows the spool speed down and allows us to make a little easier cast.
To start, then, you adjust that spool to that tension, to where the lure will not go down by itself.
You have to kind of jiggle it down.
That's the first thing you want to do.
The second thing you want to do is don't try to overhead cast to begin with.
The best way to learn the mechanics of this bait casting reel to start with is let down a little line, about this much line, and try a kind of a soft sidearm cast.
Remember, you've got to keep your thumb on top of this spool all the time.
And just try a soft sidearm cast to begin with.
Just make a little cast out like that.
And, of course, always stop the lure with your thumb on the spool.
Don't let the lure hit before you touch that spool.
And, of course, with bait casting, you've got gentle pressure on top of that spool all the time, especially when you're starting, so that it won't overrun.
So the line won't come off the reel faster than the lure's going out.
That's what we're doing with this gentle pressure.
So you let about a foot and a half down.
And to start with, just make that gentle sidearm cast so that you can get the feel of when to let go of this.
Because that's the whole key in bait casting, and it keeps you from having backlashes, is learning when to let go of that lure.
After you've practiced sidearm a few times, we'll do it again.
Just make a gentle cast out.
You'll see the lure will go quite a ways, even with this tight spool tension.
Then you can go to overhead casting.
Now, once you've kind of got the feel of when to let go of that spool, remember, you keep your thumb on the spool at all times with light pressure,
and you always stop the lure rather than let the lure hit and then stop it.
Because if you do that, you'll get an overrun or a backlash.
After you've practiced with the sidearm cast a little bit, with this tight spool tension, then you go to the overhead cast.
The overhead cast is like we do always with bait casting or spinning tackle.
It's all wrist.
Try not to make too hard of a cast.
Just aim kind of high and make a gentle cast out there, stopping the lure.
And the whole key to learning bait casting is don't make too hard of a cast.
If you start that lure off too fast, the spool starts spinning, and it spins quite fast, and usually it'll overrun,
especially when you're inexperienced in keeping it under control.
So that overhead cast, again, is just a little gentle aim kind of high to begin with, so you don't want to let go of that.
And thumb that spool as the line goes out and stop it before the lure hits with your thumb.
Always have a line come between your thumb and forefinger here of your left hand if you're reeling with your right hand,
and of course the opposite if you're reeling with your left hand,
so that line goes on that spool under some tension and keeps nice and snug.
So anyway, to finish up here, bait casting wheel takes a little practice, a little bit more practice than the spinning wheel.
And here again, the whole thing in this is don't throw the line or don't put too much energy on the rod to begin with.
Later on, you'll be able to do it as hard as you want.
But when you're practicing, have a little line down and make gentle casts.
Aim a little high on your initial overhead casts.
And then as you go along and get practice and get the feel of this thing, you'll be able to cast accurately.
You'll be able to cast consistently.
And if you do get a little overrun or a backlash, it'll be very small and you'll be able to get it out and continue fishing.
And then eventually you'll get a free spool situation and you can throw that lure two or three hundred feet with a sidearm cast
and cast 100, 125 feet overhead with good accuracy.
Learning to use a bait casting wheel is not as hard as you think.
You know, fly fishing is one of the more enjoyable forms of fishing.
And in order to become a reasonable fly fisherman, you have to become a fairly proficient fly caster to enjoy the sport more
and to get the best and the most benefits out of fly fishing.
Fly casting itself has been a mysterious thing for many, many years up until at least the last eight or ten years.
There wasn't a lot of real good instruction on the market to help a person learn.
There have been a lot of old wives' tales about casting, things you do, things you shouldn't do that were right and wrong.
And fly casting has been somewhat of a mystery and a lot of new fishermen have been a little afraid
that they wouldn't be able to learn the casting part of fly fishing.
Well, that's really not true.
Casting is a very, very simple thing.
Casting a fly rod at least well enough to catch fish is quite a simple thing.
And it's really just a set of mechanical functions, four or five or six of them, that have to be performed.
Now, there's several ways to perform those functions, but you must perform those five or six functions in order for the cast to go right.
And it's our object in these fly fishing segments to teach you those individual functions, how you perform them, why you do,
what happens when you don't, and so that you can pretty well easily learn the art of fly casting.
So this is fly fishing, fly casting in five easy segments.
We're going to tell you how to do it and break each segment down and then when you put them all together,
you'll become a good fly caster with a little practice.
And remember that practice, I'll emphasize the word practice.
You can learn the mechanical functions and rules, but you can't do all of your practice on the stream.
In fact, it's better to practice on land or if you've got some water near your home and get those basic movements and mechanical functions down.
All right, this first segment, we're going to deal with the first part of the cast.
And even though we're not making the cast yet, this is a very important part.
We're dealing with the grip, which should be reasonably firm on the rod with the thumb to the rear.
That's the grip portion of this segment one.
The forearm and wrist should remain straight throughout the cast to the elbow.
The only time the wrist breaks or moves or bends is during the power application and then ever so slightly.
The third part of this segment is the proper movement in your shoulder,
keeping the thumb firm grip on the handle of the rod and with the thumb to the rear,
straight wrist and forearm attitude.
And then we want the movement from the shoulder here, keeping the rest of the forearm and wrist fairly straight.
So try to practice moving from the shoulder.
In other words, rotate the movement for the cast.
Use the shoulder.
Don't be afraid to use that arm.
The fourth part of this segment is the line.
You must keep the line tight during all applications of power because you don't want to waste any energy.
We don't want to waste the energy of this rod in taking slack line out of the system
or taking curlicues or waves or whatever out of the line.
So the easy way to do is to hold the line in your left thumb and forefinger if you're right-handed,
the opposite if you're left-handed,
and make sure that that remains either in a downward position as you make the cast
or at least hold it steady so that no slack is in the system when you're applying this cast.
The second segment is going to deal with the initial part of the cast,
or really it's the preparatory move to the cast.
This is something that's misunderstood by a lot of people.
In this action, we're going to point the rod at the target
so that it gives us the maximum amount of movement to the rod as we come back in preparing to apply power.
The second part of this segment is, of course, maintaining tightness with the line,
but also we push the line down now at the same time we draw this rod up.
As we draw this rod towards us, and I'm doing all this slow motion.
We'll do it again here so we can show you again.
As we draw this rod towards us, it's solving two or three problems.
Number one, we're getting the line moving because a moving object will come out of the water easier.
Number two, with that movement and draw portion towards us,
we're taking the slack, any curlicues or any curls or anything that might be in the line
so that we're not going to waste the rod's energy on taking those out of the line.
And three, and probably just as important as anything,
you'll notice that we've lifted a lot of the line out of the water
by the time we get back here in the preparatory to making the power movement.
And that means that we have to waste less energy in breaking the surface tension.
In other words, if we have to break the surface tension of 20 foot of line on the water,
it takes a lot less energy to break the surface tension of two or three feet on the water.
Now, along with that, of course, is combine always tight hand
and even we move the hand down during this movement
so that we get that line moving, take the curlicues out,
lift as much of it out of the water as possible in this rearward movement towards our shoulder.
That's the second part.
Okay, now we're going to deal with the third segment,
which is actually the back cast or application of power.
Let's quickly go over the first two segments.
We had a good grip on the rod with the thumb to the rear,
straight wrist and forearm attitude, tight control on the line,
and a movement in the shoulder, try to rotate the cast,
rotating the movement of the cast from the shoulder rather than just the arm.
The second part was pointing the rod at the target and drawing the rod towards us
and move the line down to get all the curlicues out of the line
and to straighten the line and get it moving
and lift as much line out of the water as possible
so we're not going to waste the energy when we do apply power.
Now, this third segment is the power application,
and it's very simple, and most people try to make mistakes in casting,
and most of the mistakes that are made are from misapplication of power.
This rod only has so much power to give,
you must utilize it at the proper time to make the cast go correctly.
So, bearing in mind that first two segments, the things we talked about,
here is going through the second segment again,
and then I will demonstrate the third segment,
the back cast or power application.
It's just a little brief speed up and stop.
We'll do that again.
The rod comes back from segment two now, brief speed up and stop.
That's segment three.
The back cast, that's all there is to it.
It's just that little brief movement, little brief movement and stop.
You must apply power quickly to the rod and let it stop,
and the distance that the rod travels in that arc
will determine the exact size of your loop.
In other words, if you go out the tip of the rod,
my wrist, if you'll notice, is just moving that far.
In other words, it moved from there to there.
If you went out to the tip of the rod, this nine-foot rod,
you would measure from where it started to where it stopped.
You'd have the exact size of your loop.
So, to throw a tight loop, we need to keep that movement brief and positive.
Watch it again.
No power, no power, now power and stop.
That is the cast, and that's, if you've done the other things correctly,
that will send the line flowing out behind you.
That's all there is to it.
Everybody tries to make the power here. That's wrong.
You make the power after you've made this preparatory move.
That little brief speed up and stop is the power,
and you'll notice how the line comes up out of the water.
So, all you need is because we utilize the energy of the rod till it's fullest.
Keep that movement brief and positive.
That's all there is to it is just that little brief speed up and stop.
All right, the fourth segment we're going to deal with here
is called the delay or hesitation.
This is to allow the line to unfurl behind us or almost straighten out
so that we don't start the forward cast until that has taken place.
The reason for this is that we don't want to use the energy of the rod,
just like we didn't want to misuse the energy of the rod
in breaking excess surface tension on the water
when we were drawing the line off the water.
We don't want to misuse the energy of the rod by unfurling the line.
We want the line to unfurl itself almost so that when we start our forward cast,
we have the line directly behind the rod,
and we're not having to use any of the energy to take the curl out.
Now, the delay or hesitation varies according to how much line you have out.
If you notice, I have a short amount of line here.
I don't wait very long, and I start the forward cast.
But as I work line out here, I have to wait just a little longer.
The more line I have out, the longer I hesitate and delay for that line to unfurl.
The more line I have out, the longer I wait.
If I've got about 40, 50 feet out, it takes about that much delay,
and then I start the forward cast.
Now, what happens if I don't wait long enough,
and you've all done this and you'll all recognize it,
if I start that, if I don't delay, then what happens?
The cast doesn't go.
In other words, if I don't delay long enough, the line ends in a pile.
And the reason for that is that we've misused the energy.
We use most of the energy of the rod in unfurling that line behind us,
and by the time we started to drive it forward, most of the rod's energy would use.
And you notice when you snap a fly behind you or when your line snaps behind you,
that's what happens.
You've started the forward cast too soon,
and you didn't wait long enough on the delay.
If you have trouble getting this back cast, waiting for the back cast,
delay or hesitation, turn sideways to the cast,
and you can stand here and watch your cast and see about how long it takes to unfurl.
And even you can experiment and try casting too soon or too late
and see what effect it has on your cast.
But this is a good way to get in practice to have that feeling of how much time to wait
for that line to extend out behind you on the back cast.
That's segment four, the delay or hesitation,
of fly casting made easy in five easy segments.
Now we're going to deal with segment five,
which is what we've been trying to get to,
is the forward cast, the thing that we put out there to hopefully catch the fish with.
We're ready for step five, which we said is the draw and forward cast,
which is power application on the forward cast.
When we have our rod back here in this position,
we've waited long enough for our line to unfurl behind us,
the forward cast and draw execution is made in this manner.
Now remember, it's always important to have control of this line at all times,
no difference throughout the whole cast.
You never let go of this line when you're applying power during the cast.
This draw and power application is made like this.
The little slight forward movement of the rod,
what this does is it makes sure the line is straightened out entirely behind you
and you've got the line moving forward now.
This should always be done with forward motion,
with the reel slightly ahead and down from the tip in a downward motion like that.
Once you have made that draw motion, and we make that draw motion from up here,
then the forward cast is made, which is exactly the same as that back cast,
just that short little flick of the wrist.
In other words, a draw, flick.
Draw, flick.
There is the forward cast.
Draw, power application.
Here again, draw, power application.
Here again, draw forward and the little flick of the wrist.
Remember, the movement is short and positive.
It's not jerky, it's smooth, but it's positive
and the power application has to start and stop in a brief space of time.
That determines the size of your loop.
And if you have done those things, the hardest part of casting is not that part.
The fifth part is the easiest part of casting.
Once you have learned the first four parts, the fifth part,
which is the draw and forward cast or forward power application,
should be relatively easy.
In fact, the first four parts are the parts that most people make mistakes on more frequently.
So if we do those first parts right, we just make that little draw
and that little flick on the forward cast,
and you notice 45 foot of line sails out almost effortlessly.
And we can even increase that, and we get 50 foot of line out now.
That little draw and that little flick, the line just turns over and lays down like thistle down.
That's fly casting made easy in five easy segments.
And if you'll practice those segments and blend them all together,
you'll be able to cast very efficiently,
and the more efficiently you become, the more fun you'll have out of fly fishing.
In this segment, we're going to talk about cleaning and flaying fish.
We're going to go over two different types of fish in this particular segment.
The heavy scale fish, which is like this one here,
which would be a striped bass, a small striped bass,
but it would include crappie, bluegill, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, anything with a heavy scale.
And how we get these ready for the table, we don't have to clean the entrails on these,
as some people do, and scale them,
but the easiest way and the most convenient way is to fillet them.
What you want to do is come behind the pectoral fin here
and cut on an angle towards the front of the fish
so that you cut through and get as much of that meat on that back as possible.
And what we do is we cut through that and we cut down until you touch the backbone.
Then, and I'll turn this around so you can see what I'm doing,
above this side of the dorsal fin, you make a cut in there,
and you go in and you're going to be touching the top of the rib cage
with the point of your knife.
You don't try and go through those ribs, you're cutting along,
just pushing into the top of the ridge cage, rib cage,
until you reach the anal vent on the fish.
At that point, you put your knife through, holding against the backbone,
holding against the rib, the main backbone,
and you go down just about to the end of the fish, the end of the tail.
You don't cut through there, I'll show you why.
We don't do that.
Then you can come in here and we're going to skin out this portion
over the edge of that rib cage.
You get that separated, and you notice I haven't cut it off here at the tail.
You just bring that back up there.
You can see we haven't left any meat on the carcass there.
We're going to bring this around,
and with that skin being left on that tail to give us a purchase,
we're going to come down this fillet,
and just working right against the skin,
we're going to take that fillet off that skin.
Okay, now we have a totally boneless piece of meat there,
and as you can see by the carcass and the skin,
we've actually wasted very, very little meat,
but we have a nice boneless fillet there.
That just took a, well you can do it in 30 seconds once you get used to it.
Now that's the general way that we do the scale,
the heavy scale species such as the largemouth bass, bluegill,
crappie, white bass, striped bass as we were doing here.
With this fish, we do it a little different.
We don't have to skin him, although some people do skin trout and fillet them,
and that's another technique that you can use,
but most people don't skin trout.
The key to cleaning this is just very simple,
but surprisingly a lot of people really don't know how to go about
cleaning a simple thing like a trout, and that's what this video is for.
You start here at the anal vent,
and the key is you don't stick your knife way in the fish.
I'm just using less than an inch here.
The reason I'm doing that is I would prefer not to cut into the entrails
inside the stomach cavity.
Now you notice I've made this cut right up into the back of the gills here,
and here's a nice key, and this works very fine for fish up to around two pounds.
After you've made this initial cut, you come right up here under the fish's throat,
and this little V you see there on the front of his gill rake here,
on the front of his gill rakers, you just cut through that.
Now we've done this.
Now it's a very simple matter to hold onto that fish,
and you'll strip the pectoral fins off the front of these fish,
and that doesn't hurt anything as long as your fish isn't too big.
It makes a nice clean job.
You see we took those pectoral fins, a little tiny, tiny bit of meat, but not much.
That gives us a purchase on the entrails.
Now we're bringing the entrails out.
We haven't cut any.
You notice how clean the body cavity of that fish is.
We've not cut any entrails, and we come right back here and take out that whole system.
When I get home, of course, and get the fish ready for the pan,
I will take out this blood line, clean it out with my thumb,
and I'm not going to do that right now because it makes kind of a mess.
But all you do is you get under the membrane here
and just go down this with your thumb or forefinger,
and you'll take that blood line right out.
I would recommend when you're planning to eat some fish,
first of all, you clean them as soon as possible, or fillet them as soon as possible.
Second, you get them as dry as possible, as soon as possible, and on ice or cold.
This hopefully will help you getting those fish ready for the table that you decide to harvest.
Debarbing your hooks is an important part of catch and release fishing.
With a debarbed hook, contrary to what you might think,
you lose very few fish because you didn't have a barb on your hook,
maybe 5% more than you would otherwise.
But the main reason why it's important is it allows you to release the fish
with a lot less handling.
And of course, the more you handle a fish, the more chance you have to damage him.
Debarbing a hook is simple.
What we're trying to do here when we debarb a hook,
and of course, incidentally, buy barbless hooks.
If you're interested in catch and release, there's more and more barbless hooks coming on.
If you tie your own flies, there's a lot of those,
and some lures are starting to come with barbless hooks now,
so that's something we can look at for the future.
But in the meantime, many of the hooks have barbs on them.
The barb, of course, is this little projection in the back of the point
which theoretically keeps the hook from coming back out.
We would either break the barb off right here,
and so we'd have a barbless point,
or we would bend the barb down over so it was no longer a barb,
but just merely a little hump there.
So you have a much better chance of survival when you have barbless hooks.
To minimize stress to the fish,
it's a good idea to turn it upside down while handling it.
Most fish seem to relax and struggle much less when held in this position.
A surgeon's forcep is a very useful tool for extracting the smaller hooks,
even when debarbed.
Moving the fish back and forth causes water to flow over the gills
and speeds up recovery of normal breathing.
Continue doing this until the fish swims off.
There you go. Yep.
The Video Encyclopedia of Fishing Tips.
We hope you found them informative and entertaining,
and that they help you get more fun out of fishing.
Having spent two hours sharing ideas that can increase your abilities to catch fish,
I suppose it's only natural to want to share with you in closing
a philosophical thought or two about this sport we all enjoy so much.
I like the expression sport fishing.
It says so much more than just putting meat on the table, so to speak.
Gene and I have been fortunate enough to fish many of the world's best waters,
and I frequently have friends and neighbors say to me,
how many did you bring home?
The expressions on their faces range from shock to disbelief
when we tell them that we turned most of the fish loose.
Many people miss one of the greatest thrills to be experienced in fishing,
because they have never given any serious thought to the concept of catch and release.
Now, nobody enjoys a pan-fried trout or salmon barbecued over a campfire
in some place like Alaska any more than Gene and I do.
And we don't want you to think for one moment that we would want to see you
or any fellow angler give up eating fish, nor do we want you to feel guilty for doing so.
Eating fish is just as natural as wanting to catch them.
But will you ponder for a moment with me on the benefits of releasing fish?
Probably the first and foremost reason for limiting our kill
is that every year there are more and more of us taking up fishing,
and we're getting better equipment, and we're becoming better fishermen.
Hopefully this tape makes a contribution in this area.
But I haven't heard of anyone creating any new rivers lately, have you?
Yes, they've dammed them and turned sections of rivers into new lakes.
But the number of rivers and lakes capable of supporting fish life is on a long-term decline.
I don't know of a single state fish conservation and management department
that is optimistic about even being able to maintain the present quality of fishing at its present level.
Not only is fishing pressure increasing,
fish progress and pollution are diminishing the numbers and quality of fish waters,
but the ever-increasing cost of producing fish leaves most of our fish managers in a real quandary.
We wish it weren't so, but it is.
And as we listen with envy to our grandfather's stories of fishing in the good old days,
I'm afraid that so too will our grandkids probably talk about our time.
The threat to the future of this sport we love so much is very real.
So I propose this question.
Can catch-and-release help any as to assuring there might still be fish for our grandkids and future generations of anglers?
Well, I'm simple-minded enough to believe that it can.
I could talk about the merits of catch-and-release for a week
and probably not change the thinking of a person who's never tried it.
So I prefer to talk about a feeling.
A feeling I get every time I release a fish I've been fortunate enough to catch.
When I'm holding a fish in my hands that has given his all in a contest with me,
I can't really find words to describe how it makes me feel to watch the strength come back into his body
and his spirit to be free come back to life.
And when he swims off to resume his life in the stream,
I find myself almost offering a little prayer that he and I might someday meet again
or at least that some other angler might enjoy that fish like I did.
To me, that moment is the epitome of why we call it sport fishing.
So, Gene and I hope you've enjoyed our effort in this tape
and that your fishing success might increase.
But we also hope that if you've never been an advocate of limiting your kill
instead of killing your limit, you'll give it some thought.
Test my theory about the feelings one gets from releasing a trophy-sized fish.
I promise you, you'll discover a whole new dimension to fishing.
Thank you for watching!