How to Improve Your Indicator Nymphing, With Guide Matt Squillante

Summary

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The Orvis Fly-Fishing Podcast

Episode: How to Improve Your Indicator Nymphing, With Guide Matt Squillante

Host: Tom Rosenbauer
Guest: Matt Squillante, Orvis-Endorsed Guide (Redding, CA)
Date: June 2, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this episode, Tom Rosenbauer talks with expert guide Matt Squillante about maximizing effectiveness with indicator nymphing. Their discussion dives into the common pitfalls anglers face, highlighting how to keep your fly in the water (and out of tangles), how to cast ungainly indicator rigs, and how to master both the mechanics and the reflexes of successful hook-setting. Matt distills his years of guiding experience into actionable tips and techniques aimed at both reducing frustration and maximizing enjoyment on the water.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Ubiquity and Challenges of Indicator Nymphing

• Matt’s Background: Guides on diverse rivers around Redding, CA (Yuba, Trinity, Feather, Lower Sac, Upper Sac, Hat Creek; [29:17])
• Main Goal: Help anglers spend more time fishing, less time untangling, and improve strike success ([30:14])
• Teaching Focus: “I love to help people get better...I think in part because I really didn’t have a lot of help when I started.” – Matt ([30:26])

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2. The Two Biggest Mistakes in Indicator Nymphing

“I feel comfortable narrowing it down to these two things that are most costly. And if you can work on these two things, you can up your efficiency...you don’t want to pay your guide to fix tangles all day.” – Matt ([34:15])

I. Bad Casting (Not Loading the Rod)

• Clunky Rig Dilemma: Indicator nymphing setups are heavy, awkward, and tangle-prone ([35:28])
• Wrong Cast, Wrong Rig: Don’t use a “Ferrari cast” (smooth overhead for light flies) for the “dump truck” of indicator rigs ([36:48])
• Solution: Use the “water load” or “water haul” cast—let the river load the rod, then cast ([38:16])
• Critical Tip: Always LOAD THE ROD. Bad casts mostly stem from a lack of rod load, leading to slack, inaccuracy, and tangles ([39:56])
• Practical Cue:

  “Just strip the line in shorter and keep going shorter until you lift that rod up and you feel a little tension and you can see the tip of that rod bend. Now the rod is loaded.” – Matt ([42:39])

• Stripping to Cast: If you’ve drifted out a long line, strip back to handle-able length for the next cast ([44:22])
• Physics Analogy: “An object at rest wants to stay at rest…the more line you have out there…the harder for the rod to pick it up from a dead stop.” ([48:06])
• False Casting: The more false casts with this rig, the more likely tangles happen ([50:28])
• General Principle:

  “Every single cast in fly fishing, no matter what, you have to load the rod.” – Matt ([51:18])

II. Bad Hook Sets

• Typical Mistake: Setting too hard/powerfully, not quickly or accurately ([54:07])
• It’s About Speed: “Hook setting is not about power…what it is, is about speed. And a good hook set is going to keep you in the game, it’s not going to come flying back at you.” – Matt ([55:19])
• Pointer: If you miss the fish, a gentle set keeps the flies in the water; an aggressive set wastes time and leads to tangles or casting out of position ([57:13])
• Ideal Hook Set: Upward, or at a 45-degree downstream angle, but “up” is easier for beginners ([57:10])
• Practice: “The more you fish with an indicator, the more you learn how to watch it and look for subtleties—the better you’re going to get.” ([64:04])

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3. Mastering the Quick Strike Reflex

• Challenge: Most anglers lack the muscle memory/reflex speed to set on subtle takes with an indicator.
• Training Tips:
  • Simulated practice: “I’ll just play fish and I’ll grab the indicator…try to get them distracted, so it’s not predictable.” ([65:00])
  • Home exercise: Tie indicator rig to a tree, set an alarm or have someone else call “set” at random intervals to work on the reflex. ([66:10])
  • Set on any movement—even if it’s likely the bottom—when practicing to ingrain the reflex ([67:41])

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4. Adapting Your Hook Set to Water and Distance

• Short Casts: Small, quick arm movement is enough when there’s little slack ([69:09], [79:28])
• Long Casts/Downstream: “I generally recommend getting that rod higher…pulling that slack, you’re getting rid of that slack and you’re pulling down at the same time. So it’s like a lift and strip at the same time.” – Matt ([71:34])
• On Downstream Drifts: Hook sets are always harder; often best to set straight up, especially for beginners ([75:00])
• Physical Cue: Whichever way your thumb is pointed, that’s the way you'll set the hook. For a downstream set, turn your thumb downstream ([75:48])

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5. Memorable Quotes & Analogies

• On Rig & Cast Choices:

  “A dry fly…that’s a Ferrari. This indicator rig…that’s a dump truck. If you use a Ferrari cast with the dump truck, it doesn’t work…” – Matt ([36:48])

• On Tangles’ Mission:

  “All tippet was born with one goal in life: tangle up on anglers. That’s what it wants to do forever and ever.” – Matt ([50:38])

• On Loading the Rod:

  “Like a bow and arrow…that’s what loading your rod comes down to—making sure you make that rod bend, and then we release that energy.” – Matt ([38:16])

• On Reflex Development:

  “If you have something like a variable alarm…that’s also a good way so that it’s not predictable, because that’s what you want to replicate. This is not predictable, right?” – Matt ([66:10])

• On Achievable Progress:

  “If you focus on those two issues, you’re going to see your time that you’re actually fishing go way up… The level of frustration should also come down, which means your enjoyment should go up.” – Matt ([81:31])

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Important Timestamps

• 29:17: Matt describes his home rivers and approach
• 34:15-35:28: Introduction to the two biggest mistakes: bad casting and bad hook sets
• 36:48: Ferrari vs. dump truck analogy for matching casts to rigs
• 38:16-39:56: Detailed explanation of the water load cast and importance of loading the rod
• 44:22: Why stripping in line before the cast matters
• 54:07-55:19: Bad hook sets—why speed beats power
• 61:46-64:04: Developing a fast reflex for indicator takes
• 66:10-67:41: Practical, at-home practice techniques
• 71:34: Adapting hook sets to long-distance, high-slack situations
• 75:00-77:55: Physical cues and thumb direction for downstream hook sets
• 81:31: The payoff of focusing on just two big fundamentals

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Actionable Advice

Casting the Indicator Rig

• Use a water load/water haul cast—NOT standard overhead or false cast
• Strip in line until you feel rod tip tension every time before casting
• Accept the inherent clunkiness, focus on keeping straight lines and minimizing false casts

Reducing Tangles

• The more you swing the rod in circles, the more you tangle
• Reload tension for every cast rather than trying to throw slack around

Hook Setting

• Focus on speed, not strength—quick upward or downstream lift, not a powerful yank
• For distance/drifting: haul the line when setting to pick up slack

Improving Reflexes

• Practice reacting to indicator twitches—simulate at home or on the river
• Don't overthink “upstream” vs. “downstream” in the heat of the moment; practice pure upward sets until muscle memory takes over

Trainer’s Fundamental:

“When in doubt, set straight up. Not hard, but quick.” – Matt ([79:23])

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Final Message

Catch more fish and have more fun by focusing on these two fundamentals: always load your rod before casting, and set the hook quickly. Master these and you’ll spend less time untangling, less time missing fish, and more time actually fishing. Or as Matt puts it:

“If you focus on those two issues, you’re going to see your time that you’re actually fishing go way up… your enjoyment should go up.” ([81:31])

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Transcript

[A]

Foreign.

[B]

Welcome to the Orvis Fly Fishing Podcast. This is your host Tom Rosenbauer and my guest this week is Orvis endorsed guide Matt Squalante. And Matt is from the Reading, California area. And what Matt's going to talk about today is how to make your indicator fishing better, how to spend more time with your fly in the water and not untangling your leader and how to properly cast an indicator rig, how to strike better on an indicator rig and how to develop that quick strike reflex that you need in indicator fishing as well as some other things. But if you like to fish with indicators or dry droppers for matter, Matt's got some great tips for us and we're going to do the Flybox in a minute. The Flybox is where you send me questions and or comments or tips that you want to share with other listeners and I might read them on the air or answer them on the air if I can. You can send me an [e-mail] just put your question in your email or if you want attach a voice file and I might read it on the air. We've got a couple a couple phone calls that I'm going to read this week. But before we do the fly box, let's talk about some places that you might want to go fishing this year. I've got some got some ideas for you. One is with George Hancock in the Charleston, South Carolina area. George fishes for redfish, spotted sea trout, flounder sharks and maybe tarpon if conditions are right with Georgia fish, some beautiful barrier islands and low country marshes. He's got over 1010 years of experience guiding these waters and it's a year round fishery. So if you're visiting the Charleston area, it's a great option to spend a day with Captain George. He's a great teacher. So even if this is your maybe your first saltwater fly fishing experience, he'll make sure you have a great introduction to this, what I consider a very addictive way of fly fishing. Our outfitter this week is Unicoi Outfitters. They're also in the Southeast, they're located in Helen, Georgia. And Unicoi has 28 years of experience guiding in the North Georgia area. They've got a number of private streams managed for very large trophy trout and they've also got the 26 public streams in the Chattahoochee National Forest for wild trout. They have a U.S. u.S. Forest Service special use permit to fish the Chattahoochee river, which was America's first designated wild and scenic river They've received awards as Outfitter of the Year from Orvis and they've received a gold level business member of Trout Unlimited for their contributions to cold water conservation in the Southeast South. So a day with them you can feel good about yourself because you are spending your money with someone who gives back to the resource. And when you go with unicoi you got a chance to catch a wild North Georgia brook trout, which is pretty rare and something I'd like to do someday, as well as browns and rainbows. And they also offer trips for bass and landlocked stripers and reservoir they can offer fishing for largemouth, smallmouth, red eye and shoal bass and if you're time limited they've got a three hour, a half day or full day trips. The trout fishing is October through early July and then when the water gets a little warm in late summer they go bass fishing and chase some stripers. Our lodge this week is the famous X Flats and this is on the Yucatan Peninsula. They're located in a quiet peaceful town of only 350 people, so it's a very, very safe area. And this is Flats Fishing in Southern Mexic at its best. It's set between the Caribbean and Chetamal Bay and within the protected national park with miles of pristine flats to explore. Plus just offshore is the largest barrier reef in the Western hemisphere. They've got fishing for bonefish permit, tarpon, snook, barracuda, triggerfish and jacks. They actually use two guides per boat to add an extra set of eyes to make sure that no sight fishing is missed. The lodge itself is an oceanfront lodge with only eight air conditioned rooms, so it's not a big place. It's very intimate and each room has a balcony overlooking the ocean. The meals there blend coastal flavors with familiar favorites in a very low key setting. Here's a place where you have a good chance or you have a chance at least. No guarantee of catching a grand slam, a bonefish permit and tarpon within the same 24 hour period. But the opportunity are there. This is also one of those places where it's possible to catch permit on surface flies. And if you're interested in learning more about that, I did a podcast a few weeks ago about permit fishing with with dry flies with floating flies. All right, let's do the fly box. The first one is an email from Colin. My first full season of fly fishing is well underway and I need to thank you for this amazing podcast as it has helped me hit the ground running with new hobby in Particular, your podcast with Mark Fritt really inspired me to cut back on the two plus hour drive out to Western Massachusetts, fish for trout and spend a little more time exploring my local waters in the Boston area. His book was fantastic by the way. I was fishing a local pond yesterday that stock with trout but is home to many other species, largemouth carp, sucker panfish, etc. Took my friend there and showed him the spot and we started catching a couple nice panfish on some nymphs. On one cast I threw a size 16 zebra midge about 6ft from the bank underneath the tree and within a couple seconds saw my indicator plop underwater. I set the hook and started stripping line, then turned around to my friend and said ah, just another bluegill because the fish didn't seem to have that much oomph to it. About halfway into stripping the fish in, it took off like a rocket. For the first time, my rod was under so much pressure from a fish that I actually thought my rod was going to break. I played the fish for about five more seconds trying to get it to ease up, but eventually was able to spit the fly out and it was gone. I feel completely bamboozled by this fish and can't stop thinking about it as it surely would have been the biggest fish that I've caught on a fly rod. Could this have been a carp or a big trout? I can't recall much discussion on the podcast about fish behavior while they're being played. Well Colin, I don't, I don't know what that fish was. It sounds pretty exciting and mysterious. I would suspect the fact that it was close to shore and it took off like that. It was probably a carp. They, they tend to, they tend to take off like a tractor trailer and they don't stop for quite a while. It could have been a big sucker. I doubt a trout probably would have made a little more commotion and would have wiggled a little bit more, but to me it sounds like a car. We'll never know. But that would be. That would be my guess. So maybe you want to doing a little sight fishing for carp in this pond. Here's an email from Jonathan. I know over the past few years scientific anglers have meshed with Orvis and now you guys sell their items, which is great except for the loss of some Orvis items, mainly being the Orvis Poly Leaders. I really enjoy fishing these in the 5 to 10 foot deep sections of lakes and streams since I hate casting a full sinking line from a kayak. Why did Orvis do away with Poly Leaders. And are you guys going to bring back these items? If not, what do you recommend as a replacement? I really love the medium sink you guys sold and the one I have is getting overly used as I've had to shorten it about a foot or so over the past few years due to breaking off the micro swivel I tied to the end after breakoffs and such. Now that was once a seven foot Poly Leader is only around five and a half feet. Appreciate your time as always. So Jonathan, the reason that we dropped where it was Poly Leaders is that scientific anglers makes a very very item called the sonar leaders and you can find those on the Orvis website. They're basically the same thing. They're a little bit longer, but that should be no problem. You know, sometimes you want a little bit longer one or you could cut one back and nail, not a loop or something to it if you really want a shorter one. But I find the 10 footers to be just about right. And again in purpose and function they're very similar to the old Orvis Poly Leaders.

[A]

Hi Tom, this is Jared and Sage the possum chocolate Labrador calling from Missoula, Montana and I just listened to your interview with Chris Steinbeck on Rocky Mountain Forecast for this summer and you were mentioning that you hadn't got a lot of questions to the fly box lately. So I'd been sitting on a couple, thought I would send you. It's salmon fly season out here, which is awesome. So I'm fishing big flies with big tippet and I've had a couple issues. I'm kind of wondering what you think. So I've been using a double Davey knot for tying my tippet to pretty much all of my flies. But I find as we're getting into spring and I'm starting to fish more dry flies that if I use that double Davy on my tippet knot on a dry fly, it will actually cause the fly it seems like to kind of lay off to the side rather than sitting kind of vertically straight up in the water? I'm wondering, I, I, it seems to go away when I t tie a clinch knot rather than a double Davies. So I'm wondering, is that something you experience where the knot that you tie to a dry fly can actually change the way it floats in the water? And I believe that you tie a clinch knot most of the time not even an improved clinch. So is that the knot that you prefer for tying to dry flies? And then also I use a, what's called a fly clip that's from a big manufacture and fly fishing that you can tie your tippet to a little ring and then the rest of that ring is. It is like a little hook that allows you to loop a. Loop a fly eyelet on there and so you can actually change out flies pretty quickly. So it's nice in concept, but I had a couple times this past week with new leader that's 1x so it's relatively thick. Where I lost fish at that knot, I get the. I lose my whole rig. And when I get back the leader, it's got the little kind of squiggly pigtail at the end which it tells me it's a knot failure. So I'm wondering, I was using a trilene knot to tie to that little metal fly clip. I'm wondering, do you have a suggestion for a different knot to tie or is that, you know, a problem that seems to happen just with thicker tippet or, you know, thicker leader. But hopefully that all makes sense. Thanks a lot for your help. I look forward to your response.

[B]

So, Jared, I'm not sure. The double Davy nut seems to. Seems to come out straight out of the eye of the hook. If you find that it. That it sits better with a clinch not then just use a clinch knot. Both of them are good knots. And I, I honestly wouldn't worry about whether you fly lays off to the side or lays straight because salmon flies are pretty clumsy insects and they often flop over and. And do crazy things on the water. So you know, if you want to go ahead and use that Davy knot. I don't. I don't think I have any problem because your flight doesn't always have to be oriented perfectly straight in the water to fool the fish. In fact, it might look a little more realistic if it doesn't. I don't know what happened with that fly clip. I have not used a fly clip since I was about 12 years old. So I don't. I don't know. I don't know exactly what might have happened. You know, ordinarily I would suspect that the fly clip had a little a burr on the metal which would cut your leader. But the fact that it came back with a pigtail and the fact that you use a trilene knot, which is a really good knot, makes me doubt that. So I am really not sure what the problem is. I don't think it would happen with a fly clip in general. Maybe just tied a bad knot, you know. Did you test your knot before you. Before you put it out there? Because you can Tie the best looking knot, whether it's a trilene or a clinch or a Davey knot. And sometimes they just don't work for, for whatever reason. And so you need to test every knot. That's the only thing that I can suggest to you in the future. Here's an email from Shep. I recently spoiled myself and purchased a three weight graphite superfine rod and really like it. I have noticed with this rod I tend to catch my fly on the end of my fly line and my loops seem to roll out rather sloppy compared to when I use my 5 weight helios D. I never had this problem on my 5 weight. So I'm wondering am I casting too fast with the three weight even after I've tried to really slow down my back cast? Any recommendation would be greatly appreciated. Well, Shep, I'm not sure I have, I have a three way super fine and I use it a lot and there's a little bit of adjustment between that and Helios 5D but I don't, I don't think it's that much of an adjustment. It's, it's, it's obviously it's something in your casting stroke and typically when you, when you hit your fly on your fly line, you are throwing a tailing loop. You're either starting your power stroke too quickly or you are not raising and lowering your elbow which, which gets your line and your rod tip out of the way when you're, when your fly line loop comes forward. So it's probably one of those two things. I, I don't think, I don't think you should need that much of an adjustment. So maybe, maybe go back to maybe not worry about casting it differently and just cast it like you did your Helios and see if that helps maybe tighten up your casting stroke a little bit. You know, the fact that your, your loop seem to roll out sloppy tells me that your casting arc is a little bit, a little bit too long. Your tip is traveling too through too long of an arc. So you know, without watch it would be really difficult to figure that out. My advice would be if you can, to go to a fly shop near you or an Orvis store and have them watch your casting with that super fine and see if they can pick up something that you need to fine tune a little bit on your casting stroke. Here's an email from Eddie from Golden, Colorado. I have one tip and one question for you. I'm on the new side of tying flies and my flies are not always tied that tightly. I began using head cement, which definitely helps keep everything in place. But I have found that head cement can leave a very light white residue on the thread, especially the black thread. A solution I found that worked pretty well is to take a flying fine tip black Sharpie and simply touch any of the areas to restore the thread to a deep black color just takes a couple seconds. Well, the white cast probably doesn't matter to the fish. It matters to me. The better I feel about my flies, the more confidence I have fishing them. And that does translate to catching more fish. A question I have for you and might actually merit its own podcast, is fishing deeper runs and pools. Nymphing runs where the water is a foot and a half to two and a half feet. It's pretty straightforward. I'm able to control my drift pretty well and feel that I'm getting the flies in the right place. But when it comes to deeper runs and pools, I have much less confidence. I'm talking about runs where the water is maybe 6ft to 8ft deep. While I'm able to catch fish somewhat consistently in these runs, it always feels like it's more luck than skill. And other anglers I've talked to seem to echo the same feelings. It seems to be everybody's weakness. Any advice you can provide would be appreciated. Well, Eddie, regarding the head cement issue, good head cements won't turn your thread white. So, you know, sometimes I have found that not all head cement thinners work with all head cement. And if you put the wrong thinner in your head cement, that can tend to make the head cement turn white at the end. So my advice would be to try another bottle or try another brand of head cement because it should dry nice and clear. It shouldn't turn your black thread white. But, you know, your your solution with a black permanent marker. It's a good idea in general, if you want to change the head color of your flies to just hit them with a marker. Regarding your your your question about fishing deeper runs. First of all, you didn't say if you were tight lining or if you were indicator fishing. Sounds like you were probably indicator fishing. And there's a couple things to think about here. One is that there may not be as many fish as you think in those deep runs, at least not feeding fish. Trout prefer to feed in water that's about 2 to 4ft deep. That's been, that's been proven by observations by fish biologists and scientists. So there may not be as many fish in those really deep places as you think. And often if fish are in water that deep, they're there to hide, they've been spooked or they're just not feeding very actively, they're trying to get out of the way and stay in some place that's safe. They will often slide into shallower water than they feed. So there may not just be as many fish in those areas. Barring that, it's not easy, it's not easy to fish in and water that deep. So don't beat yourself up over it. If you're tight lining, you're going to need to lead the water by much more, much more area so that your flies have a chance to get down to those depths. And if you're indicator fishing again, you're going to have to lead it by a lot more. And of course, the longer you cast with an indicator rig, the greater the chance that drag is going to take over. So my, what I would do if I'm indicator fishing, which I think you are, is to use a very long tippet it below your indicator. I would tie your indicator onto the, basically the end of your leader right before your tip it then put on, put on a like a 10 to 12 foot tippet, 5x, maybe even 6x to help get those flies down because the thinner, the thinner the tippet, the easier, easier it sinks. It's got less resistance in the water. This is, this is a bear to cast. You might try putting a couple split shot on that leader, but long, thin leader and lots of lead is, is about the only way you're gonna, gonna get down that deep. Again, it's, it's not easy and I wish you luck. But again, I wouldn't, I wouldn't worry so much that you're not catching fish in water that deep because don't think there's a lot of fish feeding down there. Here's an email from Davey. I've discovered your podcast fairly recently and I really enjoyed listening through previous episodes on my journey to work. I live in Northern Ireland, but I find much of your content to be just as applicable in the waters that I fish over here. There is, however, one thing that puzzles me slightly. We had friends from the USA visiting with us recently and when I showed them the river that I often fish, he said, yeah, we'd call that a stream. Here in Ireland a stream is usually something you can jump across, whereas what I described to him as a river was about 15 to 20ft wide. So for you, many listeners from other parts of the world, help us out with the difference between a stream, a Creek and a river and any of the other terms you might use for running water. Thanks for all you do, and thanks in advance for playing a small part in international relations. Well, Davey, there's not a good standardized, there's no hydrological standard for the size of moving waters, unfortunately. So, you know, the river that, that I have here in my backyard is not very wide, but they call it a river on the map, I guess, because further downstream it's, it's quite a bit wider, but most people would call it a creek. And I can tell you what I seem to hear amongst anglers here in the States and hopefully, hopefully that'll help. But again, there's no, there's no standard. So what I'm telling you is just what I hear mostly. So this, the very smallest piece of water, the kind you can jump across, is either called a brook or a creek. Mainly a brook. If it's really tiny, it's a brook. And then a creek might be a little wider, but then again it might not. You know, a creek is, again, it's a pretty generic term and stream can mean anything. A stream can mean anything from, from 10ft wide to 100ft wide. You know, a trout stream is a trout stream. And some people would call a big river a stream, but usually, usually a really big one is called a river. So it's. I know it's confusing, but I don't think, I don't think you can really know what size a piece of water is by what somebody calls it. I think you really need to see a picture of it and, and what they're talking about or ask them how wide it is. It's going to vary, but again, there's no, there's no standard, officially recognized designation for, for a piece of moving water based on its size. Here's an email from Jim. Your podcast is the most informative, easy to listen to, efficient, not a lot of chit chat stories and well produced of all fly angling podcast I know of. And your wealth of experience and opinions are much appreciated. Thank you.

[C]

Well, thank you.

[B]

Thank you, Jim. Been fly fishing for eight years, capping a lifetime with a spinning rod and loving it. I fish like to fish western US still waters for trout and often drift or strip streamers, leeches, nymphs on a sinking line using a float tube. Recently I've been experimenting with a washing line technique which is engaging and productive. It occurred to me that maybe that's my question. Using this to influence a dry dropper rig for moving water might work, say a hopper or other large dry fly at the end of the tippet with an emerger on a tag tied up closer to the fly line. Is this a dumb idea? Would it have any advantages or drawbacks compared to regular dry dropper? Have you or anyone you know rigged this way? I look forward to your answer in a future podcast. Well, Jim, when you say closer to your fly line, I'm not sure how close you mean. In a stream, in moving water, generally you're not drifting as you would with the washing line technique. You're actually casting over the fish. And if you have that fly too close to the fly line, you're going to spook the fish directly under your fly line. So having the, having the, the extra dropper too close to the fly line is probably counterproductive. I don't know how close you're talking about. If you, if you want to put it at the end of say a, a 9 foot or a 12 foot leader above your big dry fly at the, at the other end, then I think, yeah, it's great. A lot of people do put, you know, fish double dries or dry droppers on, on a separate dropper or you can tie it to the bend, the bend of the hook on the big dry fly. That's the way most people do it. But again, I, I wouldn't put in a stream, I wouldn't put that dropper too close fly line, it's going to land too hard and fly line makes a pretty good splash on the water and you want to keep your flies as far away from that as possible.

[C]

Hey Tom, Adam here from the Seattle area.

[B]

Love the podcast.

[C]

Thank you for all that you do for our sport and for conservation. I so many of your the episodes

[A]

have been great, but I loved the,

[C]

specifically, I loved the podcast of Is it a steelhead or is it a rainbow trout? With Katie Kobayashi. I had a question. My question for you is, is there an easy way to visually tell in your net whether or not it is a wild trout or a stocked trout? Hope you're doing well and thank you so much.

[B]

Well, Adam, no, there is not. You will hear people tell you that if a brown trout has blue cheeks, it's definitely a wild trout. Or if it has a red adipose fin, it's definitely a wild trout. And this is absolutely patently untrue. In general. In general, if you're catching a lot of fish of the same size and they're kind of pale and their fins are kind of beat up, then you're probably fishing over hatchery fish. But again, there is no way, and biologists will tell you there is no way to tell a wild from a hatchery fish unless it's a fishery where they clip the adipose or one of the fins on the stock trout. And then, then you're going to know. And in general, general wild trout have a little more brilliant color and their fins, the ends of their fins are much cleaner and sharper. But I've seen wild trout with, with beat up fins that I know were wild trout and I've seen hatchery fish that had pretty smooth, clean fins and pretty brilliant color. They can give them different types of diets to make them develop brilliant colors. So no, there is, there is no visual way to tell really. Biologists say that, you know, they need to do DNA analysis really to, to tell if a fish is, is stocked or wild. And that's, that's beyond, that's beyond the reach of us with a fish in the net. So you're just going to have to guess, you know, knowing whether there's been stockfish in the area will help. But beyond that there's, there is no easy visual way to tell the difference, I'm afraid. All right, that is the fly box for this week. Let's go talk to Matt about fine tuning your indicator fishing. Well, my guest today is Matt Squalante and Matt is an Orvis endorsed guide in the Redding, California area. Matt, just, just tell people what rivers, what rivers you generally cover when you're fishing so they have a geographical reference or what you're doing.

[C]

I gutted about five to six different rivers. I'm on the Yuba, I'm on the Trinity, I'm on the Feather, the Lower Sac, the Upper Sack, which is anything above Shasta Reservoir and also Hat Creek. They're all about a 45 to 2 hour radius from, from where I, I live, where I operate. So most people, a lot of people are familiar with the Redding area. I live a little southeast of that.

[B]

Huh. Okay, so that's a great, that's great because you cover a diversity of waters. I mean the Upper Sack and the, and Hat Creek are very, very different waters. So what we're going to talk about today you have various applications and, and we should be able to apply it to any water in the, in the world that we fish with nymphs, right?

[C]

Absolutely. Yeah, that's, and that's a great point. That's, and that's part of why I wanted to, to speak with you about this because this is ubiquitous. This is across the board. You can Take this information anywhere. Yeah, I went to guide school, and one of my strengths is that they took. They told me, you know, at the end when we had a recap, was my teaching ability. And so I love to teach. I love to share information with people. I love to help people get better. I think in part because I really didn't have a lot of help when I started. There really was no Internet. I didn't have anybody in my family who fly fished. So I feel like I had this really big learning curve, and I made a lot of mistakes along the way. And then, of course, gotta go back. You gotta go back and fix those, right? If you want to continue to get better. And so what I hope to do with people is, you know, be the guy that can help them build a really solid foundation and avoid that massive learning curve that I had. And the topic today came about because I had looked at some of my own fishing. I grew up on the east coast, and even though when I came to California, I'd been fly fishing for quite some time, I didn't have a lot of experience fighting big fish. And I started to get into steelhead fishing. And typically those fish are bigger. And what I found was, after a while, it seemed like, you know, I think I'm hooking a lot of fish, I think I'm doing well, but I'm not sure I'm landing a lot of these fish. And rather than guess right, I wanted to check myself and see if what I was perceiving was real. Turned out it was very real. I had a problem. I was only landing about 50% of my fish, which is really poor. And so it was by paying attention to, hey, recognizing, hey, I have an issue, right? Paying attention to that issue. And for example, if I was fighting a fish and I assuming I got a good hook set, okay, if I lost that fish during the fight, I would really pay attention to was, what did I do just before I lost that fish? Because that was probably my mistake. Hook, right? And the next time I hooked a fish, I tried to pay attention to not making that mistake. And of course, I talked to some people and I read some articles on how to fight bigger fish. And eventually, over time, once I identified that, hey, you got a problem. Once I identified that I could work on how to fix it, and I did. So now my land rate became very high, right? It was probably in the 90s, well into the 90% versus that 50%, right? Where I just had a problem. I wasn't. I was making a lot of mistakes. And What I realized in the last nine years of guiding was I started paying attention to my clients and I started looking at them in the same way that I had looked at myself. And I said, you know, what is costing people the most time? Where do my clients lose the most time when they're fishing with me? Why do some clients come out and they're fishing in an eight hour day? You know, assuming we have 45 minutes hour for lunch, they're probably fishing six, seven hours of that day versus I've got other clients who come out and they're literally fishing maybe only four. What's going on with those people? What I don't want them to fish for, I want them to be more efficient. And so what I recognize this is specifically talking about indicator fishing. Okay, Right.

[B]

Cause that's the topic we're talking about.

[C]

Right? That's the topic.

[B]

That's the two biggest mistakes people make in indicator fishing.

[C]

Absolutely. The two things that cost them the most time. And this is again from watching thousands of people literally at this point in my career. And eventually I felt like, okay, I've looked at enough people, I've gathered enough data. I feel comfortable narrowing it down to these two things that are most costly. And if you can work on these two things, you can up your efficiency. And the value that you're going to get from your day with a guide or your own fishing is going to be so much higher. You don't want to, ideally, you don't want to pay your guide to fix tangles all day. You want to pay your guy to guide you. Right. And put you on fish and, and teach you things and, and be more successful.

[B]

Right.

[C]

So these are the two things that I've identified that cost people the most time, I. E. Not fishing. Okay. And number one is surprise, surprise, bad casting. Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And I want to preface this by talking a little bit about the rigging and the cast, the specific cast that I'm talking about.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

The indicator rig is really important here. Okay. The, the rig that we're using on our rivers, but that's also applicable to other rivers across the country or across the world in your own fishing and somebody else's fishing. Generally we have a fairly long meter here. Okay. We have an indicator we might many or may not have at least one, possibly two swivels to have a butt section, a running line, and then our flies below it, we've got split shot and then we generally multiple flies. Okay. That is a very ungainly, clunky rig. That's all there is to it, it's inelegant. There's nothing beautiful and runs through it about it. Okay. It just also happens to be very effective. Right. So I want to make that clear that we're. We're talking about a certain type of rigging. Okay. When we're. When we're indicator fishing. So that leads me to the specific cast. Okay. And that's one of the things that I try to help people understand is that there's many, many, many different casts in fly fishing. There's a curved cast, a wiggle cast, a roll cast, a reach cast, a steeple cast, bow, and all kinds of casts. Right. And they're all relevant for certain types of rigging in certain situations.

[A]

Right.

[C]

We use a different cast for a dry fly, say, like a size 18 atoms, than we would for our indicator rate. Right. And the analog. The analogy that I use is a car, an automobile analogy. Right. A dry fly, a nice, beautiful, light Atom, size 18. That's a Ferrari. Okay. This indicator rig with a split shot and an indicator, and it's long and it's got multiple flies, and it's clunky and swift. That's a dump truck.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And so if you use a Ferrari cast, the overhead back cast with the dump truck, it doesn't work, and vice versa. They're both ongoing, but they do very different jobs, and you have to recognize that. So it's really important to understand that there is a right cast or most appropriate cast for your rigging. Okay. In the case of the rigging that we're talking about, it's the water load. And I generally call that the most maligned cast. And fly fishing people just don't seem to like it, especially guys that have experience. They want to throw an overhead back cast with their indicator rig like they're dry fly fishing. And that's the Ferrari cast with the dump truck. And it just doesn't translate. Right. So you need to understand we have different rigging and different casts that are appropriate for those riggings. So the water load is your best cast. Okay. Pete Kutzer, you can find his video on YouTube. He calls it a water haul. Okay. It's essentially the same cast.

[B]

Sure.

[C]

Okay. It starts out of. By lifting the rod, creating tension. Right. Which is what we always need to do with any cast. Making it bend, turning your hand either upstream or downstream in the direction that you're casting, and then you're going to come over your head. Colloquially, we sort of call it a. A rainbow cast or a flop cast, because the rod Cap is in a big arc, but like every other cast in fly fishing, it's a straight line. Okay. As soon as you start coming off of that straight line again, like any other cast and fly fishing, you start to have problems. Okay. And the problems generally start to occur because people don't load the rod. Okay. And they don't understand what load on the rod is and how it feels. Okay. And that's critical. Okay? That is absolutely critical. You have to load the rod every single time. And so when you don't, what happens is there's no energy. Think of an elastic that you just put in the palm of your hand, and you turn your hand over, it's just going to fall at your feet. There's no tension, there's no energy. There's no spring in that. As soon as you pinch that elastic, you pull it back, you make it stretch or bend, you let go, that elastic flies out. Okay. Your fly rod works in the same principle, or like a bow and arrow. Okay. You have to pull that bow back, you have to make that rod bend, and then you release that tension. Same thing. That's what loading your rod comes down to, is making sure that you make that rod bend, and then we release that energy. Okay. That's essentially what a cast is. And so what I found is that people are not loading the rod. When I talk about bad casting, it's really not loading the rod.

[B]

Not loading the rod on a. On a water haul or a water line.

[C]

On a water haul. Yeah. Okay.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

What will happen is they will have way too much slack and they'll start swinging the rod, wrap back and forth, trying to create enough momentum so that eventually it will cast. Yeah, eventually, if they swing it around 10, 12 times, they probably will make a cast. But that cast, completely inaccurate, Right. It'll pile up and it will be very late. Right. So if I say, hey, hit that spot, especially if we're moving downstream in a boat, right? Where, yeah, I can try to hold us. I can try to pace the slowest down a little bit. But if the water's moving fast enough, and I say hit it, and it takes you 20, 30 seconds to hit it, because you're swaying that rod around, trying to create energy, you've missed that spot. That's that simple. You've missed it. It's too late. So you're going to lose fishing time. That's one of the outcomes. You're going to lose opportunities by doing that. That. The other thing is, as you start to swing it around again, you're Lying. And it's not traveling in a straight line. And as anybody who's fished long years with tippet and multiple flies knows, that stuff has one goal in life and that is to tangle up on you. That's its sole purpose. That's what it wants to do more than anything else in the world is tangle on you and start swinging it around. It's not traveling in a straight line. Okay. And that's when it's going to roll and tangle. Okay. And so that's going to be the other outcome, is you're going to tangle up massively. Usually. Okay. Sometimes it'll be wrapped around the rod, sometimes it'll just be wrapped around the leader and a ball. Regardless. Now we've got to pull over to the side of the river, drop the anchor, possibly cut everything off and re rig your entire system here. That can easily, depending on how bad it is, that can easily be five, 10, 15, 20 minutes.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

If you're doing that three or four times a day and you've got two anglers. Two anglers times 60 minutes. Right.

[B]

Each, you're a busy boy. If you got two anglers that are

[C]

doing that, you've just lost two hours. Right. Of your fishing day.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

That might seem excessive, but I guarantee you it happens all the time. Because again, people just aren't loading the rod and they don't understand that it's not going to work without energy in it. You have to load that rod.

[A]

It's.

[C]

It's like a revolver, but a single shot revolver. Right. If you pull that trigger and there's one bullet in it, the next time you want to, to take a shot, you have to reload that revolver, you have to put another bullet in. Casting is the same way. You have to load that rod every single time you want to make a cast. So the easiest way to do that. Okay. Is simply the answer is always the same. If it's not working, if you're swinging it around right and you're not creating energy, you're not loading the rod. The answer is very simple. Just strip the line in shorter and keep going shorter until you lift that rod up and you feel a little tension and you can see the tip of that product end. Okay. Now the rod is loaded and it has energy in it and you can make a cast. Okay. You will save yourself a lot of headache. You'll be far more efficient, you'll be much more accurate. Okay. You'll have control and you're not gonna miss those opportunities, some of which are, hey, you've got one shot at this. You need to be ready. You need to hit that spot when I tell you hit. Because we're going to be moving past it really fast. Right. And you're not going to lose out on those opportunities.

[B]

Yeah, I can see where, where when you're waiting by yourself, it's pretty easy just to let the line hang downstream of you and you're going to have tension eventually and the rod tip is going to bend. But in a boat, sometimes maybe the boat's moving faster and you can't get that same tension. So it's a little bit harder doing that from a boat. So stripping in the line, stripping in line until it, until you get tension on it is the way to do it?

[C]

Yeah, absolutely. The answer is always the same. It's one plus one is going to equal to every single time. So if it's not working, your answer is shorten up the line. Okay. Okay.

[B]

And then, and then, but then to get distance, then you got to, you have to shoot it on that water load. Right? You have to.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

You have to release that line that you've stripped in.

[C]

And I think mentally that's where people get stuck. They think, oh, I've had a long drift and this is 100% applicable because I see it walking weight fishing too, all the time. They'll, they'll extend their drift, right. So they'll make maybe a, let's say a 15 foot cast and then. But they'll extend it another 20 or 30ft to get a much longer drift. So now Maybe they've got 35, 40ft of long enough out of their drip.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Rather than saying, I need to reload this rod in order to make a cast. Right. So I'm going to strip it in short so that I can get good tension, I can have control and I'm going to shoot it again. They think, well, hey, I've got that 40ft out there. That's how far I want to be anyway. I'm just going to try to make it work from there.

[B]

Oh, but there's slack and there's slack in that system.

[C]

So there's a system and it's not gonna work. Right. And you can. A very easy, easy way for people to help themselves understand what load is. Because I had a client recently and I was surprised. I fished him a couple times and he's been fishing for maybe 20 years. And I, I kept telling, hey, you're not loading the rod. And he said, well, I don't really know what that feels like. And I Was surprised by that. And I said, oh, okay, well, let's do a little. We'll just do a really quick little example that will help you. So if you take your indicator rig, okay, and you place it in no current, there's no current that's going to pull it downstream. Just dead still water. That indicator is going to sit there, hold your rod perfectly parallel to the water, the surface of the water. Nothing's going to happen. That rod's not going to bend. That indicator is not going to move down. There's going to be no tension. You're not going to feel anything. Nothing's moving. It's just sitting there. And you can see the rod is perfectly straight. Okay, now take that same rig, throw it out into a little bit of current and let it drift all the way downstream. You don't even have to pull the rod upstream that rod due to the tension. The pull of the water on that rod and your indicator and all the flies and what. It's going to bend a little bit. And it's subtle, but you should feel some tension. That's. That tells you, okay, I've got some energy, and now I can do something with that energy. What we want to do with that energy is make a cast. That's all a cast is really, is a release of energy. Just like a catapult. You pull that catapult back, you cut the line, and that object flies out. Okay. If you don't pull that back and make it bend, that object's not going anywhere. Okay. There's all kinds of analogies we can use.

[B]

Yeah, it's a good analogy, though. It's a great analogy.

[C]

They're all the same, right, that it's literally we have to put some energy into that rod. And again, I see it all the time where people. I'm not sure if they get lazy or they forget or they'll make a good cast, and then the next cast, they won't. They won't load the rod. And I'm not quite sure. I haven't quite identified what the cause of that is. I think a lot of times, again, they think, well, I've already got all this line out there. I'm going to save time by not stripping it in, Right?

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Because I've already got this distance and I tell them, you're not going to save time. You got to cost yourself time every single time if you try to cast that. It also comes down to a basic principle. Even if you do have. Have some load on the rod, there's a Certain point for all of us. You probably know this as well, myself included, right. We all have a certain amount of line that we can cast, right? And some of our, some of that distance is longer than others. Some people can cast 50ft from a dead stock. Other people can only cast 30. Right? So we all have a certain distance, even if there is some load in the rod. But it's a basic principle of physics. An object at rest wants to stay at rest. So the more line you have out there, even if there's some load on it, a lot of times you can't pick it up. It's just too much mass to pick up from a dead stop. So that's also one of the reasons I try to work with people when I'm teaching a Waterloo or really any cast. Try to get a rhythm going. I know I've heard some casting instructors say use move Mickey Mouse. Mickey Mouse, whatever. I tell people, hey, if you have any song or rhythm that you like in your head, try to cast to that rhythm. Just get your mechanics down. Cast smooth rhythmically. Because once you lose that rhythm, it's harder to pick that stopped object. Especially if you're shooting line and you're getting farther out there, you get more and more mass, right. It's harder to pick that greater mass up from a dead stop. Okay? So try to keep that rhythm going. Get your, your object moving, keep it moving and then you can make your cast. But try to pick up 40 or 50 fields line at a dead stop with an indicator heavy split shot. Sometimes we're fishing out here, for example, like two SSGs plus bead head nymphs, two or three. That is an awful lot of weight to try to lift up to a dead stop and move. Right? So that's number one. Want is understanding you have to load the rod every single time. And if you don't, the outcome is not going to be anything that you really want. Are you going to tangle up? You're going to miss opportunities. You're going to spend a lot of time on the side of the river fixing those tangles. Okay. And you're going to miss a lot of time throughout the course of your day. So it's going to cost you fishing time.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And the water load as opposed to false casting. The more you false cast with that kind of rig rig, the greater, the greater the danger there is.

[C]

Exactly.

[B]

Like I said, it wants to tangle it.

[C]

That is its sole goal. That is its sole goal in life, Right. It was born tip it all. Tippet was born with one Goal in life, Tangle up on. On anglers. Right. That's what it wants to do. That's what it wants to do forever and ever. So just be aware of that. Okay. And understand what load is, understand how it feels, understand that sometimes it can be subtle, but also understand that every time you want to make a cast, no matter what cast, you have to load that rod every single time, no matter what.

[B]

Even if you're just fishing that 18 atoms, the rod's still gotta load.

[C]

And that's what I try to tell people is these lessons. Today, we're specifically talking about the water load and indicator fishing. But I also try to teach in a manner there that helps people understand this is across the board.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

If you're roll casting, you still need to understand that how you're loading the rod and that you have to load it if you're bow and arrow casting. I think a bow and arrow cast is actually a great example. Right. Because you actually are physically pulling and making that rod bend, and you can see the difference if you don't versus if you do. Right. But every single cast in fly fishing, no matter what, you have to wield the rod. And so that's one of the things I look forward to as I listen to my clients. What I'm listening for is when they say, oh, I felt that one, and I say, that's great. Because a lot of fly casting, you can't necessarily see what's going on behind you. Right. You need to feel what's going on behind you on your back cast. A lot of times or other casts, you need to feel that rod. So the sooner you can start to develop that sensitivity to, oh, I felt it. That's progress, and that's really good. And I want you to start to pay more and more attention to how that rod feels. Right. How does it feel when you make a good cast versus a bad cast? Right.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

And look at that feet. Think about, oh, that bad cast. Like, I don't know, it felt kind of like spaghetti, like sloppy spaghetti. Like, just didn't feel right. That's great. That's progress. Because now you're understanding how that rod works and what load is and isn't.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

The second thing that's going to cost people a lot of time. Again, talking about indicator fishing doesn't necessarily.

[B]

It's not just time. It's not like we're on a clock. It's frustration, too. It's going to save you frustration.

[C]

Absolutely. And that's also a big part of it is, like, if you're on your own. Like I'm going to fix your tangles if you're fishing with me. Right? Yeah. But if you're fishing on your, on your own, you don't want to sit there fixing, fixing tangles all day. That's not, that's not why you're out there.

[A]

Right.

[B]

I don't want to be fishing.

[C]

The other example that I give people is what if you've got a 45 minute hatch window and you make a bad cast that tangles up.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Right. And a lot of people tell me, oh, I, it takes me 10 or 15 minutes to tie one knot, right? Well, yeah, if you gotta cut all that stuff off and tie three or four knots to get back into action, by the time you get, you just missed that beautiful hatch window because you made a bad cast.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Right. So things like that are just like killers for your day. Right. I mean, we don't want that for people. Right. So that brings me to number two, which is bad hook sets. And I always kind of joke around that it's a little tongue in cheek that men come into the sport with a handicap because we're socialized from a young age. If it's not working, just do it harder. Right. And that'll make it work. Right. And that's generally the worst thing we could do in fly fishing. Because fly fishing is about timing and rhythm. Right. And subtlety, balance, speed. Right. If we want to cast farther, for example, we will incrementally add a little bit more power. What we really need to do is speed the lineup. Right. That's going to make us cast farther.

[B]

Right.

[C]

I use the example of Joan Wolf all the time. I tell people, look, if it was about men, especially if it was about power, Joan Wolf would not have been a casting champion. And she is.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Right. And I think she was just in her 20s. Like she was a fairly young petite woman. She was beating all the men. I said if it was about power, she wouldn't have won. It's not about power.

[B]

Right.

[C]

It's about mechanics and. Yeah, right.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So I use her as an example and it comes into hook setting as well. Okay. Hook setting is not about power. Okay. These are not tuna. Even a steelhead. It's not a tuna fish. Okay. We're not setting on marlin or anything like that. I've done a fair amount of saltwater fishing in my day. We're not, we're not fishing for those fish.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

What it is, is about speed. Okay. And a good hook set is going to keep you in the game, okay? It's not going to come flying back at you. If it does come flying back at you, there's a good chance it's going to hit you. But also, like we talked about with the casting, what's going to happen as that, that you pull that back. It's not a straight line. And anytime you come off of a straight line, that tippet, like you said, it wants to tangle, it's going to roll and it's going to tangle up on you. And now you have a bad tangle, right? So you have a hook set. Now you got a bad tangle again, you pull over, it's going to cost you 5, 10, 15 minutes depending on how. Depending on your rigging and how bad the tangle is, is. The other thing is, especially on small water, like we were talking about a little bit earlier, you got bushes to your left, you've got bushes to your right above you and behind you. A bad hook set is going into those bushes. Okay? Now you're climbing into the tree or the bush and you're really talking about time, right? And frustration like. Like you alluded to, right? It's frustrating. You don't want to end up in the tree, you don't want to lose your flies, you don't want to spend your time pulling out of the bush, right? So the bad hook set is usually a case of too much power and people pulling back toward them, which sends the flies coming back at them again and above them.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

Even if it doesn't tangle, okay, let's assume, okay, bad hook set, but it doesn't tangle. You still just took yourself out of the game. The flies are behind you, the fish are in front of you. You, right? So that bad hook set when flying behind you, now you got to strip it back in shorter recast, get back out into that drift, make more commotion. You're losing time, right? You just took yourself out of the game. Don't do that. So the, the ideal hook step is downstream and up kind of a 45 degree angle downstream. But I find, especially with newer anglers downstream and upstream isn't. It's not rope yet, it's not ingrained. It's not like riding a bicycle. They have to think about that's downstream a lot of times. So what I tell people is just come straight up, okay. We call that hangout. Okay. It's still a good hook set and up and down. Usually people have a much more instant recognition of that's up, right? Okay. And it's understanding that it's about speed. And not power that you want to just get that rod nice and high quickly and start to strip down with your left hand to create tension on that fish if you do that. So if your hook set is quick and you strip down to pick up that distance, okay. Especially if you have a long leader, etc, like when we're nymphing, okay, you need to close that distance between you and that fish, put a bend in the rod. Once you get a bend in that rod, now it's time to get into how you fight fish. Okay? But that good hook set, if the fish isn't there, generally that indicator is popped up maybe a foot or two at most. You can drop it and keep fishing. You didn't take yourself out of the game game. And I can't tell you how many times when I've worked with clients on a good hook set and I say, okay, drop it. After they make a good hook set, two feet later, there's a fish there. They kept fishing, they kept themselves in the game. And two feet later, because their flies were still in the water, they hooked a fish because they were still fishing. After a good hook set, a bad hook set, that, that fish is there. But you just took yourself out of the game because you're on the other side of the boat or you're on the other side of the creek if you're walking weight fishing or you're in the bush and you're not going to get that fish right. So the bad hook set is going to cost you again in time. Frustration, you're going to miss fish and you're going to spend a lot of time, tips and tangles and other things that you don't want to happen. So bad hook sets, none of the outcomes from a bad hook set are good. None of them are what you want. So those are the two things that I've identified that if people can just focus on loading the rod every single cast, right. And the answer to that is always the same. If you go to make a cast and that rod is not loading, strip it in short, shorten up the line. When you lift it up, get it high. That will put bend in the rod. You'll feel some tension. Now it's loaded and you can make a cast. Okay. And the second thing is learn how to make a good hook set. It's not about power, it's about speed. Right. Getting that rod high and closing that distance between you and that fish as soon as possible.

[B]

Let's, let's dig into the hook set problem a little bit more. Matt Because I've got a couple questions that I want to ask about that. So in my experience, when I'm with, when I'm with guests on a hosted trip and I'm fishing with someone, they just don't have the, they don't have the reaction speed. They don't have that muscle memory. You know, the guy to yell, set, set, set, set. And then they'll set, right? What do you, you know, people just, they, they can't make that. They can't make the reaction quick enough either. Either on a dry or a nymph. Not so much of a problem with a dry, but with a nymph, you know, if the indicator moves, you know, a fish has got in its mouth, right? You know, you got a rise, and maybe the fish is a slow riser and you can hesitate a little bit and be okay. But on a nymph, you got to be right there. So how do you, how do you help people develop that quick reflex?

[C]

You don't, you're just a lost cause. No, no, don't tell me that.

[B]

You gotta have all the answers, Matt.

[C]

Well, that's what I tell people. Just ask me questions and I'll answer them best I can. If I don't have an answer, I'm a fly fishing guide, so I'll make something up that sounds believable. You know, hopefully you buy it. No, that's a great question. And, and I, I honestly, I would love to give you like a, a cut and dry, simple answer. This is how you fix that. Because that's a real problem. And I'm just really honest with people and I tell them so. When I started fly fishing here in California, it's. I don't want to get into the background, but I spent most of my time tightlining. Okay. I wasn't fishing with indicators. So when I started fishing with indicators, even though I've been fly fishing a long time, just like everybody else, I was not good at reading it right, and so I missed a lot of fish. I guess my, my honest answer to that question is the more you fish with an indicator, the more you learn how to watch it and look for subtleties, the better you're going to get. I think like a lot of things in fly fishing, it's time on the water and it's just practice. So I live close to the Bay Area. I get a lot of clients from the Bay Area. Bay Area is a wonderful place to live in a lot of ways. It's not a wonderful place to live if you're a Fly fisherman, and you want to fish for trout because there's. Everything's three and a half to four hours away a lot of times. And what I tell people is your biggest hurdle right now is your ability to get back out on the water soon so that you can practice what we worked on today so you can develop those skills. I, Before I was guiding, I loved to fly fish. I've been fly fishing since I was 11. I'm 52 now, so I went as often as I could. But when I started reading the indicator, I was not good at it. Right. Two years later, I was better. And I thought, oh, my God, I missed so many fish the last two years. Right. I'm so good at reading the indicator now.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Well, two years after that, I thought, wow, I've really gotten good. I've gotten so much better. I've made so much progress from where I was two years ago. Right. I missed so many fish before that. That. Right. And so I do believe firmly that like so many other things, it's reading that indicator is practice. Right. And the more you fish it, the better you're going to get. The reflex part is a challenge because a lot of times when you have older clients and as you get older, your reflexes kind of slow down, and at that point, you're generally fairly experienced. That's a little bit more challenging to deal with because you're just dealing with an age issue at that point. In the beginning, when people are younger and they're starting out, what I will do is if I find they're really having a problem is I'll play fish and I'll grab the indicator.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

And I'll just find some place where I can drop it. There's no. There's. There's slack. There's just almost like we're fishing. Right. It's not perfect situation, but it. It simulates the real fishing fairly well. And I'll just go over and over and over with them. I'm playing the fish. I'll drop that indicator, you know, and I'll start talking and I'll pretend I'm, hey, look at that bird over there. Try to get them distracted so that it's not predictable. When I say set, set, set. Right. And I'll. I'll work with them, you know, on that, to get. To get that hook set. Right. And I'll say, okay, good. Good job. Better. Okay, let's do that again. Okay. And again, I'll try to distract them. I'll, you know, get them thinking about something else. I'LL wait a really long time and make them think, like, I forgot, you know, like what we're doing, you know, again, because you could go 20 minutes, you can go five minutes, right? So I try to change it up, all the intervals and everything while I'm working with them, and I just play the fish, you know, and that's something

[B]

anybody could do with anybody kid or, or their spouse or something. Just go out in the yard and have the spouse do the thing, right? And try to develop that reflex 100%.

[C]

And if you're on your own, what I've done, like, if I'm working with four people, let's say I'm doing a clinic, right? And I'm working with multiple people that I just. I can't play fish with everybody. I'll tie it. I'll tie it to a tree, right? And so. And I'll. I'll have them drop the indicator, right? And I can look over there and I can say, you know, I'm working with Bill playing the fish, but I can all of a sudden look over and. And, you know, oh, five minutes pass. I didn't say anything to Mary. Mary. Set, set, set, right? And it's attached to the dream. She has that tension, right? Because feeling that tension is. Is really important, right? Like, if you just lift and there's no tension there, that you're not getting what you need to get done, right? So if you're working by yourself and you don't have anybody to hold it for you, just tie it to a tree, right? And if you have something like you could, say, set a variable alarm or, you know, that a ding or something at variable intervals, that's also a good way so that it's not predictable, because that's what you want to replicate, is that this is not predictable, right?

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

It could happen at any time. It could happen a minute after you just set the hook. It could happen 15 minutes after you just set the hook, right? So that would be my guidance for somebody trying to work on it themselves. The other thing I will do with people is. And. And you. You know this. And. And people who've fished and are experienced reading, you know this, a lot of times rocks are going to make that indicator or bottom is going to make that indicator act like a fish. It's going to move.

[B]

Yep.

[C]

I can tell that's the bottom. But if I have somebody I know is struggling, I'm going to have them set on that anyway, right? Because we're. We're not. I'm not worried about Whether it's. I know it's not a fit, that's irrelevant. It's practice, right. And I just want to see, you know, I want to see their mechanics. I want to see how fast they respond. And I'll tell them, like, hey, you need to be five times faster than that. Like, that's not going to get done. Right. We need to, we need to do that. So again, like, I'll be going through somewhere, I'll see something like, okay, that's bottom. I know it's a rock. I know there's not going to be a fish there, but it's going to give them practice. Right. And that's all I care about.

[B]

Out. Yeah, no, that's a couple of. That's a couple of good, good tips. Now I want to. Now I want to delve deeper into not setting the hook properly. I don't think a lot of people understand what that means. So. So, you know, you could have, you could have a short cast with no slack or you could have a 60 foot cast with a ton of slack in it. Yeah, the hook set's going to have to be different in both of those situations. So, so how do you articulate to someone how you set the hook? You understand what I'm saying? What do you want? What's the goal? What do you want to accomplish when you set the hook?

[C]

Okay, I think I know what you're

[B]

going to say, but I want to try to lead you into it.

[C]

Fair enough. Fair enough. So we've gotta, we've gotta create tension, right? The fish is gonna grab that, that fly. And if you've ever watched fish feeding underwater, trout, they're tasters, right? But they'll take some and they'll spit that out as fast as, as that, as an eye point, literally. But take something in and spit it out, right? So our job, right, is to close that gap right between that, that fly and us as fast as possible by pulling it into the fish's mouth. Okay. And the best way we can do that, typically, right, is to pull on the line and, and get that line tight. So the way we do that is to get that rod tip as high as we can. Okay. Because we're picking up distance. So when we're fishing, that rod tip is low. Like, I'll have people hold the rod tip three or four feet off of water. And I say, no, you're losing three or four feet of hook set room. Right? Keep that tip low when you're fishing, okay. Because you want that rod to come high as fast as you can and start stripping down. We have long leader. We have distance between us and that fish. Now, if that distance is not as great, your hook set's much easier. That pull can be really short. Right. My arm on a. When it's relatively close and I don't have a lot of slack, my arm might travel six inches. Right. To get that sharp pull, just get tight to that fish and put a bend in the rod. But when I have a lot more distance between me and that fish, I've got to bring that rod, Bring that rod higher. Very high. Helps as I'm stripping down. Okay. That, that right hand, if you're ready, should come up high, and that left hand should come down to your pocket. So it's like a strip set at the same time.

[B]

Okay. So you actually haul? You actually haul.

[C]

I did.

[B]

When you start.

[C]

Yeah. Okay. Absolutely.

[B]

On.

[C]

On those long. On those long.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

Right. We've got maybe 20, 25ft of fly line, but then we've got, you know, anywhere from 8 to maybe 12ft of leader. Right. If we're fishing some of our bigger rivers. Right. That's a lot of distance to make up. So by lifting it higher, pulling that slack, you're getting rid of that slack and you're pulling down at the same time. So it's like a lift and strip at the same time.

[B]

Okay? Yep. Okay.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

Good.

[C]

That's. That's the best way to do it. And then once you get that rod high. Right. Once you get a bend, then we're going to put that rod in our chest. And the more we pull back on that rod, the more bend we're gonna. But at that point, we're connected to the fish. And now we're kind of getting into fighting how we're going to fight the fish.

[A]

Fish.

[C]

Right. Which is different. That hook set. The hook set, again, is largely about the speed. Right. But yes, the farther away that you are, I generally recommend getting that rod higher, fat, as fast as you can, and stripping down because we gotta pick up all that distance. It's a lot like even if you make a short cast, if you're extending your drift. Right. So you're. You're making a short cast, but you're feeling. Let's say you're feeding it down 30 or 40ft to a fish down below you, right?

[B]

Yep.

[C]

Let's say even if you're don't have a long leader. Let's hypothetically say we're walking, wading on a spring creek, super clear water. Okay. The fish are very Pressured and they're spooky. Okay. The best thing you can do is stay away from those fish. So you're going to keep yourself well upstream of them. You're going to make a short cast, but you're going to need to, in order to hit those fish downstream of you and not spook them, you've got to feed that down to the them. You can't cast close to them and drift it across. You've got to feed it to them. Okay. The caveat, the trade off with that is obviously the farther you extend your drift, the harder your hook set's going to be. Okay. That's still going to be the only option. If you're in clear water, it's maybe three to four feet deep at most. They're pressured, they're going to see you. You can't stock up on them. Right. You create distance by feeding that out. But now you have a long hook stack set and there is no, there's no two ways about it. That's a difficult hook set and you're going to miss, you know, some of your hook sets. We have a river here. You may have heard of it. I've only fished it twice. It's absolutely beautiful. Crystal clear water up in the mountains. It's called Fall River. It's a spring creek up near the Bernie area. It's absolutely beautiful, but literally gin clear. And the drifts that guys make Lake are 50, 60ft. And you've got a tiny, tiny, tiny little indicator because those fish are so sensitive. The water's so clear, Right? Yeah, it's an extremely challenging hook set. I went and fished it for the first time a couple months ago, and even with, you know, the high lift and guys that are experienced, it's a struggle. It's a challenge. There's no two ways about that. The longer that that is out there, the harder your hook set's going to be. But if you like that challenge, you'll keep working on it and eventually you're going to get better with it. But certainly those longer hook sets are tough. There's no two ways about that.

[B]

Yeah. Especially if they're downstream. Maybe because you often pull it right out of their mouth.

[C]

Yeah, exactly Right. And so again, that's kind of. If you're downstream, that's where you're straight up. Because you can't really. You can't set downstream too much them, right. Because you're fishing downstream to them. So your best option is just to go straight up on that. You can try to come off to one Side a little bit. Again, I think just people, especially if they're not highly experienced, it's just easiest to get it straight up because they know where up is. Everybody knows where up is.

[B]

Yeah. And with a long cast, doesn't matter what angle your rod goes at, the line's still going to go straight up, straight stream. With all that line on the water, you can cast a left, you can hook set to the left, you can hook tuck to the right, and the line's still just going to go straight upstream.

[C]

Yeah. So I can offer you one. Offer folks out there who are listening one piece of advice. Okay. Like casting. If you set up your body the way it wants to work, okay. It doesn't really have a choice. It's gonna work that way because your muscles, your tendons, your bones, everything wants to work that way. It's set up to work that way. It's kinetics, right?

[B]

Yep.

[C]

How the body moves. Okay. To get the downstream hook set almost every single time. Okay. Without fail. Okay. When I'm fishing, Okay. I want that downstream hook set. Okay. Whichever way your thumb is pointed is the way you are going to set the hook. So right now we can do this lesson. Okay. Stick your thumb straight out, your hand straight out. Turn it, turn it left. Assuming left is upstream. Okay. Pull. Well, you pull in the direction that your thumb is facing. If you went downstream, that's a push. That's not a pull. You're not gonna push. You're gonna pull. Your thumb is facing upstream. You are pulling upstream. Okay. Now return your thumb to center vertical, straight up, ticket downstream. Your body, your muscles, your bones, your brain, everything thing. Again, a push is upstream. A pull is only one direction. It's downstream.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

So if you just. When I'm fishing, the first thing I do when that indicator lands is I look at my thumb. And you don't have to massively turn it into just a little tick downstream. I set my body up to work that way.

[B]

This is when you're fishing upstream, Right. When you're fishing upstream, you want to set a little bit downstream, downstream.

[C]

Yeah. Whenever I want that downstream hook set. Right. So if I'm. If I'm indicator fishing and I've made a cast right. My. Again, we started off with the ideal, right. As you get more experience, is sort of a 45. Downstream, downstream, and up. Right. The way to do that, the way to get that every time, is to just tick that thumb downstream. Your body's not going to pull upstream. It's going to pull downstream. It has no choice. It's literally, you set the body up to win. You can't fail because that's the way it's going to work, period. So just a little tick of that thumb, and you'll set downstream.

[B]

And this would be. This you'd want to set sort of downstream when your fly is either upstream of you or across from you.

[C]

Right, right, right. As it gets farther downstream, that downstream hook set gets harder because you don't have anywhere left to pull. So that's again, why a lot of times, I'll just focus on. Go straight up. It's easiest. And then in Matt's perfect guide world, I'm going to see every single client again, and they're going to stay with me forever, and I'm going to get to work with them over time, and we'll get to that downstream quick set. But that's not reality. Right. As much as I wish it were. So know, given that. Right. I try to bring people along progressively. Right. Make things as easy as I can for them in the beginning, because we throw. Especially people starting out. That's one of the things I feel. It's. It's tough for me sometimes because I empathize. I feel like, you know, we get people out on the water, we throw so much at them sometimes in. In a very short period of time to get them.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

You know, and so going straight up, I found, just kind of takes that which way's downstream, which way's upstream out of the equation. Right. And it's just easier for people to begin with. And then over time, if you want to work toward that downstream hook set, that's how you do it. You make sure that thumb is pointed downstream, and you'll pull that way every time.

[B]

So when in doubt, pull straight up.

[C]

When in doubt.

[A]

Not hard.

[B]

Not hard. Not hard, but quick. Right?

[C]

That's fast. Yeah. It's. It's speed related. Right. It's just like casting. It's speed related. And then the longer your cast, the higher I recommend lifting that rod again, if it's a relatively short cast, you don't have to pick up a lot of distance. You know, my. My arm might move 5, 6 inches at most. It's a quick, short jerk.

[B]

Yeah. So enough to lift the indicator. Enough to lift enough indicator out of the way.

[C]

Yeah. You try to try to lift that indicator. If it's. If it's already underwater, you're graced. That fish helped you out probably. He probably already hooked himself, and you don't have to worry about it. So. Yeah. But generally yeah, you want to, want to get that as high as you can. Okay. For sure.

[B]

Well, Matt, those have been some great tips. Thank you. And I know I get a lot of questions on the podcast about hook setting and, and how do I reduce tangles on a multiple fly rig. So these are, these are great tips and great answers that I'm sure are going to help a lot of people.

[C]

Yeah. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I hope we have helped some people, giving them some things to look at and practice a little bit, understand the importance of loading that rod and that if they can just focus on two things, which is very manageable, just look at those two things because those are the big, big culprits. And if you can do that, I, I don't make many guarantees in fly fishing. I've been fly fishing for 41 years, so I found that's not a good thing to do. But I'll make a concession here and say, I guarantee if you can focus, if you're having problems with those things, if you focus on those two issues, you're going to see your, your time that you're actually fishing go way up. It's going to increase your actual fishing time. And like you said, the level of frustration should also come down, which means your enjoyment should go.

[B]

Yeah, you want to have fun out there. You don't want to be frustrated.

[C]

And that's, that's what we want for everybody. And if you're fishing with a guide, whether it's me or somebody else, what I want for you is I want you to try to get as much from that guide as you possibly can, can for your money, right? I want you to get your full value. And the real value that a guide brings is what can he teach you, right? What experiences can he give you that day that you can use in your own fishing when you're not with him? Right? And if again, you're at the side of the river and he, you're just paying him to fix tangles, you're not getting the value out of him that you could be. Right? You know, your, your progress is going to be slow. And ideally, you know, we, we Orvis and all your, your programs and your lessons, right? The, the books I know that you've written and the things I've seen from Pete and other people at the company, we all, we all want people to succeed and we want them to learn and improve and get better. So hopefully today, you know, I've given people just two small things that they can do that are, are manageable to look at and try to improve.

[B]

Yep. I got a couple things I'm going to remember too.

[C]

I'm going to use tomorrow on the river. Well I'm sure I can learn a lot from you too so maybe, maybe I can get back you sometime fish some small waters with you. That would be super fun.

[B]

I'd like that. Well Matt, thank you so much. And if you want to fish with Matt and improve your skills with Matt you can find them on the Orvis website and the California listing. So so again we've been talking to Matt Squalante and Matt, thanks again.

[C]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thanks for listening to the Orvis Fly

[B]

Fishing podcast with Tom Rosenbauer.

[C]

You can be a part of the show, have a question or a comment, send it to [e-mail] in the Body of an email or as a voice detector. You can find more free fishing [e-mail].