Howard Croston on Competition Mindset and Loch-Style Fishing for Stillwater Trout (Littoral Zone Podcast #22)

00;00;02;07 – 00;00;32;25 Phil Welcome to the Littoral Zone podcast. I’m your host, Phil Rowley. Littoral Zone or the Shoal area of The lake is a place with the majority of the action takes place. My podcast is intended to do the same for you, where the action is to help you improve your Stillwater fly fishing. On each broadcast, I, along with guests from all over the world, will be providing you with information, tips and tricks, Fly’s presentation techniques along with different lakes or regions to explore. 00;00;33;08 – 00;01;02;08 Phil I hope you enjoy today’s podcast. Please feel free to email me with your Stillwater related Fly fishing questions and comments. I do my best to answer as many as we can prior to each episode just before the main content. Thanks for listening. I hope you enjoy today’s show. Today I am pleased and excited to have Howard crossed and join me from across the pond in England to discuss Stillwater flies and tactics. 00;01;02;20 – 00;01;32;04 Phil If you don’t know, Howard is a long time member of the English fly fishing team and a former world champion. Howard is a fly designer with Fulling Mill and the product development manager for Hardy and one extremely good Fly Fisher. On today’s podcast, Howard and I are going to discuss his evolution as an angler and fly Fisher, and how his competitive experiences have influenced his approach to fly fishing lakes and the thoughts behind the development of his revolutionary drop backbone. 00;01;32;14 – 00;01;54;22 Phil But before I join Howard, I want to respond to a question from Matt BURNETT. So in today’s question, Matt asked a great question and one I often get a lot. And he lives in north eastern Tennessee, and he says, I’m interested in fishing some of the still waters in my area. For trout. To my understanding, the fish are stalked annually with no natural reproduction or very little. 00;01;55;10 – 00;02;13;22 Phil I believe the water is deep enough and cold enough to support holdovers and that some of the Browns will push up into the tail waters from one of these two impoundments. The lakes are drawn way down each winter and are filled again in the spring, and I’m wondering what time of the year is going to be best for me to target them in this varying environment. 00;02;14;05 – 00;02;37;13 Phil Any additional information or advice you have for chasing these Stillwater trout in this part of the country is greatly appreciated. And he thanked me for all the great information we provide. I provide on a regular basis, which is great. Thanks so much, Matt. And again, a great question and a bit of a tough one because fluctuating environments like impoundments like this to draw down reservoirs, they do have an impact on where trout are, their behavior. 00;02;37;21 – 00;02;58;14 Phil And trout to me, and I’ve never fished these waters, although it sounds like I’d like to go investigate them. Trout will usually move to where they’re most comfortable in the forms of the ability to breathe and oxygen content where they can find a level of protection. And that can be drop off structure like weed beds, adjacency to deep water and of course, food. 00;02;58;14 – 00;03;22;23 Phil They’ve got to be able to feed and sustain themselves. So these are always three keys I look for. And you may have those fish holding over in winter if it’s not too shallow. And I’m not sure, probably not like where I am in Canada. We get a lot of ice. It’s middle of winter right now as I’m answering this question and we’ve got a lot of ice, so they’re not going to stay in an area where they’re going to get frozen in and can’t get out. 00;03;23;02 – 00;03;44;13 Phil So they’ll move. But if there’s enough water there, they certainly could be there. They maybe because of the cooler water temperatures, their metabolism slows. They don’t need as much fuel in the form of food to eat. They’re going to be a little bit more challenging to catch and find. But you know, slow presentations, you know, such as balance, leaches under indicators, those kind of things are always good. 00;03;44;25 – 00;04;08;26 Phil Water temperature for me is always key. So I always use a thermometer both at the surface and if the depth allows it down deep. And I just have a cheaper stream side thermometer on a piece of parachute cord or cord, you can get it any home hardware, home store, Home Depot, any home improvement store like that. I tie it on a string and I lowered over the side and let it sit there for a bit and then pull it up and see what the water temperatures are. 00;04;09;09 – 00;04;33;01 Phil And I’m always looking for water temperature in that 50 to 65 degree Fahrenheit range. That’s the sort of happy zone for trout, if you will. Typically, when the waters get below 50, water temperatures get below 50, they’ll still be there. But again, their metabolism will slow right down, of course, above 65 water as it increases, does not hold the same level of oxygen and trout become less comfortable in extreme circumstances. 00;04;33;01 – 00;04;59;20 Phil They can become stressed, they can go into shock and they can die. So I’m so usually in that higher water temperature, those fish are not going to be there. So I would say as usually in all lakes, spring and fall is usually the best times because you’ve got, from what it sounds like here, the air impoundments, the lakes are filled up again from the adjacent tail waters and the water temperatures probably influenced by that cooler water are going to be within the trout range and again in the fall months. 00;04;59;26 – 00;05;22;11 Phil Summer again gets really warm. That water temperature warms up. And as I mentioned earlier, there’s less oxygen, so fish are more likely to slide out into those tail waters if they can get to them and take advantage of that cool oxygenated water source. And of course, tail waters are rich in food, too. And as you mentioned, they’ll move into those tail waters, too to spawn because trout and lakes can’t spawn. 00;05;22;11 – 00;05;49;16 Phil They need only in rare circumstances, but they need moving water, a particular level of substrate, gravel, bottom, those kind of things where they can spawn successfully. You will see them attempt to spawn in some lakes. I know down in Argentina, I’m convinced, and those wind driven waters down there that they have adapted to, to spawn on some of the gravel shorelines that are prevalent on some of the lakes and the lagoons there. 00;05;49;26 – 00;06;10;08 Phil But even Lago Strobel Jurassic Lake has an inflow stream. The barren coastal river that comes in and trout move up there to spawn. So they need that moving water. But that’s what I would target on. I’d let water temperature me be my guide. I’d look for areas that for structure, like I said, drop offs, weed beds, sunken islands. 00;06;10;25 – 00;06;31;06 Phil One good thing about the lake, if it draws down, you can use that when it’s in its lowest state to get go down, have a look at it and see what features are exposed. Because when the lake’s back up to full pool again, you’ll know where those sunken features are and you can easily find them. Of course, electronics are always good to have if you have access to those as well. 00;06;31;06 – 00;06;55;05 Phil I use those a lot in lakes. They don’t make you catch fish. They don’t catch fish for you. You’re like any tool. You have to learn how to use them to be successful and use them to your advantage. So I hope that helps. Matt gives you some things to look at. I thank you again for the question. If any of you else out there have a question for me, please don’t hesitate to send me an email at Fly Craft at Short, Kay or Phil at Phil Rolly, fly fishing, dotcom. 00;06;55;14 – 00;07;18;05 Phil And I’ll make note of your question and I’ll certainly use it in a future episode. So thanks for this great question, Matt, and let’s get on with today’s podcast. Welcome to the Lateral Zone Podcast. Some people always laugh at the name, but I chose it because it’s sort of where most of the fishing activity in our lakes, North America, take place. 00;07;18;05 – 00;07;37;07 Phil So I don’t want to appear here as a stalker because I’ve been following you for a while. I had the pleasure of meeting you for the first time in Denver last year, and I just wanted to talk just to people having a chat about fishing on a boat and all that stuff. So. But you’ve been quite successful in your fly fishing career. 00;07;37;22 – 00;07;42;01 Phil You’re a former world champion. 20, 20. That’s quite an accomplishment. 00;07;42;01 – 00;07;52;28 Howard Yeah, it was 2019 just before the COVID thing blew up. So but technically, I was still world champion in 2020 because we didn’t have one in 2020. So. 00;07;53;02 – 00;07;56;02 Phil So two time. 00;07;56;02 – 00;08;03;27 Howard And I don’t if it counts in that respect, but we did. I was in the team that won it in 2009 as well. 00;08;04;02 – 00;08;08;16 Phil Oh cool, cool. And you’ve been on the England team a long time. Mean, how many years have you been on the England team. 00;08;09;07 – 00;08;17;11 Howard Since 2006 now. So it’s close in and while it is 20 years. 00;08;17;20 – 00;08;24;08 Phil How’d you get in? Just. I know it’s a totally different culture as far as competitions in the UK versus North America. 00;08;24;17 – 00;08;52;15 Howard Yeah, I mean, back home we, we go through home internationals, so just England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales and then it used to be that you generated points from fishing in those events. You met a criteria and then you got picked from the group of people who were eligible to meet the world team. But we changed that in 2000 dating I went to a purely qualified team. 00;08;52;24 – 00;08;53;04 Howard Yeah. 00;08;53;18 – 00;09;08;13 Phil And that’s, that’s probably a good way. I know. I think Canada’s gone that way a little bit. I know the U.S. did for a while they didn’t have that model. And you know, now they have gone that way, which is probably the best way to do it. Right, Because only the best get there. 00;09;08;22 – 00;09;32;06 Howard Yeah, I think it’s what it does is it makes it achievable If you want to be in there is no like, well, he’s not getting picked. He should be picked and he is. And you know, you meet the minimum requirements to fish the qualifiers and then you know, you’re either in your or not. So it’s you know it’s a clear easily understandable where. 00;09;32;13 – 00;09;34;23 Phil Yeah it’s not political or financial. 00;09;34;25 – 00;09;40;12 Howard Yeah exactly where the financial things because it’s expensive so it’s either one way or the other. 00;09;40;13 – 00;10;06;12 Phil So yeah that was, I was fortunate enough to be on a team in the 2007, I think it was Canadian championships and we won gold and everybody says, Oh you’re coming to the Worlds isn’t quite the way it sort of works over here. Plus it’s an awful lot of money that, you know, I jokingly said, I think I’d rather go to the Bahamas and spend that money in the weather and not be bound by all the rules that that have to go that are, you know, there for a valid reason. 00;10;06;12 – 00;10;21;00 Phil So so in addition to competing, you’re a fly designer with falling mil. You’ve got a whole line of flies out there. And you can if people check out the full mil YouTube channel, there’s a lot of video with you on there with your flies and your techniques and some of the things we going to talk to you about today. 00;10;21;10 – 00;10;24;26 Howard Yeah, quite a lot of stuff for those guys. They’re a good bunch of guys. 00;10;24;26 – 00;10;31;05 Phil Yeah, they look like a good a good organization. Of course. You work with Hardy. How long have you been with Hardy? You’re the product development manager there, correct? 00;10;31;13 – 00;10;43;03 Howard Yeah, I’ve had a number of roles. Hardy’s I’ve been the for 24 years, Neil and I think so long time. So yeah. 00;10;43;08 – 00;10;44;07 Phil Going to retire there? 00;10;44;27 – 00;10;48;25 Howard Well, you never know. You never know. I’ve got a few years left and so. 00;10;49;04 – 00;10;51;15 Phil And your wife Nancy, she fishes too, right? 00;10;51;15 – 00;11;10;05 Howard She does. She’s an acting coach. She does a thing called Fishing for Heroes. So she takes ex-servicemen out, some with PTSD, some with other issues. Yeah. You know, to get her into fishing. And she works for a big fishing tackle company as well. Small fish fellows. 00;11;10;11 – 00;11;24;05 Phil Oh, okay. Yeah, Yeah, I see some of their videos as well. I think I actually subscribe to their channels because they have some good content there as well. All right. Let’s talk a little bit about your early life. How did you get into Fly fishing, huh? Yeah, Let’s start right at the red, the grass roots. 00;11;25;09 – 00;11;55;07 Howard Yeah. So basically, I was I had a bad term when I was quite young. I was ill. And the doctor said to me, parents, you know, it needs to be out to the city and in the countryside. And my parents had a holiday home very close to a river. And, you know, when I was like five or six because my dad fished, he started taking me down there and, you know, afloat fishing with worms like most people do, and then quickly got into fly, fly fishing. 00;11;55;24 – 00;12;01;24 Howard And that was it. It was just, you know, I was hooked. So the the pond broke. 00;12;02;16 – 00;12;07;08 Phil So do you have, other than your father, any other mentors in there as you were growing up? Any. 00;12;07;16 – 00;12;34;17 Howard Yeah. So like my uncle was called me uncle. He wasn’t really my uncle, but he was a relation of my mom’s and he was a fly fisherman. My dad was a fisherman. And that’s how I got over into the fly side was through my Uncle Sid and you know me to fly time classes, all sorts of stuff. And my dad encouragement to learn how to fly cast, you know, at a good level. 00;12;34;26 – 00;13;00;06 Howard When I was a kid, he took me for lessons and the whole thing. And so, you know, I learned from some really, really good anglers at a young age. I learned how to cast from the head of one of the teaching organizations in the UK, Mackenzie Phillips. And, you know, Father took me to him for one lesson, and then he just said, Oh, you know, you can come for free, you know, anytime he wants. 00;13;00;27 – 00;13;02;26 Howard So I got, you know, I got helped a lot. 00;13;03;06 – 00;13;08;08 Phil Okay. All right. And then you started on Rivers. When did you get introduced to Stillwater? Fishing? 00;13;08;08 – 00;13;30;02 Howard So really what happened was I always river fished and then I started to lake fish in the winters in our courses. So our trout fish and shoots don’t typically end to September, beginning of October on the river. And we have got grayling fishing. But you know, the river’s blow out a lot and you know, as a young kid it wasn’t that easy to access. 00;13;30;24 – 00;13;56;22 Howard So I started going to still was a little bit and got into Stillwater in the winter and then we jumped forward a little bit. When I wanted to study competing, I sort of thought that you had to be really good at the lakes and maybe not as good at the river’s. So then I got into the lake fishing to basically try and get a place in one of the teams. 00;13;56;22 – 00;14;16;02 Howard And it turned out you needed the river stuff on the legs of. So I managed to I’ve got my first England cap and a little competition even though I’ve been river fishing for at that point 20 years, 15 years before. So I did it a little bit backwards, you know? 00;14;16;02 – 00;14;41;28 Phil Yeah, I was the other way. I learned to actually start fly fishing on rivers and then where I grew up in British Columbia, on the west coast of Canada, Rich Stillwater culture there. And it was just yeah, it was affordable and accessible for us. You know, we could jump in our cars and inflate a float tube and throw it in the trunk of the car and not inflate inflated after we threw it in the car and not after I mean, after we got out, you know, you know, and and and go fishing. 00;14;42;10 – 00;15;00;25 Phil We had a lot of seasonal rivers and Adam’s fish salmon where I grew up and think great. Vancouver, Victoria, a lot of, you know, an Adam’s fish, steelhead, salmon and stuff. A few residents, but not the, you know, No. You see, in the blue ribbon states of Montana and you’ve got there in southeastern B.C. So the lakes were just easier. 00;15;00;25 – 00;15;19;10 Phil So when I picked up, you know, it’s one of the reasons I watch a lot of your stuff is I’m a big your own entering, whatever it’s called this week. It’s got so many names as well. It’s sort of my get to escape and just go fish and not have to worry about. So I love all the the leader and the techie about it because there’s so much of that I found is very transferable to lakes as well. 00;15;19;19 – 00;15;19;29 Howard Yeah. 00;15;19;29 – 00;15;26;18 Phil Which we’ll talk about those as well. So you mentioned, I guess I forgot to ask you, where are you actually living In England. 00;15;27;02 – 00;15;58;28 Howard So I live about 20 miles from the Hardy factory. Okay. Well, it’s called Morpeth. Okay. So the Hardy brand is based in Alnwick. It’s a spiritual and historic home. Yeah, we still have the factory in the shop there, but the actual offices that I work in every day is about ten miles south of where I live now. So I live between the factory, which I go to three times a week and the office, which I’m in most days. 00;15;59;00 – 00;16;03;03 Howard Okay, So I’m like slap bang in the middle and that’s in the east to the east of England. 00;16;03;12 – 00;16;08;14 Phil So for those not familiar with totally English geography, what’s the closest sort of major city? 00;16;09;01 – 00;16;11;11 Howard It would be Newcastle. Newcastle upon Tyne. 00;16;11;13 – 00;16;12;12 Phil Okay, so. 00;16;12;12 – 00;16;17;27 Howard It’s up on the north east coast, probably 40 miles from the Scottish border. 00;16;18;05 – 00;16;34;08 Phil Okay. All right. Well, I got called. It’s going. It’s like today we work or we got lots of snow and cold here today. Okay, so you mentioned getting into competitions. You started, I guess you could say recreationally what what drew you to competitions and all of that? 00;16;34;19 – 00;17;02;04 Howard Yeah. So really, I got into casting competitions. First of all, when I was a kid, my dad sort of pushed me to enter and I did quite well. And then I practiced and I did a lot better and I competed for a good number of years before I ever fished in a fishing competition. When I went to a world championships in Slovakia for the Karsten. 00;17;02;04 – 00;17;26;27 Howard And it was tough. You know, the the wind got up and it was sort of like blowing right at the limits of whether we could continue compete in or not. And they let us continue. And everybody went up to qualify. My group didn’t qualify because the wind. So I’d put like a year’s worth of training and didn’t qualify for three events. 00;17;27;22 – 00;17;49;23 Howard And I came home and I was like, I don’t know if I want to give up another year of fishing to train Karsten when things like that can interfere with it. And to be honest, I was losing some interest in it then, and I thought, I’m going to try competitive fishing instead, so I’ll get not to go. 00;17;50;08 – 00;18;00;11 Phil Because there’s a big culture of competitive fishing in the UK, not just in fly fishing, but also, you know, of course, fishing. Yeah, carp especially. I follow some of that because. 00;18;00;11 – 00;18;05;28 Howard Yeah, we’ve got all that stuff. That’s a big thing over here. But no game fishing always appealed to me More. 00;18;08;01 – 00;18;27;17 Speaker 3 San Juan rod work started with a simple belief great fly rods and gear shouldn’t cost a fortune. As a family run company, they focus on building high quality fly fishing products that perform on the water without the premium price tag. You can try San Juan. Rod works for 30 days risk free right now, and if you’re not satisfied, send it back for a full refund. 00;18;27;17 – 00;18;57;27 Speaker 3 You can go to san Juan. 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You know, there’s a lot of, you know, stuff get fed or you know, you have to do this, you have to do that. 00;19;33;05 – 00;19;55;17 Howard And competition for me helped me boil down through a lot of the, you know, the old wives tales and the hearsay and got me to what I think makes a difference. So competition fishing taught me how to be, you know, efficient and a successful angler and I think really taught me what mattered and what didn’t matter to a large degree. 00;19;55;20 – 00;19;59;03 Phil Okay. Well, can you get a couple of examples of that? Come to mind? 00;19;59;16 – 00;20;24;13 Howard Yeah, I mean, you always for argument’s sake, there’s a lot of people, even some people who fishing competitions over here will say things like, Oh, wait, you know, nylon diameter doesn’t matter. You know, they can’t say it’s it’s fluorocarbon and visible, all this kind of stuff. Whereas, you know, line diameter makes a massive difference. It’s not just about whether they can see it or not, you know, the diameter effect. 00;20;24;13 – 00;20;50;03 Howard So so it is it has an an influence on your drift. How well you fly behaves, all that kind of stuff. And also, you know, people get wound up on the fly color and yes, it makes a difference, but not to the degree that a lot of people take it. So we have a particularly on our lake fishing over here, you know, fly like the blob everybody knows of. 00;20;50;21 – 00;20;53;16 Howard And these over here. Yeah. 00;20;54;12 – 00;20;55;12 Phil It’s popular here to. 00;20;55;28 – 00;21;23;18 Howard The just the level we go to with the collar is insane. You know you’ll they’ll go into a fly shop and they’ll insist on you know like in a pocket from the very, from to the stock that’s been bleached a little bit by the sole, but it’s not quite the color it’s supposed to be. Or then they get so wound up over things like that. 00;21;24;04 – 00;21;35;11 Howard And to some degree, yes, but it makes a difference. But it’s not going to replace good technique, you know, good approach, all that kind of other stuff. And having the fly in the right place. 00;21;35;12 – 00;21;56;29 Phil That’s what I favor a I call it, drop it right depth, right, retrieves four and then sort of the pattern because everybody puts so much blame on the pattern that that’s why they didn’t catch fish. Yeah. And there’s so many variables that impact color, you know, depth of water, clarity of water. What? The sunlight, clouds. It’s all also different. 00;21;56;29 – 00;22;18;05 Phil Yeah, well, unfortunately or fortunately, blobs have become very popular over here, particularly hanging them under indicators when we’ll get to your drop box in a bit. But that can be a pretty some of my local lakes it’s those fish are you know especially because all our fish are you know hatchery raised like a lot of yours and stocked at different points in your life. 00;22;18;05 – 00;22;37;15 Phil And some of the particular species are very blob prone and really like them. So it’s really it’s good that it’s got I think a lot of people more interested in still water fishing because as such especially over here in North America find that everything still so river dominated and stuff just trying to, you know tell the world it’s still waters or a pretty cool place to go fishing but. 00;22;37;19 – 00;22;38;08 Howard Absolutely. 00;22;39;00 – 00;22;52;04 Phil Yeah so you get to the world championships. I’m trying not to make this all competition will get into some Stillwater stuff in a second, but that must be pretty rewarding to be selected to the team. And then the success you’ve had, like I said, winning the world championship. 00;22;52;11 – 00;23;16;29 Howard Yeah, it’s been huge. Image dominated me my life for a good number of years and I and I’ve put a lot of effort into, into it. I had a very near miss in 2012. I came fourth after lead and for basically the whole competition and I had one bad beat and I slipped into fourth place. But that spoiled me a little bit. 00;23;16;29 – 00;23;42;05 Howard The year after I was a little bit, I was quite upset by it, but it basically refocused my mind and I thought, look, you know, I’ve nearly been the, you know, and then 2017, I had another good run and at one bad session, intense again, I was run for a medal. And then in 2019, it just fell, right. 00;23;42;22 – 00;23;55;29 Howard And I got the right mix of eight and it was predominantly big fish. And there was three lakes, two rivers and a fish well on the lakes. And I got decent enough beats on the rivers and it got me over the line. 00;23;56;05 – 00;24;07;12 Phil Yeah. Do you find in those competitions, from what I’ve seen, it’s a lot of times the river beats can have the real impact because you can be in or is the lakes, is that fair to say, or am I? Yeah. 00;24;07;12 – 00;24;28;27 Howard I mean the argument is on the lakes provide it’s not a pegged bank lake and it’s a room in Bullock Lake lifestyle. Yeah yeah. Loch style you must have your own best flat, you know, at least as far as the amount of time you off control the bolt. Occasionally things happens that stop me from being the master of your own destiny. 00;24;29;13 – 00;24;43;22 Howard But most of the time you are. Whereas on the river, you know the best angler in the world. If he gets an unworkable beat a song, it doesn’t matter how good you are. If you haven’t got the fish, you can’t do anything. 00;24;44;01 – 00;25;06;09 Phil Well, you had that series on the floating mill YouTube channel about you’re the last world champion. And the one that stuck in my mind was, you know, was definitely home. Team advantage, I think played in a lot of those that there is some gamesmanship comes in but you having to climb down a knotted rope don’t want at my age I would have but I’m not going down there it’s like it. 00;25;06;20 – 00;25;08;04 Howard Won’t be going down for much longer. 00;25;09;07 – 00;25;23;10 Phil Yeah, but I thought, wow, that’s pretty. All right, let’s talk still. WATERS Yeah. And if anybody wants to, I’ll just make the six part video series you did with Falling Mill on your journey in the That was in France when it. 00;25;23;10 – 00;25;26;22 Howard Was it was the French one year before last. 00;25;26;28 – 00;25;30;14 Phil Yeah. Because they also made a hike up into the hills to go lake fishing. 00;25;30;28 – 00;25;33;17 Howard They did, but that was worth it. Yeah. Yeah. It was. 00;25;33;19 – 00;25;44;26 Phil Exceptional. Like that was a pretty grueling from some competitors I spoke to. I heard from that it was a little unexpected. So if you weren’t in great physical shape, it got. Yeah. 00;25;45;14 – 00;25;52;03 Howard Yeah, it was, it was tough. Yeah. But those lakes were worth the hike every day of the week, and it was exceptional. 00;25;52;19 – 00;25;56;09 Phil What made them that way? Just the quality of the fish. And it looked beautiful. 00;25;56;09 – 00;26;18;23 Howard Yeah, it was a combination. It was stunningly beautiful. The water is literally transparent. It’s you cannot, you know, it’s hardly the all wild fish. They were actually pretty free ryzen and, you know, pretty co-operative. And it was interesting fishing you know, a lot of fish in and Yeah, just really good. 00;26;19;01 – 00;26;37;14 Phil Yeah. It’ll look great. It’ll a great. So I’ll put a link to those videos on there. So anybody who wants to watch them they can do so it’s well worth watching just to see what you go through. You and the team and everything. I think it gives some real context to it. All right. Stillwater Strategies and Tactics, let’s talk a little bit about reading the water. 00;26;37;14 – 00;26;50;19 Phil Any tricks you’ve got or anything you do on how you when you get to a new body of water. Let’s say you’re fishing from the shore. I’ll start there and maybe if you think that’s logical and then go into sort of fishing lifestyle and choosing your drifts or things like that. 00;26;50;21 – 00;27;29;17 Howard Yeah, definitely. I mean, so for me, the first thing is, is it a wild venue or is it a supplemented venue with, with stockfish? So that gives you some indicators as to maybe where you’re going to find fish again, How often the lake has fish put into it has a bearing on where you might start. But generally if I was looking at the lake and I hadn’t fished it before and it was with planted fish, I would typically go and try and fish on a downwind bank, you know, opposite with there’s a chance the fish have been introduced because quite often they’ll run with the wind until they hit something to hold them. 00;27;30;08 – 00;27;52;15 Howard That’s for relatively fresh fish. If they’ve been in that body oil for a while and they’ve been at liberty and natural seed and it’s a little bit like on a river, a start to structure depth changes, weed beds, those kind of things. And I’ll always, you know, try and fish a cross section of water just to get a feel for the venue. 00;27;53;00 – 00;28;18;16 Howard You know, it can be difficult trying to identify where to fish and if you can find information about what does the body of water hold in terms of number of fish, you know, is a high population dense. The low density of the fish introduced regularly as you put in once a year. All of those little bits of information can help you form a plan, you know, And the number one thing is can you see them? 00;28;19;06 – 00;28;24;24 Howard Can you see fish rising, Can you swim? Cruise And you know, there’s a lot of information. 00;28;24;24 – 00;28;43;27 Phil Yeah, we we have something we call we jokingly call the two fish rule over here. If we see a fish move twice in an area, get going. Yeah, right. Just I always joke, even if you feel better knowing somebody in the neighborhood, right, rather than just appearing to beat their own water. What do you notice differently between stock fish and wild fish? 00;28;43;27 – 00;29;05;19 Howard Stock fish can often or will just follow the wind. They get put in a body of water and all ready to show up and the wind tends to push them. That’s the first thing. Wild fish, all fish have been in a bit longer, will typically go where there’s a food source. So that could be at the top of the wind, you know, where you’ve got anything windblown in the water. 00;29;06;14 – 00;29;19;19 Howard So there is a little bit of a difference there sometimes, but really fish or fish and even a stock fish when it’s been in a body of water for a long time will start to reverse very quickly. 00;29;19;28 – 00;29;36;05 Phil Yeah, it’s you call them grown on. We just are as if they survived the onslaught because usually they’re all milling around where they were dropped in in a big school and everybody with only commercial anglers are just beating them to death if they survive that, that initiation. 00;29;36;25 – 00;29;59;04 Howard Yeah, we have. I mean, our fisheries are quite varied. You know, we’ve got massive reservoirs, Rutland Water, which is stocked irregular, but it’s a huge body of water. It’s fly fishing only and there’s a lot of natural food in there. So those fish will grow on will natural eyes. You know, they can be at liberty for two or three years and getting bigger. 00;29;59;21 – 00;30;19;15 Howard And then we have small fisheries which get stopped regularly, get huge angling pressure and you know, the fish becomes very, very clever very quickly. You know, some of those lakes operate a kill policy, some, you know, there’s a turnover of stock, some of them are just catch and release. So we’ve got we’ve got quite varied lake fisheries. 00;30;19;19 – 00;30;36;25 Phil Yeah, it is funny you mention that because I think over in North America and fly fishing is such a catch and release culture that when they see some of them, you know, I used to get Trout fishermen magazine and total fly fishing and a lot of dead fish pictures. That was magazines back then and everybody was mortified by that. 00;30;36;25 – 00;30;54;24 Phil But I remember I think it was Roger Daltrey from The Who actually owns a fishery, was talking about why, you know, killing, like you said, mentioned the bag limit was to if you’re running a fishery for business like that and you’ve got a bunch of smart fish, nobody’s going to really pay to come get skunked, right? They want to have some success. 00;30;55;07 – 00;31;09;29 Howard There has to be a turnover in some of these venues, you know, rambles on, you know, indigenous trout waters or the red fish. And personally, I’d rather people go and kill an introduced rainbow in a lake than a wild fish. 00;31;10;03 – 00;31;30;29 Phil Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well that’s sort of same. And a lot of our stock fisheries usually have some form of you’re allowed to retain them anyway. Ironically, over some lakes they’ve gone catch and release have never really been as popular as I thought they were going to be. They got, you know, people fished the lakes for different reasons. Whether it was catch and release or not was quality of the fish, the experience, those kind of things. 00;31;30;29 – 00;31;38;29 Phil Are there any other like any environmental cues you follow things that guide you as far as weather systems, those kind of things. 00;31;39;12 – 00;31;44;10 Howard Not so much in terms of because I competition fish, it doesn’t really matter what. 00;31;44;19 – 00;31;45;25 Phil You get, you get what you get. 00;31;46;01 – 00;32;13;26 Howard I’ve got a goal. You know, if there’s a competition, it’s, you know I go But one thing I will say is when I do fish, a lot of our stock lakes, especially ones that get pressure on nearly always fish on the downwind bank. And that’s more for the fact that a lot of farmers don’t like fish and into the wind and you get the fish piled up on the downwind bank because they get left alone and they do get pushed though by the wind. 00;32;13;26 – 00;32;29;22 Howard So I’ll nearly always be shocked when they look up, especially when I’m fish in fish and dry flies. If the fish are rising, I nearly always fish wind or a worst case crosswinds. Never fish wind if I can help it, you know, just for the drug aspect. 00;32;30;00 – 00;32;49;13 Phil Yeah, we do. I’ve had some memorable days with, you know, even the wave action just churning food up and getting it into the drift or into the they’re in there having a great time. And like you said, everybody’s talking around points and getting behind islands and leaving the lake. If it’s too much because we we don’t do the bank fishing that you guys have there. 00;32;49;13 – 00;33;07;19 Phil We just lots of between trees and weeds and mud and private land issues from time you got an access to get on and off the lake but it’s just not practical. We spend a lot of time in boats, a lot of anchored fishing, but we’re taking more and more. You’re seeing more and more people finding the the benefits and the joys of lifestyle. 00;33;07;19 – 00;33;08;28 Phil I really enjoy that, too. 00;33;08;29 – 00;33;09;11 Howard That’s good. 00;33;09;18 – 00;33;14;02 Phil Is there any differences on your approach to fishing versus bank fishing versus lifestyle? 00;33;15;04 – 00;33;40;27 Howard Yeah, I mean, with with locks now we do a lot of dress fishing, obviously. Personally I try and especially on going to new water. I’ll use an example. In Tasmania, when I was fortunate to win the Worlds in 19, when I went on to the first session, Lake would never fish before. I had information from maps and stuff like that about what the depths of the lake were and some of the structure. 00;33;41;10 – 00;34;08;26 Howard So there was thought in channel down the middle of the lake. So it was heavily weighted. Then there was a bolt in channel that it was heavily weighted and I caught my first drift to go over the weed, the drop off the channel, the next drop off and then the weed again. And I thought in that one drift, I’m going to get a rate of where I should be repeating drifts, you know. 00;34;08;26 – 00;34;24;07 Howard So that’s all I did. I went to a set that was an exploratory drift, hit the first edge, not a fish, never came off an edge for the next three and a half hours. You know that. That’s what paid out for that that respect. 00;34;24;14 – 00;34;32;02 Phil Well, I make sense because you you’re exploring all those different water types and where you find the fish concentrated, just target those water types. That makes total sense. 00;34;32;11 – 00;34;46;02 Howard Yeah, that was it. And I just repeated drifts and phone drifts with an edge and a little bit later in the afternoon there was some fly came off and I went shallow. Yeah. And that got me my last two fish which actually got me over the line. 00;34;46;02 – 00;34;47;24 Phil Was at the championships at Blue Lake. 00;34;47;24 – 00;34;49;15 Howard Hell yes. 00;34;49;21 – 00;35;07;06 Phil Yes. I remember Devon provided a couple of pictures for my book of lifestyle that some of the guys had traditional clink style boats, which we don’t see too much of, if any, in North America. And he just told me that it was just almost lethal. Some of the winds they had to fish in, it was special. 00;35;07;18 – 00;35;32;12 Howard I remember on on Woods Lake, the drugs they had on the legs, there were big aluminum pumps. Yeah. And they these chain links on the drugs that were like that, this huge chain length. Yeah. Because the draw was enormous and it actually snapped in a bow. Wow. You know, it blew one of the links when we rolled down away of and came back open the drogues not well. 00;35;32;12 – 00;35;33;25 Phil Amongst the major for a good it. 00;35;33;25 – 00;35;34;25 Howard Was brutal. 00;35;34;25 – 00;35;56;24 Phil Yeah. Yeah. Because their drugs are different. I had Tom Jarman on a while back and their drugs, they weight the bottom of the drug and then have almost foam in the tops, which is different. You know, I’ve got a gray not got a gray stroke, so. But, you know, sometimes deploying it, if you’re not careful with how you deploy it, it can sort of deploy collapsed and it. 00;35;56;24 – 00;35;57;23 Howard Just yeah. 00;35;57;24 – 00;36;04;25 Phil Open. And I’ve often thought about adding a little weight to the bottom lip of it to sort of encourage it, but not drag it way down. 00;36;04;26 – 00;36;19;27 Howard Yeah, it’s a good idea. The only reason I was on weighted is because in our competitions it’s disallowed. Yeah, we can’t wait. They’ve got to be in on the way. A drug. Then you’re not even allowed all the size metal. It’s just one of those daft rules that we’ve got. 00;36;20;26 – 00;36;36;28 Phil There’s a few in there. Like I said, back to competing. I just eventually shrug my shoulders and accept it. It’s like offside in football. Soccer’s like it is what it is. It’s just, you know, it’s the rule. All right. You can debate it all day long. What it should be or what they should borrow from another sport to make it better. 00;36;36;28 – 00;36;51;07 Phil And it just goes on and on. Okay, so what have your observations about troll behavior? Anything Like you said, you’ve wild fish and how you found the move and throughout the season, throughout the day, is there anything there you could life have taught you? 00;36;51;12 – 00;37;15;02 Howard Well, actually, one thing that’s probably interesting that some maybe some people don’t think about or understand is that how I found out about it was I was in a bull. It was really weird. The guy was in the boat with was an optician, but he had a background in something else and something to do with lights and how it interacts with water and everything. 00;37;15;16 – 00;37;40;27 Howard And we were drifting and the light was really weighted and I could see rising fish, but I could also see the fish truck in quite shallow in the water. I could see them coming after that reason, I could still see them push it and move and just because of the angle of the light. And I couldn’t believe how fast they were moving between rising and rising again. 00;37;41;29 – 00;38;05;03 Howard Whereas because the rise was quite a slow movement, it was quite a slow had until, you know, no rush to it. But the second that fish got back onto the water, it mortared and then it rolls again really slowly. And up until that point I’d been mistakenly thinking, well, that’s a different fish, you know, to see it rise in front of the boat. 00;38;05;19 – 00;38;12;19 Howard And then I’d see another one out the corner. Me, I, you know, that one’s got past. I’ve missed it. And it’s actually the same fish. Yeah, it’s just more trying so. 00;38;12;19 – 00;38;13;07 Phil Quickly. 00;38;13;22 – 00;38;42;09 Howard Between Rise and No, they don’t always do that. Well that made me saying the not maybe always doing what you think they’re doing. You know sometimes that the shift in a lot quicker than you think. And a good friend of mine, John Hall, said I remember fishing with him dry four years ago in a bull on cue and him giving them loads of lead, right going way went from them and then all of a sudden, you know, a little head and tail rise and it’s the same thing, probably the same fish. 00;38;42;21 – 00;38;42;28 Howard Yeah. 00;38;43;07 – 00;39;13;07 Phil We found that some of the lakes I used to fish in the province of Manitoba. Lots of similar what you have with your roach fishing in the fall there. We have lots of small minnows that don’t compete with the trout. As for they are in the food source and we would watch browns particularly. They would like to get in the shallows and bowl these fish up and then just go at them and we would see these vicious swirls and we drive ourselves crazy chasing these rises until one day I in clear situation, I just sat back and watched and watched this fish move. 00;39;13;07 – 00;39;30;19 Phil And it was a similar view. It was the same fish. So we learned just a they would cruise a beat and just put yourself somewhere where you can have a chance at that fish without scaring it on the beat. And they would come to you almost, right? Yeah. Yes. Chasing them was exhausting. Right. Because we all we assume every fish rise is another fish. 00;39;30;19 – 00;39;45;16 Phil And and I’ve seen a lot of times to where it’s if you watch those are the same fish right. Was a lot of people that come with me and guess they’re like oh my God look at all the fish This is I bet it’s two fish rising, you know, three times each looks like six fish. 00;39;45;16 – 00;40;11;01 Howard So yeah, they can get active sometimes. One thing that again, I think some people don’t twig is when you see a rising fish, you can tell quite a bit about what depth that fish is coming from by watching the rise fall. You know, if you see a head tail and it’s a, you know, a long, shallow angled rise that fish is cruising relatively high. 00;40;11;17 – 00;40;29;29 Howard You can see them sometimes when the straight open, straight down. So you can actually get a read off where the coming from and that can help you with how much lead to give them. You know, because if they’re cruising high the windows are shorter. If the going back down you might need to give them a little bit more lead. 00;40;30;04 – 00;40;31;11 Phil That’s a great tip. Yeah. 00;40;31;23 – 00;40;54;22 Howard Makes sense. And that plays a little bit as well into like I’ll use an example of a local lake here. There’s a lake called up near my house. It’s pretty shallow. It’s got some resident browns in it and a lot of stock rambles. If you see a fish rise in a like a normal track in head and tail rise, it’s nearly always a ramble. 00;40;55;17 – 00;41;31;04 Howard So you cover it, you know, at a normal distance and quite often you’ll get it. If you see a fish that comes very much vertical up and down, they’re often the resident browns and the only way to catch those is to actually hit them right in the middle of the rise and leave it. The reason is the Browns are sitting on the bottom in the weeds and all that stuff, and they basically shoot in the end and shooting straight back down and they only see a fly when they get back down there and set again. 00;41;31;26 – 00;41;41;12 Howard And if you land it straight where they’ve been, they’ll come straight up and eat it. If you lead, then they never see it because of the knot track and they’re just straight up and down from the structure. 00;41;41;27 – 00;41;51;11 Phil Okay, well, that’s interesting. That’s a great tip in noticing any differences. You’re well-traveled between North America and the UK as far as how the water fish behave. 00;41;51;29 – 00;42;01;21 Howard Yeah, I’ve been lucky. The show fished in Montana quite a bit on the lakes and it was mind blowing. In all honesty, it was so good. You know the fish. It was. 00;42;01;21 – 00;42;03;13 Phil Have good, have good taste. 00;42;03;13 – 00;42;25;21 Howard It’s just ridiculous, you know? It’s just ridiculously good. I mean, back home, if there was a place you could rent boats from and like a fishing operation, those lakes and the ones I fished would be fully booked all the time, you know, because it’s so good, you know, and it’s so owned or exploited. It’s just incredible. 00;42;25;26 – 00;42;27;04 Phil What other lakes did you fish there? 00;42;27;24 – 00;42;32;25 Howard Um, fished had been a little bit fished quick. Yeah, fished and. 00;42;33;16 – 00;42;34;02 Phil I like that. 00;42;34;16 – 00;42;37;03 Howard Yeah. And it’s a terrible don’t go there. 00;42;37;04 – 00;42;41;13 Phil Yeah. Whatever you do, whatever, whatever’s listening, do not go to. 00;42;42;05 – 00;42;50;29 Howard Yeah. No, don’t go there. And then I also fished on Forget it is all under giants that are on. 00;42;51;03 – 00;42;55;16 Phil Oh yeah. Up towards the Missouri. 00;42;55;28 – 00;42;58;25 Howard Yeah, yeah. Well that’s called the reservoir. I think it is, yes. 00;42;58;25 – 00;43;01;09 Phil Yeah. Yeah. You go up in those canyon and up. 00;43;01;09 – 00;43;09;04 Howard Yeah. That’s it. Yeah. Yeah. I got like 3 hours out there in the morning and got like three £6 fish. 00;43;09;15 – 00;43;10;27 Phil Yeah. Did you fish enemies at all. 00;43;12;10 – 00;43;13;09 Howard No, I don’t think a dead. 00;43;13;19 – 00;43;34;29 Phil Fish very well as full fish were in two feet. Three feet of water. Well you know was mid tips with real slow tips or even hover lines and that was all you could, you know, because they were right in the weeds. And we found them just we were going leaving the landing area, you know, the dock and going to one of the favorite spots and you just scattering fish. 00;43;34;29 – 00;43;56;09 Phil It’s like slow, though, like we need to fish here. It turned out to be a good idea. So. All right. Let’s talk a little bit about gear and equipment, cause everybody loves talking about that and especially in Lake. So why don’t you walk me through or Rod choices sort of line options your favorite lines leader construction, the law is yours. 00;43;56;22 – 00;44;24;07 Howard Yeah. So I’ll I’ll preface this by saying I fully understand I’m in a very, very fortunate position. I work for a tackle manufacturer, design gear for a living, have pretty much got every single model, a fly rod that exists. And I’ll be honest, I use that to my advantage. So if I’m buying fishing, I nearly always use nine and a half foot rods, mainly because I like sufficient. 00;44;24;09 – 00;45;02;17 Howard The wind and that slightly shorter rod, even though So six inches makes it much easier to fish into a headwind than a ten filter. So for bank work going into the winter, typically use a shelter rod soon as on bolt fish in a number of fish. And I use a ten footer so that I can get that little better fly separation and still net of fish on the point and also to hang the flies further away from the bolt in terms of line size, again, I’ll be honest, fish six, seven and eight dependent on what’s happening on the rod. 00;45;02;17 – 00;45;35;01 Howard I enjoy fishing the most is a ten foot four six rather than go in with the seven, which would be a standard, you know, ten, seven standard over here. So everybody uses I like the ten six just because it’s more pleasant to use. It’s a bit lighter. It’s not as hard on the edge in anymore. I’ll use the eight when it’s an island or I just need real distance, you know, So when the temperatures get high in the summer, fish go really deep. 00;45;35;20 – 00;45;52;10 Howard Go to fish with things like the boobie basher, the flora die eight. That’s what I’m throwing a ten for light weight, you know, just to cope with the line so I can get it a long way and get the depth. You know, normally I’m on six or seven weights, I’m on my. 00;45;53;11 – 00;46;04;13 Phil Mostly fives and sixes here, four. So because we do a lot of anchored fishing too, I think that I found with lifestyle when I first did it with a five weight, it just about exhausted me because it’s just a lot more adjusting. 00;46;04;26 – 00;46;05;10 Howard Like, yeah. 00;46;05;12 – 00;46;29;13 Phil I think I lasted one session and said, Bugger this, yeah, grab the six. I was not. That was nothing left me by the end so you know nobody I think thinks to use eight weights, you know thinking it’s too much rod for the fish and all that stuff and I think that’s a valuable tip. You just presented there for casting those heavy sinking lines and getting the distance and covering the covering those, those depths and pulling the flies. 00;46;29;24 – 00;46;36;21 Phil Yeah, let’s talk leaders. Everybody likes leader discussions. Could be here for days. 00;46;36;28 – 00;46;57;24 Howard Yeah. So I go to routes. Yeah, right. So reach with leaders when I’m dry. Fly fishing. If it’s one or two flies, I have some degree of taper in the back end just to maintain the control so that I can control the turnover, control the slack, you know, and cover the fish accurately. 00;46;58;01 – 00;47;00;09 Phil Get that delicate presentation. Yeah, Yeah. 00;47;00;10 – 00;47;27;06 Howard And just really make sure that I’m getting good, positive turnover when I want it to go crosswind and stuff like that. That’s from a drift involved when I’m doing pretty much anything else at general official level. So I put a short section in the tip of the line from the end of the fly on down to a tip it range of, you know, like two, two and a half, three feet maximum. 00;47;28;01 – 00;47;32;03 Howard And then I build middle level cast off the end of the level leader off the envelope. 00;47;33;25 – 00;48;01;19 Speaker 3 Do you think you need a Bush plane to fish Alaska’s legendary waters? Think again. 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Don’t miss out. 00;48;34;21 – 00;48;41;24 Phil So how thick is your what pound breaking strain or whatever you want. Everybody’s different with breaking strain or so for that short but some. 00;48;41;24 – 00;49;08;17 Howard Yeah it’s just like a section of 12 or £15 and it’s like it’s just something to give me a little bit of turnover but I don’t want to tip it leader particularly of any great length because I’m a strong believer in I want the fly line and the sync profile of the fly to affect the way the flies are presented. 00;49;09;06 – 00;49;17;29 Howard So as soon as I start putting a tepidly on, I’m taking a little bit away from that interaction between the flies and the fly line. 00;49;18;15 – 00;49;21;23 Phil You know, they start acting more independently of each other than as a team. 00;49;22;00 – 00;49;47;10 Howard Yeah, And I just think that, you know, I prefer to use the line to control the flies. And I don’t want that tepid section in there interfering with it when it’s efficient. And quite often I learned this from fishing in Orkney with really, really good local drift anglers him are commonly the he pulls these flies quite often very, very close to the end of his line. 00;49;48;04 – 00;50;13;08 Howard So he’s getting more effects off the line and having a big long lead. So a lot of people over here in the UK default to having ten feet from the end of the fly line to the first fly. And they do that for two reasons. One of them is they’re convinced that the fly alone is going to spook the fish from the fly, which is not always the case. 00;50;14;03 – 00;50;37;02 Howard And secondly, it makes it easy to change fly lines because you pull up ten feet through, you change the line, the knot at the bottom, and then it’s your rod still threaded and you can do it very easily. But personally, I would rather, you know, put the fly in the right place so that it’s fishing in the right area and the lines affect it in the right way. 00;50;37;21 – 00;50;58;13 Howard And just to take it back to bang fishing for a second somewhere, that’s really important to me is when I was talking about fishing at when those fish can often be around the edge of the lake on a on a ledge if you fish as the standard cast, which might be ten foot to your first fly, you stand on the bank. 00;50;59;00 – 00;51;21;27 Howard You can stop when you retrieve your flow. Ice fishermen are all the same. They lift the line out the walls when they’ve still got four or five or six feet to make the next cast easy. If you have ten feet to your first fly, you fly 16 feet from the edge of the lake, and that is often outside of marginal shelf. 00;51;22;15 – 00;51;48;01 Howard So your flies never come to the shelf. So if I’m fishing on a bank with a very close edge, I’ve occasionally on occasion got the fly pulled into within 1218 inches of the end of the fly line so that the drop of fish is right into the edge of the shelf. The line isn’t spooked most of the time, but it gets the fly with it, you know. 00;51;48;25 – 00;51;52;15 Howard So I’ll, I’ll sometimes fish before it’s very close to the end of the fly line. 00;51;52;23 – 00;51;58;06 Phil So. Okay. So yeah, they were doing ten feet and your to first fly you’re again it’s short. 00;51;58;11 – 00;52;06;16 Howard I mean it can be maybe not down as far as a foot, but it’s like 1824 inches from the end of the fly line. 00;52;06;16 – 00;52;08;09 Phil Sometimes we’ll get close. 00;52;08;19 – 00;52;14;06 Howard There and I’ll do that. The other thing I do a lot of without giving everything away. 00;52;14;12 – 00;52;14;29 Phil Nice think. 00;52;15;27 – 00;52;43;08 Howard I play around a lot with the full rate of the fly. So I have unweighted flies, flies weighted with tungsten flies which are positive buoyancy like a fob or a formed of two and a half flies which are neutral in buoyancy, which have enough foam just to arrest the sink. Right. And aloft on a particular on a small still what is which got a lot of pressure. 00;52;43;26 – 00;53;18;27 Howard If I’m fishing upwind, then there’s a marginal shelf. This is one of my favorite tactics. I’ll fish a short. So the first fly, so let’s say like 2 to 3 feet at first fly. I’ll have a tungsten bead on it beyond the dependent on the lake and the rules. Amount of a buoyant fly on the point fish start off a float in or should it line through, went fish it right into the edge and I’ll let that tungsten drop down that marginal shelf in front of me. 00;53;19;25 – 00;53;37;28 Howard But it isn’t plummeting because it’s being held by the float in line and the FOB on the point. And I get like a nice vertical presentation dropping down in the edge and I can bump it and get it to go straight up and it will drop again. And I catch so many fish do. 00;53;37;28 – 00;53;39;03 Phil And that’s interesting. 00;53;39;03 – 00;53;39;13 Howard You know. 00;53;40;04 – 00;53;52;07 Phil You’ve also on the the different ways you tie your flies, you’ve got a series of flies with flying male with the I remember seeing one of your views with a cormorant that the bead is towards the back, so it falls. 00;53;52;16 – 00;54;13;28 Howard Yeah, I did that to get the amass the bow and I get a little bit more action off the wing doing that to to my eye loops that are in the wall, you know, because if you have the bead at the front then the lines go into the eye, the weight is pinned, you know, and it’s sort of wears on the back end and it just tends to trap door a little bit better. 00;54;14;11 – 00;54;17;20 Phil That’s interesting because so many people just beat always goes on the front. 00;54;18;05 – 00;54;18;16 Howard Yes. 00;54;18;16 – 00;54;34;04 Phil And first thing you have to do by having a hooked or barbed hook, stick it on there. So again, just to summarize, so you’re dry fly. What’s when you mentioned your tapered leader set up that you start with is there any sort of set links you use like seven and a half a nine at 12 or is. 00;54;34;24 – 00;54;52;12 Howard No. So what I tend to do is I tend to cut a section out of a type of leader just because I’m a bit lazy in a build all my own river leaders for the still more efficient. I just I just chop a bit of out of a turbo. It probably ends up at about six or seven feet maybe. 00;54;52;29 – 00;54;55;16 Phil And you’re chopping it from the back and removing the butt section. 00;54;55;20 – 00;54;57;20 Howard I just take a bit off the from a bit off the back. 00;54;57;26 – 00;54;58;06 Phil Okay. 00;54;58;18 – 00;55;25;26 Howard And I’ll be honest, I just eyeball it. Yeah. I put a tip it ring on the front and then it depends really if I’m using a two or three or a single flying dry fly rig on the conditions. Well you know, quite often offish to flies in the space and again a very a little bit I’m not is an angler I’m really not one for saying this is the formula. 00;55;26;08 – 00;55;47;26 Howard I use this all the time because it depends on the size of fly I’m throwing, how well resistance it is, and a host of other factors. So I often eyeball it for the conditions. And you know, if I’m covering fish and I’m not getting it to turn over fast enough, then the wind’s carrying it off target. I’ll chop it back, you know. 00;55;48;05 – 00;55;52;11 Phil And what about subsurface links and fly spacing? Is there anything. It depends. 00;55;52;11 – 00;55;53;09 Howard On conditions. 00;55;53;13 – 00;55;58;21 Phil Yeah, conditions like clear water versus. Yeah, big murky water, those kind of things. 00;55;59;00 – 00;56;14;26 Howard So in Tasmania, all the chocolate water flies are pulled in tight, you know, had short, short leaders and with three flies relatively close to go clear water, I’ll spread them out. 00;56;15;17 – 00;56;18;15 Phil You know. What about your dropper links, anything there you like and you. 00;56;20;05 – 00;56;32;27 Howard Don’t like them too short and I don’t like them overly long, so it’s probably the probably what for me keeps six, seven, eight inches maximum. Okay. You know we six seven owners. 00;56;32;27 – 00;56;39;29 Phil In a tying so your dropper onto the leader or are you connecting leaders and leaving tags. 00;56;40;10 – 00;56;58;03 Howard Yeah normally I just use a figure eight knot which is a very very high not strength. No and I just add on I don’t add the dropper to the man length. I just build it in three bits, you know. So but again, it’s you could do it either way. 00;56;58;26 – 00;57;24;20 Phil All right, let’s just talk about your drop back ball. And I think I can’t remember if I mentioned it already, but how. No, we’re talking a little bit before, but in North America, the bung or strike indicator is sort of an accepted piece of equipment both on rivers and lakes. There is some people that don’t like them, but over where you are that must have been you must have looked like the Antichrist. 00;57;24;20 – 00;57;25;25 Phil It just so. 00;57;25;26 – 00;57;53;11 Howard Yeah, it’s I mean, I just it makes me laugh. It really does, like, so divisive. It’s just ridiculous. I mean, for me, the the biggest joke of it all is and there’s a couple of fisheries, I’ll not name them, but there are a couple of fisheries. Nice venues were the drop backbone this bund. But all of their indicators of different sizes are allowed because drop by bung is flow. 00;57;53;11 – 00;58;01;23 Howard Fish in and around indicator is not. It’s traditional fly fishing. Yeah. So fly. 00;58;03;04 – 00;58;09;05 Phil We have similar arguments, although most people just look at a strike indicator and that’s bait fishing period, right. 00;58;09;13 – 00;58;31;29 Howard Yeah it’s I have no issue either with a break. Nobody’s rules. Fly fishing to me is what you want to make of it. And if you look to indicate a fish, more power to you. If all you want to do is fish dry fly on a split can rod, that does not bother me in the slightest. And I have friends worldwide either. 00;58;31;29 – 00;58;50;13 Howard End of the scale. I have guys the only fish can. And then so wines and single cut skill, dry flies and I have friends who hang multicolored textiles on the advanced suspension devices and that’s all they do. 00;58;50;21 – 00;58;55;07 Phil Advanced suspension devices. It doesn’t bother me that might stick. 00;58;55;21 – 00;59;24;02 Howard You know, it’s one of those things, but it is divisive. The reason why I personally I don’t like to rule out the indicator as a method and as an approach. It’s for a number of reasons. Number one, it’s an easy gateway into fly fishing. It allows somebody is not necessarily got brilliant technique while casting to get a fly out the fish and catch fish, you know. 00;59;24;02 – 00;59;50;23 Howard So that’s one such thing. Second thing, I think quite often people come in from conventional fishing with the fishing with floats. And of course fish can relate to watching an indicator rather than going directly to real fly fishing, if you want to call it that. So I think it’s got a lot of appeal and it’s a very, very good method and it’s not always easy. 00;59;50;29 – 01;00;07;00 Phil Yeah, it’s for me, it’s most complex system I probably use as of course people think, Oh, you just stick the float on it and chuck it out there and you know, you might as well stick the rod in, in a bank stick or something and just start to lay it in the boat and wait for something to happen. 01;00;07;00 – 01;00;11;23 Phil And the leaders are complex. The whole method is to be good at, right? 01;00;11;27 – 01;00;52;08 Howard It’s like any sense, like any method. You know, the guys are very good at something. There’s a lot of nuance to it. And I’ll be honest, when I did the the drop backbone, whatever you want to call it, then, are a developed it gave me a lot of interest again, an indicator fish. And it made it interesting because I started to see a lot of stuff What you missed with a normal indicator, you know you can tell even to the degree when a fish has swung past the fly, not eat, that, you know, because in calm conditions nothing will be set in and you’ll just see it kick a little circle. 01;00;52;23 – 01;01;08;19 Howard And that’s a fish, as I found out. Drive fish. And that’s just don’t drive by and not fly or move an old man. It transmits to that thing. And the number of times when I’ve had the and then I’ve bumped it a couple of times and it shot on the. 01;01;09;00 – 01;01;09;15 Phil Fish, came. 01;01;09;15 – 01;01;14;11 Howard Back, you know, came back and it’s, you know, so for me, it’s an involving method. 01;01;14;21 – 01;01;35;12 Phil For those who aren’t familiar with. I think most people in North America look at a strike indicator as some kind of a round teardrop float. Yours is quite different. It’s what, inch and a half, two inches long, very thin, almost like stick. Like, is that fair to say? Yeah. Basically of course fishing it’s a wide GLA. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 01;01;35;13 – 01;01;37;13 Phil Which is a deadly method. Yeah. 01;01;38;11 – 01;02;00;05 Howard You know it’s advantages for me it’s easier to cast because it lies flat when you cast it. So it cuts the second rate. When you strike, it pulls flat so you don’t get that rip through the wall that you do with a teardrop or a round indicator. So you don’t have to strike as hard when you fish in that long range. 01;02;00;11 – 01;02;20;26 Howard You just strike like you strike in a dry fly and it pulls straight through and you get good hook set. And then when it’s fish in, it tells you so many things. It tells you if the fly is hanging free, it tells you if efficiency in the fly while it’s sinking because it never sets. And then you just set the hook. 01;02;21;25 – 01;02;48;20 Howard It tells you a fish is given you a drive by an it. Also, the key thing for me is a normal indicator only indicates when a fishing to the flying swims off was a drop back bone indicates when a fish comes up to the fly and inhales it and doesn’t move. So if it just very gently takes that fly in, the white comes off and it falls over, then you strike. 01;02;48;20 – 01;02;51;14 Howard And that’s where the drop back came from. 01;02;51;14 – 01;03;08;28 Phil And I’ve seen that. That’s because other methods we never go. The only way we can see if you got a real eye for a traditional indicator, it would actually almost appear to rise a little bit on the water. But those takes are so hard. So that’s so hard. And when you got chop and everything but yours just falls down. 01;03;09;01 – 01;03;09;29 Howard Like that just does it. 01;03;10;04 – 01;03;24;16 Phil That’s odd, right? Yeah. Now yours, you’ve got kind of a dart system. Correct. For with your flies that you have a falling mill that. So because you’ve got to have enough weight under there to to tip vertical. 01;03;24;26 – 01;03;47;15 Howard That’s the tricky bit. I spend a lot of time refining that so it was funny because when when they were launched there was a local guy somewhere near me over here in the north East who instantly copied them all and started selling them, but he’d never use them and they were huge and they wouldn’t, they wouldn’t cork You needed a break to get them to stand on. 01;03;47;15 – 01;04;21;26 Howard And so I spent a lot of time working out the optimum weights for the length, the lengths important versus the weight, because what you want is a really positive reaction from when a fishy to the high takes the weight off. You need to be enough buoyancy and length for it to visibly show something in the fly. So I did the weight system on the flies and the markings on the bond on the indicator to help people get the optimum balance. 01;04;22;11 – 01;04;29;08 Howard You know, you can make your own flies, but it’s better if you make them the same weight as the Fuller Mill ones, you know? 01;04;29;21 – 01;04;48;12 Phil Yeah, because that’s use a lot of I know I personally, when I’m not using indicators, I use a lot of brass. We do a lot of chrome and fishing over here and a lot of brass because we fish in multiple ways, not just under indicators. And it’s just been, it’s just been lazy having one fly that covers as many different presentation faces as I can. 01;04;48;25 – 01;04;54;13 Phil So it was a little difficult for me at first to get those brass to brass beads to tip that thing vertical. 01;04;54;13 – 01;04;55;11 Howard Yeah, you do get. 01;04;55;12 – 01;05;02;23 Phil A little assistance sometimes in the form of shots or something else or a swivel or something else in there. So but man, it works. 01;05;03;20 – 01;05;34;22 Howard Yeah, it’s, it’s the Lethal method. Yeah. You know, it’s starting to catch on now as people are starting to understand it, because it is a little bit more involved than a normal indicator. But when you’ve when you’ve had one of those days where the fish refuse use to swim off with the fly and you realize just how many times fish have got, you’ll fly in the mouth and that indicates there’s nothing it will it depresses you the first time you see it. 01;05;34;22 – 01;05;55;16 Phil Well, I’ve seen underwater footage and also had those you know, when you’re sitting fishing with somebody and having a really good day with the indicator and jokingly say, I wonder how many fish we’re having a great day, but I wonder how many fish eat the fly. We never even knew it. Right. Because you, you know, especially we find it with blobs, they’ll mouth them and play with them a little bit. 01;05;55;16 – 01;06;12;05 Phil Oh, you’ve got sort of seen video footage where somehow they got it underwater and you can see the fish playing and mouthing. And there’s he said there was nothing on the indicator indicator. Eventually the fish committed more positively to it and then you got the traditional pull down and. 01;06;12;12 – 01;06;12;25 Howard Yeah. 01;06;12;25 – 01;06;16;01 Phil You know, game on kind of thing. But I mean the fish you would have missed. 01;06;16;14 – 01;06;19;08 Howard Those drop box. You see every one of those. 01;06;19;19 – 01;06;38;25 Phil With blobs because we fish them a lot. Tungsten beads, you know, we, I tend to fish them with tungsten beads because the materials are so the synthetics are buoyant. And if we’re not careful in a catch and release world, they go down the pipe fairly far. So, you know, I’m trying to fish them on as heavy a set up as I can to compensate for those buoyant materials. 01;06;39;05 – 01;06;50;23 Phil Have you found anything to help with the drop back bone with that? So you get those flies, that indicator cock and set properly because those flies are so natural buoyancy in there you’re trying to overturn. 01;06;50;29 – 01;07;31;18 Howard Yeah. I mean I’ve got weighted blobs in the full mill range. Which way to the tungsten bead and those are still sized to set that indicator perfectly. And on the, on the deep looking thing is quite interesting because one of the bricks that got thrown at me many times when I launched the drop back through a nail was, you know, all these things is going to deep hook all these fish and it’s such a bad thing that fly indicate in the five years of fish that has never hope to fish anywhere except in the outside of the mouth. 01;07;32;25 – 01;07;44;24 Howard They don’t have time to swallow it. Cause you see everything. Yeah, exactly. It’s the exact opposite that the bricks that get thrown. Yeah. You know, it’s like it’s just bricks from people who’ve never tried that. 01;07;45;09 – 01;07;55;14 Phil In the package. I’ve seen those two sizes that come. A small one, a shorter one and a longer one. Yeah. And then you’ve also got a stealth package too. That’s more of an olive coloration. 01;07;55;18 – 01;08;11;15 Howard Yeah. There’s just a, there’s a black one basically, and a multi-colored one and two sizes, one for a single fly or two lighter flies. And then the big which works with either two of the bigger flies. All three of the smaller ones. 01;08;11;22 – 01;08;22;05 Phil Okay. All right. Well, people will I’ll have links to that because people need to add that to their to their kit bag because it’s not a bad idea, Howard. 01;08;22;13 – 01;08;49;26 Howard It’s good form. And, you know, full disclosure, I’ll tell you where I got it from. I was in Tasmania. Good friend of mine said, Have you ever seen one of these? It was a fly with the form cylinder out the back and a synthetic skirt. He said we use them for finding holes in the weed so we throw it out there and the way of the fly will stand it on end and we know then we’re fishing in a hole and we’re not laying on weight. 01;08;50;14 – 01;09;10;29 Howard And I just saw the application of it and I thought, I can do more with the and in the UK a lot of the indicates a efficient that we do doesn’t have a hook in the indicator. So I took the hook away and thought well it’s a wide Gleno and then I thought well you know at the end of the day flow fish fishing anyway, so let’s just. 01;09;11;09 – 01;09;12;08 Phil Plug our nose and jump. 01;09;12;16 – 01;09;16;11 Howard I’ll just do it and I’ll take the grease off. 01;09;16;11 – 01;09;36;26 Phil Well, I think over in North America, here with our indicator culture, we thank you for it. So if you’re feeling down, give me a call. I’ll keep up again. Okay. Um, anything else you want to talk about? We’ve been going of this for, You know, I could. I could take. I could waste your entire evening here because we’re 7 hours apart. 01;09;37;08 – 01;09;48;03 Phil Is there anything else you’d like to talk about or still want to related there or anything else you think we’ve missed that you’re willing to part with? I respect the giving away all the tricks because you’re still competing. 01;09;48;12 – 01;10;17;28 Howard No, I mean, I don’t. I don’t have a lot of tricks, really. I mean, I tend to base a lot of my fishing, a relatively common sense approach, I think, and maximize and what I think’s going to work. I mean, some of the things I would say I see a lot of people on the lake fish. So to go into like this all automatic haze of just doing the same thing over and over again when small or relatively small change can have a big impact on efficient. 01;10;18;13 – 01;10;45;28 Howard And again I’ll I’ll reference Tasmania because it was things though which made some big so one of them was because we were fishing in turbid water and there was a lot of shore and everything was getting chewed up. I fished on the lakes when I pulled up, predominantly pulled in Tasmania, I used three tungsten baited Louis, but I had much bigger beads on them than I would normally. 01;10;46;16 – 01;11;08;15 Howard And I did that because we found that when you got an impact, the fly hit the wall. If it hit the water near a structure where there was a fish, it alerted the fish to it and you would often get them first pole. So I fished heavy flies in Tasmania again because of the turbidity. I pulled the flies in closer. 01;11;09;08 – 01;11;32;11 Howard So the my thinking was when I’m in. If one fly goes past and gets a fish’s attention, but it doesn’t take it for whatever reason, it’s very quickly going to get another fly by and then another one going past it. That was my basic reasoning. And the other thing that made a big difference was how far your cast. 01;11;32;11 – 01;12;11;14 Howard So because the fish were coming either immediately after impact or on the hunk and the fish on the hand, I don’t believe were following the fly. I think they were coming out of structure when you hold the flies near it. So you had this chance where the fly landed. They heard it or saw it you pulled and they took the middle of the retrieve thing West Sydney and then the hang when then flies a drop in down alongside structure that you couldn’t see because it was it was colored, one would see it and you would get that one. 01;12;12;06 – 01;12;35;04 Howard So all I did was every session I pulled out 15 yards a law and turn the drag up on the rail to prevent me from and from casting any further. And I just fun casted wombat cast I impact strip strip strip hang wombat cast out and I just I just played the numbers game you know for for I was ever. 01;12;35;25 – 01;12;45;12 Phil Interesting because you know because lots of people like to vomit as far as they can see it and and just keep doing that over and over and over again. I’m ever really link where they’re getting the takes on what’s going on. 01;12;45;23 – 01;13;01;13 Howard You know, if you throw 30 yards versus 15 I’m getting double the impact potential reaction takes and I’m getting double two hunks in a four hour. You know and that that should translate into twice as many chances you know. 01;13;02;03 – 01;13;09;10 Phil So on that note, have you got any top tips for how anglers can improve their top three top one. 01;13;09;10 – 01;13;29;11 Howard Probably the first one and the same with any fishing is just to be an observant angler. You know, a lot of the clues, you know, when you turn up at a venue, if you just take the time to have a little bit of think about it and you know, whether that’s what’s the water temperature, then other fish are active, not active. 01;13;29;21 – 01;13;56;16 Howard Is there a food source? You know, is the wind blown fly, you know, just at the time to give it a little bit of thought, You know don’t be afraid of asking somebody either. You know, there’s somebody else first. You know, what’s going on? Is there a you know, they’ll either tell you they won’t. It always surprises me the number of people that just won’t ask, you know, if they came over to me and said, hey, what you do in or provide it, it’s not a competition. 01;13;56;16 – 01;13;59;16 Howard I’ll gladly tell. Yeah. Oh yeah. 01;14;00;04 – 01;14;22;17 Phil And I think you find most people, there’s always those curmudgeons out there when you’re just fishing for yourself. But most people are pretty chatty out there. We all want to know and what’s work because you think you’re doing good and somebody else. I got, you know, twice as much like, okay, what do you what now? I’m going to watch you a little bit and see what you’re doing and ask you what about if, you know, we’re getting more and more people in thinking about competitive fly fishing here in North America. 01;14;22;26 – 01;14;27;04 Phil Any three tips you can recommend for them or any top tips? 01;14;27;04 – 01;15;03;25 Howard Well, the first thing is give it a go because you’re going to learn faster. You’ll come on as an angle away quicker, in my opinion. The second thing is don’t run before you can walk. Concentrate on the basics. Learn some of the more basic methods. Well, you know, like learning how to pull for argument’s sake and even little things like if you can, you know, through all the distance you want to throw with one or two back casts rather than three or four, you’re going to catch a lot more fish over the course of the day. 01;15;04;15 – 01;15;33;03 Howard So most of the basics before you start getting to, you know, too involved in everything else. And really outside of that, you know, you need to make sure you’ve got all of the lines out is a big thing. Lines are very relevant and still efficient and it is a minefield. There are a lot of them. So don’t get too wound up like we have guys here who will have full versions of Fast Intermediate just from different manufacturers. 01;15;33;16 – 01;15;49;01 Howard You don’t need to go to that level. Just have a slow intermediate, a fast intermediate, the di three di five di seven and a tip line on a floater. You know, it’s a lot more lines and you need when your is efficient. 01;15;49;11 – 01;16;12;29 Phil Yeah, that’s one of the things I think when people transit, you know here in North America it tends to be people learn to fish rivers first and then migrate over the lakes. And that’s one of the things that just blows their mind. And and like you, I’ve been fortunate enough, I’ve got lots of toys to play with. But, you know, it’s important to always say if you’re going to buy that line, understand it, what it does, what it can’t do, what you know, it’s a tool. 01;16;12;29 – 01;16;27;23 Phil Learn how to use, how to use it. You know, you bang a nail in with the end of a screwdriver if you want, but a hammer is a better toy. Yeah. Or conversely, you can bang a screw in with a hammer, but, you know, learn how to use things properly. So the right tool for the right job. And you mentioned the trees there. 01;16;27;23 – 01;16;46;17 Phil I know it drags on even longer, but you did was it was fulling mill. You did a really excellent video on or it on your own YouTube channel which seems to be dormant lately. You had some great stuff on there about. Yeah, you know, the retrieves and letting the fly fall and then you and then all of that stuff. 01;16;46;17 – 01;16;48;03 Phil I found that a fascinating. 01;16;48;13 – 01;17;08;15 Howard Yeah that was on my own channel, which I did slow down on things got busy again. Yes. When we did it in Corbett to maintain my sanity, being locked in the house at the best of patience. Yeah, but when they let me out again instead of I just went fishing. 01;17;08;23 – 01;17;32;26 Phil This. I’ll put some links to your channel because there’s even though maybe it’s not as active as it once was or there’s still some great information on there for people to look at because you’re a very thoughtful one. You know, you’re thinking about everything. Everything happens for a reason, which is sort of the same way I look at things, like when you get a fish like that, you know, And it was a little not quite as as it was the previous fish. 01;17;32;26 – 01;17;50;12 Phil What was different there and what can you know, that leads to a lot of neat discoveries and things like that. So no, I can’t think of anything else is ah, I don’t know. I hate to ask favorite fly so I won’t because that’s like to me, like how long’s a piece of string? Because it’s got so many variables too. 01;17;50;12 – 01;17;52;03 Phil It’s such a tough question. 01;17;52;03 – 01;18;10;08 Howard It is. I’ve got lots of favorite flies, to be honest. I can give you all. I can give you a favorite flight for Stream Efficient. I I’m a big advocate of using very, very slim zonk because as opposed to Marabou style today’s. 01;18;10;23 – 01;18;11;01 Phil Okay. 01;18;11;17 – 01;18;35;01 Howard I carry a lot of donkeys tied in different weights. I have a heavily dressed with a wide strip for use in light colored water and I have really really thin ones where I take like a full in now the three millimeter, the micro strips and I actually half and again and just like little tiny eels like a needle in the water and those things are lethal. 01;18;36;11 – 01;18;43;10 Phil That’s good. Okay. Most underrated tactic. People don’t use as much as they should in stores. 01;18;43;19 – 01;18;45;28 Howard I this is from a UK perspective. 01;18;45;29 – 01;18;46;13 Phil It looks like. 01;18;47;13 – 01;19;21;06 Howard I very very rarely see people fish in with flies with tungsten versus normally weighted flies. And I catch a lot of fish just because I think the way when you retrieve them, the swim profile is different to the majority what other people are doing, you know. So I straight line nymphs a bit with small tungsten beaded nymphs when everybody else is typically used in either a brass bead or a fly with some blood in it or no weight. 01;19;21;13 – 01;19;30;00 Howard And I’ve had some astronomically successful days just through fish in tungsten nibs, you know, and I don’t really see many people do it. 01;19;30;14 – 01;19;32;21 Phil Okay. How about overuse tactics? 01;19;34;14 – 01;19;40;25 Howard A lot of people just rely on pollen, like bog standard pollen. Yeah, I throw it, I rip it, bark. 01;19;41;01 – 01;19;41;22 Phil Rip and strip. 01;19;41;22 – 01;19;58;02 Howard We call it take no notice of what temperature the fish are to and they just keep going. You and eventually it goes tight. Then they get one or two or three just, you know, sometimes just slow slowing down a bit, you know, and Yeah. 01;19;58;03 – 01;20;12;25 Phil And just to me, that just gets boring after a while. Like it’s fun to do sometimes. I’ll just do it. Why did you do that? Just because I wanted to do something different. Yeah. You know, especially in those days when fish are really active and they’re willing to play, this is the time to experiment, monkey around things. Oh, right. 01;20;12;25 – 01;20;22;19 Phil Because you got an audience that wants to know. Now you can see if things do a dance. So when you get on those days, fish aren’t as cooperative. You’ve got some confidence and some different things to try. Yeah. 01;20;22;29 – 01;20;44;20 Howard I think one of the worst things that I see on a regular basis is people throwing out, ripping it back constantly, and then they bring the fly in and they change the color and they just do the same thing again, rather than leaving the fly on and fishing it different. You know, the first thing to do is go back to the Well, I’ll try this part and I’ll try that part. 01;20;44;20 – 01;20;45;20 Phil It’s the fly’s fault. 01;20;46;02 – 01;20;55;19 Howard Lies fault, you know, not the fact that I’m moving it three times faster than it should be. Six for all of the heads. Yeah, you know, it it’s, you know, it can be something as simple as that. 01;20;56;14 – 01;21;01;05 Phil You’ve traveled the world favorite Stillwater fishery. 01;21;01;05 – 01;21;02;08 Howard So again. 01;21;02;08 – 01;21;03;11 Phil Another strange question. 01;21;04;12 – 01;21;29;03 Howard I really enjoyed the variety of Tasmania and yes, in the competition it was great. You know, I had a real good result after the competition when I got to travel around and do some bank fishing and then some bought fish in a better conditions. That was incredible. You know, they’ve got such a variety, you know, shallow water tail in fish. 01;21;29;17 – 01;21;47;06 Howard It’s like bottom fishing. Yeah. You know, but for big brown trout, you know, Polaroid. And from a drift in both lakes, very clear. You can see them cruise and you know, you can intercept a cruising fish with a dry flowing. It was just so over the course that was some of the best Stillwater fishermen ever done. 01;21;47;18 – 01;21;56;14 Phil All right. Last any piece of kit or gear, you’ll never go out other than, let’s say, the basics of rod line reel and sort of niche stuff. 01;21;56;14 – 01;22;21;19 Howard That route you stuff. I always I use it a lot, especially for when I’m dry fly fishing just solid muscle in grace for the tip of my line and the tapered portion that the back of me dry fly lead or I’m dry fly fishing. I use that an awful lot and I use it as fly float and as well particularly for light shipments, both the types stuff where I’ve got to rub it into the seals for. 01;22;21;21 – 01;22;26;06 Phil Do you grease the leaders as well to get them to sink using Fuller’s Earth or any of the circles? 01;22;26;27 – 01;22;35;13 Howard Occasionally. But I’m not a big I don’t put a great deal of faith in that unless I actually really need to and very rarely need to. 01;22;35;15 – 01;22;44;24 Phil You know, I think it’s for me, it’s only been when it’s been really flat and maybe everything just sits on that surface film and it looks like a rope to the fly. 01;22;45;03 – 01;23;01;20 Howard Yeah. I mean what I do then in them situations is the fly patterns I use will typically be a suspender topper or a foam beetle or something like that, and I’ll pull the line under and the fly come and sit back off again. And then it’s. Then it’s gone. 01;23;02;00 – 01;23;14;18 Phil Yeah. Oh, great tip. All right. Lastly, where can people follow you? Stay in touch with you. We mentioned your YouTube channel. I encourage you to get back. I’ve got a YouTube channel. Yeah. 01;23;14;28 – 01;23;34;22 Howard I will. I will get back to it. I’m on Facebook. I’m ho crossed and fly Fisher. I’m also on Instagram. I think it’s so across them fly fishing as well. And I do have a YouTube channel it’s all in the my name you can find there. I I’m also obviously in a lot of the early stuff and the great stuff because that’s who I work for. 01;23;35;07 – 01;23;37;09 Howard So I’ve got a lot of content out there as well. 01;23;37;19 – 01;23;48;10 Phil And Fulling Mill, of course you’ve done a lot, of course, full earlier, so I’ll put all links with that. All right. Is there anything else, Howard? Have we missed anything that you would hope to talk about or. 01;23;48;23 – 01;23;52;14 Howard No, I don’t think so. I think we’ve we’ve covered quite a lot growing the funnel. It’s been good. 01;23;52;23 – 01;24;00;15 Phil It’s been good. I really thank you for taking the time and and your evening because you’re as I said earlier, you’re 7 hours ahead of me. So. Yeah. 01;24;00;25 – 01;24;04;05 Howard It’s the two hour. All right? It’s not bedtime. Yeah, it’s not bedtime. 01;24;04;05 – 01;24;26;08 Phil You’re not one of those stuff. No. Bit of a late night. All right, Howard, thanks so much. Hopefully everybody enjoyed this. Some really great information here today. Improving your still water fishing and what you can learn from Howard and the lessons, the hard won lessons he’s had from competition, fishing. And until next time, we’ll hopefully see you on the water. 01;24;26;08 – 01;24;47;23 Phil I hope you enjoyed my discussion with Howard. I found his approach and insight into fly fishing leaks based in part on his competitive experience. Fascinating. Howard thinks about all aspects of his presentation a practice we should all follow. He is a brilliant fly fisher who consistently thinks about every phase of his techniques strategy, tactics. Whenever he’s on the water. 01;24;48;12 – 01;25;11;17 Phil Come to think of it, he’s probably thinking about it when he drives his car or sitting at his desk or sitting around home too. Aside From Howard’s approach to fly fishing lakes, we also discuss the development of his drop back bunk. I highly recommend you pick up a few for your Stillwater kit bag. Howard’s Bunk or indicator offers several advantages over other indicators and will definitely help you catch more fish. 01;25;12;01 – 01;25;33;13 Phil Check the shownotes for links to the drop backbone. Also, don’t forget to check out the Shownotes for links to Howard’s Instagram and Facebook pages. Be sure to give him a follow. You will also find links to both his YouTube and fulling mill’s YouTube channel. Howard has some excellent Stillwater based videos on his personal YouTube channel on the Fulling Mill YouTube channel. 01;25;33;14 – 01;25;54;04 Phil Howard also has several Stillwater Focus videos, along with his specific drop back among content. Be sure to watch Howard’s six part video journey during the 2020 World Fly fishing championships for a unique behind the scenes glimpse into what it takes to compete. Thanks for listening.