S5, Ep 150: Being a Complete Angler with Davy Wotton (Pt I)

**Marvin Cash (00:00:04):**

Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, I'm joined by fly fishing legend Davy Wotton. Davy generously spent almost three hours with me discussing what it means to be a complete angler and how to get there. This is part one of our conversation and we'll drop part two on the other side of the holidays.

But before we get to the interview, just a couple of housekeeping items. If you like the podcast, please tell a friend, and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out.

And a shout out to this episode's sponsor. This episode is sponsored by our friends at Nor-vise. Their motto is "tie better flies faster," and they produce the only vise that truly spins. From now through Christmas Eve, if you purchase a Nor-vise gift card of $250 or more, you'll receive a coupon code for 25% off your next Nor-vise purchase. Folks, hit the easy button and take advantage of this great offer. And Tim just dropped the 2024 show schedule. Head over to www.nor-vice.com today to see if the Nor-vise team will be coming to a town near you.

Now, on to our interview. Well, Davy, welcome to The Articulate Fly!

**Davy Wotton (00:01:20):**

Yes, thank you, Marvin. I'm looking forward to what we're going to talk about.

**Marvin Cash (00:01:26):**

Yeah, absolutely. And we have a tradition on The Articulate Fly — we like to ask all of our guests to share their earliest

**Davy Wotton (00:01:30):**

fishing memory? Oh, okay. Insofar as that is concerned, well, that would be in about 1955. And that was largely brought about because where we lived on the farm there was a river that ran through there. There were some ponds in the area as well. So as far as fishing was concerned, with a long line, my first experience really was going to the waters and messing around with nets and catching newts and various aquatic things there.

Then I got to fishing, and mostly I fished at the time with nightcrawlers, worms, you know what I'm saying? And you go out and you dig them up, find them where all the livestock would be and stuff in the manure heaps, and then go fishing. And that would result in catching the species of fish that were in that river. Most rivers over there in the UK — well, all of them are, in fact — the cold water environments. There really are no warm waters in the UK, England, Ireland, Wales, or Scotland. And so you catch different species in there. It could be roach, rudd, bream, carp, whatever the case may be, and trout, of course, because they would all basically live in the same environment. But there may be greater or lesser numbers of those specific species depending on that river. So yeah, pretty much my earliest fishing memories were about that era, 1955-1956.

**Marvin Cash (00:03:01):**

When did you come to the dark side of fly fishing?

**Davy Wotton (00:03:05):**

Okay, well, there used to be a — and I don't remember his name because it's gone back so long — but in any event, there used to be this old fellow. He'd come there and he'd drift the river for trout. And he'd fly fish, obviously, to do that. And that fascinated me. I used to watch him, and he kind of talked to me about this. And he'd catch these small browns, about eight or ten inches. And he'd keep them and off he'd go.

Anyway, one thing led to the other. Now, that said, I also, at that age, had a .177 air rifle. And I would walk around all the land and I'd shoot different things, to be honest about it. And he asked me one time — if my memory served me right, I had whacked some birds, and I don't remember what they were to this day, to be honest. But nevertheless, I showed him what I'd shot, and he wanted them for the feathers. That I recall, which he took.

And anyway, he was the person that first put a rod in my hand — a fly rod, that is — and got me interested in, and cast a line on the water, and fly fish. And I'll never forget to this day, the first trout I caught was on an Alexandra wet fly, which was the tail fly of the three flies that he was fishing at that time.

And to be honest about it, I guess water and fish has always been an attraction to me. End of story. And that really led me into a pursuit that ultimately became a living, to be honest about it. And bear in mind, too, over there in the UK, as you all know, you don't have to travel far to find various types of water. You know, you could fish the saltwater one day and you could go fish a freshwater environment the next day. So that was no big deal. So I enjoyed fishing in the ocean as well as I did in freshwater.

So we'd go there and fish at times of the year when the Atlantic cod came close to shore, or whiting, or different species of flatfish, whatever they were — place, sandbags, and eels, and whatever the case may be. And I also enjoyed very much fishing for coarse fish, as they know, coarse fish in the UK. The terminology is really based on the fact that they're scaled fish, in other words, like carp and roach and bream, fish like that, whereas trout are not really a scaled fish like that. So that's why they're called coarse fish. And that's a lot of fun too.

So really, to put things into perspective, my interest in fishing, period, were to catch fish, regardless of whether they were game fish, sea trout, salmon, freshwater species, or saltwater species. I just loved to be by the water fishing. Much to — at times, let's put it this way — I gave my parents hell because I'd take off on a bike and go somewhere. They really didn't know where I went, to be honest about it. And I'd come home and God knows what I was, and they'd say, "Where the hell did you been?" And I'd say, "I went fishing." Well, yeah, but — and I guess back then there really wasn't the concerns about young people going off and getting hauled off and assaulted, if you know what I'm saying, particularly in the rural areas where we lived. And that was also, I guess, part of my upbringing.

And then to move on a little bit, my parents decided that I needed a better level of education. And regular day schools were, in their opinion, somewhat limited, and so I ended up getting sent to a boarding school where they considered I should get a better level of education. Well, I probably did, but more to the point, it was really advantageous to me because this particular school was an old Victorian school on thousands of acres of land, and on that land was lots of different waters which contained fish. And so at every opportunity, when we weren't in classrooms or other aspects of what we had to do, I was allowed to go and do what I wanted to do, which was to go fishing. And I would do that all the time. And it also built up my levels of skills and expertise in what I was doing.

More to the point, one of the game masters — and I still remember his name, Richard Butt, his name was; he was from Scotland — and I had this great interest in wildlife, nature, and fishing. And he gave me a book and some fly tying material that his father had owned, and I still have that book, which was W.C. Stewart. And that's what got me interested in tying flies, and that's moved on from there.

A number of the members of staff also hunted me, and ultimately what would happen is they'd go out on their hunts and they'd come back with whatever it was — pheasants and partridges — and they'd give them to me. And guess why they did? Because they wanted me to pluck the birds for them to eat. That's fine. I ended up with a lot of feather, which otherwise at that time in the early '60s I would not have got. And that was fine, but it was all part of, if you like, my self-education process.

And then, when you read these books on the techniques of tying — by today's illustrations and so on, they weren't always easy to understand, because the terminology, well, "you apply the legs to the fly." What the hell's that? Well, legs in old terminology was a hackle. There's terminology like that, that at that time you didn't really put together exactly what it was. But if you looked at the illustration of the fly, you could figure it out. And of course, a lot of the very old catalogs of the 1800s and early 1900s had illustrations in there of those flies. They weren't pictures — they were actually paintings of those flies — on that list and the other.

And then I got a book which really furthered my education in fly tying knowledge, by John Veniard. And it really described a lot of flies of universal use, whether they were from New Zealand or Australia, America. And it really broadened my outlook as far as what was going on around the world, as far as the artificial fly was concerned. Albeit a lot of material I in no way could get at that particular time in my life. Obviously I did as years went by, but nevertheless, it opened up a whole new outlook for me as far as fly fishing and the relationship of fishing flies and catching fish — primarily trout, of course, not always, but primarily trout. And it was just a wonderment to me.

And more to the point, I was fascinated by the materials. You know, golden pheasant — where the hell did you find golden pheasant back in those times? Well, you could, but I didn't know where you could. And all other exotic materials, so to speak, as opposed to the regular live birds that lived in your part of the world, whatever they were. And of course, don't forget, back in those times they pretty much shot whatever it was and they used the feathers. It doesn't matter whether they were songbirds or owls or whatever the case may be — they were part of the culture, so to speak, of creating artificial flies. Of course, most of those species now are protected, and rightly so.

Even so, there's still a market for those legally obtained, or if you can get all the museum specimens or something like that — and it gives you legal possession and use of those feathers to tie a lot of those flies as they originally were, in whatever, the 1700s, the 1800s — because time's moved on now. But in any respect, ultimately, by the time I was in my late teens, I had gotten proficient at tying flies, pretty darn good.

And not only that, I lived fairly close to, at that time, a fishing tackle shop. And of course, in those days, there was no such thing as a fly shop over there in the UK. There is today, but there wasn't then. They had to provide all types of equipment, whether you fished with a fly rod, whether you fished for the saltwater species, or you fished for coarse fish. So there was a whole big variable in the equipment that they sold. But this one particular place did sell flies. And they were the first place that bought flies from me.

And not only that, they also had a limited supply of fly tying material, which came from the company E. Veniard, which was the largest supplier of fly tying material in the UK, and still is, incidentally. And so that obviously fed my abilities to tie more flies because I could get these materials that otherwise weren't indigenous to the UK, so to speak.

So yeah, once I started to learn how to tie flies efficiently, I ended up, as I just said, tying those flies more commercially. And of course, that being the case, you learn a lot more skill in tying and, more to the point, different flies. I will tell you, though, interestingly enough, back in the earlier days, the vast majority of flies that I tied commercially were traditional wet flies and dry flies. Nymphs at that time had a very limited market, so to speak. That dramatically changed. And the reason it did is not so much for the river angler — more so for the stillwater angler. The stillwater angling over there is big, big business. And that became more prevalent as far as the demand for flies for stillwater angling. Albeit they still use — they call them lures, you call them streamers — they have the same thing, and it still includes a lot of traditional wet fly work. But nymphs became more in fashion, particularly those that represented chironomids, which are a significant food base in stillwaters. And in stillwater, chironomids are large. They're not like the little micro things you get on the river.

A lot of publications started coming out around that time — certainly in the late '60s and into the '70s — that depicted more the use of nymph patterns, or flies or imitative representations of food sources, as opposed to flights of fancy, let's put it like that. And so ultimately, all of that increased my knowledge and skill levels because I was fortunate enough to start at the time when, to be honest about it, what had taken place for about the last 50 or 100 years was still common practice.

So my introduction into the world of fly fishing, both by the means and methods of handling, but also by, shall we say, the greater knowledge of artificial flies that induce fish to take them — I was there at a time when I was able to get on board as everything started changing. Whereas today, if somebody takes up fly fishing, I can only imagine, if not being possible, for them to backtrack on what took place in the last, whatever, 50, 60, 70 years. It's more what they see today, which, as you well know, is extremely prevalent as far as what they can look at on YouTube and various things like that.

**Marvin Cash (00:16:05):**

Yeah, I mean, you have to put in a lot of effort to basically go find the books — like Vince Marinaro books, and even stuff way older than that. To your point, you kind of were brought up at the tail end of a very classical period of fly fishing, right?

**Davy Wotton (00:16:20):**

Yes, that's right. That's exactly right. Because the way I was introduced, inducted to it — or whatever way you want to look at it — was largely by persons that had been fly fishing for 30, 40, 50 years before. So they were still somewhat engrossed in what their forefathers had showed them, or whatever the case may be. And literature back then was somewhat limited compared to today. I mean, the amount of books that are published on fly fishing is just unbelievable. It really, really is. But then back in those times, that was not the case.

I would say that the two people that really influenced a greater understanding of trout behavior, the insects that they fed on, and so far as artificial flies were concerned, most certainly John Goddard was one of those. The two publications that he wrote — Trout Flies of Stillwater and Trout Fly Recognition — in the more modern times, there was nothing that can compete with that. But that said, there are people that had written publications back in the 1800s that even today, I strongly enjoy reading, because they make sense in so far as what they observed and how they assumed, shall we say, an artificial should be created to deceive a fish — which, of course, they did, and they still do today.

So I find that fascinating — that kind of history. And of course, I've built up a huge collection of publications that go back to those times. And it just always fascinates me. Sometimes I've got an incredible memory about what I've read in a book. And if you said to me where to find it, I know exactly which book to go to get that.

But it still fascinates me and intrigues me to read a lot of that literature of how those individuals thought about what they do. And ultimately, it boils down to one thing, which I'll always maintain is significantly important — and one of the reasons to be a really good fly fisherman — and that is to be a very observant person. In other words, you observe what's going around in front of you, and that in itself will give you a fundamental background of knowledge that otherwise you wouldn't get.

You can read books, and you can look at DVDs or YouTube or whatever. That will give you knowledge, but it doesn't give you the necessary practical application. So somebody looks and says, "Oh, yeah, that's how you cast." Then they go out in the yard, pick up a fly rod, and attempt to try and do what they saw on the DVD. Well, that doesn't happen, right? And it's largely the case with fishing, too. Just because you say, "Oh, yeah, well, that's the Blue-Winged Olive, or that's the Medium Olive, or Danica or some other mayfly, or whatever" — oh, yeah, yeah. You've got to have a great understanding of — we'll talk about this a little more as we go on.

So the bottom line is that I would say almost certainly that the people that authored those publications were also very observant individuals. For one reason or the other, I don't necessarily agree with all that I've read, what certain individuals have said, but that's how they saw it. And that's really what matters. And then we can always build up on what it was that they said, which may be good, bad, or indifferent. It just depends.

**Marvin Cash (00:20:14):**

Yeah. It's interesting too, right? Because that was a time when there were a lot fewer distractions, and people could be much more thoughtful and very, very deliberate, which I think is a skill that is harder and harder to practice in the modern age where there's so many things coming at you all the time, and the return time on ideas and

**Davy Wotton (00:20:36):**

getting stuff out is so fast. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Because certainly the fly fishermen that I knew in my early days, as you will know, did not have that. But certainly there were publications over there in the UK like Trout and Salmon, and in later years magazines like Trout Fisherman, which I wrote for for many years, or Salmon, Trout and Sea Trout. And of course, that made, shall we say, knowledge more available to the majority. Otherwise, they wouldn't have got that.

But that said, I still believe, despite that, that a person that spends time on the water develops ultimately a greater fundamental understanding of what's going on. And of course, assuming they've got relevant skills — which again we'll talk about later — that allow them to put that into practice. And that's a fascinating thing about fly fishing.

And I'm often asked this question, and I will tell you this. As much as I believe in and enjoy the actual physical act of casting a flyline and catching fish, I still look at the trout as a species of fish. I would derive as much enjoyment if I was casting a spin crankbait out there on the lake and catching a big bass. It doesn't matter to me how you pursue the fish that you want to catch. So I never believe, as some individuals do, that people that fly fish should be put on a pedestal above all others. That's just a nonsense way of thinking. A fish is a fish. It doesn't matter whether it's a carp, it's a roach, it's a tench, it's a bream, whatever it is — it's a fish and you have to learn the skills to catch it.

So don't in any way, shall we say — I'll put it this way — be thinking you're a better person just because you fly fish. Because it requires skill, of course. But becoming a skillful angler at any species requires skill, full stop. The top bass fishermen in the world are extremely skillful anglers. They didn't get there by chucking and chancing it. They learned a lot more about the species they pursue and how to fish for it. Likewise, guys that fish in the surf, for whatever it may be, they develop levels of skill that allow them to be successful.

So like I said, I've never been of a mind that, well, just because you fly fish for trout, you're a better person than others that fish otherwise. It doesn't matter to me whether a guy here on the White River wants to go chuck a spinner or fish a bait, whatever the case may be. He enjoys doing that. That's his enjoyment. So what? As long as he ultimately respects the quarry he pursues, I'm fine with that.

I don't believe that everything should be sacred so far as fly fishing is concerned, with one reservation, which is that most certainly there needs to be in certain water environments regulations that, shall we say, allow those fish to maintain survival in those rivers. In other words, I wouldn't suggest for a moment that you can just go there and do what the hell you want and haul all the fish out. That makes no sense. And so regulations are put into effect regarding the means or methods of how you can fish those waterways. And obviously where fly fishing is concerned, to some extent, it gives the fish a certain degree of protection, shall we say. Whereas if everybody went out there and started chucking worms in this, that, and the other, it would take no time before they cleaned them out.

So I fully respect that if there is a requirement of regulations to protect those species, or whatever, or the catch-and-release ethos, I'm absolutely fine with that, because there's plenty of other places you can go if you want to go and catch and keep fish. You know what I'm saying?

**Marvin Cash (00:24:55):**

Yeah, absolutely, I do.

**Davy Wotton (00:24:56):**

Yeah, and it's just that fly fishing, looking at it in that respect. And as I've already said, high-skilled anglers that fish for any species have developed high-level skills to be successful. And fly fishing does too. You're not going to be a successful angler just by ultimately chucking, chancing, and this, that, and the other.

So, how do I believe anglers understand trout behavior across the seasons? Well, once again, I'll go back to the single word of observation. Certainly, most river systems — you can get the information that relates to given times of the year and the prevalent species. And what are the more likely flies to use to catch those fish? There are two ways to look at that.

You know, Dave Whitlock, who was a very close friend of mine since the '80s — and we spent a lot of time fishing together, and we're very close on a personal level as well — we had many, many long discussions about different aspects related to fly fishing. And what interested him a great deal was obviously myself coming from the UK, and even knowing full well that I had a lot of experience of means, methods, and techniques of the past, which to some extent he didn't quite understand. Don't get me wrong, because Dave Whitlock, in my opinion — and I've fished with a lot of pretty well-known people — was, in my opinion, overall the most skillful fly fisherman I ever knew, most certainly in America. And he had a thorough understanding of everything that related to trout fly fishing, which was nothing so much to do with the physical act of casting — chuck the fly out. It was much more than that.

Once again, observation. He knew exactly what trout behavior was. In other words, under given prevailing conditions, what those fish would likely do based on the season and year, whatever it be — the hatches, the water temperature, the best means and methods of presentation of given flies at that particular time. And that is only something you acquire over time. You can read it and look at it, but you've got to be on the water to really get that thorough fundamental understanding of what is going on and what you need to do to achieve success.

And so to answer the question, do I believe that the majority of anglers understand trout behavior? The answer is no, to be honest about it. I would hazard a guess to say this — and this is based on my experiences with guiding thousands of anglers — there are very few that, if you take them out on the water and you say to them, "Okay, now, what is your best option here? And what is it you need to do to set yourself up to enable you to catch the fish?" — very few of them would give you what I would consider to be a positive answer. They almost certainly would say, "Yeah, well, I'm going to stick a Woolly Bugger on, or I'm going to put an indicator on and this, that, and the other." But where do you go from there?

And so ultimately, if the truth of the matter be known — and that's okay — they're paying you for your skill and advice to enable them to do what you want them to do so they can catch fish. You follow what I'm trying to say? And then you also deal with the aspects of the relative skills related to that, which I'll talk about a little later on.

So you also asked me, do I believe that anglers understand food behavior across the seasons and this, that, and the other? Well, once again, that's a process of, A, spending time on the water and observation. If certain insects are abundant at that time and you see fish visually feeding on them, are you able to identify them? And some will argue, well, it doesn't really matter. If I chuck a fly out there, I'll probably catch a few fish. But does that develop a fundamental understanding and betterment of knowledge and skills? No, of course it does not. You ultimately have to suffer the consequences of not catching fish at times if you want to learn more skills.

And I always tell the guys this: if you spent all day on the river and you didn't catch a damn fish, you learned a lesson, which is you didn't do nothing right. Okay? So what is it that you needed to do to correct that problem? Well, it's a very simple answer — observation. What is going on out there, and the acquired skills to enable you to fish the means and methods of flies and presentations relevant at that prevailing time to induce those fish to take your flies.

Now, that said, if I was to give any person a list of, say, 10 flies, I know — having fished all the way around the world — that one or more of those flies will, I guarantee you, catch a trout in any water environment that they live in. It doesn't matter whether it's a river, whether it's a pond, whether it's a massive reservoir or a natural loch or lake. I know within those 10 flies, the odds are that if you present those in a manner which is, shall we say, acceptable to the trout in those waters, you'll catch some fish. Now, you may not catch a lot of them, whereas other methods may, of course, dramatically increase the numbers of fish you catch. On the other hand, if you don't fish those flies in the right manner that they should be fished, generally you might not catch anything. So it's not a question of not using the right flies. It amounts to more or less the fact that what you're doing is not presenting those particular flies to the fish in an appropriate manner to induce the take.

Now, let me give an example. And I use this one as something I always ask people. Okay, there are two anglers and they're fishing. Well, Bill Smith — he knows nothing more than chucking out an olive Woolly Bugger. 50 yards downstream, there's whoever — Ted — he's an angler that likes to fish with imitative patterns. So he's going to fish possibly a Hare's Ear or a Pheasant Tail in a nymph mode.

The guy upstream starts whacking fish out one after another on a Woolly Bugger because that's all he knows what to do. And the other guy downstream catches maybe half the number of fish that the guy whipping the Woolly Bugger upstream does. So the question I would ask my guys is, well, who do you consider to be the better angler? How are you basing your answer to that? Is it based on the fact that he caught more fish? Or is it based on the fact that that angler downstream fished with more skill, even though he caught fewer fish? Which one to you would matter?

"Well, it'll be the guy catching more fish." That's generally their favorite answer. But we also know that at times that situation can be the opposite. In other words, the guy fishing the Woolly Bugger gets next to nothing, whereas the guy downstream fishing the nymphs catches more. But it is an interesting answer you get — how does the average angler answer that question? Is it based on numbers of fish, or is it based on the fact that he didn't catch as many fish, albeit he fished with a lot more skill and understanding of what he was doing? I always find it interesting to hear the answer that I get given to that one.

**Marvin Cash (00:34:06):**

It's kind of funny, right? Because for me, I kind of focus on what I call — and everybody's goal can be different — but I always try to focus on what I call being a complete angler. So I would — it's kind of an interesting thing, right? So we have a lot of guys where I live that are really, really good at fishing the South Holston River, to your point. But if you take them somewhere else, they're not nearly as effective because what they know how to do is to fish that type of water — that specific piece of water — very, very well.

**Davy Wotton (00:34:38):**

But they haven't developed translatable skills. Yeah, that's often the case. And I'll tell you why — because if you fish the same water on a regular basis, you develop a familiarity with that particular water and the habits of the fish in that particular water, and generally speaking the majority of means or methods by which you will catch those fish. And you're quite right — often is the case that they go someplace else, and what to them is standard ingrained knowledge on their own waterway doesn't work. And once again, it's simply based on the fact that they don't have much more understanding of what they need to do. Just put it to you like that, because every waterway is different to some extent.

That said, as I previously said, I could give you a list of pretty much 10 flies which I know will work in any trout habitat that exists in the world. That said, you also have to, again, be observant. Because the predominance of hatches out where you fish — I know you've got a lot of fantastic PMD hatches on that river, right? Well, you may not see that on other rivers. There may be other species that exist on those rivers that are more seen on a regular basis by the trout. For example, there may be a lot of stoneflies in that river. We don't have those here in the White River. There may be in that particular river very little in the way of crustaceans — i.e., sowbugs or scuds — there may be a greater predominance of other species.

So your orientation towards the methods of fishing, to some extent but not totally, have to be — if you want to be more successful — related to the behavior of the fish in that river based on prevailing conditions. And of course, for the most part, what do the fish generally see on a regular basis insofar as their natural food is concerned? I'm not suggesting for one moment that just because there's a whole abundance of whatever it is — sowbugs in that river — that should ultimately be what you should fish to capture fish. Of course it will. But it would also restrict your greater abilities of knowledge and skill to fish other things if you just specifically relate to fishing that way all the time, because that's your comfort zone.

And so the fascination of fly fishing, more than anything else, is that once you have acquired many, many different levels of skills — be it dry fly fishing, whether it be nymph fishing, whether it be fishing emergers, whether it be fishing soft hackles, whether it be fishing traditional wet flies or streamers or whatever — it gives you a choice. On any given day, what is it I want to do to catch fish today? Regardless of the numbers of fish I catch, irrelevant or otherwise.

For example, I might choose one day to go out there and just fish dry flies. Fine. I know the odds of catching a lot of fish are against me because that's just not the prevailing conditions that are conducive to that. But so what? I enjoyed myself doing it. Did I learn something from doing it? Yes, of course I did. If I didn't do it, I wouldn't know any different, right?

And so what I try to tell people is that to broaden your outlook on different levels of acquired skill, you have to accept days where you ain't going to catch much. And I'm not suggesting that at the time you may or may not have been doing something wrong. It just may have been that at that time the fish weren't interested in what you were doing. But you don't necessarily know that because a fish can't tell you, right?

If you have a day where you don't catch a fish, there are reasons as to why you didn't. And one of them obviously is the fact that what you were doing was not going to work. But there may be other reasons for it too. And that's part of the game. But a really skilled angler — if catching fish is of significant importance to him more than anything else — he's going to have the armory to use different means and methods of skill, i.e., by the style of flies he uses and means and methods of presentation, whatever the case may be, to likely induce fish even under prevailing conditions when they're going to be tough to catch.

Typically when you get very, very low cold water conditions, that's going to be one of them. Or you've got lower dissolved oxygen levels in the water, which means fish are just not comfortable eating in the first place — that's the other. So you're going to get tough days regardless of what skill levels you've got.

That said, I've always told anglers that the fact that you know what to do on this particular water because it produces results for you is not the only answer that you need to have in your head. You need to go out there on some days and do stuff you've never done before and see what happens. You might be surprised. On the other hand, you may say, "Well, the hell with this, I ain't catching anything and I ain't doing that again. I'm going back to fishing the Woolly Bugger." It's a defeatist attitude, right? So you didn't learn nothing because you went back to your comfort zone.

So you're asking me what common problems do I see on the water? And I assume what you're asking me is what do I see anglers doing which I would consider to be wrong. Is that right?

**Marvin Cash (00:40:35):**

Yeah. I mean, I guess what I kind of think about, Davy, is — if we talk about, people think of you as the wet fly guy. But like, as we said, you've done a ton of stuff. And so I guess if we come all the way back out of that and we talk about, what do you think is required to be a complete angler? And we've talked a little bit about understanding trout and food behavior, but it might help for people that want to have a more versatile skill set and be able to catch fish in different places and in varying conditions. In your mind's eye, I know casting is one of those things, but what are the handful of skills you think you have to possess to be considered a complete angler?

**Davy Wotton (00:41:21):**

Well, okay. As you well know, I've won a lot of competitions, fishing by different means or methods that would be necessary in that particular water, be it in dry fly fishing, wet fly fishing, or whatever the place may be.

The first thing I would say is this: learn to be accomplished at different given skills. And ultimately, there are two effective methods that one should acquire skills for. And ultimately, the first one is nymph fishing. In other words, presenting the fly on and near the bed of the river. Why? Because for 90% of the time, that's where the fish are.

Now, this is the thing I want to say. Do I consider fishing an egg to be nymph fishing? No. I consider nymph fishing to fish a fly that in some way represents a natural food source that's there. I don't consider an egg to be within that. Let's put it that way. I know they catch fish. I'm not arguing about that. And I may use eggs at times. I'm not saying that. What I'm saying is to become skillful and experienced in nymph fishing by the many different methods that you can apply — whether it be indicator nymphing, whether it's what they now call the Euro-nymphing techniques, whatever the case may be — become efficient at that.

The next thing you're going to deal with is the surface, so you're going to be dealing with hatches, and you're going to deal with various stages of emergence of specific insects and what the fish are doing as far as taking those. Are they taking them as emergers? Are they taking those as they're moving up through the water column to the surface? Are they taking them as emerged duns, or are they taking them as spinners?

I mean, you've got a number of different possibilities as to why those fish choose to take that natural insect at a given stage of its life cycle. And a well-rounded, experienced fly fisherman will know that. You will be able to look at that fish seen surface feeding, and pretty much tell you exactly what they're doing by watching the way that fish rises to that particular insect. And obviously, the species of insect concerned gives you that clue.

You get a very different rise form, shall we say, to a caddis, as you would to a little tiny midge or a Blue-Winged Olive or something like that. There are much slower, purposeful rises to those species. So that also gains you knowledge. What I'm saying here is that learning to become a really skillful nymph fisherman — as best as you can — because next you're going to be dealing with fishing in the surface. And like I said, understanding the species that are prevalent at the time will tell you generally how those fish will take that species during the stages of its emergence from its nymph or pupa to the time that it is a winged insect when it flies off the water.

Don't forget that they come back to lay their eggs and therefore they become spinners in the case of mayflies, or dead caddis, or whatever the case may be. So you must learn those different skills and how to present any choice of the right flies to that.

Now, we move on from that. So you want to learn more skills that can catch those fish. If those fish aren't on or near the bed of the river, is it necessary to fish nymphs? No, it's not. I'm excluding eggs because I don't really put those into the category — let's put it that way. San Juan Worms and stuff like that, yeah, that's fine, but in a lot of cases, most rivers don't have worms that resemble the artificials that are used. But anyway, the next thing I would tell you is to learn to fish the surface. And like I said, you learn to fish at various stages — whether they're the natural insects moving up through the water column, whether in the stages of transitioning emergence, whether they're duns or adults, and whether they're spinners. So you require different flies to do that, obviously.

And ultimately, the safest ride you're going to fish would be a dry fly. I will tell you this: in all my years of experience of watching other anglers, to be a really skillful dry fly fisherman, the dry fly fisherman probably in most cases requires a lot more skill than most of the other methods of fly fishing. And most of that relates to your ability as a caster. That's the first thing. And second, your ability to control a drag-free drift. And that's not easy for the majority of people to do.

There are different means and methods of presentations, of course. We're not arguing about that. They could be direct upstream, they could be slightly across-stream, or they could be downstream. More to the point, the means and methods of approach to those presentations is very much based on what you yourself do — i.e., what position are you in? Are you upstream of the fish? Whatever the case may be, you have to be in a physical position to be able to make an efficient, effective presentation of a dry fly without drag to those fish.

And in a lot of cases, when I watch persons do that, they're wrong. Instantly, they make a cast, they get drag. And there are two reasons. One is they're in the wrong position to start with — in other words, where they're standing. And secondly, they don't know how to make the cast which eliminates drag, at least for a period of time, without spooking those fish. And that requires skill.

I would have to say that dry fly fishing, more than anything, requires a lot more skill than most other methods. Mostly because when you're nymph fishing, you're essentially fishing a relatively short section of water — upstream, across-stream, and downstream — short sections of water. Where dry fly fishing is concerned, you may have to make significantly longer casts, and you may have to control your line to eliminate drag for sometimes significantly longer periods of time, more so than you would generally if you were nymph fishing.

So I would tell you that, in my opinion, to become an expert dry fly fisherman, you've got to be skillful at a lot of different things. And ultimately, your casting skill is primarily one of those. The next being your ability to control a drag-free drift for effectively a significant period of time. Also, more to that, your understanding of the fish. You can figure out, if you do it long enough, when to make a cast and when not to.

Consistently casting over a fish you watch rise is not the thing to do. The worst thing that you can do is to spook a fish. And if you consistently keep casting that fly over that fish, you will do that. Generally speaking, if the fish sees your fly presented in a good and proper manner two or three times and it refuses it, it figured it out. In other words, it doesn't like the fly. And you've got a number of choices. You change the fly, you give the fish a rest, and you go back to it again. Continually pounding that fish is absolutely a big mistake. And you see people do that all the time.

They stand there like a heron. I call that a heron stance. And the difference between them and the heron is the heron stands there still, but the angler moves around and waves his arm around and this, that, and the other. And so they put the fish down. And despite the fact that the fish are still visually seen rising — if indeed they are, after being lined and splashed Lord knows how many times — they're never going to catch them. Never. As long as they stand there doing what they're doing, they ain't never going to catch them.

And I'll go back to what I just said, Marvin, that in my opinion, to become a skillful dry fly fisherman, you have to develop skills that generally speaking as a nymph fisherman you don't. Because essentially, as long as you can get your flies somewhere close or near the bed of the river for a relatively short period of time within that drift, the odds are you'll catch fish. I'm not suggesting for one moment that the fly you use is the issue — why you don't — because it may well be. Because certain flies do work productively well based on the nature of the particular water you're fishing, whether it's slow-moving water, whether it's fast, rocky — all those require somewhat of a different approach, essentially based on how you make the leader-tippet sections up and the addition of weight if needed, and the particular flies you use. But I still go back to say that generally speaking, within those 10 flies, there would be nymphs that would catch you some fish if you present them in the right way.

**Marvin Cash (00:51:33):**

I understand what you're saying for dry fly fishing. And it's kind of an interesting thing, right? Because the first thing you try to do is move the angler to make the cast as potentially effective as possible. But when you start out, you really can't cast well enough to move yourself into position. And then obviously when you get really good and your skills are better, you can fish effectively from the same place with more difficult casts. I mean, how does an angler — because the typical putting cones out in the yard stuff is not going to help you solve those dry fly puzzles, whether you want to get most of your line in the lane or how long you can mend. What's your suggestion for anglers to be able to solve that problem?

**Davy Wotton (00:52:26):**

All right. That's a good question. Okay, there are two aspects to that. You develop, one, casting skills, and one, presentation skills. That's the first thing.

So to develop good casting skills, the first thing is: if you go fishing, you do not put a fly on. Because ultimately your brain is orientated towards fishing. And so when I teach people casting techniques and skills, the water is not a necessity. I don't need to be on water. I can do that on the grass, whatever. And I watch exactly what they're doing and what they're doing wrong, and try to correct the problems that they have. And in most cases, there are many of them.

That said, if the person concerned has fished for some considerable time, ultimately they are developing inherent faults for one reason or the other. They've developed muscle memory and it's kind of ingrained in their brain. It can be at times virtually impossible for them to get out of that, to be honest about it. Because it's like me saying to you, "Okay, if I want you to throw this tennis ball, you're going to pick that ball up and throw it." And if I try to tell you I need you to do it a different way to improve the distance that you're throwing, yeah, you may try to absorb some knowledge from me as to why I want you to do that, but the odds are you'll go back to doing what you did before. And that's largely what happens with guys that have developed, unfortunately, bad inherent faults in their casting skill.

To be honest about it, the overall average skill level of casters is not good by any stretch of imagination. Certainly, they get away with the limited skill levels that they've got based on the means and methods that they fish. But if they're forced — or have a need — to, shall we say, cast in a different manner to what is ingrained, they're in trouble. In other words, you say to them, "Okay, see that fish rising over there, 47 foot. I need you to make a cast. I need that fly to be seated six feet above that fish." They probably couldn't do it. Or if they get it out, they'd do it in such a way as to run the fish off.

So first and foremost, I would spend time with them in a non-fishing situation. Let's put it that way. Regardless of whether it's on the grass or, ideally, a pond, not moving water. If you can help them overcome some of those faults — and I'll tell you one of the biggest faults, ultimately, is hand casting. In other words, for most general trout fishing, you've got three what we call relative positions of fly casting. One is wrist, the next one is forearm, the next one is your arm — in other words, your whole arm is moving. That is one of the biggest mistakes for general trout fly fishing. I'm not talking about casting 70, 80, 90 feet in a saltwater environment where you've got a double haul and this, that, and the other. General trout fishing does not demand that.

If you have the fundamental understanding of how to load that rod sufficiently in the backcast, that's it. So the consensus about that is that the majority of anglers use way too much arm — in other words, upper arm. And that tends to cause the flyline to do things that ideally you don't want it to do, particularly when you're casting accurately or you want to make, shall we say, better presentation values and things. Because initially, how that line lands on that water determines what you can and cannot do with it thereafter. If you make a bad, sloppy cast on that water, the odds are you're never going to correct it to get an effective drift. If you make a good, proper presentation, it's easier to correct that. If you make a bad one, the odds are you cannot correct it.

So a lot of that relates to anglers using too much arm — in other words, the rod tip is rotating and not tracking in a straight line path, as it should. In other words, it's creating like a semi-arc. And guess what? The flyline goes forward wherever the rod tip goes, and you're trying to throw the line straight, and from the backcast it's nearly hitting the ground behind you. That's not going to happen.

So that's the first thing. The next thing would be presentation casts. Now, unless you've acquired good basic, fundamental casting skills, the odds are, for the most part, you're not going to make really good presentation casts, for the reasons I just said — which are that you cannot throw the line in an accurate line of presentation value to start with.

So when it comes to teaching people a lot of what we call presentation casts — like slackline casts or puddle line casts or different mends and whatever the case may be — to allow flies, and we're talking about dry flies here, to be presented in a manner where they're, shall we say, acceptable to how the fish sees them, it doesn't happen. Now, you can get away with that with a caddis. A caddis you can drag around and wham, the fish come up and whack them. But that's generally not the case where mayflies and a lot of other species are concerned.

So I would tell any person listening to this program: if you think you have got bad casting skills — whether you admit it or not is another matter, because the majority of people do — go and try and get at least some instruction from a casting instructor that knows what he's doing. That's the important thing. He may or may not be able to help you. As I've said, if you've developed serious inherent bad faults, which have become muscle memory or are pretty much ingrained in your head, it's going to be a tough deal for you to get out of that.

If you're prepared to spend hours and hours out there, you may well do it. But it will be a tough call. That I know. Ultimately, if anybody is listening to this program and you're a newbie to fly fishing, or interested to do so, go and get good casting instruction before you go down the wrong path and develop those bad habits. Because the odds are, if you try to do it yourself, it will never happen.

Granted, there are some individuals that have got natural ability. And for the most part, most people don't. And it doesn't matter what aspect of skill it is they want to aspire to. For many, it's a hard game to get to that higher level. For others — and I teach shotgun shooting as well — some people have got a natural ability to learn quickly and get good quickly, and others, it's just not that easy. They enjoy what they do but they're never going to achieve those high levels of skill.

So that's what I would tell you about casting. You've got to learn to be fundamentally a good, basic caster with good fundamental skills. Because if you don't have that, it's going to cost you. There are a lot of circumstances and situations demanding at that time presentations of flies or techniques of fishing that you will not be able to deploy because you don't have those skills.

The easiest, I would say, probably for the majority — obviously — is first and foremost across and downstream fishing with a streamer or a Woolly Bugger. And that's okay, because it catches fish. And I don't argue with that at all. But if that's the way you're going to pursue your long-term success in fly fishing, well, that's fine. But guess what? There's a whole bunch of relative skills and techniques of fishing that you are missing out on — and they know it doesn't work for the most part. If you learned those skills, you would probably enjoy a lot of them a lot more than just doing what you're doing, trolling a fly across the stream and putting it back.

Likewise, when nymph fishing with an indicator is concerned, it's generally overall one of the easiest ways to teach people how to catch fish with a nymph, for obvious reasons. Pretty much all they've got to do is get it out there on the water, control the line to a certain extent, and watch the indicator. And if it goes down, pop, you raise the rod, you hook the fish. That's okay. It's a basic level of skill that they understand. But learn more advanced skill levels. Because advanced skill levels will ultimately — I guarantee you — catch you more fish that otherwise you're not going to catch, because of the limitations of what you're working with at this present time.

**Marvin Cash (01:02:23):**

Yeah. And so we talk about casting being the foundation, right? And you've got to get the straight line path down and not throw the big arc. And then hopefully you do that and you're able to make the presentation cast. And I guess we kind of put that together with trying to build a better understanding of trout and food behavior. What else do we kind of need to put in the pot to have this complete angler stew? Is there anything else we need to add?

**Davy Wotton (01:02:59):**

Yeah. Okay. If I'm initially asked a question by a person that comes to me and says, "Hey, Dave, I want to learn to fly fish" — and obviously the first thing I'm going to tell them is fantastic, but you're going to have to learn how to cast. Because they see people doing it and they're in wonderment, because they see this line going back and forth, back and forth, which is kind of — if you like — the magic of perception of what fly fishing is all about. That physical line you see in the air. Whereas someone that throws a crank or a spin bait, their line goes forward, generally not back. And so I tell them: fantastic.

Obviously, I ask them whether they have equipment. If they don't, that's fine. I've got plenty. And then we set them up with a lesson. And I can tell pretty quickly what their likelihood of ability is going to be by the manner in which they pick up what it is you're trying to teach them — a basic, simple overhead cast, which is: you've got 20 feet of line in front of you on the ground. You're going to raise the rod. You're going to stop the rod at a given position. You're going to allow time for the line to track behind you. And before you load the rod and bring it forward — do they develop that sense of feeling in their hand or not? Some people do straightaway and other people don't. They say, "Well, I can't feel anything." Okay, and why? Because most times they're not moving that line sufficiently fast enough into that backcast to physically load that rod under some degree of pressure, both in the backcast and the forward cast. You have to develop that sense of feel and also a sense of timing.

And you can convey that to people. They've got to get that basic understanding down, period, before you can go any further. So, for example, they do well with 20 feet of line. Okay, so let's add another 10 feet — 30 feet of line. In other words, you've got the rod length, which being 9 to 10 feet, and you've got, say, another 20 feet of flyline, which makes it 30 feet to the end of the flyline. And if you add a 9-foot leader on there, you're essentially looking at 40 feet from where you stand to where that fly is on the end. So that's 40 feet.

So you just extend the line a little more, and that requires a little different approach than, say, 20 feet of line. Why? Because you've got to move the line faster. You've got more line out there. You've got to load that rod quicker. Add another 10 feet — same thing. You have to load that rod much faster than you do with 20 or 30 feet. And the further that line is extended, the same thing applies. You have to move that rod faster because you've got more physical weight to move that line. Vice versa, you have to allow a little more time for that flyline to extend behind you before you come forward.

And really, that is the initial basic approach to getting somebody to learn to flycast. Of course, in most cases, they say, "Can we go fishing? We want to catch a fish." Yeah, that's fine. I guarantee you I could take that person out in the boat. And as long as they can chuck 20 or 30 feet of flyline in front of them with the indicator, and have got some reasonable ability to react when the indicator goes down and set the hook on that fish, and they're able to control it once they've got it — they'll catch a fish.

Oftentimes you can take absolute beginners out there and you're going to catch fish. Fortunately for us here on the White River, there's a fair number of stocked trout which make life a little easier. That's not going to be the case on a river that's even a little more difficult for an experienced angler. I'm not saying they might not catch one or two fish, because there's always a few fish in any river, but certainly if you have got a waterway that has got stocked trout in it, life's going to be a little easier for them.

But that's okay, because they've gone through the process of learning the simple basic casts and a basic method of fishing that allowed them to catch fish, and ultimately that may well be something that they wish to pursue for the rest of their life.

**Marvin Cash (01:08:03):**

Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Again, if you like the podcast, please tell a friend, and please subscribe and leave us a rating and review in the podcatcher of your choice. And don't forget to head over to www.nor-vise.com to see if Nor-vise will be coming to a show near you in 2024. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, everybody.