S6, Ep 14: Being a Complete Angler with Davy Wotton (Pt II)

**Marvin Cash (00:00:04):** Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly. On this episode, fly fishing legend Davy Wotton returns for part two of our conversation. Davy generously spent almost three hours with me at the end of 2023, discussing what it means to be a complete angler and how to get there. This is part two of our conversation. There's a link to part one in the show notes.

I think you're really going to enjoy this one. 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 review in the podcatcher of your choice. It really helps us out. And check out our Patreon community. It's a great way to support the show and our many partners. We have everything from discounts on tying materials and guide trips to small group classes.

And thanks to everyone who spent time with us on the show circuit in Denver, Edison, and Ypsilanti. It's always great to spend time with our listeners and friends. 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. The Nor-vise team continues to rack up the miles. Next stops are the fly fishing shows in Bellevue and Pleasanton. You owe it to yourself to drop by the Nor-vise booth to see the only vise that truly spins for yourself. Not going to be in Washington or California? No worries. Nor-vise's entire 2024 show schedule is up on their website. 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.

**Davy Wotton (00:01:42):** You know, a lot of my customers don't fish that much during the year. And the reason being, they don't live close to a water that allows them that access to drive down the road a couple of hours, go fishing and come back home. They have to travel fairly significant distances to do so, or their work routine doesn't allow them. So that also is a restriction. How much time can you actually put on the water in a given year? Do you live local? Are you retired? Can you go there every down day if you want? Or not the case. So you may only end up going, whatever, four or five days a year. I've got customers like that. They can only fish three or four days a year, but they come and fish with me for those three or four days. And then pretty much they don't fish for the rest of the year.

Does that limit their ability to become well-rounded, more skillful anglers? Yes, of course it does, because they don't spend the time on the water. And that's something you have to do. Going back to what we've been discussing, regardless of whether you live by the river and can go there every day — does that necessarily relate to the fact that you become a much more skillful angler? Not necessarily so. It depends on you. Are you once again an observant angler? Do you understand what's going on on that river? Every day you go there, every day could be different.

Okay, so you're going at a time when there's a period of emergences — be they caddis, mayfly, or stoneflies, or what? Well, you should be aware of that. Even somebody that is not, shall we say, a skillful angler should have some awareness of that. You would assume. Okay, yeah, I saw these bugs, this, that, and the other. They should also develop, you would assume, an awareness of what flies to use and how to present those flies to catch those fish. But you know what? They may well have terrible casting skills and they don't catch those fish because they don't have the ability to present those flies in an acceptable manner to the fish.

And I know that is a common issue with a lot of people that fly fish. I know that for a fact. I watch them. I don't say anything to them because I don't believe it's my place to do that. But when I'm there myself, I just watch people and see what they're doing. I'll give you another example — a little while ago, and this is something I see on a frequent basis, I might add. I was wade fishing myself, and there was a couple of guys there fishing downstream from me. I'm not joking. They must have been using an indicator that would stun a 10-pound trout if it hit them on the head. They had a huge indicator. Right. And they're fishing in skinny water about 18 inches deep where the fish there in that particular area of the river — which I know well — ultimately all they're eating is little tiny chironomids and probably little scuds, which are roughly about a size 16 or 18. But here they are banging this out in the water, and they must have been doing that at least for an hour. I could see — you could see that indicator a hundred yards away. I guarantee. A huge thing.

I could have gone down there and given them a lesson. Said, "Hey, you know, you're wasting your time doing this." But I just don't always do that. Sometimes I might, but generally, ultimately, it amounted to this: those two guys had never had any what I call significant instruction about how to approach what they were doing. They probably just went into a fly shop or some store and bought these big indicator bobbers. I have no doubt they acquired some flies from some source or whatever. And when they started doing their own thing without any chance of success whatsoever — did they make a fatal mistake? Of course they did. They should have gone and got at least some instruction.

Most of the fly shops that I know of are only too prepared to give somebody free instruction. You can become a member of your local fly fishing club like we have here. We have a huge fly fishing club here in Mountain Home, Arkansas, or TU. I guarantee there will be guys there that will help you and it won't cost you a thing. Or you can attend classes, some of which you would have to pay for. Obviously, if you want to come and be a participant in some of the classes that I do, you're going to pay for it. Because that's my profession. I spent my life learning what I know. I didn't get paid for everything I learned. I can assure you I spent thousands and thousands of hours fishing and doing what I know today to learn what I know today.

Nobody — I'm not saying I didn't learn from other people. Of course I did. And everybody that fishes has. You can't say otherwise. But you develop, obviously, over and above those levels of skills that other people have taught you, and you benefit from that. Everybody else has. And you can pass that on to another person, which is what it's all about.

So I would just make that case as an example of what I saw there a few weeks ago, and it's not something that I don't see on a frequent basis because I do. And the other one — I said earlier on is the heron stance. I was fishing a zone on our river here. It was a catch-and-release trophy zone a little while ago. And there was two guys fishing on the shoal at the top end of that particular section of the river. They were there for at least two hours. I was boat fishing, drift fishing, incidentally. So I'd run up upstream when I drift downstream a good ways and I'd come back up and do that. But they never moved. They stayed there for about two hours. I saw one of those guys catch a fish in all the time I was close enough to see what they were up to. But they never moved.

And I'm thinking, once again, you need to go and get something to teach you more about what you need to know, which is: you don't stand there more or less for two hours repeatedly doing the same thing within a relative distance of your casting zone over and over and over again. The fish aren't stupid. They're just not going to react to what you're doing half an hour later from when you started. It's not going to happen.

So there are so many things like that. I think — well, I know — that most fly fishermen do want to learn better skill levels. There's no argument about that. And most certainly, as you well know, they come to me — they want to learn the arts, methods, science, and skills of fishing wet flies. And there's a lot more to that than people realize. It's far more than just casting the flies across stream and stripping them back. That's probably 10 or 15% of the knowledge and skills of fishing those styles of flies.

But again, I have to say that unless you have good, developed casting skills, you're going to have a problem. Because where you're legally allowed to do it — in some places you may be restricted to one fly, or say like in Montana, legally only two — you may be able to fish three, four, or more flies. You can fish six flies on a leader system if you wanted to here. But nevertheless, in order to do that, you have to develop casting skills to know how to do that. Because I know, believe me, if I set somebody up with a three-fly dropper rig where you've got in the region of somewhere between 12 to 14 feet of overall leader length off that flyline, with dropper ties that are spaced approximately 30 inches apart, they don't take five minutes and they tangle them up. Why? Because of their casting skill. That's it.

You have to understand how to cast in such a manner that you do not cause those flies to tangle up. More to the point, you've got to be able to present those flies in a manner whereby you can control how those flies are fished and control that drift, and — more to the point — know exactly at what point in time a fish has taken your flies and you raise and hook the fish. And it takes a lot of practice to do that.

You know, contrary to what you might think — if you're going to chuck flies across stream, the fish does the work for you. It's going to grab the fly and you're going to feel it pull on it. Boom. And you may or may not get it. The most common error, of course, when people fish like that downstream, is they react instantly to the feel of the fish taking the fly. And guess what? They pull it out of its mouth, or it's on there momentarily and it comes off. There's a lot more to that skill when you are fishing downstream that avoids that situation from happening. Let's put it like that.

So regardless — and going back to something I talked about a little earlier on here — where nymph fishing is concerned, is it absolutely always necessary to fish nymphs on or near the bed of the river? Absolutely not. I can tell you now that fishing soft hackles by that means or method can be exceptionally deadly. In other words, what you're doing — you're fishing them in the same manner as you would present upstream, in front of, or downstream of a fish. The only thing is you've got to get those flies not always near or close to the bed of the river. That's far from the truth, to be honest about it. Because when you're fishing two or three flies like that, it enables you to fish them at different levels within that water column. And it's not always the case that flies have to be within six inches of the bed of the river before the fish will react to them. That's absolutely not true.

Obviously, some prevailing conditions may be related to that — exceptionally cold water or something like that. But certainly when water temperature is warm, food can be seen by those fish at many different levels within that water column. It may not necessarily be the fact that it's related to a hatch. It may be what we define as biological stream drift — where whatever it be, caddis larvae or caddis bugs, they drift downstream. They move to a different zone or whatever. I've seen times when I've seen loads of snails like that drifting down. Nobody quite understands, I guess, why they do it, but obviously they move, and that's their natural means to do it. They drift downstream.

So there's always things there that fish are aware of. You get a little fast riffle, for example, and all of a sudden it turns up a bit of the bottom. And guess what? The bugs get shifted off and they get churned around in those water columns and they get moved around. Don't think for a moment they all track close to the riverbed because that's far from the truth. They don't.

Anyway, the point of the matter is that you can fish soft hackle flies that cover different levels of depth in the water column as a dead-drift mode, as you would with an indicator, in other words. But of course, you generally wouldn't use an indicator. I know some people might do that, but I would tell you: if that's how you're going to fish, you don't do that. Let's put it that way. Why? Because you're adding something that can detract the fish from looking at your flies. And you all know that when you fish with an indicator, how many times does a fish come up and grab your indicator? Well, there's a reason for it. They see it, and they want to go up and investigate what it is. But if they do that, they weren't looking at your flies. Because you've changed their perception of vision to looking at your indicator instead of your flies. If you didn't have that indicator on, there's a very good chance they would take your fly, not the indicator.

But my point of the matter is that you may be fishing in three, four, five, six, seven, eight feet of water, and I see that frequently when we're drift fishing out here with indicators — a fish will come from the bottom of the river and take that indicator or grab it on the surface. Why? Because they see it. What I'm trying to say is that if you adopt the upstream approach so far as fishing soft hackles are concerned, avoid using an indicator. Your flyline is your indicator.

Obviously, if you're in what we call contact — close contact fishing, in other words, you're only recasting leader, kind of like EU nymph fishing for that matter — you're watching that for your indicator take of a fish. If you're fishing further across stream, you watch the flyline.

And another thing I might add here — big mistake by many anglers: their dry lines sink. If your dry line sinks — and I don't care how much you pay for a line — ultimately the factory finish of that line will start to wear off and your line will start to sink within the meniscus, i.e. the surface. If it does that, it ultimately will result in issues as far as effectively mending the line, because as you start to try to move the line, you drag everything else because it's in the water.

The most efficient way to be able to mend a flyline is that you mend it off the surface of the water. And the only efficient way to do that is to grease that line up so it does that. And there are a number of different products that you can use. Personally, I use Mucilin. I've used it all my life. And it requires, obviously, that you must maintain your line — keep it clean and so on.

And there's one other thing, incidentally, I might add here. It will pay you at times to stretch your line. What will ultimately happen is the lines kind of shrink somewhat and they don't lay straight. And not only that — it inhibits the line moving through your guides on your rod. So if there's a friend of yours fishing, just pull out 30, 40 feet of line and very, very gently just stretch that line. You'd be surprised how much it will actually stretch — you'll get three or four feet. And then, of course, keep it clean. That's more of an issue with guys that fish in warm water situations as opposed to good clean water like we have here on the White River or spring creeks. But nevertheless, grease that line up so it floats on the surface.

In fact, in the DVD I did on nymph fishing and Midge Magic Fishing, I show clearly the difference between a line that's floating on the surface and one that is not. If you try to move that flyline without moving that fly, and the line is in the water, the odds are you will not do it. You will drag that fly. Instantly raise that rod. If that line is on the surface of the water, you can just kick and lift that rod tip and that line will just lift straight off the surface with little or no disturbance to your fly. So that's something you folks that are listening should bear in mind. Make sure that your flyline — dry line of course — always is visible on the surface and not in it.

Okay, so going back to what I was talking about — fishing with the soft hackles. You may fish one, maybe two, maybe three. It's a means and method of skill and presentation that requires time to become skillful at, as with anything else.

Now, as far as the use of what we call the traditional wet flies, let me just say this too. Here in America, a wet fly for the majority is a fly that sinks — yeah, of course it is. If you relate that over there in the UK where I'm from, what a wet fly is, they will know exactly what you're talking about. It is a traditional winged wet fly, whatever it be — whether it be an Alexandra, or Wickham's Fancy, a Silver Victor, a Butcher, a Duck Fly, you name it. They will understand, yeah, I was fishing wet fly. They know what you're meaning.

If you're dealing with, shall we say, the shell hackles and spiders, well, that's of course more related to the North Country style of fishing, which almost always is pursued by fishing in a mode upstream, largely because you're fishing fast to shallow water streams and those fish intercept their food base as it comes down toward them. Whereas, of course, in the slower evening water systems like English chalk streams, that's a different ballgame. There you can cast a nymph upstream of a trout. It'll drift past that trout two or three feet or more downstream, and all of a sudden that trout will turn around, go downstream, and take it. That's a different scenario.

So once again, observation is an issue — under the prevailing conditions and the nature of the water you are fishing, what are those fish likely to do and how are they likely to respond to what it is you choose to do to catch them? So the answer really is there's more than one way to catch the same fish. But there's probably one way that's going to be more likely to do it than others. Because at any point in time, that trout — while it's in its watery world — is looking for something to eat. It may not matter that it's on or near the bed of the river. It could be in the mid-water column. It could be on or near the surface or on the surface. That fish is looking for something to eat.

And bear in mind, we also have terrestrials that get blown onto the surface of the water. It doesn't matter whether they're beetles, whether they're hoppers, or whether they're cicadas, whatever. There's always something in the environment of that fish's world that's going to instigate that fish to react to something that you are likely to do to catch it — if your approach is, shall we say, acceptable to the fish at that point in time.

So ultimately, I would say an all-around angler — if that's the way to say that — is a person that is an extremely observant person based on his own personal observations. Obviously, he's going to learn some of that from what he's told or what he's read. But ultimately, I will tell you from my experience, the people that are ultimately the best at it — their personal observations exceed what others have said or told to them. In other words, they see beyond that. Let's put it to you like that.

Put that into perspective. So I say to you, Marvin, "Yeah, go down the river today. You're going to see a hatch of whatever it is — PMDs." Well, all I told you is when you go to the river, you're going to see some PMDs on the water. What does that tell you? Oh yeah, I'm going to see some PMDs on the river. But does that help you in any other way so far as observation, so far as what you need to do to catch those fish that are feeding on PMDs? What flies are you going to use? What mode of presentation are you going to use? Are you going to fish a dry fly? Are you going to fish an emerger? Are you going to fish a nymph or what? There's a limitation insofar as what somebody has told you and what you have read, which is not so much what the advanced angler has got. He's got greater observations when he gets there and knows what's going on. And that's based on experience — a lot of it. There's no question about that.

But anyway, you know, as far as I'm concerned, an angler that is, shall we say, a skillful angler, has somewhat got command of, or got the ability to fish pretty much all means and methods. He may not be, by any stretch of the imagination, the most brilliant dry fly fisherman, but he may be a really good nymph fisherman. He may not be a good streamer fisherman, but yeah, he may be a good dry fly fisherman. And you almost always will find that one of those categories of fly fishing will be the one that he's really, really good at. Let's put it that way. That's not to say he's bad in any sense of the word in other means or methods of fishing. It's just the one that has a greater fundamental understanding and has probably applied more of his knowledge and skills to become that good.

I know guys that are exceptionally good casters and/or fly tiers, but they're really not that good anglers, which is interesting. Because you would think, well, a guy's a great caster — he also should be a good fisherman. Well, that's not true. Or he's a really good fly tier. Well, he should be able to tie every fly in the book that catches fish. That's not necessarily true. Why? Because the act of physically fishing and catching fish is a totally different dimension to being a really good caster or a really good fly tier.

However, a well-seasoned fly fisherman — or what I would consider to be a real high-end class fly fisherman — is good at those two things also. He's pretty good at fly tying, and he's pretty good at casting. Maybe not the world's expert, but nevertheless, he's got a greater fundamental understanding of that than, shall we say, the overall majority.

And I'll go back to telling you where Dave was concerned — he unquestionably had those skills to masterful levels, all of them. Whether he applied his ability to present those flies, he had a really, really good fundamental understanding of everything he did. Why? Because he'd spent a lot of time on that water fishing — thousands of hours. And I'll tell you the same thing: unless you spend thousands of hours on water, you're going to be somewhat limited. I understand that. But for the majority of anglers, if the truth be known, they can still acquire skill levels that they don't have if they're prepared to put in the time, the effort, and develop the knowledge and skills to do so. Whether they choose to want to do it — that's another matter.

In many cases, they like to go fishing. That's fine. They enjoy themselves and they catch fish with the limitation of skills they've got. And that's okay. But I also have a mind to tell them, "Hey, you know what? There's a whole bunch more that you could do that will really change your insight into what you can do in the wonderful world of fly fishing." You follow what I'm trying to say?

**Marvin Cash (00:27:15):** Yeah, I do. It's kind of interesting too, because it's almost like we've come full circle. Because I think you have to have the skills. So you kind of put that off to the side, but really it's kind of like you have to understand the trout behavior and the food behavior to then inform how you need to present your flies to have the highest

**Davy Wotton (00:27:37):** likelihood of catching the fish, right? Yeah. Absolutely. Yes. So I mean, even a

**Marvin Cash (00:27:44):** even a kind of an intermediate skilled person, or a person who can't fish a lot, if they think about the puzzle and say, "Well, it's April, I'm on this piece of water, this is what the trout should be doing, this is what the food should be doing" — and then the question is, do they have the skills

**Davy Wotton (00:27:59):** to present the fly in the best possible way? That's largely true. Once again, I have to go back to saying what I've said a good bit here: in order to improve your level of skill, you've got to do something other than what you just still do. In other words, granted, you accept the fact that that will catch you some fish. But you've got to develop other skills which relate to everything related to the physical act of fly fishing — be it casting, understanding fish behavior, the food that fish feed on, the best means of presentation, flies of choice — right? Because there's a whole big part of that equation that comes together to make it happen. I.e., a fish opens his mouth and takes your fly.

And then — you asked me about selectivity of fish, which is a good question — how does your decision, or my decision, or whatever, determine what it is that you do? Most of the time, what we're dealing with as far as the word selectivity is that the fish at that particular point in time are somewhat zoned in on a specific species at a given stage of the life of that specific species. Mostly related to emergence, because that is when you see the fish on or near the surface. The fact of the matter is, you don't really know what's going on subsurface unless you're in a situation where you're in a clear water system like an English chalk stream and you can watch them do it.

For the most part, the waterways that we fish, we don't or cannot see that. So that's beside the point insofar as selectivity is concerned, because as far as I'm concerned, the fish can be as selective on the bed of the river as they can on the surface. The difference is you don't see them on the bed of the river — or you're less likely to — but you do see that visual on the surface. That's the difference. Either way, those fish can be difficult either way.

So when you get the guys at the pub, and they say, "Oh, I didn't catch no fish. They were selective." And I ask them, "Well, what do you mean by that?" "Well, they were selectively feeding." I said, "Yeah, well, you know what? The answer to the issue where you are concerned is you hadn't figured out how to catch them. It wasn't that the fish was doing something different in that respect. It was just doing what it would naturally do. You just hadn't figured out what you need to do to deceive them." Which is what you're doing.

For the best will in the world, it doesn't matter what you tie on a piece of metal. And I can tie flies that are really anatomically correct and they look really good. Hey, why would the fish refuse that? The fact of the matter is they do. Strangely enough. And the simplest flies are the ones that work more effectively than those glorious creations that took you half an hour to tie. Which, in my opinion, if you're spending that much time tying at the vise, forget it, right?

**Marvin Cash (00:31:41):** Yeah, I was going to say, you need to find another hobby. You've got too much time on your hands.

**Davy Wotton (00:31:45):** That's right. That's right. If I was going to spend that much time at a vise tying a fly, I'm telling you now, I'm going to be tying somewhat — not all, but part of — a classic Atlantic salmon fly that would take me probably a few hours to tie anyway. It's not going to be an average trout fly that I can tie in two or three minutes.

Anyway, the answer to selectivity — once again — it matters not whether the fish are on the bed of the river, midway in the water column, or at varying degrees below the surface. It is the visual on the surface for most people that defines what they determine as selectivity. Well, define that word. Pretty much, from a fly fisher's point of view, it means that at any given time, there's a certain stage of that insect's life cycle that the fish are more tuned into. And obviously, in many cases, it's at the stage of transition from the nymphal or pupal stage to the winged insect. That's it. And in my experience, I would say that for 80% of the time, that is the most vulnerable area where your fly needs to fish to take that fish.

Obviously, there are times when you visually see them taking duns on the surface. And that's usually in slower water. And it's usually small insects too. In most cases — not all, but in a lot of cases it is. And therefore, you have to adopt your approach to that. Which is ultimately — I will tell you — assuming you've got the right skills of presentation, the fly can be absolutely critical. The fly. People will tell you it's all related to presentation. I'm not arguing that for one moment. But I will tell you that there are times if you don't have that right fly and the fish don't see it the way they want to see it, you ain't going to catch them. I mean, that's a fact.

No one's arguing that the presentation value is not important. Of course it is. You can present, ultimately in perfection, 20 different flies to that fish and it won't take them. Why? Because it sees them and it don't like what it sees in the story — in its zone of vision. Particularly when they're feeding on small insects, the zone of vision is very small. It's not wide. When they feed on caddis, it's significantly wider because the caddis are moving around under the water — left to right, up or down, whatever. When they're feeding on small insects, generally they're in slower, slack seams of water where they have more time to see them. And they're very, very persistent in the manner in which they actually take their insect.

Another interesting thing about that: if you ever watch fish rise — and I spent hours and hours doing that because they fascinate me — they'll come up, gently open their mouth, engulf that fly, and they sink back down again. They don't often just stay at the surface gulping bugs as they come down. They usually go up, they go down, they come up, and they go down. And obviously there are different reasons why they do that.

They may well go down a few inches or more, which is in addition to the surface — looking at what's coming toward them in front of them. And then they know distinctly at what point in time to rise, open their mouth, and take that fly. You must likewise figure that out. You must likewise present your fly, based on visual, on that timing. In other words, you may be using the right fly, but every time you essentially cast in front of that fish, the fish doesn't see it because it's going past the fish. In other words, the fish has just risen, taken a natural, and as soon as it does and it's sinking down a little bit into the water column, your fly passes over its head — gone behind the fish. He didn't see it.

So there are different things by skill of technique that you can deploy. One is observation. Again, observation. Watch that fish. Don't worry about just rushing out there, chucking the fly at the fish. If that fish is consistently feeding on a natural insect, it's probably going to do so for a good period of time, so long as that hatch takes place. If you go out there and instantly start chucking casts at it, the odds are you'll probably put that fish down. And you may be lucky — you may just catch it on the first cast. Possibly.

I will tell you — don't do that. I watch that fish, what he's doing. I want to see exactly the track that that fish is in. I also want to read that water. I want to see how that current is likely to influence my drift. Have I got to cast across the fast current across stream to get my fly into that soft water zone on the opposite side? If so, I'm going to consider where my approach is going to be to eliminate, for the best part of it, adverse drag. Things like that you take into consideration. It's not just a question of what we call barging out there and start chucking flies at that.

And so going back to what I was saying about the behaviour of the fish — you watch them and they delicately take down this little size 20 Blue-Winged Olive or a spinner, for example. Typically spinners — when they float dead on the surface, you may not actually see the fly because they are so low in the water's surface. You don't see dead spinners unless they're right at your feet or something. And a lot of people I know say, "Look at them fish rising. They're feeding and we can't see any bugs on the water." Why? Well, they're eating spinners. Dead flies. That's what they are.

You may see that here on the White River. It's definitely early in the morning. There ain't any natural flies flying around. They're eating dead spinners. You've got 100 miles of trout water on the White River. That's a lot of water. So you pay attention to that. Fish a PMD spinner or whatever it is, but watch the fish.

So don't assume always that you're fishing the wrong fly. It may be the case that what you're doing doesn't allow the fish to see your fly at the time that is appropriate for that fish to rise to the surface and take it as it would a natural. So you can do things to try and put things more in your favor.

And this is assuming you haven't spooked the fish by your leader or whatever the case may be. You present that fly further upstream. Which is also a common mistake, incidentally — casting the fly too close to where you see the rise. And incidentally, often where you actually physically see the rise is not where it actually happened. The fish's movement is actually upstream of where you see that disturbance of the water. And it may be dependent on the speed of water — it could be six inches, it could be a foot, it could be two feet. But present your fly much, much further upstream.

That gives a longer time delay. In other words, that fish may rise and sink down six inches and come back. And it may be whatever — a second or two seconds. So if you try and figure out, if you like, the delay time from the time that fish was last seen to the time it comes up again, and you present your fly upstream at the same appropriate time such that by the time your fly comes close to or near the fish, it sees it and comes up and takes it. It's hard to explain it verbally, but your observance of what's going on will teach you those things.

"Ah, I know I have the right fly, but the fish are not seeing it." And once again — when you become really familiar with the water that you fish on a regular basis, the odds are you know what flies should catch those fish under most prevailing conditions. Maybe not. You may find one day you go out there full of good intentions. "Yeah, we're going to have a good day." And all of a sudden, what the hell's going on here? I ain't catching nothing. They usually take my this, that, or the other, but I'm not catching any fish today. Why? There's got to be a reason why. And it's not necessarily that you're doing something wrong because you did that a hundred times and it's worked. It just may be that on that particular day, the fish have no interest in accepting the flies that you're fishing at that time. So you've got to change — for one reason or the other.

So once again, observation. And that's why — I said earlier on — I consider dry fly fishing, or shall we say fishing to fish on or near the surface that you can visually see most times, probably requires overall more relative skills of understanding based on all the necessary skills of the actual act of fishing and presentation of those flies and powers of observation.

That said, as I already said, likewise, the same thing can apply to fish that you can't see. Why is it that certain nymphs work exceptionally well on one day, but they don't the next? You think, "What the hell is going on here?" The last four or five times I've been out fishing here, I fished whatever — a Frenchie or a Pheasant Tail or whatever else — and done real, real well. And I come out here today and I made 30, 40 casts — no interest. Why?

You know the odds of the fish being there are there. Unless something dramatically serious happened and the fish weren't there, the odds are they're still going to be there. Why is it that I can't get those fish to take my fly?

I would accept that there are certain issues that may cause that to be the case, particularly here on the tailwater like mine. At certain times of the year when our lakes turn over and the water is discharged from the lake to the river, the DO levels — the dissolved oxygen levels — get exceptionally low. And that being the case, I can assure you that fish are less likely to want to eat for obvious reasons. Because the parameters of oxygen levels in the water are so low. And you may have to go 9, 10, or 12 miles downstream before the DO levels in the water increase to a sufficient level that the fish are more interested in taking. But that's typically usually a case related to tailwater subject to lakes above where the water turns over. In other words, the warm water starts sinking to the lower levels. Don't forget Bull Shoals Lake is over 200 foot deep, which is an exceptionally deep lake. And that's not always the case with others. But that may be the reason.

Then water temperature may be another reason. Dramatic changes in water temperature affect fish. I know that to be the case here. We may have an average, say, whatever, 55 degrees. They release generation out of the dam and water comes down there at, say, 48 degrees. Well, that sudden change in water temperature will often shut the fish down. Excessive levels of temperature in water can do the same thing.

When you get low levels of water in the summer months, you get temperatures in the river increased dramatically. Everything on the bank — whether it be the rocks or the gravel — they absorb heat. And that fundamentally causes the edges of the water to warm. I have seen times here where I check water temperatures in the margins at 75 degrees, because you've got 90 or 100 degree days, and those rocks and gravels that are right on the edge of the water are really hot. Water tracks over that stuff, that temperature is absorbed into the water. And when you have low flows on the river, the further you go downstream, of course, the warmer the water gets. That may be another reason. But those are generally exceptions to the rule, to be honest about it.

The fact of the matter is that you may well get there one day, do what you've always done, and get no positive results. Well, other than the things I've just explained, there may well be an issue with the flies you're using. And you would assume, "Well, if they take these on a regular basis, why don't they take them today?" And I tell you it's a weird thing — and I tell you that from my own experience. Many, many times you go there with obviously that initial approach and nothing's happening. Then you've got to start chopping and changing. All of a sudden you find the answer. So instead of, say, a Pheasant Tail or a black chironomid or whatever else you want to think of, you put a different fly on and they attack it. You can't go wrong. You start pulling them out one after the other. Very strange.

Why should that be? Why should those fish all of a sudden change from something that they've always reacted to, to something that, well, you've never fished that before? I can't give you the answer to that. The fish can, but I can't. I just know from years of fishing that never accept what you do as always the answer. You've got to be versatile.

If you fish in a zone of water for a relatively short period of time and have no positive results, one of two things should happen. One is you better move, or you change the method of fishing that you're doing. In other words, you've got to show something different to those fish. Because if you persistently keep showing them the same thing over and over and over again, I can pretty much guarantee you they're going to get wised up and won't take it.

And big browns are like that. The best chance you're catching a really good, big trophy brown trout is the first time it ever sees the fly that you're putting in front of it. The more you do that, the less likely you are to catch it. And that's largely true with big rainbow trout.

In fact, I would say this — and as you know, the White River here in Arkansas — a 20-inch brown trout here, we don't consider it to be a trophy. It's got to be 24 inches or more. And there's a lot of them in this river. But you try and catch a big rainbow. Big rainbows, in my opinion, can be more difficult to catch than big brown trout for lots of different reasons. One primary one being that the big browns are much more aggressive than big rainbows. I'm not saying they don't eat larger food forms, but they're different. They really are different.

So for me, it's a pleasure to see the days when we catch these bigger rainbows — 24 to 25-inch rainbows — because you don't see them that often. You know they're there, but you don't catch them too much.

So fly selection was something else that you asked me about. Oh, that's a big, big question. I'll go back to what I was saying. You can probably take 10 flies and fish any trout water in the world — the same flies, by the way — and one or another of those flies will guarantee to catch you fish. I'm not suggesting for a moment that those flies may be the ones that will catch you a boatload. But they will catch you some fish. Because what you're going to do or use are 10 flies that cover a lot of zones within the water column. You're going to fish nymphs, you're going to fish some dry flies, and you're going to fish some emergers. And you're going to fish a streamer, which definitely would be a Woolly Bugger, because internationally, worldwide, there is no single fly of that nature to beat for catching fish.

Then you're going to use basic, simple Pheasant Tails and Hare's Ears as nymphs. They're standard flies that trout almost anywhere in the world will eat. I guarantee you that. Then you're going to use a couple of dry flies. Number one I'd probably put on my list would be an Elk Hair Caddis — universally, it is a great fly. Next one I'd probably put on my list would be an Adams, which is again consistently a good fly. It just generally attracts fish.

In terms of soft hackles concerned, yeah, almost always it would have to be a Partridge and Hare's Ear. I can pretty much guarantee you that if fish are looking for something on or near the surface and you twitch that fly in the right way, they'll come up and eat it. So within a relatively small selection of flies, you can catch fish in any waterway that they live.

But as fly fishermen, it ain't like that, right? We carry boxes of flies. If you saw what I had in my boat, you wouldn't believe it. And there is a reason why — it's not because I need them, to be honest. It's because when I tie flies for customers, I always tie three or four more than what the customer wants. And I'm always, obviously, building up more and more flies. So I put them in a fly box. And I put that, obviously, in a box in my boat.

When I go fish myself, I take one fly box with me. I don't need hundreds and hundreds of flies in a box. I know what I need. And pretty much there are a number of flies that cover the categories I just said — which would be some nymphs, some dry flies, some wet flies, and possibly a Woolly Bugger. I don't use that fly that often because I prefer to use adult imitations. But that said, I know it's a very efficient, effective fish-catching fly. And probably when I'm fishing newbies — newcomers — that's the first fly I'm going to put on their rig for them so they can cast it across stream and let it swing around and come back. And obviously the chances of them catching a fish are pretty good. I'm certainly not going to take them out there and expect them to present a dry fly on a drag-free drift because that ain't going to happen. Right?

**Marvin Cash (00:52:21):** Yes. Size 24 on 7X.

**Davy Wotton (00:52:25):** Oh yeah, well, you've got to be getting up in there to the levels of a little more skill to do stuff like that, right.

I fish waters in my lifetime that one could argue those fish are nearly impossible to catch. And it's not so much because they've been pressurized by anglers — one has to accept that fish are persistently fished for by whatever means they are, whether it be fly fishing, bait, or whatever the case may be. There's no doubt that they do wise up. I mean, they do. There's no argument about it. And that's due to obviously the presence of anglers and the means of method that they deploy to try to catch them.

But that said, I fish places where those fish have never been subjected to anything like that kind of pressure from a human being. But they are exceptionally difficult fish to deceive and catch. And obviously, we're talking about wild, stream-borne fish. They're so tuned in to their environment and the natural food sources that are abundant to them that if you do something that doesn't really come close to what they expect to see, you'll probably spook them and they'll take off. You know, good luck. We ain't going to catch them. They're extremely wary of anything that they see or feel that is different.

And when I say feel, I mean this: if you do not wade in a manner that basically reduces any water disturbance whatsoever, they're gone. When you wade in a river, you create pressure waves that go upstream as well as downstream. In other words, the water can't pass you, but it forces pressure waves upstream of you. And those fish are sensitive to that. They may not know you're there, but they sense something is wrong. For example, in nature, it could be an otter swimming upstream toward them. You follow what I'm trying to tell you? There's something that changes water pressure that they sense or they hear — something different. They're gone. I mean, like a shot, they're gone. And they probably won't come back to that particular lie that they were in for quite some time.

Because I've often watched wild trout — which used to grow in one of my local rivers over there in the UK — run off. And I've gone back an hour later or more, and he's still not returned to that lie. And they may not. Oftentimes, after a time, they will.

And once again, your approach has got to be extremely careful and cautious. Once again, observation. You're observing what that fish is doing. You're not making an assumption by any stretch of the imagination. You make an observation of that fish. What do I need to do to get an approach to that fish? That's the first thing. Not necessarily how I'm going to cast my fly to it. How am I going to get an approach to that fish before I make my presentations? If you make the wrong approach, then the odds are you're not going to be able to make a good casting presentation. That's the first thing.

And then the flies you fish to those fish — they can be really quite simple. I mean, a lot of those fish you can deceive with fairly simple flies like a Hare's Ear or once again a Pheasant Tail. Simplistic flies. They're not, by any stretch of imagination, pieces of artwork. But what you have to do is present that fly to that fish so there is absolutely zero awareness on the fish's part that you as a human being are anywhere near it. And you'll catch them.

I don't doubt the guys listening that have been fishing in New Zealand's South Island know exactly what I'm talking about with those big old browns down there. You make a bad presentation, you screw something up — gone. All you've got to do is cast a fairly simple fly to that trout. And if he's not aware of your presence in any way, shape, or form, he'll take it. That's it.

But the difficulty arises with some of these fish — which are in gin-clear water, incidentally, and extremely wary animals — when they feed on or near the surface. If there's anything — anything — that they see as unnatural by disturbance or movement on that water surface, they will never take your fly. You may run them off, in fact. But they won't take your fly. Even though your fly is absolutely the perfect fly for them to take if they see it the right way. But if you do something that is not what they expect to see, they're gone. And once again, observation based on the fact that you've got skill levels.

Anyway, fly fishing for me has always been a fascination in my life in all aspects. And as you know, I developed many, many different fly patterns that are appropriate for specific means of fishing — whether they'd be traditional flies, wet flies, soft hackles, whether it be emergers or whatever the case may be. Because my years of experience fishing has taught me what to do to make that fish react to those flies. Let's put it to you like that.

That's not to say that if I gave you some flies I know for a fact will deceive that fish under those prevailing conditions, they're going to do the same for you. Because you may not present them in the same manner that I do. That's just how it is. But that said, there are certain flies that are what you call pretty good standards that if you give a person a bunch of those flies, the odds are they're going to work for them. But they're not what I consider to be flies that require a little more, shall we say, precision insofar as how they're tied and how they're presented.

The interesting thing, I guess, on another aspect — where fly tying is concerned — like I said, when I first started commercially tying flies, that wasn't something I could do 12 months a year. I was also a musician. I don't know if you knew that. I was a professional bluegrass banjo player. So I traveled around the world in the winter months with different bands, and we worked on U.S. military bases overseas. And that was a whole bunch of fun. Because over here in the UK, the fishing season closes. You can't go fishing. Well, it depends on the species, incidentally, but essentially the fly season finishes. And in a lot of rivers, that doesn't open until March. And on the chalk streams, that doesn't really open until May. So you have a long period of time where unless you want to fish for other species — which I told you I did — you could fish every day of the week if you want, but you'd have to fish for different species based on the seasons and where you could or couldn't fish. Let's put it like that.

So for the best part where the trout fly fishing scene was concerned, yeah, you had a closed season — or those months where you had time to do other stuff. And obviously, fly tying was one of those. So I tied lots and lots of flies. I tied flies for London fly shops back in those times too. And they would obviously sell them mail order and so on. And that's another thing — I developed my own mail order business back there in the late 60s and the 70s and produced a catalog. And don't forget, back in them times — hard for the younger generation to imagine that — but we didn't have cell phones or internet or none of that. The only way you got media knowledge was you advertised in the fly fishing magazine with your phone number and somebody would call you up or write you a letter and order some flies from you. That kind of thing, right?

And so everything today happens so damn fast. Somebody expects you to answer the phone every time they call you. Like, well, they're doing something else. Anyway. So I'd tie a layer of flies in the winter period. And more to the point, things enabled me to do things that, obviously, in the early years I couldn't. And most of that was related to materials — synthetic materials. By the time I'd have to say somewhere probably late 70s or something like that, there was probably nothing I didn't need — I could get anything I wanted back then. Even the exotic materials for Atlantic salmon flies, whether it were Cotinga, Indian crows — I could still get that. Easier today? Good luck. Or if you find it, it's going to cost a bloody fortune.

I could go to the Veniard warehouse there in London because I got to know them there pretty good. And I'd just go in there and Jean was the manageress and she'd say, "Yeah, what are you looking for?" I told her what I want and we'd go out back and all these big huge cardboard boxes — all of this fantastic stuff in there, whatever it was. So it wasn't so much an issue then. You could get all the snipe skins you wanted, the woodcock, all of that stuff. No problem. That's not so today, obviously, because the demand exceeds the availability — particularly stuff like that, most of which was legally harvested for a limited period of time within the hunting season and sold to the likes of a Veniard to process it, whatever, and package it and sell it. But they still have today limitations of what they can get, let's put it to you like that.

But anyway, really what I was saying to you was that for me, when synthetic materials became more available, that opened up a whole new era as far as what you could do in terms of innovation. I think to some extent today — if I was to be honest, personally myself — I think in some respect the use of synthetics has gone a little too far as far as creating artificial flies. And don't get me wrong by what I'm saying. And the reason I say that, bearing in mind my history, is I'm still very much a traditionalist in that sense of the word. I still have a love of flies that existed 150 years ago or more. Because I still think there's a great intrinsic value in a lot of those flies that doesn't exist with, shall we say, more modern flies. That's the way to explain it to you. And that's not by any stretch of imagination to disregard the relevant skills of what some of those tiers now produce because they're exceptionally good. I don't dispute that for one moment. And most certainly, obviously, myself — I can do the same if I want to do it. But I still have a natural instinct to favor the flies of the past.

Of course, some introduction of the use of synthetic material — and I would always argue this too — if you wanted to discuss the aspects of fly tying more, a skilled fly tier — in other words, the guys that I would hold on a pedestal as far as skillful fly tiers that I know personally or otherwise, overall — that are capable of tying everything. In other words, they can tie a size 24 midge and they can tie a large classic Atlantic salmon fly. There are very few tiers in the world that can do that. And they may choose not to want to tie salmon flies. That's okay. I don't have a problem with that. Whereas salmon fly tiers might not be interested in tying little midges. Fine, I understand that. Either way, they have acquired very high levels of skills with what they do. But on the other hand, are they accomplished across the board at everything? Probably not. But that's okay.

I'm just kind of making a statement there that to me, the most accomplished fly tiers in the world that I know — that can really do everything — are few and far between. And you could also say the same thing about fly fishermen too. That's the same thing to some extent. It's just how you — or I personally — view that. Let's just say that.

So fly tying has changed dramatically too today. And I'd say almost certainly due to social media. All of a sudden, they could just go on their YouTube. "How do I tie this?" Type it in. There come up 10 different variations of how to tie the same fly. Good, bad, or indifferent, whatever the case may be. The availability of fly tying material today is not what it used to be. What I mean by that is the availability of given natural material. And that's brought about by lots of different reasons. One is the demand, obviously, but also the now legal restrictions on import of fur and feather from overseas sources — particularly fairly exotic feathers because of various international treaties, or the veterinary licensing certifications of importation. And the same thing vice versa — export of materials from this country to overseas sources. The same thing comes under restriction. So the availability of a lot of imported natural materials is less today than at one time it used to be.

And fortunately for us here, there are a number of people that commercially raise feather — primarily poultry, obviously, with capes and stuff like that. And of course, we have natural resources of fur from animals which are legally harvested during the hunting season. So there's still an abundance of, fortunately, natural material. And the synthetic material market is unbelievable anymore.

I would hate to be — I own fly shops, incidentally, in the UK — I would hate to have to be a fly shop owner today and having to decide what the hell do I carry in fly tying material. It's unbelievable. And most people wouldn't be aware of that because they don't have trade catalogs to know what's there. But that said, it is unbelievable the amount of material that is available today as far as synthetics for fly tiers. Unbelievable. You have to have one hell of an amount of money tied up in fly tying product in your store to even come close to carrying all of that. It's not going to happen. And so I guess what a retail fly shop really has to do is cater for, most of the time, the local community and the nature of the type of materials they use for the flies that they generally use within their location. You know what I'm saying?

And then you've got, of course, some of the mail order businesses that try to carry a lot of stuff. Feather-Craft is one of the better ones. They're pretty good at carrying pretty much mostly what you need. But they won't have it all, but they'll have a lot of it. So it's a big, big business compared to what it ever used to be years and years ago. Yeah, it's a good thing, I guess, in many ways, because everybody along the line is making some income from marketing a product, and the guys that buy the stuff are having fun tying flies with it.

**Marvin Cash (01:10:52):** Yeah. Everybody wins, right? It sounds like we'll have to bring you back and we'll do another show and we'll call it "The Complete Fly Tier." Yeah. Yeah. I think there's as much interesting stuff, Davy, to unpack about that. Kind of back to your point about when you can't get everything really easily, you have to be really resourceful and thoughtful about your materials. Right. Yeah.

**Davy Wotton (01:11:19):** I remember. Yeah.

**Marvin Cash (01:11:20):** Yeah, and so today we've got this, like, blessing where we have substitutes for natural materials, but we have a lot more stuff. And so it's a different interaction with the sport where you just basically go to the internet and have it shipped to your house, right? And you tie with it.

**Davy Wotton (01:11:36):** That's why, when seal's fur became somewhat banned over there in the UK, that's why I developed the SLF dubbing materials initially. And that started off with the standard SLF. And then I developed a lot of different other blends related to — I did all the stuff from my friend Oliver Edwards, all the master class blends. I did those. I did the Dave Whitlock dubbing blends and the Paul Jorgensen dubbing blends and a whole bunch of stuff. And I learned more about the processes of putting synthetic and natural material together and the dyeing processes in those years. It's like, yeah, unbelievable.

I sold that business to the Wapsi Fly Company here in Mountain Home, Arkansas quite some time ago, and they introduced all of the original blends I did, but they certainly carry a lot of it. So if people say, "SLF dubbing products" — that comes back to me because that's how I started that. SLF stands for Synthetic Living Fiber. And then my friend, he said, "No, no, no, no — I wrestle out. You're going like seal's fur lives forever." I said, "Yeah, right. Yeah."

**Marvin Cash (01:12:52):** I think if I look over here on my tying table, I bet you I have a storage box probably with 30 packages of like spiky squirrel and all that stuff in it.

**Davy Wotton (01:13:01):** Oh, yeah. The squirrel dubbing. Yeah. The hare's ear. Yeah, sure. Yeah.

**Marvin Cash (01:13:06):** So, Davy, we've talked about how important education is. And I would ask you a couple of things. I know you're getting ready to kind of shift gears and get away from being on the water and being in the field until kind of next season. But can folks expect to see you on the show circuit anywhere in 2024?

**Davy Wotton (01:13:30):** Yeah. Okay. Next year. And the biggest show we have here in Mountain Home, Arkansas — and some of the listeners almost certainly have been here and attended that — we'll see the Sowbug event. That's a big, big event here. I used to go to North Arkansas Fly Fishers. And that will be in March of next year. And ironically, I am the guest tyer at the event this next year. And that will be on the 21st, 22nd, and 23rd of March. And we have about 100 fly tiers there from different parts of the country. And we put on a lot of programs, and it's a great event.

And of course, if you come here, you're within a few miles of the White River. So you can always go fishing as well. The water may be high or low — I can't tell you what generation is going to be. But nevertheless, you've got plenty of opportunity because you've got the spring with the White River, the Norfolk River, the Little Red River, and the Little Missouri, and they are all trout water habitats in this area.

**Marvin Cash (01:14:41):** Yeah, and do you have kind of an idea of what your class offerings are going to be in 2024?

**Davy Wotton (01:14:48):** As far as the event is concerned, I will obviously be doing programs related — because the theme of the event is the wet fly — and so I'll be doing classes related to understanding means, methods, techniques, tackle, this, that, and the other, and demonstrating fly tying techniques for those particular kinds of flies. So yeah, those are the dates I just gave you in March for that event.

**Marvin Cash (01:15:17):** Davy, if folks wanted to either book you for a lesson or get a day on the water, what's the best way for folks to learn more about what you offer and how to find you and all that kind of good stuff?

**Davy Wotton (01:15:31):** Oh, yeah. Well, okay. They can go to my website, which is davywottonflyfishing.com. Okay? And then they can get the relevant information off it about classes, the schools, and whatever else. Or they can call me or text me on my personal telephone number, and that's on that website. So, yeah, anybody that has an interest in wanting to come here and spend some time and learn some stuff and accept, shall we say, justifiable criticism — if I tell you why you're doing this wrong, it's nothing personal. I'm telling you that you're doing something wrong, and ultimately I'm going to try to get that fault corrected.

I cannot guarantee you that for some of the reasons that we talked about this evening. But I can certainly educate you more. And pretty much I know what you would need to know. Let's put it this way — regardless of whether it be nymph fishing, dry fly, wet fly, whatever. And we have a wonderful resource there on the White River. And you never know — you may well hook one of our big trophy brown trout. You never know.

**Marvin Cash (01:16:45):** Well, it's well known. I've seen the pictures. And, Davy, are you on social media at all? Or have you been lucky enough to avoid that whole mess?

**Davy Wotton (01:16:57):** I do at times post on social media — really exceptional fish. But honest to God, I get so busy. When you do a guide day, you get up in the morning about 6 o'clock, 6:30. Get everything ready. You may have to drive 30, 40 miles — not always to where you're going to fish that day. You spend the day out in the river with your customers. You've got to drive back home. And you've got to deal with a lot of email correspondence. I may have to tie back up flies because they lost them or something else or whatever the case may be. Now I've got some animals to take care of as well. There's a limit to what you can get done in a day. And not to mention yard work and this, that, and the other. I write articles for magazines. If any of the listeners here go to the North Arkansas Fly Fishers website — which is NAFF, N-A-F-F — every month I write an article on there that's got, not in all cases, but sometimes a lot of history. So I deal with some historical aspects of fly fishing and the flies related to them.

There's so many different things I do on there. For example, this next month my article is related to soft hackles — but not what most people know. It's related to the Irish style soft hackles which are used for the Danica Ephemera mayfly emergence. And that ain't tied on a size 16 or 18 hook. They're big. They're tied on size 12 and 10. And I'll show examples of those flies. So if the listeners have got an interest, they can go to our website and they can pull up a lot of the stuff that I've written over the years, and I know they'll find a lot of that pretty darn interesting.

So yeah, ultimately — if you want to get a hold of me, go to my website or just call me directly on my number, which you've got: 870-404-5223. And text me. I can't always get back to you right away, but I will.

**Marvin Cash (01:19:12):** Yeah, and I will drop a link, because that sounds like a great resource to get those articles. I'll drop that in the show notes too. And, Davy, I really appreciate you — even though you only got a half a day today. I really appreciate you spending so much time with me this evening.

**Davy Wotton (01:19:26):** Yeah. 93 hours.

**Marvin Cash (01:19:30):** I haven't quite set the Supinski record, but I got pretty close.

**Davy Wotton (01:19:35):** Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah, so by all means — if you want to delve into the aspects of fly tying historically to where we are now, yeah. I'd love to do that. Just let me know.

**Marvin Cash (01:19:50):** I would love to, too. Thank you so much again for making the time, Davy. You're most welcome, Marley. Take care of yourself. I'll do it. All right, my friend. 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 review on the podcast of your choice. And be sure to check out our Patreon community and head over to www.nor-vice.com to see if Nor-vise will be coming to a show near you and to check out all of Tim and Michelle's cool products. Tight lines, everybody.