Tell me about it!
I'm very much in the "gear whore" phase of my angling journey. If I don't catch fish, by God, it won't be because I didn't have the right tactics and gear covered... or, so I like to think.
Earlier this year, I took an extended trip and fished in Florida, New Mexico, and Utah. I thought about trying to do salmonflies in Montana, too, but it became clear that would be one stop too many, so next time.... Anyway, I brought all kinds of salt and freshwater gear and flies, to the point where my giant suitcase was half filled with fishing gear. At trip's end, I had used about 5% of it (and caught lots of fish!). That said, I had few regrets, because I never found myself wishing I had something.
The worst overkill on preparation, by far, ended up being for Utah. I had been there last year (about a month later), and I had tough fishing until I found a dropper/dry combo that worked pretty well on my last day. Before that, I had tried streamers, double nymph setups, terrestrials... everything I could think of, with very little success. This year, I prepped heavy for the dry/dropper thing. The fish weren't responding to ANY of what had worked the year before. Turned out they were keyed into the caddis hatch so much that caddis was all they were looking for. I had only a few caddis imitations, and most of them weren't working. I had one, lone, purple X-Caddis in my box, and it proved to be the ticket. What had seemed like impossible fish instantly became stupid. I caught lots of browns between 17 and 22 inches, a few nice rainbows, and even a rare cutthroat, all on the same dry fly. I finally broke it off while trying to land a hog. None of my other caddis patterns were working, so I decided to go smaller with a midge pattern. A No-see-um got it done. Anyway, I figure I tied about 100 flies for that trip, and I ended up catching all my fish on two.
The trouble is that we can do research and learn about what MIGHT be happening at our destination when we get there, but we don't know what's ACTUALLY happening until we're there, so we have to prepare for every possibility we can imagine. That inevitably leads to overkill. The more we learn about a given fishery, the more in tune we become, but it takes years of fishing the same place to get it dialed.
We tend to fool ourselves, too. 20 years ago, I fished woolly buggers and Muddlers, with the occasional orange stimulator or steelhead caddis, all off the same rod/floating line, just about everywhere, and I caught at least as many fish as I do today. Hmmm....
I'm very much in the "gear whore" phase of my angling journey. If I don't catch fish, by God, it won't be because I didn't have the right tactics and gear covered... or, so I like to think.
Earlier this year, I took an extended trip and fished in Florida, New Mexico, and Utah. I thought about trying to do salmonflies in Montana, too, but it became clear that would be one stop too many, so next time.... Anyway, I brought all kinds of salt and freshwater gear and flies, to the point where my giant suitcase was half filled with fishing gear. At trip's end, I had used about 5% of it (and caught lots of fish!). That said, I had few regrets, because I never found myself wishing I had something.
The worst overkill on preparation, by far, ended up being for Utah. I had been there last year (about a month later), and I had tough fishing until I found a dropper/dry combo that worked pretty well on my last day. Before that, I had tried streamers, double nymph setups, terrestrials... everything I could think of, with very little success. This year, I prepped heavy for the dry/dropper thing. The fish weren't responding to ANY of what had worked the year before. Turned out they were keyed into the caddis hatch so much that caddis was all they were looking for. I had only a few caddis imitations, and most of them weren't working. I had one, lone, purple X-Caddis in my box, and it proved to be the ticket. What had seemed like impossible fish instantly became stupid. I caught lots of browns between 17 and 22 inches, a few nice rainbows, and even a rare cutthroat, all on the same dry fly. I finally broke it off while trying to land a hog. None of my other caddis patterns were working, so I decided to go smaller with a midge pattern. A No-see-um got it done. Anyway, I figure I tied about 100 flies for that trip, and I ended up catching all my fish on two.
The trouble is that we can do research and learn about what MIGHT be happening at our destination when we get there, but we don't know what's ACTUALLY happening until we're there, so we have to prepare for every possibility we can imagine. That inevitably leads to overkill. The more we learn about a given fishery, the more in tune we become, but it takes years of fishing the same place to get it dialed.
We tend to fool ourselves, too. 20 years ago, I fished woolly buggers and Muddlers, with the occasional orange stimulator or steelhead caddis, all off the same rod/floating line, just about everywhere, and I caught at least as many fish as I do today. Hmmm....
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