Bill Flader shares lessons learned from 75 years of fishing

Keep your fly in the water, if for no other reason than that’s where the fish are, and you may be missing opportunities, as the following examples show.

Many readers will have fished for trout or salmon in Lake Michigan tributaries, or even western rivers. I’ve had hookups just by leaving line out while wading cross-current moving from place to place.

Then there’s 73 year old John H, part of our party at Christmas Island for bone fishing, who (probably having been there before) trolled a tarpon fly (usually no longer than 4 inches) behind the slow-moving punt used to transport fishermen between wadable flats. He was rewarded by landing a 6 foot, 85 pound barracuda, an all-tackle world record.

And on a unique trip, six of us spent a week fishing for bonefish from a 90 foot “mothership” yacht anchored on the remote south end of Andros Island in the Bahamas. It was a cold spring in that area, and the occasional bones we saw were in large groups, usually followed by sharks or cudas … not happy fish. Later in the week our guide reported seeing two large bones, so four of us were dropped off to wade in that direction, to be picked up later. Soon clouds rolled in, making spotting fish impossible, so there we stood. After a while it occurred to me there could be fish swimming nearby and not even know it, so I starting casting, very quickly hooking an above average torpedo, which when landed we estimated at 6-7 pounds, likely the biggest of the week.

You never know.