Blue Skies Fly Fishing Guide - Yakima River, WA

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Trout Bums at Large is a monthly column appearing in the Yakima Herald-Republic and the Seattle Times. The column is written by Randal Sumner and Mark Littleton. We will be keeping an archive of these articles on this page.

Vested Interest
by Randal Sumner
04/01/2004

I had some new clients on the water a couple days last week, both new to me and to fly fishing.

Two days is hardly enough time to cover all the intricacies of catching trout on a fly rod. What I mean is, we caught some fish but will they be able to go cold turkey without the aid of fishing professional and repeat the experience? I hope so, it is a very simple concept that takes years to perfect.

One of the guys had a brand new empty vest and wanted to know what to buy to fill it up, what tools are useful, what are junk. So lets start with the vest itself, almost all the major brands are good. Like most purchases if you buy quality the first time it always pays off long term. My old vest is about ten years old it’s only the second one I’ve owned. It has fifteen different size pockets that are full of really used fishing goods. Let me go through it with you.

First I carry two fly boxes both are Richard Wheatley swing leaf models; they hold a ton of flies. These are great boxes I’ve worn the paint off both of them, they are durable and elegant, unlike plastic they add some English tradition to my fishing experience.

The second item is a stainless steel nippers on a retractable lanyard, a good one will cost about $10. On the front upper pocket is a hard foam fly patch; the ones that come with some vests are sometimes a hunk of wool, which is visually interesting but a bad way to keep track of expensive flies.

I carry a Ty Fast nail knot tool for attaching the leaders to the fly line. I notice they are selling all kinds of leaders and fly lines with loops already attached, learn to tie a nail knot its not that hard. The perfection loops just add a little more drag to your presentations. It’s not that hard to do it right.

The only exotic piece of equipment I carry is a stream thermometer; the one I have is for testing refrigeration equipment. A thermometer is one of the few ways we have of predicting trout behavior. No we don’t take the fish’s temperature, it’s for the river water. The water temp is a great indicator of what the bugs and trout are up to.

As for the rest of the pockets I carry four different spools of Climax tippet material, from 6x to 3x and a couple spools of 8lb Maxima. I also have packages of Climax tapered leaders, usually 9’ 5x, just cut the loop off. In the last pocket I have some strike indicators both the poly yarn and corky type for different nymphing situations and a couple of bottles of Loon Aquel fly floatant. In the big back pocket I put my old catch and release net, it’s an old wooden thing that has seen a lot of beautiful trout. I have quite a few empty pockets, that at one time or another may have carried things I was sure I needed. The last piece of advice I have is keeping the vest out of your spouses view; she WILL want to wash it sooner or later. Wash my vest, you must be kidding.

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