Musings Of An Old Trout Bum

Comments on everything fly fishing and other stuff too

I would like to introduce myself . . .  my name is Greg Vinci, and I am a 77 year old trout bum.  I’m also an author, photographer, public speaker and for twenty years I was an owner of a wholesale fly fishing tackle distribution company.  In 2017 I authored the book “Flyfisher’s Guide to California” which has been updated and will be back in print early in 2025.  Additionally, I created and manage the website www.californiaflyfishingreports.com which is a weekly updated report on many of California’s most popular waters. For the last twenty years my stories and images have been featured in many fly fishing, historical and travel magazines. I’ve shot over twelve magazine covers which which I think is some kind of record though I think there is another guy or two out there that may have shot more.  I don’t keep up much with what other guys are doing.  

I’m, for better or worse, a skeptic.  I’m proud of that though I’m aware that skepticism, if you are not careful, can cause you to ignore some very innovative ideas. Sort of like going through life with blinders on but in my case I’m interested in practically everything, it’s just that sometimes I want to shoot the messinger. I’m sarcastic as hell, and in social situations I have learned to keep my lips zipped, as I’ve found that some don’t think I’m as funny as I think I am. 

I will comment on a wide range of subjects but concentrate on those that relate to my over thirty years of fly fishing and the interesting experiences that I’ve enjoyed as a writer, photographer and author for fly fishing and outdoor magazines.  Warning, I’m not politically correct as it relates to fly fishing, and some of my opinions may go against the grain of those of you who have been indoctrinated by the somewhat uptight fly-fishing culture of the past whose remnants still occasionally haunt the sport. I hope you will join me two or more times a week for what I think will be an interesting and entertaining experience.

How I Became a Trout Bum

I don’t know what it was about me but for some reason one of my earliest memories was that I had a fascination with fish, particularly trout.  We lived close to the ocean and one Saturday morning, my dad woke me up early in the morning and we hopped into his old beater Buick Century, stopped by my grandparents’ house to pick up my grandfather and drove down to Manhattan Beach Pier which was maybe an hour from our house in North Hollywood, a suburb of LA. It seemed like a long drive for me, and if I remember right, I ended up falling back to sleep in the back seat of the car. I awoke as my dad was pulling into a parking lot.  From the rear window a warm car the outside seemed cold and you could barely see the other cars in the parking lot.  It might have been the first time I had seen fog as it was rarely foggy in the San Fernando Valley where we lived.  We got our gear out of the trunk and in the dim light, walked out on the pier which was lined with what I assumed were fishermen along the railings on both sides.  There was a distinctive fishy odor in the air and it got more and more intense as we proceeded towards a small building at the end of the pier.    

We entered the building and in it was a counter and a big fish tank with hundreds of small shinny fish swimming about.  Occasionally the person behind the counter would dip a small net into the tank and scoop up a bunch of fish and put them into a box like what Chinese food came in and give it to a customer.  Rather than buy the live fish my dad bought some dead ones that were on ice in the glass case beneath the counter (mackerel).  Once we left we walked along the pier until we found a spot among the many fishermen standing along the railing which was wide enough to fit the three of us.   My dad  and grandfather got our gear ready and then cut the little fish into small pieces  and placed one on the end of the hooks attached to our fishing lines.  We then lowered our lines down into the water and waited.  Occasionally we would raise and lower the lines slightly hoping to get the attention of the fish. 

After a while I heard one of the fishermen next to us yell “fish on” and I looked his direction to see him raising and lowering his pole in a pumping motion as he frantically cranked his reel trying to bring in what I knew must be a behemoth.   I stared at the water waiting for a glimpse of this denizen of the deep and after what seemed a long time to a six-year-old, the water began to boil around the line and a silver flash appeared for a second and then disappeared into the dark water as I could hear distinct whine coming from from the fishing reel as the fish tried to escape.  After what seemed an eternity, the fisherman was finally able to lift wiggling fish high enough out of the water so that his partner could lower a long handled net and retrieve the fish.  I was so excited that by time the fish was landed I was as exhausted as the guy who had just caught the fish.  That was the first time I experienced the visceral feeling and the pleasure of a predator, that in fly fishing circles spawned the term “the tug is the drug”.

It wasn’t long before the tip of my fishing pole began to wiggle.  My dad saw it first and he excitedly said “Greg, lift your pole, you’ve got a bite”.  I lifted the pole and held on tightly as I didn’t want to lose the fish and more importantly the pole and reel.  There was a lot at stake here.  Almost immediately I could feel my dad standing closely behind me with his arms wrapped around my body and his hands on the pole.  He coached me by telling me when to turn the crank of the reel and slowly but surely the fish came to the surface and my dad took over and pulled it out of the water and onto the deck of the pier where it flopped around as I attempted to grab it.  In the meanwhile, my heart was pounding harder than ever in my excitement as my primal instincts had taken over for the very first time, and there was no way I was going to allow myself to fail at grabbing that fish.  I finally was able to grab on to it long enough to throw it into a bucket that my dad had brought along in case we got lucky.  The body of the fish was sort of flat, oval in shape with dark stripes running along its sides.  My grandfather called it a perch.

From that day on, I was always begging my dad to take me fishing again and eventually I wore him down, so my dad agreed to take me on another fishing trip but this time for trout.  One Saturday morning, I was awakened by my dad telling me to get out of bed, get my clothes on and hop into the car.  I was a little confused as it looked like it was still night outside. He said, don’t worry about breakfast as we would get a doughnut along the way.  My dad put the fishing gear in the back seat, and we took off.  Getting a doughnut was a real treat to a six year old so the day was starting out well.  I settled down in the passenger seat and watched as the streetlights and neon signs of the San Fernando Valley moved by.  I knew that they would soon be replaced by pine trees as I figured we must be headed for the cool streams of the mountains that surrounded the LA area.  Surely it would take some time to get there but the memory of how cool it felt to have a fish tugging on my fishing line that time on the pier, would make it worth the wait.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t long however that my dad turned into a parking lot.  I could see some pine trees outside but also a few palm trees which seemed out of place.  He parked the car and said to get out.  I asked him, are we in the mountains yet? And he said yes and then said, “grab your fishing pole and follow me”.  So, we proceeded up a walkway between two tall buildings, and at the entrance was a sign that said Sportsman’s Lodge ⁽¹⁾.  We soon came to a bridge from where I could see a lake filled with crystal clear water.  The lake, that gave off a slight fishy smell, was surrounded by bushes and pine trees.  It was like a lush mountain forest except there was a building behind them.  Needless to say, my six year old mind was a little confused. 

My dad found a spot where a pipe was pouring water into the lake, and I could see what looked like hundreds of fish milling about, occasionally rising to the surface and grabbing something in their mouths and then returning to their companions below. He began rigging the fishing poles, tied on the hooks to the lines, pinched a little BB size weight above the hooks, and strung a round ball up the line and secured it with a toothpick.  He then pulled a jar out of the tackle box who’s contents appeared to be little red balls though when he opened the jar they smelled awful.  I asked them what they were and he said they were fish candy.  He pulled one out and carefully pierced it with the little round shaped hook, threw it in and handed me the pole.  He then said “if you catch a fish we can take it to the cook in the restaurant and ask him if he will fry it up for you.”

He instructed me to watch the red ball that floated on the surface and if it moved, lift my pole and maybe if I was lucky there would be a fish on the end of the line.  I stood there staring at the red ball, and nervously, waiting for the fish to grab the little red stinky candy we used for bait.  I didn’t know at the time that my nervous feeling was a precursor to the feeling that I would have as an adult when staring at my first buck through the Leupold scope mounted a top my Winchester 270. My six-year-old attention span generally lasted only about five minutes or so and my eyes began to wander away from the red float.  I didn’t know that I was about to learn one of the most important lessons in life and particularly the blood sports, is that the fish is going to strike, the duck is going to land in the decoys, and the buck is going to step out of the bushes right when you are taking a piss. 

Suddenly, I heard my dad say “strike! Lift your pole! You’ve got a fish! I turned to see that the float had disappeared, and the line was zig zagging in the water.  I lifted my pole as my dad had said and began reeling the fish in.  I pulled it out of the water and the wiggling fish flew over my head and into the bushes behind us.  My dad intuitively took my pole from me so I could go find my fish.  The line was a tangled mess but on the ground was the convulsing dirt encrusted trout.  I tried to grab it, but it kept slipping out of my hands until I finally I discovered that when it was upside down it calmed down enough so I could hold it for my dad to remove the hook with some needle nosed plyers.  I was then able to walk with the fish over to the bucket of water my dad had brought along and deposit the fish.  This was the beginning of my journey as a trout bum. 

(1)    For information about the Sportsman’s Lodge? Click here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportsmen's_Lodge

What color is your fly?

If you’ve spent any time perusing fly fishing magazines you probably have read many articles about fly recommendations and fly tying that are very specific about the colors the flies should be to  match the hatches of various aquatic bugs you may encounter on the water.  The irony is that the authors generally forget to mention that matching the correct fly color is mostly important on still or spring creek environments and are less applicable on freestone waters that the majority of us fish.  If you are primarily a freestone fisherman you might want to ignore much of this gibberish about fly color as other characteristics may be more important. 

When fishing dries on riffle water the color of a light hued fly such as a Pale Morning  Dun, for example, may elicit fewer strikes than a darker hued pattern such as a Adams Parachute.  The reason being is that a pale hued fly is more difficult to see among the myriads of white sparkly bubbles and against the broken surface film than a darker hued fly that presents more of silhouette and stands out against the mirror like surface film.  Additionally on freestone waters, the fish doesn’t have time to think about if the color of the fly matches the color of the real bugs floating over their heads, as it only has a split second to make the decision whether to grab the fly.  It needs to eat first and ask questions later. 

In the case of spring creeks or still waters, the fish has plenty of time to scrutinize the fly and if it the fish happens to be picky, it may reject the fly if it doesn’t mimic the color of the hundreds of real bugs that are on the water at a given time. That seems only logical but one must ask why, in many cases, have we been able to get trout to respond to let’s say, a gray bodied Parachute Adams during the hatch of yellow bodied Pale Morning Duns?   Additionally, why are hair wing flies such as Elk Hair Caddis (that are available in a variety of colors) that ride high enough on the surface film so that the fish have no way to see the body color, work so effectively no matter the color of the actual caddis on the water.  Before the development of the flush sitting parachute style flies in the nineteen seventies, almost all mayfly dry fly patterns were tied in the traditional Catskill style (where the hackle is wrapped radially around the shank) and they worked perfectly well even though the their colored bodies never sit in the surface film where they may be visible to the fish.  Catskill style flies caught millions of trout for over a hundred years without the fish ever knowing their color.

Use of fly flotant is another factor that can obscure the color of the fly.  Grease flotant also somewhat obscures fly color to a certain extent.  For years I only used that type of flotant and very successfully I might add, until one afternoon when I was fishing a run on a freestone stretch of the middle fork of the Stanislaus River in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, and a sporadic hatch of PMDs was coming off plus a few caddis were occasionally popping.  I was fishing a size #16 yellow parachute PMD pattern greased up with some silicon-based fly flotant, which was getting some looks but no grabs.  Eventually my fly got waterlogged so I thought that I would try a new fly flotant product that had been recommended to me by California fly fishing guru, Ralf Cutter which was a fly flotant desiccant powder (rather than grease).  Such powders not only wick away moisture but also treat the fly with a fine hydrophobic powder.  On my first cast I noticed the fly reacted much differently than the greased-up fly as it seemed that it was much more sensitive to the micro currents on the water.  What I mean is that while still in dead drift, the fly seemed to quiver making it look very lifelike.  Rather than sitting in the film, the fly was supported by the tips of the hackles.  On my second cast a Rainbow came up and slammed it.  I played it for about a minute, landed it and released it.  I of course now had to remove the slime on the fly, and as Ralph had recommended, I put the fly in the bottle of the powder, shook it a few times, and then removed it to find that the fly looked almost like new as the slime was gone except for the fine powdery substance that covered it.  Though I knew that the racket put up by the thrashing fish I had just caught probably had put down the rest of his buddies, I decided to take a couple of more casts before I moved on.  I cast out to the same seam as before but in a little faster water and on my second try another Rainbow came up and wacked it hard.

Something about that fly was irresistible to the fish and I concluded it was the fly’s position high in the surface film and tiny movements as it reacted to the micro currents that told the fish “I’m alive”. When you have the chance, treat a dry fly with some desiccant f gives the impression to the fish of something that’s alive and something it wants to eat flotant and drop it into a glass of water and then observe it from below.  You will be surprised that unlike a grease treated fly the desiccant treated fly appears as a cluster of sparkling dimples that quiver at every slight movement of the water.  It’s my opinion that a fly, regardless of its color, can never look wrong to the fish when treated with desiccant flotant as the fish makes its decision on whether to grab the fly based on the presence of the hackle dimples (profile and size are important too) and not the color of the fly.  I also theorize that the hydrophobic nature of the desiccant enhances the visibility of the fly compared to the visibility of the natural bugs on the water and gives the impression to the fish of something that’s alive and wants to eat.

Did I succeed in changing you from the dark world of grease flotant over to powdered desiccant flotant? Well I hope not as I actually use both at the same time.  Whenever I tie on a virgin fly the first thing I do is sparingly rub some grease flotant on the body and hackles as a waterproofing.  At some point it will need additional treatment which is when I will dry it out and treat it with the powdered desiccant flotant and continue with it until I change to another fly.  An even more effective technique is to pre-treat your virgin flies with some of the waterproofing sprays that are available in fly shops and then follow up with powdered desiccant flotant.  

Now that I got all of that off my chest, I’ll continue this discussion about fly color next week, but this time, I will give you my opinion as it relates to flies fished beneath the surface film such as cripples, emergers, pupae and larva.