What’s the worst fishing tip you’ve ever received? Leave us a comment and let us know – this should be fun! You could win yourself a free pair of Abel nippers too.
We’ll start with an example.
Your humble editor decided to leave the wife’s first casting lesson to a neutral third party. That was a good decision, but the casting instructor’s focus on trying to get a first-timer to load different parts of the rod in her first lesson was pretty tough. When you’re casting a fly rod for the first time and your instructor keeps telling you to “feel the tip!”, you probably have no idea what he’s talking about.
So how about you? What’s the worst tip you’ve ever received? Leave your bad tips here.
Oh yeah – on Friday February 22nd we’ll pick the best worst tip and send its author a free pair of Abel nippers.
“It’s not that deep….. You can wade through that!”
“PULL STRAIGHT UP ON THE ROD WHEN YOU ARE FIGHTING THAT KING!!”
Worst tip I ever got was from a guide on the Madison when I was a kid. He recommended throwing whitefish, after the obligatory death grip called the “whitefish handshake,” under the decks of houses that were built too close to the river. If the smell of rotting whitefish on a 95 degree summer day wafting up from their deck didn’t piss the “Californicators” off the skunks that followed certainly would.
“Oh, its not necessary to sneak up on those fish!”
We had had a day full of unintentional dips in the water, a broken rod tip, a couple of painful injuries on the trail and to put the icing on the cake, no fish! When a local construction worker saw our plight he decided to tell us of his secret rainbow spot on the Saco river. Well we were pumped and took off. After following his directions and taking the trail behind McDonalds we found his secret spot. The rainbows he spoke of were nothing more than suckers, and so were we…….
Every time I got in casting range of a fish, my guide would look downstream and say “Whoa – that was a real pig down there! Let’s get it.” Of course, when we go to the “big fish”, he would wake it, or it would be in the worst set of cross currents. I ended up with one fish for the day, only because I was able to cast to it before the guide had a chance to pull me off it to say, “Whoa – that was a pig down there!” He was beyond incompetent.
Come to think about it, there was also this guy who tried to convince me that scenting flies with various fish attractants was the future of fly fishing……… That was pretty bad
Just use this fly. My bud had been slamming ’em all morning. Caddis hatch and the fish were ignoring every dry and emerger I had. Didn’t understand what I was doing wrong. Bud offered up the fly he was using. He even tied it on for me.
I cast it out and WHAM! Fish hit it, but got off. Cast again. Third cast, WHAM, a grapefruit size head of a giant Pennsylvania brown engulfs the fly. Brief five second fight and the fish spits it out. Happened 3 more times in 10 minutes, but nothing as big as that second fish. I check the fly. Something had to be wrong. My “friend” had intentionally cut off the bend of the hook when he tied on the fly for me. Funny. NOT.
Here comes the permit…he ate! Trout set! Trout set! Trout set!!!!!
I few years back I went salmon fishing for the first time in the Salmon River (NY) with a friend. We got settled in a spot and i asked him to explain how to go about presenting the egg fly. His tip was cast out, wait for the salmon to swim over your line and let em have it. Second worst tip “Salmon don’t eat” and while i realize the statement is somewhat true they WILL hit a fly out of aggression. I’ve seen a king swim 6 feet out of his way to whack streamer. Sorry i know you asked for one but the second just fits
Snap it! – Hank Patterson
I’ve been told many, many times that it was impossible to catch bass on a fly rod, and that I had to have a trout stamp no matter where I fish with a fly rod, because there was no way a CPO would believe I was fishing for anything other than trout, even where we don’t have trout naturally.
I guess they never heard of flats fish.
Now keep that elbow close to your side and use your wrist to to move the rod from 10 o’clock to 2 o’clock. See! I told you it was possible to cast 30 feet!
When I was young – like first grade – my mother would sometimes pick me up when school got out and we would go up to our river farm to fish a slough for a mess of bluegill for dinner. At that age mom would invariably outfish me every time. Then one day she told me that the fish could smell us and they liked how she smelled better.
So one morning before school mom tells me she’s going to pick me up after school and we’d go fishing. At that age you get crazy ideas and I sneeked into her bedroom and spritzed myself with some of her fragrance. I liked to never play that down at school, and to top it off I got skunked that day and mom caught a half-dozen.
I never took any fishing advice again until I was well into my 20s.
Set the hook faster! Pulled the hook away from a lot of fish until I learned better!
Two old timers fishing and they see me catch a Pickerel a nice 20 inch fish and release it. Then they say here is a fishing tip, “Always release those fish into the grassy field over there, (75 yards away) if they are strong fish they will find their way back”. Just to piss the old men off I went home and tied up some ugly streamers and came back to intentionally fish for the pickerel and release them gently back into the lake.
“OK, pick it up. Come more left. More left. I said MORE LEFT man!… Oh sorry, I meant right.”
Cheerio, Mr Permit.
My Grandad used to always say to me, “you gotta hold yer mouth right.” Even if he was right I can never rember how I was holding my mouth when I catch a fish.
“Dont forget to be on time and bring your 8wt…….Oh! And bring some bananas for a quick snack!”
” When and if the fish jumps stick the rod tip in the water, then you wont break off!”
My grandfather had just died and I needed some time on the water. I was living in Redding at the time, so water was easy to get to. There is a spot known as “the bench” that has some really big salmon, sitting on their redds, leaking eggs for eager and really big trout. That is where I needed to go. It had recently rained and it was cool and wet, but the path was short and an easy walk. The only tricky part was something like a ten foot cliff that you had to negotiate to get to the water. My mind on other things, I didn’t negotiate it well, at all. I slipped at the top and pretty much fell to the bottom, hard. As I lay there, in the bank-side vegetation I looked up to see that I had broken the tip off the rod on my fall. I just lay there for a while, contemplating how much of a dumbass I was for such a careless fall. As I lay there, berating myself, a driftboat came by and, wordlessly, caught a 20″+ rainbow out of the exact spot I would have been fishing if I had not broken my rod. I climbed back up the cliff and just went home. Didn’t even get to make a cast.
That was the crummiest day I’ve ever had fishing.
“Never set the hook by bringing the rod over a shoulder & to the side, always set straight up in the air!”
“get right behind him,you will get a better shot of his cast’s”. That’s what this guy told me to do with the camera when i was taking pictures of another guy casting, so i did, and wouldn’t you know it but the next cast he when when i was getting (the perfect shot position) I got a size two low water cray to the ear.lol
You don’t need that extra rod……sheesh
I ran into a guy having lunch on the side of the river near a spot I like to fish. “Don’t bother fishing this stretch of water, I’ve already been through all these runs and they’re not biting.” He then proceeded to tell me the patterns he used. Since I love a challenge (and hate being told what I can’t do), I tied on one of those patterns he mentioned and went to work. I caught three nice browns while he watched. His parting comment was, “Those fish weren’t there when I was fishing. You sure timed that right…”
“Oh my god, that’s a GIANT fish….be careful with him, I’ll get my camera.”
No need to go today – I don’t think they will be biting. No doubt that is the day the feed will be on!!
The worst tip that I have ever heard has to be: “When fighting a Steelhead, you need to keep the rod tip high. The bigger the fish, the higher the rod.”
Big flies catch big fish.m
After a 1/2 hour of fishing down a pool beside a russian guy, he asks what I am using. It is a size 12 soft hackle hare’s ear nymph. He says in a strong russian accent, “I have been catching fish all day, cut that off and I’ll give you some worms.” While he had been catching 4-5 trout and they were in his creel, they were all below 10 inches. When I landed the 20 inch brown he was very quick to come and try to help land (and take) the fish. The trout was safely released and the russian guy, had no more advice for me. I don’t know how I could have cast a worm on my 4 wt anyway.
There are no real advantages to a single hand spey set up.
From the George Herter Professional Guide Manual:
“If you have a client who can’t catch a fish, dump a can of cottage cheese in the river upstream of the run he’s going to fish. He will catch his limit every time. But remember this is should be done only as a last resort, because it is so effective it is not very sportsmanlike.”
(Great thread, BTW. – Kurt)
BAD TIP 1: I tie a lot of flys, for steelhead, salmon, trout and bass. Some guy told me to use dog hair on my flys. So I did for 3 months. I catch around 50 fish per month. But that three months I caught ZERO fish and didn’t know why. I was at a local shop and told them, I wasn’t catchin anything. When he saw my flys, he almost died laughing. He told me that dog hair has smelly oils in them that the fish can’t stand. Thanks for the great tip Moron, who ever you are.lol!!!! BAD TIP 2: A guy on a river here in Vancouver told me once to use 5lb tippet for steelhead because they don’t fight hard and you rod will take all of the stress. I lost 5 that morning. BAD TIP 3: a guy at a fly shop told me that I don’t have to have my license with me. So I forgot it one day.the dfo officer ask to see my license. I told him the guy at the shop said I didn’t need it because my number was recorded, the very understanding officer laughed and filled me in on the regs. I didn’t get a ticket( thank god)that guy at the shop was fired the next day. These were tips I was givin when I had just started. 14 years later and I know a lot more. Thanks and tight lines
“You won’t need to bring your raincoat, it never rains this time of year”
Luckily that was some ‘advice’ I ignored
There aren’t any “slippy” rocks in this part of the stream.
My favorite WA. steelhead guide, initilas J.K.,
“You’ve hooked into a real dandy…Now don’t F*&K it up!”
This was a bit unnerving at the time, but hilarious once we got my biggest chrome fish to date, “in hand”.
Last year I fished for an afternoon with a bait fishing, fish-killing guide. He told me that the only thing the steelhead were hitting was surf-sized spawn bags. His were about the size of a small plum. I caught the only fish of the day and my biggest of the season on a size 10 yarn egg. So much for his theory. There was so much wrong with that picture.
The worst tip I ever gave my wife was when she had hooked into a very fresh silver salmon in Alaska. As he was jumping out of the water I would tell her to drop the rod down. Meaning the rod tip, but instead about the third jump the silver made and me telling her to drop the rod she did just that and walked away while the fish was still on… That was the worst tip I ever gave..
A guide told my wife to wade a little further, he had ahold of her belt. Good thing! A little further and she was floating.
Worst tip ever: release hatchery steelhead
QUICK! Drop your backcast 6 0’clock , 20 feet!!!!!
“We gonna miss those rocks?”
“Sure! We’ll slide right over. Just keep fishing that good bank over there.”
Well…luckily I am a strong swimmer (one arm doggy paddle cause I’m not letting go of my rod).
Back in the day when most of the King fishing at A.W. was done from the boat with single handers, I was in a prolonged yo-yo type tussle with a particularly pissed off chum. After it made its umpteenth trip under the boat, it came up to the surface. My guide, whose identity will remain secret (I don’t even remember what he looked like) stuck out his net and told me to “haul that S.O.B up now! “. As the fish dove toward the bottom there was a loud crack. My Sage 10 wt. Rplx looked like a string of Christmas lights as it was in 8 pieces hanging from the fly line by the guides. Yeah, haul that fish up, huh!
So who was chosen as best/worst tip. Broken rods, frustrated wives? Terrible guides…….?
Hi Billy! Here’s the announcement of the winner…
https://deneki.wpengine.com/2013/02/worst-fishing-tip-ever-winner/
Don’t worry about being caught … snagging is the only way to catch um! They don’t take bait or flys . . . Everyone snags um, it’s the only way.