Night fishing is a mystery with no resolution. Every other aspect of fly fishing for trout has been written about, understood and expanded upon. Lifetimes of information are available at your fingertips — the lives of so many fishermen who’ve come before you. You can read the accounts of their discoveries, their failures, their new ideas and understandings.

But the night fishing game? It’s like a bare cupboard.

There are very, very few people who’ve spent much time on the water at night. And there are even fewer anglers who’ve written or shared good information about fishing for trout after dark.

Because there are so few practitioners of the night game, so few anglers willing (and able) to put in the hours and search for those answers, we find the same beliefs repeated time after time. The same advice. The same wives tales rerun again and again, because they sound like they make sense.

The truth is, night fishing is hard. Consistency is elusive — maybe it’s not even possible.

But after years of experiencing that kind of failure, I found an answer. I discovered a fly and a handful of tactics that turned the hook-up ratio around. And I started landing far more trout by fishing what I’ve come to think of as a mouse emerger.

In this podcast episode, my friends Josh and Trevor join me to discuss the mouse emerger concept.

What is it? And why does a mouse emerger fool more trout than other approaches? Why do trout attack flies but refuse them so often at night?

(Companion Troutbitten article for this podcast is found HERE)

In this night fishing episode, we discuss the flies:

— The Bad Mother
— Lynch’s White Bellied Mouse
— The Pendragon
— The Black Rogue
— The Gypsy Queen

And we dig into the tactics for fishing a mouse emerger style:

— Locations
— Retrieves
— Angles
— Speed
— And the deadly Slow Slide

Since 2014, I’ve published over 700 articles on Troutbitten.com. These are fishing stories, tips, tactics and commentary. But it all started with a tale about night fishing that I titled, One of These Days. Since then, I’ve written a forty-part, ongoing series about Night Fishing for Trout, and there’s much more to be learned and discovered.

Find those night fishing articles and so much more at Troutbitten.com.

Resources

READ: Troutbitten | Series | Night Fishing for Trout
Presentations -- The Deadly Slow Slide
Moonlight, Starlight and City Light
Back In Black -- The Night Shift
Headlamps, Flashlights and Glow in the Dark Stuff
Upside Down and Backward

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Fish cold water, fight 'em fast, handle gently, release quickly. In this second edition of the Troutbitten podcast, my friends Bill, Austin, Trevor and Josh join me to discuss safe catch and release practices, from hooking a trout to letting it go. Because if the goal of catch and release is to put a trout back and catch it again, then we want to ensure that the health of the fish remains intact.

Some of the catch and release best practices might seem like common sense. But the truth is, handling a trout without harming it isn’t necessarily intuitive. It takes some forethought and preparation. You need the right tools — the right skills. And it takes a good understanding of how trout are built — how they are a little more sensitive than other species. It helps to understand the trout and learn its habits, if you plan to release the fish without harming it.

There’s a lot of nuance in topics like this. And we cover the details around these key principles: Fish cold water, fight 'em fast, handle gently, release quickly.

At every level of experience, we’re always learning and trying to improve or share ideas about the fish we chase. The Troutbitten guys joining me are full of ideas, and they share some great thoughts about how to handle a trout.

Lastly, we discuss how experience is the only teacher. We acknowledge that mistakes inevitably happen. We've all killed trout accidentally, and it's part of the learning process. But education is the best preparation for releasing a trout safely. And hopefully, it's podcasts and shared information, like this, that gives fly anglers the confidence to go fishing and enjoy their time on the water.

Here are a few key supporting articles from Troutbitten:

READ: Troutbitten | How to Hold a Trout
READ: Troutbitten | Their Heart in Your Hands
READ: Troutbitten | Are We Taking the Safety of Trout Too Far?
READ: Troutbitten | If You Have to Revive a Trout, It's Probably Too Late
READ: Troutbitten | Category | Fighting Fish

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Orvis

In this inaugural Troutbitten podcast, my friends Bill, Austin, Trevor and Josh join me to discuss how fly fishing for wild trout creates a life on the water. 

We consider what it means to fish hard, how hope is the strongest trait of a successful angler, why everything works sometimes, and how fly fishers, all too often, are a little much. 

We also talk about the tenets of Troutbitten, or the shared interests and characteristics about fly fishing that bring us together and keep us excited about trout fishing for a lifetime. 

In 2014, Troutbitten.com started with fishing stories and tips. And from the beginning, the tactics articles have leaned toward the advanced angler without neglecting the beginner. Now over 700 articles deep, the Troutbitten website has become a huge resource for trout anglers on a fly rod. Dry flies, nymph fishing, streamer fishing and more, Troutbitten articles offer tactics, commentary and stories to educate and entertain. 

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