Welcome to the Orvis Fly Fishing Guide podcast with Tom Rosenberg, bringing you tips, tricks and techniques to help you get the most from your time on the water.

Here's acclaimed fly fishing author and lifelong fly fishing

enthusiasts Tom Rosenbauer. Let's talk about early season or cold water fly fishing this week. Usually what we see in the early season is water that's very cold,

40, 45 degrees or even lower and moving fairly fast. It's rare to see low, slow water in early season

because most of us have snow runoff or it's rained a lot in the spring. So because

trout are cold-blooded they're not inclined to chase a fly

very far early in the season. Now if you've ever seen the movie Cars there's a

car character in there who's a voice I think is is by Chichmaren and he's kind of this low-slung old

catty or something and he's always using an expression low and slow and that's

what you want to do early in the season is to fish your flies low or close to the

bottom and slow. Now it can be that can be a challenge in the early season

because you've got fast water and to get the fly close to the bottom and to keep

it moving slowly is really difficult because you've got a lot of current pushing your line along and it's real tough to get that fly close to the bottom and keep it moving in a realistic manner.

The best way to learn how to fish flies early in the season is to either go worm fishing or to watch a good worm fisherman.

I don't believe that anybody can be a really good flyfisher unless you've done some worm fishing first, particularly in early season.

And if you watch a good bait fishermen or worm fishermen, they cast upstream, they let that worm tumble along the bottom with just

enough weight to keep it from hanging up, but they get it down slow, low and

slow. They keep their rod tip high and they let that worm tumble

along the bottom in a really natural manner until it gets below them and

they pick it up and throw it out there again. They don't throw that worm out there

and leave it sitting on the bottom of a pool usually and they don't skip it

across the top of the water reel in expecting a trout to get it because a trout just isn't going to chase something

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