Tips for Fly-Fishing Backpacking Trips, with Derek Bargaehr
The Orvis Fly-Fishing Podcast
James Hathaway
4.8 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 5 January 2026
⏱️ 84 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Want to get away from the crowds? Want a high mountain lake or stream all to yourself? The best way to do this is to take a backpacking trip, but you need to prepare more than you would for a car trip or a trip to a lodge. What exactly should you take and what should you leave behind? What kinds of flies and accessories should you bring? How can you save weight and still have enough gear for a fun fishing trip? Derek Bargaehr [37:36], an experienced fly fisher and backpacker, gives us tips on how to make the most of your next backpacking trip.
In the Fly Box this week, we have some questions. A couple of which could only be answered by my co-workers at Orvis so we have responses from both Pete Kutzer, our casting guru and Shawn Brillon, our bamboo rod craftsman.
How can I easily estimate how much backing is on my unlabeled reels?
A listener relates how some podcast advice on emergers helped him and his son have a successful trip
I took a lesson on two-handed casting and it was all done on grass. Was this wrong?
What advice do you have on cleaning the ferrules on bamboo fly rods?
Are Orvis bamboo fly rods impregnated?
On a tarpon trip, the fish were in deep water so I used a sinking poly leader on my floating line. Should I have used a full-sinking fly line instead?
Is the Albright knot a better knot than the nail knot for attaching a leader to a fly line or backing to a fly line?
When connecting pieces of tippet I will normally go up two X sizes, like from 2X to 4X. Is this wrong?
Is it OK to clear a casting lane on a trout stream?
What can I do to find bigger trout during the dog days of summer?
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hi, and welcome to the Orvis Fly Fishing podcast. |
| 0:18.5 | This is your host, Tom Rosenbauer. |
| 0:20.7 | And in this week's podcast, we're going to be talking about backpacking and fly fishing. |
| 0:28.0 | My guest, Derek Bargar, is an old friend and listener to the podcast, and he's actually the one who made this microphone |
| 0:41.1 | that I'm recording with right now. And Derek is an experienced fly fisher and he's also an |
| 0:50.8 | experienced backpacker. And I know a lot of you ask about backpacking and fly fishing. |
| 0:57.7 | What should I take? |
| 0:59.4 | Should I take waiters? |
| 1:01.2 | Should I wear my waiting boots? |
| 1:05.0 | What flies should I take? |
| 1:06.7 | And Derek's going to go into great detail on all of these things, the equipment you should take and what you should prepare for, |
| 1:15.3 | but also the pleasures of backpacking for fly fishing, the way you can get away from the crowds and have a whole alpine lake to yourself. |
| 1:26.4 | And it's a different world than what most of us are used to. |
| 1:32.3 | I hope you enjoy this podcast. I know I learned a lot from it. |
| 1:37.0 | Before we get into the flybox, a couple things I wanted to tell you about. First of all, |
| 1:42.6 | the Orvis Learning Center, which I know a lot of you use, |
| 1:46.2 | it's a mostly video-based lessons on all different aspects of fly fishing, now has search |
| 1:54.5 | available throughout the entire site. Previously, you could search podcasts. You could search |
| 2:00.2 | the text on podcast from the transcripts, |
| 2:03.5 | and you could find the topics you wanted. But now the search is global. So if you're looking for, |
| 2:10.6 | for instance, West Coast steelhead fishing, you can search that in the search box at the top of the learning center, |
| 2:19.1 | and you'll be able to get not only the podcasts that deal with this, but the videos and maybe |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from James Hathaway, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of James Hathaway and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.