Devin Olsen

1.  Choice of equipment Rods, reels, fly lines, fly floatants, clothes, glasses, and other useful items.

I fish with a Hardy Ultralite LL 9' 9" 4 weight and a Peux Fulgor reel. I use a 2 weight Airflo Tactical Taper Superflo 2.0 fly line. I wear Smith Guides Choice Sunglasses with low light yellow lenses throughout the year.

Pablo Castro Pinos netting a fish on his home river.

2. Leader material, build-up, length and knots.

I use a 15' Soldarini Camo leader that tapers to .16 mm. I cut off 45 cm/18" of material from both ends of the leader. I then add 45 cm of 5x and 45 cm of 6x tippet. Then I add enough 7x to make the leader twice the length of my rod. The total length ends up being 19.5'. I use figure 8 knots to connect my tippet. This leader is for finesse presentation work only. I turn to ad hoc adjustments on shorter commercially tapered leaders for fishing larger foam terrestrials.

A Leonese brown trout caught with Pablo's dry fly technique.

3. Approach and stealth.

The best way to learn about stealth and approach is by sight fishing. I got hooked on sight fishing back when I was a teenager and spent several years fishing rivers where I could target fish I could see. I learned how close I could get to trout at various angles simply by paying attention to when fish spooked from my presence. I now have a memory bank in various conditions that I apply to each situation I encounter on the river. I think about how close is too close and then stop a few feet before I reach that point. I also spend quite a lot of time fishing from my knees or with obstructions between myself and the fish in order to shorten my presentation range to make drifts easier to manage.

Pablo fishing dry flies on a pool of a beautiful river in the Leon region of Spain.

4. Reading the water.

This is a topic that takes years to learn. Reading the water for dry fly fishing can be as simple as looking for rises. But if there aren't fish rising and I am covering the water blind, I typically look for softer edges, foam lines, and water that I think should hold fish but will be better to fish with a dry fly than a nymph. Once I have covered the target water with a dry fly, I generally have a second rod dedicated to nymph fishing that I will fish following the dry flies.

A classic New Zealand fish caught using with a long leader and a delicate dry fly presentation.

5. Casting ability which casts are essential.

I think the main thing that is needed is a firm control of loop shape and the ability to create and manipulate loops for accuracy and setting up drifts. All of the typical aerial mend/reach casts etc. are essential, but understanding how to form a controlled tight loop at various casting angles is the most important skill. With the leader I use I cast sidearm much of the time with a low trajectory on the forward cast. It's a pretty standard fly cast but is just done at various angles and with power and timing adjustments in order to form the proper J-hook shape on the water that I am looking for.

Large foam dry flies require a shorter and stouter leader. My leader was still 16 feet long when I caught this trout on a cicada, but the longer butt section and stouter tippet prevented the fly from spinning the leader into a mess.

6. Entomology, what should we know?

I was a fisheries biologist previously in my career and I have a love for science. As a result, I've read a few books on entomology and love to learn about the specific life history of various macroinvertebrates. In some cases, knowing the emergence characteristics of specific insects can be useful. However, I think most anglers need to work a lot more on their casting and presentation skills before they try to learn the specifics of the entomology of the rivers they fish. What is important for the average angler is simply being able to recognize various insects like midges, mayflies, caddis, stoneflies, craneflies, etc. If you can recognize the type of insect and get relatively close to matching it in size, silhouette, and color, you will be able to find success on the water.

The tools of the trade.

7. Rise forms Can they tell us something?

Rise forms definitely can be important. There has been an agonizing amount of material in print about this topic. Boiling it down though, I always watch to see whether a trout's head breaks the surface or if it just leaves and dimple or swirl from taking an insect in the surface film or just below. If you can also see whether there is an adult insect on the water when you see the fish rise, you'll have a better idea what type of insect the fish is feeding on but also what stage of insect they might be focused on. If their head doesn't break the water, you'll likely need an emerger/pupae pattern with the abdomen hanging in or below the surface film. If their head does break the water, opt for an adult "on top of the water" type of pattern, even if that means it's still relatively flush with the water's surface.

Pablo with a nice Utah brown trout caught on a split wing mayfly pattern during a green drake hatch.

8. Fly selection, Size, shape, materials, which flies are essential?

This list could get biblically long. To make it short, I carry a lot of CDC shuttlecock, Spanish style split wing mayfly, and downwing caddis patterns. For broken water, I turn to patterns with hackle, elk hair, or poly wing. Most of my flies are very simple. I don't put much stock in specific anatomical parts. I prefer most flies to float flush with or in the surface film and I try to get close to the general silhouette of the insect that is hatching at the moment. I find that immaculate drifts generally account for more fish than switching through dozens of patterns to find "the right fly."

Pablo Castro Pinos and Charley Card with a pair of fine brown trout caught on cicada dry flies.

9. Presentation and drifts.

My presentations and drift are largely determined by the leader I use. The leader is inspired by a formula that my friend Pablo Castro Pinos constructs with his own taper. It is intentionally made to turn over the first 1/2 to 2/3 of the leader but most of the tippet lands downstream. It creates what I refer to as J-hook on the water when cast correctly. The fly is shown to the fish before the leader and the amount of slack in the presentation allows the fish to fully take the fly on slack tippet with a dead drift.

10. Upstream or downstream?

I used to make lots of downstream drifts to fish to show them the fly before the tippet. This style resulted in a lot of missed fish though because of the hooking angle. I now position myself downstream of or even with the fish but use the characteristics of the leader to show the fly to the fish first instead of the leader or tippet.

11. Fighting fish.

I made this video below titled "5 tips for landing more fish" on our YouTube channel a few years ago. This video covers this topic better than I can explain in text.