We often use our past experiences to make our decisions instead of looking at the current conditions and making a decision based on that first.  I’ve said it for a while to people I come across, confidence flies can be a really bad thing for most of us anglers.  The problem with confidence flies is that we often choose them at the car when we rig up and forget about trying to figure out what the river and trout are doing that day.  Elk hair caddis catch a lot of fish and deserve a spot in everyones box, but that doesn’t mean you should blindly tie one on and then fish it for half of your day just because “it worked for you last time you were here”.

If you use the past as your primary influence on your decisions, you’re going to miss fish.  Rivers are always changing, you should be aware of this and make sure the current conditions match your past experiences before you just go for that confidence bug or confidence hole.

How to Fix – Adopt a Conditional Approach to the River

There are a few tips I can recommend to help you ditch the confidence approach and focus on the conditional approach.   If you approach the river with the thought that every day is different then observation and preparedness become the best tools for you to catch fish.

In order to be prepared you need to understand river and weather conditions.  We have some tips on how to do this. 

 First, is to research current weather and streamflow conditions and compare them to either past experiences or to the same time the previous year.  This means looking at temperature changes, wind and cloud cover mostly for the day compared to previous weeks and previous year.  For stream flows, it means looking to see if flows are going up or down recently and how consistent they have been and how that matches up to previous years.  Once you have reviewed the weather and stream flows you should be able to understand if things are stable or changing and then if they are changing is it for the better or the worse.  That will help you a ton on the water later as you apply your next tip.

The second tip once you’ve done what research you can at home based on weather and river conditions is to understand the insect seasonality.  Knowing your bugs like we teach in our online entomology course helps a ton in figuring out what the bugs will be doing and if the trout are likely going to be eating surface insects or nymphs or nothing at all.  Learn you bugs especially which hatches occur during what months in summer.  That will give you some good intel on the river before you even go so you can have a stocked box of flies with the best summer fishing flies for your area. 

After you are prepared for what the river should bring you, now you need to spend time on the water when you get there observing the conditions and asking yourself if they match up with what you expect based on the research you did.  If it is, stick to your guns and fish the bugs your research tells you, if you see changes or differences that weren’t expected, use your knowledge of insects, trout behavior and finding good trout water locations and adjust accordingly.  This is easier said than done, but you’ll find you have much more successful days when you come prepared to the water with as much knowledge as you can and then adapt as necessary and figure things out.  The figuring things out is often the most rewarding part!

Do your research ahead of time and then spend some time observing on the water and you’ll quickly be on your way to a conditional approach to fishing and more fish in your net.