Troubitten - "We don't want easy fishing"

Easy is fun too... 😉
I listen to a few fly fishing podcasts, and Troutbitten is notably the most jargon laden yet least informative of the bunch. Maybe it’s just me but they seem to make things appear more complex than they actually are by slapping names onto whatever tactics they discuss rather than providing explanations. 🤷‍♂️ It seems nearly the exact opposite of the Orvis / Tom Rosenbauer approach.
 
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"Fishing" is the game.
All methods. All places.
Flyfishing for brookies is one of the best.
But all species are fun depending on the place and presentation needed.

Fishing is better than chess.

I should stop there, but it is more.
Flyfishing is always a new game.
Every cast.
The weather changed, i.e., the light angle and intensity may have drifted and changed in brightness. The shadows.
A hawk shadow crossing over can change the game.
A small herd of heifers with a young bull can come thumping across a pasture to within 20-feet and in a shadowy half circle, stand shoulder to shoulder, necks bobbing heads, feet stomping.
Another human appears upstream, in the pathway, requiring some hiking to get up and around without scaring fish for that human and your own.
The leaves and branches are growing out in late spring. All the entanglements in the brush and tree branches become much more difficult to recover a leader and line.
The maturing leaf stems have changed the game.
For a month. Then more changes through the season.
Bank plants change.
Rocks change.
Paths change.
The stability of things.

The challenges always change and, remarkably and embracingly, for every environment and every species.
It's the best game.
It's the best time with the Creator of the game.
The flow of water always changes.
 
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I listen to a few fly fishing podcasts, and Troutbitten is notably the most jargon laden yet least informative of the bunch. Maybe it’s just me but they seem to make things appear more complex than they actually are by slapping names onto whatever tactics they discuss rather than providing explanations. 🤷‍♂️ It seems nearly the exact opposite of the Orvis / Tom Rosenbauer approach.
True, Mason! It's a brand he's building, unless naming stuff is part of the enjoyment for him.

Word on the street from the Central PA crew is that he's a better musician than fisherman 😉
 
True, Mason! It's a brand he's building, unless naming stuff is part of the enjoyment for him.

Word on the street from the Central PA crew is that he's a better musician than fisherman 😉
Hey Chris, I hope you’re doing very well! His articles are as bad as the podcasts: loads of sentences peppered with made up jargon and very little content. Here’s one prime example of subprime meat.


As Truman Capote once remarked, “That’s not writing. That’s typing.”
 
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True, Mason! It's a brand he's building, unless naming stuff is part of the enjoyment for him.

Word on the street from the Central PA crew is that he's a better musician than fisherman 😉
I credit Dom with much of what I know about modern nymphing tactics- a lot of which I learned from him while smoking cigarettes (the drunk ones don’t count) outside of various State College bars during his bands’ set breaks back in the early 20 teens. I can assure you he’s as knowledgeable and skilled a fisherman as he is a great musician.

An honest critique of their podcast in my opinion is that they’re either running out of stuff to talk about or just trying to get blood out of a stone by milking topics over too many episodes while not really presenting anything substantive anymore. Part of this could be that I’ve gotten to the point where I already know a lot of what they talk about? (Although this seems sort of unlikely considering they have a lot of more seasoned anglers than I that fish a lot of different water types both in PA and in the west).

The first like 2-3 seasons had a lot of good information packed into a pretty dense but approachable format. However, lately I’ve just been listening to what seems more like a bunch of friends bullshitting for an hour and a half about various parts of the industry they don’t like (while also contributing to the problem by profiting from it and accepting ad revenue from spot burning apps like TroutRoutes or shilling for brands that aren’t even producing the best gear anymore).

Regarding the jargon, I think that’s baked into the technical nature of competition style nymph fishing. It’s pretty easy to get good enough to catch a few fish with a mono rig, but there are a lot of subtleties that are lost on folks who don’t really do a deep dive into the technique for a lengthy period of time. I’m grateful for that since those same people are also usually pretty enjoyable to fish behind.

I’m not sure what the answer is, although it seems there are plenty of topics out there still to cover without talking about why a whip finish tool isn’t necessary for 10 minutes (it is, btw… head cement is the thing that isn’t).
I guess the real question is what does anyone truly expect to get out of a flyfishing podcast?

We’re participants in a sport where no amount of reading, listening or planning serves as a substitute for getting out on the water. I’ve spent a lot of time learning what I know, and frankly unless I like you there’s no real incentive for me to share that information- lest I see your Toyota Tacoma parked at my favorite access point pounding the same water I like to fish with the very flies, techniques, and approaches that I spent so many years learning. I’ll probably continue listening to TB (along with podcasts like the destination angler, wet fly swing, etc) mostly bc they’re there and they provide me with information without really expecting anything in return- a relative rarity in today’s society.
 
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An honest critique of their podcast in my opinion is that they’re either running out of stuff to talk about or just trying to get blood out of a stone by milking topics over too many episodes while not really presenting anything substantive anymore...

No different than magazines like Fly Fisherman, Fly Tyer, et al which have been squeezing that same stone for decades...

I guess that why I don't do magazines or podcasts...
 
No different than magazines like Fly Fisherman, Fly Tyer, et al which have been squeezing that same stone for decades...

I guess that why I don't do magazines or podcasts...
Yeah, i guess it all boils down to how you like to spend your downtime. If I’m twisting up some bugs or doing some woodworking out in the barn, it makes for much better background noise than the latest talking heads on the 24-hour news cycle or listening to the Phillies, Eagles, or Penn State blow yet another championship window 🤣.

I think the big thing people forget is that this content is being produced largely for free. It’s not always going to be exactly what we want and frankly if somebody has a better idea on what/how to present I’ll most likely listen to their podcast or read their articles too.
 
We’re participants in a sport where no amount of reading, listening or planning serves as a substitute for getting out on the water.
Amen! I was partly just taking the ****. I think his videos are beautifully shot in beautiful places, and his voice is like ASMR butter if I need a nap. And I know he has a reputation as a good dude.

I do agree with some of the criticism, however. Giving a name to something a competent angler does to adjust to a condition based on time on the water is silly sometimes.

A reach cast with a mono rig is now a "triple lindy," type of stuff. Otherwise, I watch for the fishing and skip the talky talky podcast videos.
 
Yeah, i guess it all boils down to how you like to spend your downtime. If I’m twisting up some bugs or doing some woodworking out in the barn, it makes for much better background noise than the latest talking heads on the 24-hour news cycle or listening to the Phillies, Eagles, or Penn State blow yet another championship window 🤣.

I think the big thing people forget is that this content is being produced largely for free. It’s not always going to be exactly what we want and frankly if somebody has a better idea on what to present I’ll listen to their podcast too!

When I'm tying, I watch old sitcoms or cartoons I have on DVD on a sweet little 8" or 9" color CRT TV set I've had for a LONG time sitting in front of my tying desk.

I learned a long time ago that I break too much thread if I watch the news or anything else that's too serious... 😉
 
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This is a fairly quick watch and well worth a few minutes of your time. As fly anglers, we don't want easy days on the water. Sure, we're all willing to take those days when it seems like we can do no wrong. Imagine though if it was always like that? We'd get bored fairly quickly. The challenge and trying to "unlock" the day's fishing is what keeps us coming back for more. Serve that up with a good skunking' every now and then and we're assured return trips to the stream.

As I get older, the 'easy' I want is the relative ease of getting to the stream. My cliff-climbing days are getting behind me.
 
Amen! I was partly just taking the ****. I think his videos are beautifully shot in beautiful places, and his voice is like ASMR butter if I need a nap. And I know he has a reputation as a good dude.

I do agree with some of the criticism, however. Giving a name to something a competent angler does to adjust to a condition based on time on the water is silly sometimes.

A reach cast with a mono rig is now a "triple lindy," type of stuff. Otherwise, I watch for the fishing and skip the talky talky podcast videos.
Definitely agree the naming of things can seem a tad excessive to anyone who already figured them out independently. But think about how we teach something as simple as math or reading in schools nowadays. Surely you or I know how to formulate a sentence or do long division, but to somebody who has less experience there’s pedagogical value in using terms like like subject and predicate or dividend, divisor and quotient.

My point as I stated above is that he’s trying to teach these techniques to people via a free resource- something I don’t think I could ever justify doing to the masses. I’m sure he probably knows that every person who reads his articles or watches his videos is going out on the same waterways and spots he fishes (they’re not exactly a secret even though they don’t name drop)

But, I guess if you want hard fishing, there’s no better way than training an army of euro nymphers from all across the northeast with fairly simple how to instructions on how to come pound your home waters 🤣

For what it’s worth, I think that Triple Lindy thing was a tongue in cheek reference to a dumb movie from the mid 2000’s.
 
My point as I stated above is that he’s trying to teach these techniques to people via a free resource- something I don’t think I could ever justify doing to the masses. I’m sure he probably knows that every person who reads his articles or watches his videos is going out on the same waterways and spots he fishes (they’re not exactly a secret even though they don’t name drop)

But, I guess if you want hard fishing, there’s no better way than training an army of euro nymphers from all across the northeast with fairly simple how to instructions on how to come pound your home waters
You make this sound like he is doing it out of the goodness of his heart. He is obviously profiting from it, and there has always been something about his content in particular that never sat right with me in the weird corner of my mind that I try to keep to myself. I mean he is free to do his thing, and good on him for finding success for what I am sure is a lot of hard work, but I just get the feeling that he is selling us all out when I check out his stuff.

Regardless, I ran into him in various forms on the water about a half a dozen times this year and he seems like a great guy that loves to fish. Definitely knows his stuff, probably catches more fish in a week than I do all year.
 
It's interesting where this post has gone. I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the off-season discourse...

Any second now we'll segue to Cooper Sharp, soup, kielbasa and alcoholic beverages and discuss the ease or lack of ease we prefer when acquiring or making good examples... 😉
 
For what it’s worth, I think that Triple Lindy thing was a tongue in cheek reference to a dumb movie from the mid 2000’s.
That was my reference not his 😆 Nice catch!

I was def referencing Rodney Dangerfield on a high dive (and testing out terms for my new YouTube channel, maybe?)
 
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