by Jeremy Devries

Created on: December 27, 2008   Last Updated: February 04, 2009

I'm about to offer the best fishing tip that you will ever hear in your lifetime! So pay attention! This fishing tip is true on lakes, rivers, ponds, reservoirs, irrigation canals, the ocean, a mud puddle, your local sewage lagoon and the pool around the end of your kids slip and slide that ruins your grass every year. Anywhere you are considering tossing in a line, this rule is absolute. To be successful you must fish where the fish are.

A couple years ago I was guiding some clients on the Bighorn River in southeastern Montana. I was a rookie guide at the time and was very anxious to make an impression on the local outfitters and to try and find some work. In that attempt, I met an outfitter and guide named Jim Scherger.

Jim was a round young man with dark hair and a pudgy face. Jim always had a smile on and loved to flip people crap about their fishing talent or lack there of. Jim was a confident guide, extremely talented and just plain lucky sometimes, but no matter the situation, you could count on Jim's clients hooking fish. You could also count on him giving you a hard time if your clients were not into fish. Short version, Jim was cocky just like all good trout fishing guides.

Fly fishing guides engage in battle every morning. The competition to get to the best holes on the river is fierce. Most professional guides get along well with each other, but I have always said our relationships are like the cartoon of the wolf and the sheepdog. The wolf is out trying to catch, kill and eat as many sheep as possible while the sheepdog protects them. These two adversaries hit each other on the head with anvils, run each other over with steam rollers and toss each other off cliffs. At the end of the day, the two stand at the same time clock and punch out saying, "See you tomorrow Ralph, See you tomorrow Sam".

So when Jim asked me one day what flies the fish were biting on I was surprised. Here's a guide that usually has his clients into tons of fish, asking me what fly he should use. "He must be having a real tough day," I thought. He rowed his boat up next to mine and asked to see one of my client's lines. The gentleman in the front of my boat handed the flies to Jim, at which point Jim promptly cut the flies off above the split shot, and tied them onto his own clients line immediately. We protested loudly of course, as Jim simply drifted away from us chuckling with his new rig fully attached.

Common sense would tell anyone that with the exact rig, a guide as good as Jim should jump right back into the swing of catching fish. Right? Well, Jim's clients didn't catch more fish that us that day even though he had taken our exact flies, in fact our exact rig and tied it on his own line.

The truth of what happened is that I had been on the water for 2 weeks straight guiding clients while Jim was on vacation in Glacier Park. I was in the exact right spot, as proven by the previous 14 days, and Jim was just a little bit "off". Most of the day I watched him fruitlessly throw the exact right flies, "almost" where the fish were. I've watched fishermen contless times over 15 years of guiding fishing "close" to where the fish are, or "just about" casting into the right drift. It is really rare for anyone to walk onto a river and know the perfect lane, drift, shelf drop off or run to fish. Because guides are out there 14 days, (sometimes 20+) days in a row, they know within 12 inches where the fish are and have a distinct advantage.

That day on the river, Jim and I realized the best fishing tip you can get from a top tier guide is that you must fish where the fish are to have success. No matter whose flies (or how gorgeous they look) are attached to the end of your line.

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