Skills: Vision

0:00This is Daniel Galhardo and you're listening to the Tenkara Cast, a podcast about the simple Japanese method of fly-fishing, Tenkara. In the Tenkara Cast we'll be sharing information on techniques, history, philosophy, and Tenkara stories from anglers all over the world. This podcast is brought to you by Tenkara USA, introducing Tenkara outside of Japan since 2009. It's only possible we create content such as this podcast and videos because of your support. So we thank you so very much for purchasing Tenkara USA Rods, Lines, and Flies. I hope you enjoy learning more about the simple method of fly fishing. Today I'm going to be talking about what I consider to be the most important fundamental in fly fishing. And that is the skill of vision, the skill of seeing. I think this is something that doesn't get enough attention from people that are talking about techniques and that kind of thing. and I probably don't talk about it enough.

1:00And the reason we don't talk a lot about it is because vision or the ability to see things in general is considered to be a very natural thing to all people. So we might not be talking that much about it because most of us can see, and if we can see it, we assume that other people can see the same things that we do. But I think this is something that has to be taught, and it's something that has to be trained upon each person who is fly fishing. And it becomes natural over time. The beautiful thing about the topic of seeing things is that to train, it doesn't really take that much of an effort. It's not something that you have to constantly work at. You don't really feel tired. But I do think you have to be conscientious of when you're practicing the skill of seeing. I've been told in the past that I'm really good at seeing things when I'm going fishing, and I don't think I have any unnatural or supernatural abilities whatsoever.

2:06I really think it's just a matter of spending a lot of time in the water. I've been out with anglers that I consider to be incredible at seeing through the water, and they see things that I don't, and I'm always amazed when that happens. but it's just something that I like to teach people as well when I'm going out and trying to point out the things that they could or should be seeing in particular spots. Somebody once told me that I'm also pretty good at seeing things that are very subtle that might be happening in the water or maybe on the line and reacting to that very quickly and again I don't think that's an unnatural or supernatural skill. I think it's just something that happens when you spend a lot time in the water fishing. But, you know, as human beings, we depend a lot on our vision. You know, our eyesight is really kind of what allows us to process the word in a quick kind of manner. And again, it's something that we probably just don't talk about enough.

3:08But in this episode, I'm going to be talking about several different aspects of seeing things when you go fishing. I'm going to start by talking about how to spot, how to identify specify places to fish. Then I'm going to be talking about spotting fish. You know, if you're walking by a bridge, how do you, you know, see, you know, the fish that are going through the water? Very often I'm going out with friends that are new to fishing or we're just going to go for a hike and I start pointing the fish to them and they're always like, how can you see that? And it's just something that I do very often for fun and I think over time it just becomes, you'll click and you'll start seeing things in a different light. I'm also going to be talking about seeing through the water when you're fishing and kind of trying to identify things that are a little bit unusual in the middle of fishing which might be indications of fish. In my opinion when we're talking about the basic skill sets of fly fishing I think it all starts with vision. It starts with identifying the good waters to fish with seeing things that are a little bit different. After vision, you know, we can get into the fundamentals of casting and then we can get into the other fundamental, in my opinion, which is detecting strike, which goes back to this vision topic. And then the skills of, you know, applying techniques to the fly and finally landing the fish, keeping the fish on and landing the fish. So out of those, spotting places and fish, and then we have casting, we have detecting strikes and then we have landing fish, a few of those depend on our vision very much.

4:49So I think it's important to talk about it. Also, I'm going to recommend that if you don't already, get yourself a pair of polarized sunglasses. Maybe that's the reason I can see fish very often with friends because I always have polarized glasses on. And polarized sunglasses are kind of like your x-ray vision in fishing you become you kind of acquire superpowers when you have it not really you still have to identify things you have to know what to look for but they help a tremendous amount I've talked about in another episode about my favorite gear I like to have polarized glasses that have lighter color lenses like a copper kind of lens I'm not crazy about yellow but copper or very light brown. I find that they don't change colors a whole lot and yellow lenses are okay too but I don't like the ones that are bright yellow. So either I like to have a very light gray or kind of a light copper lens when I'm fishing because they don't change colors that much. It kind of keeps the word a little bit more natural. But in any case let's talk about the first thing that you're going to be looking for when you're going to go fishing. And that's going to be the number one thing you're going to look for is spots where to fish. And this is a whole nother episode in itself, the skill of reading water. But when you learn just the basics of reading water, we know that in mountain streams at least, the currents are bringing food to the fish, but the fish don't want to be fighting currents a whole lot. So typically the seam of calm water with fast water tends to be a really productive kind of place to look for. In tumbling kind of streams, very fast kind of streams, I just like to look for some of the calmest waters in foam lines.

6:41But once you kind of know the basics of how to read water, there are certain things that, you know, I think you can train your eye towards or your eyes towards, I should say. And one of them is going to be just kind of picking those spots where currents are kind of going to go in different directions, different patterns. And that takes a little bit of acquiring the skill because, you know, when we go to a stream, we just tend to assume that all the waters are flowing downstream. And we tend not to look quite as carefully at the water. But one of the things that I'd love to identify when I'm fishing, and I can talk about features another time, but you're just going to notice the subtle currents that are going on. Because, you know, of course, there's places where it's clearly going in one direction. But there's going to be places where the current is making a very subtle whirlpool, and it's actually going upstream in some places. and those are really good places because the food is kind of getting scoured and then taken to the fish that are most likely facing downstream.

7:49Now, when it comes to practice and training how to, you know, see things when you're reading water, this is the one part of the episode I don't have a huge amount to add because it's more looking for certain things, certain features, and you just have to learn how to read them. but when you go fishing maybe like when you're on the hike just kind of get into the practice of pointing to spots where you think the fish are going to be like here's a good one here's a good one here's a good one and typically people that are just starting especially in fly fishing they're going to very quickly identify the very obvious spots the the places that are very calm pools was next to fast water, places that have foam lines, as the saying goes, foam is home. So we quickly learned how to identify those. But here's a little challenge for you. When you go fishing, try to find these little dinner plate size pockets that are a little bit calmer than the water around them.

8:50And start looking at those and start pointing them out. And all of a sudden, you start kind of acquiring the sense of quickly identifying places. And then when you go fishing, you're not going to be skipping those less obvious spots. That's a very important skill, in my opinion, because especially if you're fishing pressured waters, you might have places where anglers have been throughout the day and everybody hit the same exact pools. But if you start getting into the habit of identifying what I like to call the invisible waters, those little tiny pools, very subtle, skinny kind of feeding lanes between fast water, Sometimes you see two lanes that are a little bit faster, and then you have this maybe 8 or 10-inch wide seam of water that is just a little calmer. Just pay attention to those. You know, that's a skill. And look at the water and try to see through the water. So this is going to be something I'm going to be talking quite a bit in this episode, the idea of seeing through the water rather than seeing the water, the water's surface.

9:54when you go fishing and you're reading water you're going to be very quickly reading the surface of the water you're going to see the foam lines you're going to see the rural pools and all this stuff but take a look especially in the places that have like little plunges and water gets a little faster and if the water is clear see what might be happening underneath the water like are there bubbles is there like a little channel like especially in plunges you might be able to see that where the water plunges down to the pool below sometimes you kind of see the turbulent water on the very top it looks like it's kind of rolling in a horizontal kind of fashion if you have a rolling pin for example but if you can see through the water very often you see another little current like a sheet of water just cutting through and down so that's kind of all I have to share really about the vision skill in regards to reading water getting the habit of seeing the invisible waters because that's something that you kind of have to train. Now the next thing, and this is the one that I really like to talk about, is seeing fish, how to spot fish. I have been out with a couple of anglers that are incredible at seeing through the water and they see things really well. And that's something that I feel like I do really well at as well, just kind of identifying fish when they're in the water. But when you're just starting off, I think, you know, you have to know what to look for. And that's one of the challenges here. So there's going to be fish that are going to be obvious and everybody can see it, but there's some fish that are a little bit harder to spot. You know, that's, I think, trout in particular have evolved to camouflage themselves, to become invisible to predators. You know, and we're talking about evolution, only those trout that were colored, you know, and moved in a way that made less likely to get caught by a predator would survive. So over time they've kind of evolved to be really good at hiding. And we kind of have to be a little smarter than most of their predators in order to see them. So what do I look for? So there are certain things that are telltale signs of fish. But first let's talk about different water levels. And I'm talking about different water columns more specifically. So when you, let's say we have a very typical kind of four foot deep stream, you know, which is fairly deep for a mountain stream in some places, there are going to be different water columns. You know, there's the surface, the middle, and the bottom. So that's something to keep in mind. And this is really important because very often we're trained to see, to look at the water. And that's something that comes naturally to most people. You know, you have the turbulence on the top and you have all this stuff going on on top and our eyes kind of stop right at the surface. The first thing that we see very often, it's a little bit like getting a camera with a manual focus, for example, or I should say with an automatic focus. So if you have a camera with an automatic focus and you're trying to take a picture of the river, the focus is going to be done right at the surface of water and the camera is not going to be seen through the water. If you have a manual focusing lens or a manual focus capability on your camera, you can adjust your ring and go past the surface and see through the water. And to me, that's the most important, but probably one of the hardest things to do is kind of acquiring the habit of seeing through the water. So when you go fishing or just when you go on a hike, try to see through the water a little bit more often.

13:42You know, instead of focusing on the features on the surface or see if you can see rising fish, what is on the bottom? You know, are there rocks down there? Is there sand? Can you see little whirlpools of dried leaves that are on the bottom that are getting kind of caught up in the currents? What can you see through the water? Because this is going to play a big part in the rest of this episode, seeing through the water. now let's talk let's go back to the stream that's about four feet deep and there's going to be different water columns there's the top the middle and the bottom most people when you go fishing you're going to be looking for rises but then the next thing the easier thing to see if you're especially if you're new to fishing is going to be the fish that are kind of swaying right on the surface and maybe once in a while they can come up a little bit and sip or they go and chase a fly That's the easiest fish for every one of us to see, the fish that is close to the surface of the water. To see the fish that are on the surface, they can be a little tricky sometimes, of course, because they're not moving a whole lot in every case.

14:52But let's say the water is clear, and you're trying to identify where the fish are. There is something that you can look for, and the main thing is going to be probably shape. You know, is there something that is like slender that would look like the top of a fish that is kind of on the top of the water? Sometimes you might, you know, confuse it with a branch or leaves or the currents themselves. I mean, it can be a little tricky to see them. But is there something that's slender that is solid? And, you know, can you see something a little unusual close to the surface? But pretty much that applies to any water column. and you can apply this to each one of the water columns that we talked about top bottom and middle the next thing and this applies more to the top fish the fish that are close to the top as well as in the middle yeah see if there's a shadow on the bottom of a river sometimes on occasion I've actually looked at a shadow and I thought it was a fish but then I realized it was darker is blacker than it should have been.

16:00So I kind of traced it back. You know, if your brain kind of calculates where, you know, depending on where the sun is, where the fish would be. So you trace it kind of back up the water columns to the top, and then you see this fish swaying up somewhere, perhaps upstream or downstream or even to the sides, depending on where the sun is. So we look for shades. We look for the narrow shapes. Also, looking for slightly brighter kind of spots. You know, on occasion you kind of see a slightly reflective thing happening underwater, you know, when you're looking through the water. Those are indications of fish. So the skill of seeing through the water is really important, but that skill in general that we're talking about of spotting fish. as i mentioned in the beginning of the episode the skill of identifying where the fish are that's something that it really just kind of comes through practice and all you have to do is get in the habit of watching the water and kind of get a pool and in the beginning spending it's not spend a good amount of time in the pool until you kind of see the fish and i think that's probably a good thing because in mountain streams most pools are going to have fish and if you get in the habit of spending some time maybe sit down for a while uh it's possible that you might have spooked the fish but you sit down there or stay very still for you know five minutes and then the fish might start coming out of their hiding a little bit um so get in the habit of seeing like what does it look like you know is it swaying is it very still uh which is you know something that the fish are going to be doing, sometimes when they're very still, particularly on the bottom of the river or creek, that's because they're not feeding. You know, if they're kind of like hanging, suspended a little bit above the bottom of the creek, maybe they're a little bit more active.

17:59Not always, but sometimes they're a little bit more active, and you can see them swaying a little bit more. So the fish that are in the middle and the top, I think are the, you know, easier ones to see because you can depend a little bit on the shadows that are casting. You know, you have something that's a little bit closer to your eye, so you can focus on it a little bit more. But then the last one, the last water column, is going to be the bottom of the creek. And we're assuming here clear water for all intents and purposes. And I'll talk a little bit about murky water too. But the bottom trout in particular, they're going to be the hardest ones to see because first, there's not going to be a shadow that they're casting. Second, especially in rocky kind of terrains, they're going to be really good at camouflaging themselves. And those are the ones that take a lot more practice to kind of start seeing because they can easily be confused for a rock or a branch and that kind of thing. Now, just get your eye, first of all, to focus on the bottom of the creek. You know, instead of getting in the habit of watching the rocks and the sand kind of moving along and just kind of seeing what's happening on the bottom.

19:06And as you scan a pool, kind of going up and down and from one side to the other, are there objects that stand out a little bit? You know, if most of the rocks are kind of round, are there some rocks that are a little slender? Because they might not be rocks, they might be trout. So just kind of seeing through is a very kind of important skill again. now when i go fishing uh people have asked me like you know so and this is probably one of the most common questions that i get um you know like how do you detect a strike so we should talk a little bit about strikes and you know back to the last two points it's just a matter of uh practice and it's easy to practice for you know spotting the places to fish as well as spotting fish because every bridge that you come across, you can spend 10 minutes there trying to see the fish in the water. The detecting strikes, and that's probably one of the harder ones to practice because it's not like you're getting, you know, like always getting a whole lot of strikes. But still practice, of course, makes perfect and that kind of thing. But when people ask me, so what do you depend on to detect a strike? I mean, am I feeling the fish? Am I seeing the line? Am I seeing fish?

20:27How do I know that a fish might have taken my fly? And there's all kinds of answers, but me personally, I'm going to kind of estimate that about 75 to 80% of my fishing is done based on visual cues. I'm an incredible visual person, and that's just kind of how I probably train myself. So I tend to see probably 75 to 80 percent of the strikes. Either I'm seeing a fish, I'm seeing a flash, I'm seeing a shadow, maybe I'm seeing the line moving. I'm seeing something that makes my reaction kind of happen. And then we, another day we'll talk about reaction time. But just kind of getting in the habit of reacting is kind of an important thing, reacting to anything that is going to be unusual when it comes to actually hooking the fish. But let me talk about my, what I'm looking at when I'm detecting strikes and what I think you could be looking for as well. So when you're fishing, you know, you identify the spot. Maybe you might have even seen a fish and you know there's fish in the creek. And then you cast and you cast went out just nicely and you got a really good drift. Now your fly is kind of moving downstream. How do I know if a fish might have taken? But first of all, just a little reminder, when you're fishing with Tenkara, try to keep the line tight. That's going to help a lot with your hookup rates once you see something happening. As long as you keep the line tight, move your rod tip up or downstream or just up and down on a vertical axis to keep the line tight, then whatever you react to could be a fish and you're going to hook it. What I'm looking for is as the fly is drifting downstream or you know whatever I'm doing with my fly I'm looking for shadows flashes or anything unusual and this last one is a little bit harder and I'm also looking for line movement so the way that I look at things when I'm you know I cast a fly out usually I know where the end of my 10-cutter line is I know that from there about four feet you know away is going to be my fly because I use a four-feet diameter tippet.

22:50So what I tend to do is, you know, I'm not sure if it's something that I train myself or exactly how it happens, but I tend to look at the end of my line and kind of that, you know, I think we all have a field of vision where things might get a little bit blurred or outside of that field of view. But when you're looking at the line, kind of focusing on the line, a few inches above and a few inches below are going to be kind of that focused spot. And then the space below it, a few feet beyond it, we could think of it as being kind of just out of focus a little bit, you know, if you're focusing. But they're still within your field of view. So I tend to look at the end of the line, but at the same time I'm really kind of keeping this very attentive concentration on about four foot diameter or four foot depth, I should say, and perhaps a two or three foot diameter around the main and the end of my main tank out of line.

23:56So if you were to imagine kind of a cone, kind of starting a few inches above the end of your main tank out of line, and that cone kind of goes down into the stream and through the water, and the beginning of the cone is going to be just a few inches. It's going to be like a three-inch diameter. The end of your cone is probably about two feet of diameter, two to three feet. And the cone is about four feet long or so. That's kind of what I'm trying to concentrate my attention to when I'm fishing. And then from there, essentially, you know, like there's a pattern that's kind of happening underwater when things are not moving. The water is flowing. It might be dark or light color, but there's not much going on. And if something unusual happens, you know, something kind of breaks that pattern for a split second. It's a real quick little thing. Get into the habit of just kind of reacting to it.

24:58You know, so this is a little bit into the skill of vision as well as the skill of, you know, reaction time. but I think they both go along because they're kind of self-reinforcing. If you're just seeing things and you're not reacting to it, I don't think you're training yourself. You're not giving yourself a positive stimulus to train yourself because this is all very, in my opinion, very reactionary, very instinctual. It's something that you have to build into your instincts. It's not something that you train yourself and it's like, oh, you know, when the fish flashes, I'm going to react, and then you react. It's something that you have to build into your muscle memory and into your reflexes. So I think it's important to react to your vision. But now let's say we're looking at that cone, you know, like a little bit past the end of the line. And one of the things that I see the most when I'm fishing brighter days in clear water is going to be what we call a flash.

26:02And that's essentially when something gets a little brighter. than the surrounding pattern. So a fish might turn a little bit to the side and, you know, it might sway a little bit. It might get into a slightly different position from when it was before. And that indicates that the fish has done something. You know, you might have taken your fly and sped it out before you saw it, but something just happened. So you can react to that. So number one is a flash. The second thing might be a white thing, and it's kind of similar to a flash, but it Usually it doesn't really, it's not like such a quick blink. It's more of a, the white just kind of shows up. And the white that I'm talking about is the fish's mouth. So a lot of times when you're going after trout, you know, the inside of the mouth or, you know, the kind of what we might call the lips or the trout, when they open their mouth to take a fly, they might reveal the white stuff, you know, the white skin in their flesh. And react to that, you know, that could be a fish.

27:03the third thing is going to be shadow or a shaded spot like a dark spot depending on the lighting condition the flash actually might be a little bit of a shadow but let's say we have a stream that is kind of clear and the bottom is kind of a light color like a sandy kind of bottom and a fish kind of comes to intercept your fly and that might reveal itself in the form of a shadow like in the form of a dark spot. So react to the dark spot as well. I think you can probably deduce a pattern here. I'm just talking about reacting to anything that kind of breaks the pattern of what's happening. So you're following the line and everything looks kind of even. Something happens, react to it. So again, reaction time and vision, I think, go really well together. We have to talk a little bit about both at the same time. and it's all about practice you know just getting in the habit of doing pretty much reacting to anything you know that's mostly what I wanted to share with you today I mean there's a there's probably a lot more that we can talk about in terms of vision and seeing but the message of this episode not to make it any longer is for you to get into the habit of practicing seeing things And the number one thing that I like to recommend people is practice seeing through the water, get into the habit of focusing on beyond the surface.

28:33The other thing is get into the habit of observing pools. If you're new to it, spend some time at a bridge looking for, trying to see as many fish as you can. And there's going to be some fish in there in most places. and also just kind of getting to this habit of reacting to pretty much anything that you see so that's it i mean i it's kind of a simple topic but i think it is the foundation of good fly fishing and you'll be rewarded for getting your vision trained if you have any any suggestions any tricks or any kind of tools that you'd like to recommend to folks that are listening to this episode. Leave us a comment on tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast and you'll find the episode about vision and seeing and just leave us a comment there so other people can know what you do, what your tactics are in terms of seeing things a little bit differently. Thanks so much for listening guys and until next time on the Tenkara Cast. Thank you very much for listening to the Tenkara Cast. I'd like to extend a special thank you to Nick Ogawa, also known as Takenobu.

29:47Check out his music at takenobumusic.com. We'll be posting links to any references we made in this podcast, such as Takenobu's music, on our website, www.tenkarausa.com forward slash podcast. And until next time on the Tenkara Cast. Thank you.