Kelly Galloup Explains Big Fish Behaviour

Kelly Galloup Explains Big Fish Behaviour - PLUS Black Friday Deals!

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Күн бұрын

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Renowned guide, author, and innovative fly tier Kelly Galloup brings over 50 years of expertise to his comprehensive Streamer Fishing Masterclass. Dive deep into the art and science of fishing with streamers as Kelly reveals the "how," "when," "where," and "why" behind this effective technique. Whether you're a seasoned angler or just starting out, this class offers invaluable insights to elevate your skills on the water.

Пікірлер: 50

@MarkSedotti 2 ай бұрын

Hi Kelly, It's Mark Sedotti. It's interesting. The biggest fly I've used for trout is 17 inches long. I used it up in Canada fishing for Lake Trout in a river. Wanted to copy a whitefish. These lakers would come out of the lake and swim downstream from the outlet into big pools below. Fish below 15 lbs. would follow that fly and follow that fly. Only lakers 15 lbs. and above would eat it. I'd say a 15lb. laker would be 33 inches long. We brought Russ up to this place too, by the way. Hope you are well! Haven't seen you in awhile.

@NorCalsteelheadbum 2 ай бұрын

Well, there's a pretty big difference between a laker and a brown trout. If brown trout averaged as big as lakers, I'm sure they would eat that fly too.

@insiderfishingdenmark3985 2 ай бұрын

Wow what an incredible insight to get. As you've stated multiple times I as well is told the complete opposite of the experiences you are sharing, i've been so focused on size of files ,(small as possible) and the fish deep in my rivers my whole life. Cant wait to the season starts again!

@coltonfranke6800 2 ай бұрын

I think you’re mostly correct Kelly, however, I will say that the time of day when the fish is feeding or active flips in the winter and fall for certain fish species, I have noticed this with Muskies specifically which are very similar to big brown trout in the fact that they are the big predator in the system. I’m not sure if any other musky anglers have noticed this, but in my experience fishing when the water is cold, the larger fish tend to fire up a bit mid day when the water reaches peak temperature and vice versa in the summer when it’s warm

@masonkaufmann474 2 ай бұрын

I wouldn’t know about musky but I see this with bass and pike

@bmares41 2 ай бұрын

WOW!!! Kelly thank you for sharing your wisdom and insight. It makes sense, please share more. Look forward to the next talk from the big chair. Thanks.

@rogerbird7015 2 ай бұрын

Very educational and enlightening! Thank you!

@brandonhanks902 2 ай бұрын

Real fish eat the neighbor's kids. Always entertaining and informative. Thanks Kelly.

@robertcross6834 2 ай бұрын

It's the mid 1970s and my college roommate, a lifelong Colorado fly fisherman, and I are wade fishing the green river, Wyoming. We use dries for hours and catch little browns. I switch my Eagle Claw pack rod to spinning gear. First cast of a small black and white daredevil produced a 24-inch brown. Big fish eat minnows and big easy meals.

@simonlenihan5779 2 ай бұрын

Excellent, respect

@edwardcowan7012 2 ай бұрын

I primarily fish small streams of brook trout in the winter. 12” brook trout are big in the creeks I fish and I feel brook trout in small headwaters feed heavily on small brook trout once they get over 10”. I’m relatively new to fly fishing and trout fishing but have been bass fishing my whole life. I fished pro in the 90’s and know all the bass guys you mentioned, fished with several of them. Baby Brook Trout streamer is a very productive pattern for big Brook Trout.

@3for5spotshooter 2 ай бұрын

It shrinks??? 😂😂😂Seinfeld reference. On a road bike too😊 History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Mark Twain Super piece. I have LaFontaines books and a carefully guarded supply of all his antron packets. Yes 30 years early and a loss to the craft and lore of the sport. Fantastic segment. Thank you.

@AndrewKnight-s3i Ай бұрын

This is a great video, but I’m curious how water temperature impacts where trout hold? Often, in the winter, I find the biggest fish are at the back of the pool deep. Thoughts?

@ChrisWhite.fishing 2 ай бұрын

1. Fish are lazy. 2. Fish are rarely in water deeper than 3ft. 3. Fish hold on inside bends on parallel color changes 4. Fish are meat eaters, and prey on fish up to 1/2 body lengh 5. Fish move upstream from daytime holding zones to feeding zones.

@glennbuscher8003 2 ай бұрын

Great stuff for all.

@alexhendrick8288 2 ай бұрын

Kellys channel is fantastic as well.

@Keggertotap 2 ай бұрын

I remember fishing a # 4 matuka in Northern California and saw a brown snatch a bird getting a drink of water from the river. U look at your fly an go. I need to go bigger

@DougLyons-d8t Ай бұрын

Isn’t it contradictory to say that fish are lazy on one hand and have big movement areas on the other? A two year telemetry study on a river I fish often (not the Au Sable) showed that the bigger fish (16-25” in the study group) kept from one to three “home sites” during daylight hours over the summer months, so they had fairly strong site fidelity. The fish were typically tracked to areas with lots of wood or under bridges with lots of rip rap . No movements were tracked in the nighttime hours, though one fish was tracked over a few evenings and moved from its home location to a tailout about 100 yds downstream. When spawning season came (movements started on average in mid October), fish traveled many miles.. Not always upstream and often, but not always, into tribs. One fish trekked almost thirty miles downstream where it set up adjacent to a trib. Others moved 15 miles up tribs and on into sub tribs. My point being that I think every watershed behaves differently.

@halvo11 19 күн бұрын

Just a theory but a lot of our rivers in Michigan apart from our big rivers like the lower au sable and lower manistee are relatively sterile. We don’t have the bug factory rivers like out west and a lot of our trout rivers are full of sand and wood and the mega trout are forced to find the higher gradient zones that have higher populations of sculpins, darters, juvenile trout, and crayfish if they want to eat and often those higher gradient zones don’t have great holding water super close to them. We also have wild water temperature swings that can force trout into holding near springs during the day due to the water temp peaking around the low 70’s but at night water temps settle back down to the low 60’s and they are much more comfortable traveling to find food.

@fishingthemitten728 2 ай бұрын

Always noticed that at night time in august I see 10+ pound browns in shallow water also a Michigan fisherman

@academicmailbox7798 2 ай бұрын

Dion Hibdon has a way to explain this, he says 'a five pounder never lies' (coming from a multi- generational family of lure makers, competition anglers, guides and outdoors people in the Ozarks freshwater fishing lakes, Dion Hibdon is the one other angler I know who talks about fish locations in a way that is similar to Kelly Galloup). Dion's father and mom were probably both even better anglers than Dion, and would have fished at the same time Kelly describes when Larry Nixon was at his peak. The point that Dion makes, is that based on catching a three pounder in a competition, which takes a certain lure in a certain type of water, Dion said that may indicate a fish behavior that is consistent and repeatable. On the other hand, the three pounder fish catch may not be a consistent bite pattern or a good indication of anything. Worse, it might convince an angler to run on a wild goose chase trying to repeat the same thing. However, Dion explains that five pounders never lie. When Dion catches a fish that size he doesn't rush on after. He'll take ten, fifteen minutes time even in competition to look at 'what happened', and learn as much as possible from the catch. Kelly is one of the few anglers, who approaches trout in the same way as bass anglers approach that species.

@academicmailbox7798 2 ай бұрын

One interesting thing though, Ken Duke hosted his 'group' panel called 'Bass After Dark', in his latest episode (the ones where Ken invites a crayfish freshwater species biologist, or freshwater fisheries scientist are must-listen to content), the fishing biologist and expert competition angler Michael Iaconelli both agreed on the reasons by which fish is lakes depart from shallow flat areas, to search for water depth as the end of autumn time approaches. And it dawned on me, it was the total polar opposite to what Ed Ward described in fishing for winter steelhead. That as rivers swelled bigger with rain, and spread across the shallow flat areas of gravel, that's where one would find the steelhead. So this whole thing of position of fish in one context can be baffling to the angler who fishes for species of another kind. Everything that the lake anglers said made total logical sense. And yet it might contradict everything known to be true for rivers in colder temperatures.

@academicmailbox7798 2 ай бұрын

One thing on Kelly's approach, it was probably anglers such as Roland Martin who originated or pioneered this approach (Roland himself was a trained freshwater biologist who grew up in Baltimore, and his father had been an engineer working on reservoir projects before him). In fact, Roland ended up winning so many 'angler of the year' titles the competition organizers introduced rules directly to try and even up the odds, Roland had been so successful. He was the first to study water and fish and to develop repeatable pattern or fish behavioral observation. And it gradually got adopted by competitors as the standard practice in competition. However, in 2024 the controversial debate is that electronics freed up anglers from having to figure out fish behavior patterns (the opposite to pattern development and fishing is called 'junk fishing', literally fishing without any plan). In fly fishing we have a more polite term for the same, we call it 'covering the water'. The electronics sonar that anglers have enabled younger generations to simply go and search for fish, without having to develop theories as to explain locations of fish, or why they bite. And the counter- counter argument, which the electronics anglers use is that they find fish where fish are not supposed to be. So it proves that all of the old theories didn't really work (a bit like the professor who predicted general election results consistently using 'keys', which then stopped working). Now it's claimed by some that 'the keys' don't work.

@academicmailbox7798 2 ай бұрын

When Ken Duke looked back at all available data from competition over decades, he discovered an angler named Aaren Martens was apparently in a league of his own (fishing five fish limit format competitons, Aaren had managed to generate average catches of 4,81 fish per competition day over his career). The remainder of winning and successful competitors were back further at 4,5 to 4,6 at best. And no one really scaled up to those levels that Martens could do. Mark Zona who grew up smallmouth angling on great lakes knew Aaren and commentated on his events over decades, provides more insight on the approach of the angler, who he said odten fished water that no other anglers would bother with (there's a famous scene of Aaren fishing alongside a bridge structure and almost winning an event). So Aaren wasn't following the same script, lending credibility to the electronics fishing approach. What Ken Duke explained though was using electronics (a tactic that evolved out of croppie fishing tournaments), younger anglers now hit averages that beat Aaren Martens. Even the anglers in middle of the competition rankings. So it led Dukes himself to conclude, that none of these are really Aaren Martens level of angler. It's the electronics putting the thumb on the scales.

@academicmailbox7798 2 ай бұрын

Having studied competition anglers for several years (as Kelly himself kept making this reference to bass angling, although many of us in other parts of the world were never exposed to this fishing culture), what one realizes is how gigantic the man-made and natural lakes are, that bass anglers fish. They are more like inland oceans of freshwater. So to say that Larry Nixon was 'walking the dog' on top of the water, doesn't include that Larry did 'eliminate' tens of thousands of acres of other water, in order to concentrate his walking-the-dog method on a tiny key area (Larry Nixon wasn't junk fishing). The thing I'd compare it to is golf, where one competitor is 'on the green' while another could be on the rough, or in the trees. And what one finds in golf, are Tiger Woods kinds of competitors who have natural long range ball striking capabilities. And those anglers who get by, by having good enough long range shots, but really capitalize on the putting greens. Lethal in the short game. A Dion Hibdon competitor in his fishing is like one of those Nick Faldo's in golf, who starts to understand and read the greens better. When they are dialled in, then become very hard to beat. The kind of angler in the modern sport who reminds me of Nixon now, is a Greg Hackney angler. Who can fish miles and miles of grass edge in a week, and locate a tiny area, one where the big bass live and are caught. And it's the most important thing any of these anglers talk about (including those who use electronics), they talk about eliminating water. The low percentage areas, that one seldom catches huge numbers or huge size. The heavy lifting part done by a Larry Nixon, is probably the 'elimination of water'. The walk the dog part after it, is the icing on the cake. Or maybe put another way, the golf analogy, the long shots are to get you on the green, and having found the green, one then has to study it, to understand it, to keep the score one has worked hard to obtain. There's a quite larger bass fishing context, around this Nixon statement. Few fly or trout anglers are exposed to this side of fishing culture, and it's fairly opaque at first.

@zachpinnell1498 2 ай бұрын

Thank you for everything you wrote above. It is a very interesting perspective. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of Table Rock Lake in Branson, MO. Famous man-made bass lake like you described. My parents have a condo on it. And I’ve put about 25 hrs into it with a fly rod from a skiff. No electronics. No bass for me, yet. Do you think I stand a chance with a fly rod & no electronics? I only just started in June. Haven’t tried since mid-Oct when surface temps were still >70. Perhaps water temps are just now getting to where I actually have a shot. I am by no means disheartened. I just like to get out & try when I can’t go for trout. Otherwise don’t care much for bass. But I do wonder if I am trying to do something that is actually possible to become good at (and perhaps deeply enjoy one day).

@ChrisWhite.fishing 2 ай бұрын

Cards at the end (suggested video and channel logo) are covering the Takeaways. Otherwise, quality stuff.

@AprilVokey 2 ай бұрын

Thank you! Will remove now.

@AprilVokey 2 ай бұрын

Whoops. Can’t on mobile. Will fix when back in the office 🙏🏻

@MichaelKuczynski-u7o 2 ай бұрын

Thanks you just ruined my day , now I have to rethink my fishing strategy. Guess I’ll pour myself a drink and contemplate what Kelly just said . Thanks for sharing your observations