WNY Fly Fishing - Fishing Pocket Water

Well do to my horrible accident, I will be chair bound for a few months, so I thought I would put some thoughts to paper, so lets talk about pocket water fishing. This is one of the hardest places to fish on the stream do to water  flows and obstructions in the stream, but can be one of the most productive. These areas have been food factories for trout as food tends to collect around and flow behind boulders. When fishing these lies most people tend to fish behind the obstruction, but don't forget the current seams on each side of it downstream. Wading theses spots can be very tricky so be careful, the stream bed is very irregular with bowling ball sized rocks that can be very slick. I start at the front of the pocket and work them down the sides of it, the fish can be anywhere in it front sides and behind so cover it all. This type of fishing requires a longer rod to keep as much line off the water as possible, so you can keep the fly in the strike zone longer. Pocket water is a place were you can fish in the dog days of summer because they the most oxygen and they usually have a shaded spot in them. I like to fish with streamers here, but a good dropper setup is deadly, fishing pockets always produces fish and it a lot of the time it is the biggest fish of the day.