The nice thing about such three-fly setups is that they let you cover three depths of water at the same time, and offer the trout more than one color or size to think about. What makes the Czech Rig different is not the construction of the leader, but the manner of presentation.

"When you are casting this rig, you use only about a yard of fly line out past the tip-top of the rod," Jeans said. "You cast this rig upstream and bring it down just slightly faster than the current. You don't want a drag-free drift for this presentation.

"It does two things. One is, it keeps the bottom fly up just off the bottom, so you don't get so many hang-ups. And it seems to provoke a strike response in the trout. It goes against everything we are taught about dead-drift presentations."

The other thing that Jeans emphasized is that with only a yard of line out, you aren't high-sticking the rod and you have the tip close to the water.

"It's very subtle. Right at the end of the sweep, you give the flies a twitch to see if it will get a following trout to strike. Then you just water-load the rod and flip the flies back upstream again. It will fish anywhere from 3 feet down to as much as 6 or 7 feet of depth. You can also put a Wooly Bugger, small streamer, or big wet fly in the bottom, and you can strip the line back at the end of the cast."

One neat thing is that most people don't realize how close the trout may be holding to you. We do use the dead-drift presentation at times, and we may decide to fish Wooly Buggers and streamers in a classic down-and-across presentation.

Anglers interesting in perfecting their winter trout fishing can learn a lot from these two guides. You can contact Keith Kern at K-Flies Guide Service, call him at (909) 585-3804, or email him at kflies@charter.net. His two-CD set of fishing information on Big Bear is currently being sold at Big Bear Sporting Goods and Big Bear Marina, or you can contact him directly at the phone and e-mail listed above.

For those wanting to fish the Kern River, you can reach Guy Jeans at the Kern River Troutfitters shop at 1-866-347-4876. Check out his Web site at www.kernriverflyfishing.com. Log on to the message section, and you'll get quite a bit of information on what is going on at the Kern.