I’m headed to Denver tomorrow to hook up with the St. Vrain Anglers TU club for their 2010 River Fly Fishing Expo. that runs Friday and Saturday (April 16, 17). I’ll be speaking Saturday on the development of fly fishing’s 2,000 year history (focusing mostly on the past 75 years or so), casting, and fly […]
Last week we had another big rain storm that drove the river to 10 times normal flow. Of course, all fishing plans were cancelled. Yesterday, my friends, John Beth and Dale Thompson, couldn’t wait a moment longer, so they tore over and hopped into 600 cfs of cloudy roaring water. Surprise, surprise, the fish were […]
When I was speaking to the Anglers Club of Philadelphia, I had the opportunity to meet Peter Strid, whose art is based in fishing but splashes to others related areas as well. He had donated a print of a brookie for the silent auction, and I was taken by the fact that the fish was […]
John has graciously photoed his first-choice steelhead flies. His theory is simple, but quite right: when the steelies are living out in the lake, they eat silver-colored minnows, so they are used to seeing them and know what the are. John had his best day every last Monday when we fished together for the first-run […]
Thursday, April 7, I was in Philadelphia to speak at the annual banquet of the Philadelphia Anglers Club and present a day-long seminar to a group of 20 of their members. The day went too fast. My host, Bill Wilson, and I arrived at the Appleford facility at 8:30 am. By 9 the class had […]
The steelhead are in, the steelhead are in. So are the suckers, by the thousands. So, we caught steelhead, and we caught suckers. I started the day with an egg fly dropped from the hook of a black and blue collared leech, but soon gave up on the egg fly–too many suckers. The weather was […]
My fishing pal, John Beth, will be on the river with me on Monday. He loves fishing egg flies for Steelhead, and is very effective at it. His egg “fly” is tied with soft, silicon eggs available from Cabela’s. These are Otter’s Soft Eggs. They are wonderfully simple to tie with and make superb flies. […]
Steelhead season is upon us in Wisconsin and the Great Lakes in general. We had lots of snow pack and then a fast, warming trend with rain that blew the streams out right proper. A big slug of large steelhead shot in on the flood wave and are now prowling the gravels of our streams […]
I was rooting around in some boxes and found twenty copies of Designing Trout Flies bound in dark red leather with a reading ribbon. They are in pristine condition. Published in 1991, this book defined and refined the concept of designing flies, setting the processes aside from the procedures used simply as tying methodologies. Designing […]
My great friend, maniac fishing companion, composer, luthier, guitar player, and etc. has been making knives for many years, but has never had the opportunity to delve into it as more than a very part-time hobby. He is now making custom knives in a serious way. When I say serious, I don’t mean that John […]