The day started early, and I was on the water just after daylight. The fish were moving, but not to my fly; not until I changed locations. Then they were after my fly, and continued to be after it for the rest of the day. The first several hours were an average salmon day: a [...]

The day dawned very windy and ended very windy. However, the sky was blue from corner to corner and the fish were at least a bit cooperative. Even though I’m on the downside of the king run this year, I took a couple of them early in the day, and then saw my friend Lou [...]

I had a note today from John Beth who sent a photo of a nice brown taken by our mutual friend, Dr. Dan “Doc” Zavadsky. I’ll be down there this coming week looking for this fish’s companions and others, too. Watch for photos this week.

My friend, Captain Jake Jordan, recently landed what would most certainly have been a new world record Blue Marlin on the fly rod. He refused to kill the fish, and so it will have to stand as an unofficial record. He deserves praise and thanks for this unselfish act. Here’s the report from his skipper: [...]

I received a question about John Beth’s bunny flies and his other “giant killers” that he uses for Lake Michigan tributary salmon, browns, and steelhead. The question asks: “Hello! Do these flies ride hook up or hook down? I see the eyes on top of the hook (like a clouser) so I would think they [...]

The International Fly Tying Symposium and its attendant days of fishing are over. There will be a separate posting on the Symposium. This is a story about the fishing. Variations of this story will appear in the forthcoming books, Long Flies, Designing Flies, and Stillwaters. The International Fly Tying Symposium was celebrating its 20th anniversary. [...]

Yesterday was the last day in a series of warmer that normal days for November in Wisconsin, and John Beth, Doc Zavadsky and I met on one of our favorite Wisconsin tributary streams to search for browns. I was up at 3am, on the road by 4am and casting by 6:30am. Right away I had [...]

This is a note from my fishing friend, John Beth, who was chasing trout and salmon last week. I found a few coho when we first got there, and went 3 for 4. But they were nowhere to be found by early afternoon. There was, however, an abundance of kings. Every area that we normally [...]

The last two and one-half days have raced by. The third day of the trip, Duane and I explored more areas that we had not fished before, and re-worked areas that we had fished on days one and two. The fish were not super cooperative (when are they ever?), but we did manage 8 landed [...]

Our second day of the salmon trip dawned clear, and the pile jackets felt good against the cold of the early morning. The day was to warm considerable; so much so, in fact ,that by mid-afternoon it was short-sleeve weather. As is always the case with salmon, the first hour after dawn was the best. [...]

Duane Stremlau and I arrived at the river a little after noon and were met by our friend Lou Jirikowic. “You’re in luck,” he told us, the salmon are coming in heavy.” And so they were. There were older fish there, too; ones that had run in the week before. But as we stood fishing, [...]

I am currently working on volume 3 in the Fly Fishing book series. This volume is entitled, Long Flies. By long flies I mean bucktails, streamers, strip flies, collared flies, buggers, muddlers and divers, tube flies, film flies like poppers and sliders, techno flies, and others. Their developmental history is not only fascinating but highly [...]

The trip is over, and we made it home between violent Mid-West storms. Wisconsin does get tornadoes, and we had three in our locale just before we arrived. The last part of the trip was a two-day fishing excursion on the Madison, probably my most favorite river in the US. When we visited in late [...]