2019 Western Idaho Fly Fishing Expo

I had a terrific time at the 2019 Western Idaho Fly Fishing Expo last weekend in Boise, ID. It was my 7th year tying flies at the Expo and I always enjoy seeing the friends I’ve made in previous years.

Western Idaho Fly Fishing Expo Flies | www.johnkreft.com

On Friday afternoon, I decided to demonstrate a variant of the Braided Butt Damsel.

Braided Butt Damsel Variant | www.johnkreft.com

And Saturday found me tying Beetle Bailey and a Green Drake CDC Loop Wing Emerger.

Beetle Bailey | www.johnkreft.com
Beetle Bailey
Greed Drake Loop Wing Emerger | www.johnkreft.com
Green Drake CDC Loop Wing Emerger

I was able to catch up with my friend Chris Williams. He’s a terrific tyer, an innovator of many creative flies, and is on the Whiting Farms pro staff.

Chris Williams in Boise 2019 | www.johnkreft.com
Chris Williams

For some reason, Chris felt the need to torment me a little as he brought out a few Whiting Farms capes and saddles for us to drool over.

Whiting Hackle | www.johnkreft.com

As always, thanks to Gretchen and Al Beatty for hosting me. Both are terrific fly tyers, willing to share many fly tying techniques developed over the years. They are the authors of many fly fishing and fly tying books. They’ve recently entered the realm of Kindle books. You might have seen some of the links to their books in a Throw Back Thursday Fly post recently. Be sure to stop and see them tie flies at the 2019 Fly Tyer & Fly Fishing Expo in Albany, Oregon on March 8 & 9, 2019.

Al and Gretchen Beatty in Boise 2019 | www.johnkreft.com
Al & Gretchen Beatty

Gretchen knows I enjoy pie, so she baked a fresh lemon meringue pie. It only seemed appropriate to decorate it!

Flies on Pie | www.johnkreft.com

It was a fun way to celebrate our fly tying.

Royal Wulff on Pie | www.johnkreft.com

Thanks to my RiverKeeper Flies readers who stopped by my tying table and said “hi”. I enjoyed meeting them and finding out what they enjoy about my website.

So until next year…

John Kreft in Boise 2019 | www.johnkreft.com

Enjoy…go fish!

Similar Posts

  • Boise Bound

    January is the beginning of serious fly tying. Tonight is session one of the Central Oregon Flyfishing Winter Fly Tying class. It’s the first of 12 straight weeks of classes for our COF members. I can’t believe this is my 7th year leading these classes. But that’s not the only fly tying activity on my schedule. I’ll…

  • Fishing the Green Drake Hatch

    We’ve been out on our favorite river fishing the Green Drake hatch. The catching has been minimal so I’ve had my camera in hand capturing images of Green Drakes on the water and in flight. I thought I’d share some of them with you. The image above is the exception because we haven’t seen that…

  • Pray Optic Fly

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is a Pray Optic Fly. This is another fly in a friend’s collection with a note on the fly stating it was tied by C. Jim Pray (1885 – 1952) of Eureka, CA in 1947. The Optic series of flies were some of the popular steelhead flies he tied….

  • Ray Bergman Irish Turkey

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Ray Bergman Irish Turkey. I haven’t posted a Ray Bergman wet fly in awhile. I returned from our fly fishing road trip to Montana last week and needed to get back to fly tying, so I thought a quick wet fly would be nice to tie. The…

  • Jungle Dragon Steelhead Fly

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Jungle Dragon steelhead fly. For my birthday, I received a copy of John Shewey’s book entitled Classic Steelhead Flies and paging through the book, the Jungle Dragon spoke to me. I’ve never heard of this steelhead fly. It was created by William Hosie in the 1950s, a Washington Fly…

2 Comments

  1. Hi John,
    I always enjoy seeing and talking with you! And this was a fun read! Look forward to visiting more in Albany and maybe even sharing a barley pop!?
    Cheers until we meet again!
    Chris

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *