I’m starting to read Tying Catskill Style Dry Flies by Mike Valla and thought of a Catskill fly I tied years ago. This Light Cahill is from a class taught by Dave McNeese. Perfect for a Throw Back Thursday Fly.

I’m starting to read Tying Catskill Style Dry Flies by Mike Valla and thought of a Catskill fly I tied years ago. This Light Cahill is from a class taught by Dave McNeese. Perfect for a Throw Back Thursday Fly.


This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Light Spanish Needle. The Light Spanish Needle is another old fly pattern listed in The North Country Fly – Yorkshire’s Soft Hackle Tradition (2015) by Robert L. Smith. Many of these older soft hackle fly patterns come from the Yorkshire Dales in northern England. Wharfedale is a small area…

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Hackle Stacker, a style of fly developed by Bob Quigley in the late 1980’s. Bob fished the Hackle Stacker in Southern Oregon and Northern California. The fly utilizes a paraloop technique by winding the hackle around a flexible post of some type. The fly above is a…

Yesterday, I cleaned up my fly tying bench and sat down for the first time this year to tie a few flies. It’s been about two weeks since I tied a fly. Tonight I’m teaching the first class at Central Oregon Flyfisher’s Winter Fly Tying. In addition, I’m traveling to Boise, ID this week for…

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly post are two flies from the Astorga Manuscript. These two flies were tied by a friend who loaned the book to me. The El Manuscrito de Astorga by Juan de Bergara, a cleric from the city of Astorga, recorded some of the Leónese fishing system in a manuscript written…

It’s August and the middle of hopper season and I thought I’d share my terrestrial fly box. While walking to the van today to get some flies, I saw this hopper on the driveway. I think it was a sign from the fish gods! For me, August is a month where I experience a lull…

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Royal Stimulator TBT. The Royal Stimulator is a fly I tied recently for a customer and thought is would be a good candidate for a TBT post. I checked Randall Kaufmann’s Tying Dry Flies (1991) to see if the fly was listed. The fly pattern at the…