Back to the Fly Tying Vise

After slacking off at the vise for the last two weeks, I just returned yesterday from our trip to Argentina. It will take me a little while to sort through the images before I share them here, but I need to get back to the fly tying vise and complete a couple of fly orders.

Tying Flies | www.johnkreft.com

It’s certainly an interesting mind game after returning from two weeks of summer in the Southern Hemisphere where we found highs in the 80s and 90s. It hit 100 degrees yesterday afternoon on our drive to the international airport outside of Buenos Aires. The final segment of our trip was a drive over snowy Santiam Pass late today.

The heat made me think about the upcoming summer hatches here in Central Oregon as well as planned trips to Idaho, Montana, and maybe Wyoming. It’s a great segue to the fly tying vise.

Here are the flies I need to complete one order. They’re some of my favorites.

These flies should work for the upcoming March Brown hatch in March and April. You can read more about this Mayfly from a couple of posts I wrote on RiverKeeper Flies HERE and HERE.

Golden Stones and Salmonflies are a hatch I look forward to every year at the beginning of summer. Around Central Oregon, they begin showing themselves in mid-May on the Deschutes River. Wait until July for the Goldens on the Metolius. You’ll find more flies I like to use in this Favorite Golden Stone and Salmonfly Fly Patterns post.

These are a handful of flies I carry from late March through mid-May. It certainly isn’t a comprehensive list, but it’s a state and I’ll be at the vise this week starting to tie up a few of them.

Let me know if you need any of these flies and I’ll add you to my fly order list. Better yet, if you tie your own flies, I offer fly tying videos for many of these on my RiverKeeper Flies YouTube channel.

I plan to share some images next week of our six days of heli fly fishing, using a Bell 407 for our daily trips to rivers at Estancia Chochoy Mallin in the Northwest corner of Patagonia.

Until then…

Enjoy…go fish!

Similar Posts

  • Poxyback Baetis

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Poxyback Baetis. This is an older fly pattern I found in Randall Kaufmann’s book Tying Nymphs (1994). Kaufmann’s book, along with his Tying Dry Flies, was one of the first color fly tying books I purchased. Tying Nymphs taught me new techniques, materials, and flies to tie. The Poxyback…

  • Wonder Wing Drake

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Wonder Wing Drake. Al and Gretchen Beatty graciously provided the information below from their new eBook entitled Wonder Wing Flies. While they didn’t invent the Wonder Wing, they have refined the technique used to drastically remove the possibility of the fly twisting while being cast due to…

  • Dougs Damsel Nymph

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Dougs Damsel Nymph. And here is what it looks like when wet. And a picture of the real damsel nymph. I began tying and fishing these flies in the mid-1990’s. I found the fly in Tying Nymphs book by Randall Kaufmann. I tied a lot of flies from that…

  • Red Clock or Pheasant

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Red Clock or Pheasant. I decided to tie an old soft hackle fly since I’ve been tying so many of my RiverKeeper Soft Hackle Cripples lately. I love the simplicity of these flies and am fascinated by older soft hackle fly patterns…or they would have called them…

  • My April Fly Box

    I can’t believe the beautiful weather we’ve had the last couple of weeks. The types of bugs hatching along the river are definitely changing and I decided it’s time to get my April fly box in order. Gone are the days of concentrating on midge and Blue Wing Olive patterns in sizes 18 – 22…

2 Comments

  1. Hi John,
    Welcome home to you both. I look forward to hearing about your adventures in Argentina. Perspective is an interesting thing and is definitely a consideration when returning to the real world from the “adventure world.” Again, welcome home (I guess, ). Take care & …
    Tight Lines – Al Beatty

Leave a Reply

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