If you fish dry flies, you know what I mean when I say Match the Hatch. Determine what is hatching on the river or lake that day and hopefully have a pattern or two in the fly box that will imitate the real bug and fool a fish. Sometimes it’s an easy answer. You look forward…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Goddard Caddis. Originally known as the G & H Sedge, it was created by John Goddard and Clive Henry in England as a stillwater pattern. Goddard gave the pattern to Andre Puyans (a great fly tyer as well from California) in the 1960’s. Puyans in turn shared…
Since the Crooked River Flies, Basic Dry Flies, and Basic Nymph Flies Fly Boxes are so popular, I thought I’d add an East Lake Fly Box to my RiverKeeper Flies Fly Patterns page. While my first love is river fishing, I do fish lakes. In fact, friends are surprised when they see me at a lake. I guess my…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Quigley Cripple, developed by Bob Quigley in the late 1970’s for Northern California’s Fall River. Seems like Northern California is the birthplace of several flies I like. Here is my Green Drake Quigley Cripple. As the story goes, Bob was fishing a Humpy and catching fish with…
In this week’s post, I wanted to share a fish story that happened to me last week. How many times do you walk along the river and say “there’s gotta be a fish there”? It happens to me frequently. I’ve been lucky enough to fish a lot, caught some fish over the years and perhaps…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Muddler Minnow. Muddlers imitate various bait fish, namely sculpins. This is a fly I tied many years ago…a feeble attempt at best. The development of the Muddler Minnow was attributed to Don Gapen of Anoka, Minnesota in 1937. Don’s parents ran the Gateway Lodge Resort on the shore…
Here are some recent changes I’ve made to RiverKeeper Flies. The changes include: Fly Patterns Page There’s an old adage “a picture is worth a thousand words”. With that in mind, I’ve been busy revising the Fly Patterns page to provide a simpler method of finding flies. Clicking any picture on the new Fly Patterns page will take you to…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the LaFontaine Sparkle Pupa, developed by Gary LaFontaine. Caddisflies was first published in 1981. It was a classic as soon as it was written. Before his book came out, most the talk in fly fishing was about Mayflies. Caddisflies changed everything. Gary spent many years researching caddis. In fact, it took…
Have you ever heard the term “foam is home”? Here is a perfect example of what I’m talking about. The main current is flowing towards us in the top of the picture and this eddy is capturing bubbles created by the river. And with insects in the drift, this is a natural conveyor belt of…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Birds Nest, another one of Cal Bird’s inventions. The history for the Birds Nest is a little mixed up for me. I found three versions: So you pick which one you’d like to believe. Regardless, it was and still is a great pattern for multiple bugs if used…
