• Top 10 Dry Flies for July

    The Green Drakes are winding down, so I decided I better begin thinking about what fly patterns I’ll be fishing soon and make sure the fly boxes are stocked. What better way than to come up with a list of the Top 10 Dry Flies for July? The list I compiled could be used on…

  • Bi-Visible

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Bi-Visible. Ever use one? I have…many years ago. But I haven’t had one in my fly box for some time. The Bi-Visible was created in the early 1920’s by Edward Ringwood Hewitt. In his book Telling on the Trout (1926) Hewitt stated: “Dark colors are more visible to the trout…

  • Next Cast Flyfishers Camp

    A couple of weeks ago, I helped my wife Karen teach 12 kids from ages 10 to 14 about fly fishing during the Next Cast Flyfishers Camp. It’s part of our fly club’s Next Cast Flyfishers (our youth program) goal to get kids into fly fishing in Central Oregon. This is a picture of the kids…

  • Purple Peril

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Purple Peril. Since I wrote about Purple Flies in this weeks blog, I felt it appropriate to select it as a Throw Back fly. The Purple Peril was developed by George McLeod from the Seattle area before World War II. Paraphrasing from Classic Steelhead Flies by John Shewey, George’s…

  • Purple Flies

    I don’t know why they work so well, but purple flies seem to catch the fish’s attention. What really made me a believer is the biggest rainbow trout I’ve ever seen on the Metolius River was caught on a size 16 Purple Haze. That was a few years ago. I taped it at 26 1/2″….

  • Partridge and Orange Soft Hackle

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Partridge and Orange Soft Hackle. Soft hackles are an old style of fly and were developed before Izaak Walton wrote the Compleat Angler in 1653. I’ve used various versions of soft hackles and eventually developed the RiverKeeper Soft Hackle Cripple and fish it as a dry fly. Others…

  • Organize a Fly Box

    OK, I’ve got a few questions for you today. How many fly boxes do you have? How do you organize a fly box? How many fly boxes do you take fishing? Here are the fly boxes currently in my fishing pack. Every fly fisher does things different. Managing their flies and fly boxes is no exception….

  • Tellico Nymph

    The Tellico Nymph is this week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly. This is one I probably tied in the 1970’s. It was a fly pattern out of the American Nymph Fly Tying Manual by Randall Kaufmann. I tied many flies from this book as I learned new fly tying techniques. It fishes well today and is…

  • Spinners

    We’ve been fishing the river quite a bit lately and have noticed LOTS of spinners on the water. My wife, the Bug Lady, searches back eddies for bugs while waiting for the hatch to happen. Green Drake Spinner What is a spinner you ask? Well, spinners are the final phase of a mayfly’s life, be…