I was watching the river last week, waiting for bugs to hatch and fish rise and began thinking about this week’s post. What topic should I write about? I finally noticed a couple of subtle rings from trout sipping insects. I wonder what they were eating? I tied on a dry fly that didn’t work…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Art Lingren’s Green-Butt Black steelhead fly. Here is another steelhead fly pattern I found in John Shewey’s Classic Steelhead Flies on page 90. Lingren developed this fly around 1983. He is well-known in the steelhead community and knowledgeable about British Columbia fly fishing, which is his home. The link…
If you’ve followed my RiverKeeper Flies posts for a while, you know my fishing partner and I fish a lot. You might interpret today’s title of how to select where to fish as one river over another. Or perhaps it might resonate with you to mean a summer fishing trip to a different state and…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Van Sant Steelhead Fly. The fly pattern is found in John Shewey’s Classic Steelhead Flies, page 178. Shewey attributes this steelhead fly to Josh Van Sant, Jr. (1861-1950) of Eureka, CA. The fly is reminiscent of popular trout wet flies of the early to mid-1900s, namely those…
Yes, I have a problem…feathers, feathers, feathers! I’ve been known to say you can never have enough feathers, but even I must admit my collection has grown substantially over the years. And I might have added to it this summer during our time on the Madison River, MT. No, I didn’t buy all these a…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the St Joe Favorite TBT. (I mislabeled the title – should be St Joe Favorite!) I first found this fly at the Idaho Fly Fishing Company in Avery, ID during our fly fishing trip to the St. Joe River in Idaho. I always enjoy going into local fly shops to…
Can you believe September is almost half over? I wish the calendar would slow down a bit. But the days are getting shorter, and it means Fall is almost here, with winter not far behind. Let’s get the most out of our fly fishing and ensure our September fly boxes are filled with imitations we…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Old Master. Since I referenced T.E. Pritt’s North Country Flies (1886) in this week’s post, I thought it appropriate to highlight one of the flies found in his book. This one is listed as No. 39. Materials Hook: 1 Wings: Hackled with a feather from the inside of…
Have you ever waited with anticipation for a hatch to begin and see the first few Mayflies or Salmonflies float down the river without a fish eating it? If I were an aquatic insect, I’d choose to be one of the first bugs to hatch. Why do you ask? Because I’d have a greater likelihood…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Olive Bloa. I found the fly pattern in Edmunds and Lee Brook and River Trouting (1916) on page 20. Click on the link for a FREE download. It’s one of my favorite classic books for the history of fly tying and fly fishing the old English flies….
