I feel blessed to live in Central Oregon. Why? Because I live close to my favorite river, the Metolius. I’ve been fortunate to fish this river for almost 50 years. The last couple of weeks, I’ve had opportunities to reflect on the river while waiting for rising trout. I thought I’d share a few stories…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Dette Caddis. The Dette Caddis is another fly I found in Eric Leiser’s book about Walt and Winnie Dette and their daughter Mary Dette Clark and their impact on classic Catskill flies. The book is entitled The Dettes – A Catskill Legend (1992). On the instruction page about how to…
I wrote about the Cascades Stone a few years ago, but have seen them on the river recently and thought it was time to highlight this seldom seen hatch by fly fishers. It’s actually called the Doroneuria baumanni, a cousin of the Golden Stone. But I’m getting ahead of myself. When we first noticed this…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Improved Governor. This is another steelhead fly found in John Shewey’s Classis Steelhead Flies book. It’s one of my sources of flies for TBT posts. I’ve read recently about the low steelhead returns in the Columbia Basin and it got me thinking about the last time I…
I look forward to the month of September every year because I know I’ll have some great fishing the next two months! In addition, it’s the time of year when several bigger bugs hatch. How about October Caddis or the fall drakes? Fall is a fly fisher’s dream. Below, you’ll find the flies that make…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Harrop’s CDC Rusty Paraspinner. I hope you were able to read a recent post, Importance of Imitating Mayfly Spinners. Since I’ve been thinking about spinners for a few days, I thought I’d find one to feature in a TBT post. Harrop’s CDC Rusty Paraspinner was created by Bonnie…
I’ve been working on a very large fly order of over 300 flies, which included 3 dozen Rusty Spinner Biot Body flies in sizes 14, 16, and 18. I thought it would be a great time to write again about the importance of imitating mayfly spinners. Here is a refresher or if you are new…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Roy Palm’s Special Emerger, tied below in size 20. I was introduced to this fly recently when a customer asked if I had heard of Roy’s Special Emerger, a midge pattern. He relayed a story of watching a guide with clients catching fish on a river in Colorado….
I’m back at the vise this week working to fill orders that have been stacking up during our fly fishing road trip. I started on an order of 324 flies that included several small BWO/Baetis fly imitations in sizes 16, 18, and 20. The fly order includes several of my favorite BWO imitations. I have…
This week’s Thow Back Thursday Fly is a Griffith’s Gnat encore. I’m calling it an encore presentation from the original TBT post in October 2014. I’ve since purchased and thoroughly enjoyed reading The Founding Flies by Mika Valla where he dedicates four pages to George Griffith. As I mentioned in my initial post, Griffith (1901…
