• Perfect Flies

    I got your attention, didn’t I? No, I’m not suggesting I tie perfect flies. I wanted to express how difficult it is to tie perfect flies. To me, the perfect fly is aesthetically pleasing to the eye, tied with proper proportions, and entices a fish to eat it. It might imitate a real insect or…

  • Ray Bergman’s Beauty

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Ray Bergman’s Beauty. This fly was tied by my friend Jim Fisher, the 2011 Stan Walters Memorial Tyer of the Year from the Oregon Council of Fly Fisher’s International. I recently spent a few hours with him for a tutorial on selecting materials and techniques used to tie…

  • Sparkle Dun Deer Hair

    I wanted to highlight one of the Sparkle Dun deer hair patches I’ve been using. In the last week, I tied 6 dozen Green Drake Sparkle Duns and it reminded me how important finding and using the right deer hair is to successfully tie these flies. Half of the flies were for a customer and…

  • Leader Wallet

    Today’s Throw Back Thursday post is an old leader wallet. I visited my good friend, Jim Fisher earlier this week and he pulled out several older fly fishing items in his collection. The leader wallet was one of them. It was owned by his uncle Tony D’Andrea who lived in Idaho and fished the St….

  • Fly Tying Continues

    My fly tying continues this week and includes working to fill an order for a good customer. Here are a few #16 PMD Quigley Film Critic flies off my Renzetti vise. They imitate a PMD hatching out of their nymphal shuck. Notice the body is brown and thorax a PMD yellow. I posted this image…

  • Lance Egan’s Red Dart

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Lance Egan’s Red Dart. OK, this might not be a real old fly, but it will be 9 years old this year. I read where Lance Egan developed this fly in 2011 for the World Fly Fishing Championships held in Bolzano, Italy. He used his new fly to…

  • Cast One for Hope Event in 2020

    If you are a regular here at RiverKeeper Flies, you might recall my wife and I participated in Cast One for Hope on the Bitterroot River, MT last September. It was part of our last fly fishing road trip for the year, which was cut short due to snowstorms and frigid temperatures that buffeted Montana…