• Troutsman Hex

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Troutsman Hex. I stayed at Slide Inn on the Madison River recently during our 2017 fly fishing road trip. One afternoon, I went to the shop and talked with Kelly about my Throw Back Thursday Fly feature and asked him if I could take pictures of a…

  • Quigley Victory Drake

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Quigley Victory Drake. I saw this fly for the first time a little over a week ago during our trip on the Upper Columbia River. If you haven’t seen the post, be sure to read my story of dry fly fishing with Green Drake mayflies is BIG…

  • Parachute Chernobyl and Joe Cantrell

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is about the Parachute Chernobyl and Joe Cantrell. The Parachute Chernobyl is another variant of the original Chernobyl Ant. I highlighted the fly in an earlier TBT post.  “Larry Tullis of Orem, Utah relays the fly’s development in Tying Flies with Foam, Fur, and Feathers by Harrison Steeves. Larry tied up…

  • Water Boatman TBT

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Water Boatman TBT. Peter Bowers from the Patient Angler in Bend taught this fly during a Central Oregon Flyfisher’s Winter Fly Tying class a couple of years ago. He said the Water Boatman was a fly tied for Lake in the Dunes many years ago. I wish…

  • Effective East Lake Flies

    I haven’t fished any lakes yet this year, but hopefully that will change this week. I think East Lake will be my fishing destination in a couple of days. I thought I’d use my own resources to refresh my memory for a few effective East Lake flies I need in my fly box. I created…

  • Chartreuse Humpy

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Chartreuse Humpy. I’ve featured the Humpy as a TBT fly back in April 2015. But I chose this fly to highlight the importance of what fly tyers call “variant”.  A “variant” gives the fly tyer the ability to change something on the original. Many times the change is as…

  • Mayfly Spinners

    On one of my fly fishing trips to the river last week, I was waiting for the fish to begin rising and I was curious about what flies were in the drift and available to the fish. A good place to find out is on the edges of an eddy. So I walked downstream to…

  • Langtry Special TBT

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Langtry Special TBT. I found this old article from the Bend Bulletin in a box of donated fly tying materials describing the Langtry Special. A friend of mine took his first fly tying lesson many years ago from Judge Virgil Langtry in a Maupin, Oregon church basement. Langtry…

  • June Fly Box

    Perhaps you saw last week’s post entitled Fishing the Lower Deschutes. I drifted the river twice last week. My fly box was full of Salmonfly and Golden Stonefly imitations. So I returned to my home river today and found many more PMD’s hatching and thought I better get my June fly box in order. Where…