This is one of my final posts for the year and I’d like to share some of my favorite memories from 2022 on RiverKeeper Flies. You might recall I keep track of the flies I tie. This year, the grand total is approaching 2,200 with a couple more days to go until the new year….
This is the time of year you’ll find me with Euro nymph rod in hand, searching for trout in the snow. There aren’t a lot of dry fly fishing opportunities in December. Sure, you might find a short Blue Wing Olive (BWO) or midge hatch, but it usually doesn’t last long. I went to the…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Beetle Bug Coachman. I was asked by a friend recently to tie up a few of these flies for his local river. It’s an old fly pattern he had seen recently on my RiverKeeper Flies website. Turns out, it was on the cover of this book, John…
I’m still at the fly tying vise this week as I enjoy watching the snow falling or remaining in our backyard from previous storms rolling through. I’ve been tying Royal Wulff flies while waiting for a hook order to arrive so I can complete my last fly order. I looked out on the porch yesterday…
I finished a fly order recently for a customer which included a couple of fly patterns utilizing foam and it made me think about tying and fishing foam flies. Most of the foam patterns I tie are used to imitate terrestrials or stoneflies. A new-to-me fly is this Card’s Cicada. It’s a variant as I…
I’ve been prospecting with my dry flies recently and don’t have much to show for my time on the water. I fished last week and noticed small mayflies, probably size 20 – 22 Blue Wing Olives, floating downstream. A couple of fish rose sporadically. But drifting a fly over them didn’t produce even a look….
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is John Barr’s Bouface Streamer. This is another fly I found in the book entitled Barr Flies (2007). I’ve been tying Dolly Llama streamers and Barr’s Bouface was very similar to that fly. The Bouface is featured in chapter 19 and includes detailed tying instructions. Originally tied as a…
Have you ever heard the term “variant”? It’s used a lot in fly tying and has multiple meanings. Originally, a variant used to be a fly style, similar to traditional dry flies, but the fly was supported by longer hackles and tails. Another definition is a significant variation of another fly pattern. I think in…
Welcome to this year’s holiday wish list for fly fishers. I hope you find something useful on the 2022 Fly Fisher’s Christmas list. Many of these items can be purchased at your local fly shop and I encourage you to do so. But if you can’t find the item, here are links to Amazon (affiliate…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Randall Kaufmann’s Simulator Peacock. I was paging through John Shewey’s Favorite Flies for Oregon (2021) and found Kaufmann’s Simulator. I’ve been a big Randall Kaufmann fan since the 1980’s. His books, Tying Nymphs (1994) and Tying Dry Flies (1991), were the first quality color fly tying instructions in…
