We headed over Chief Joseph pass into the Bitterroot Valley after leaving Salmon, ID. As I mentioned in my last Fall Fly Fishing Road Trip post, this trip was spontaneous. We ended up fly fishing the Bitterroot, Big Hole, and Beaverhead rivers on our way east. Yellowstone National Park was a destination as well. We…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the McMurray Ant. Ed Sutryn invented the McMurray Ant in the early 1960’s while fishing on a stream in McMurray, Pennsylvania. He watched trout crazily feeding on ants. Sometime later, he found out they were timber ants and set about designing a fly using monofilament, cork, and black…
Our home waters, the Metolius River, had been closed below Allingham Bridge for a couple of weeks due to the wildfires ravaging Oregon. Smoke in Sisters had been unhealthy, much like a lot of Oregon cities and the rest of the West. The smoke cleared for a couple of days and my wife looked at…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Benn’s Black Prince TBT. Benn’s Black Prince was created by John Benn. It’s one of the flies listed in John Shewey’s book Classic Steelhead Flies (2015). Benn was a famous fly tyer and angler in the late 1800s. He lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and ventured to the Eel…
I can’t believe it’s almost October! I haven’t been to the river in a while because of all the smoke and closures, but would expect to see October Caddis flitting around the water and laying eggs. Fishing October Caddis flies can be exciting this time of year. Here is a post from last year I…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Deschutes Demon TBT. The Deschutes Demon was created by Don McClain of Don’s Tackle in Portland, OR in the 1960s. It’s one of the flies listed in John Shewey’s book Classic Steelhead Flies (2015) where he mentions Don’s wife Lola who developed another popular steelhead fly, the…
I like to keep track of the flies that have been successful on our fly fishing road trips. Saving the information in a post on my RiverKeeper Flies website is an effective way to document the flies, both for me AND for you. I try to check out prior year posts about our road trip…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is McNeese’s Golden Heron. This Golden Heron spey fly was tied by Dave McNeese, an icon in the steelhead fly tying world. It was part of a fly collection from my friend Jim Fisher.
I hope you read last week’s post about fishing our home waters the Metolius River. We continued to fish the river last week, but forest fires in the area have changed our plans this week. In fact, the road below Allingham Bridge is closed, including all the campgrounds. They were evacuated this weekend. The high…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Grey Ugly. Recently, a potential customer contacted me to see if I would tie some Grey Ugly flies for him. I had never heard of this fly and did a quick Google search to learn about it. Looking at an image of the fly, I thought it…
