This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Mottled May, a fly developed by Charles DeFeo. I found this fly pattern in Forgotten Flies by Paul Schmookler & Ingrid Sils. This is a spectacular book and includes flies from Ray Bergman, Preston Jennings, Mary Orvis Marbury, and Carrie Stevens. I used Forgotten Flies as a reference for…
I’ve been helping my wife this week with Fish Camp, a 3-day fly fishing camp for 14 students, 10 – 14 years old. It’s part of our fly club’s Next Cast Flyfishers (our youth program) goal to get kids into fly fishing in Central Oregon. We’re teaching them about casting, knot tying, aquatic bug basics, fly tying,…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Sheep Creek Special. I found the fly was developed by George Biggs of Jerome, Idaho in the 1960’s where he fished it at Sheep Creek Reservoir on the Nevada/Idaho border. Some say the Sheep Creek Special imitates leeches is larger sizes and midges in smaller sizes. It might…
We fished the Lower D recently while drifting from Warm Springs to Trout Creek and happened to run into Eric’s Deschutes River Bar and Grill. Have you seen it along the river as you’ve floated? The location is a secret, but if you can find it, I highly recommend it. Launch your drift boat at Warm Springs…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Del Cooper. I’ve been reading John Shewey’s Classic Steelhead Flies and decided to look in my Steelhead fly box to see if I had a few of the flies. Low and behold, I found a couple Del Coopers. I must have tied this several years ago. Shewey attributes…
I wrote a post entitled Fly Fishing with Beetles almost two years ago touting how effective fly fishing can be with a beetle on the end of your line. I’m still a believer. I fish a fly I call Beetle Bailey. I shake my head in disbelief and smile at how effective Beetle Bailey catches fish! Beetle Bailey…
Earlier this month, I wrote a post entitled Where to Fish where I tried to describe the difficulty of all the fly fishing choices available to me. Today I’m headed to the Lower Deschutes to see if the Golden Stoneflies are still around in numbers to have a few fish looking up. And that means…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Hackle Stacker, a style of fly developed by Bob Quigley in the late 1980’s. Bob fished the Hackle Stacker in Southern Oregon and Northern California. The fly utilizes a paraloop technique by winding the hackle around a flexible post of some type. The fly above is a…
I was on the river last week and happened to witness a tremendous PMD hatch. I’ve been waiting for the Green Drake mayflies to begin hatching, but it was great to see PMDs hatching again. PMDs, otherwise known as Pale Morning Duns, are an important hatch for fish and fly fishers. Generally, you’ll find these…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is The Rose. The Rose is a fly from the collection of Mary Orvis Marbury. I’ll call it a “variant” as I didn’t have the original materials to tie the fly. I used a Golden Pheasant body feather for the hackle and added black ostrich herl at the head…
