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…
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…
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…
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…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Kaufmann’s Stonefly Nymph. Kaufmann’s Stonefly Nymph was created by Randall Kaufmann in the early 1990’s. I first found the fly in the classic book entitled Tying Nymphs (1994) by Kaufmann. It was listed as the Kaufmann Golden Stone, Rubber Legs. The write-up described the Golden Stone version, along with the…
It’s that special time of year when Salmonflies and Golden Stones are hatching on major rivers close to me. These are the bugs many fly fishers wait for with high expectations. Some fly fishers start shaking as they approach the river knowing the bugs are out and the fish are looking up, ready to explode on their…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Granam or Green-Tail fly. I thought this was a good fly to go along with the Mother’s Day Caddis post about the American Grannom. I’ve told you before that my Throw Back Thursday Fly segment celebrates older flies and that “old” is in the eye of the…
The Mother’s Day Caddis hatch is well-known and can be amazing to see. And it’s right around the corner. Yes, all those dots in the picture are caddis flying over the water! Thousands and thousands of American Grannom (Brachycentrus occidentalis) hatch at this time of year. These caddis are the ones building square-shaped cases you…
Wow! The weather has changed dramatically this week. The forecast shows 81 degrees on Thursday. The anticipation of some major hatches is very exciting and I decided I have to get a May fly box ready for the river. This is what I hope to catch. I’ve found the fish to be a little more…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Denny Rickards Seal Bugger. Denny created this fly in the mid-80’s on Oregon’s Upper Klamath Lake, his home waters. The fly is a variation of the popular Woolly Bugger. I’d seen this fly years ago, but found it again in Rickards Fly-Fishing Stillwaters for Trophy Trout (1997). It’s the…
