• Fish and Flies

    My life these days is centered around fish and flies. Just how I like it! I continue to tie customer flies when I’m not fishing. I was working on a fairly time-consuming post about the Metolius River being my home waters. Yes, I finally decided to share a little bit more about the river. It’s…

  • Sierra Bright Dot Fly

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Sierra Bright Dot fly. This is an attractor-style “fore and aft” fly pattern developed sometime in the 1950’s for the eastern slopes of the Southern Sierra mountains for Golden Trout. I was asked to tie a few dozen Sierra Bright Dots for a customer in sizes ranging…

  • Tying a Variety of Flies

    I’ve been spending quite a bit of time at the vise recently, tying a variety of flies for customers. Fishing will pick up soon and I’ll be off on this year’s fly fishing road trips, so I need to get as many flies tied as possible in the next month or less. If you read…

  • Black Forked Tail Nymph

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Black Forked Tail Nymph. Shortly after I posted the Prince Nymph encore, I received a note from my friend Wayne Luallen with additional information about the creator of both the Prince and Forked Tail nymphs, Doug Prince. Wayne received the following original fly pattern from Doug’s notebook…

  • Frank Johnson CDC Fly

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is a Frank Johnson CDC fly I found in a fly box Frank donated and I was fortunate to select during a Fly Tyer’s Rendezvous fly swap at the 50th Anniversary of the International Federation of Fly Fishers Fair in Bend, Oregon (2015). (Note: the IFFF has since changed its…

  • Prince Nymph Encore

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is a Prince Nymph encore. I featured the Prince Nymph in October 2014, the first year of my blog. It was one of my first TBT flies. In case you missed it, here is the story I wrote: It originally was known as the Brown Forked Tail and created…

  • Dette Yellow Stonefly Nymph

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Dette Yellow Stonefly Nymph. I pulled out Mike Valla’s The Founding Flies and paged through to locate an interesting fly for this week’s post. The Dette Yellow Stonefly Nymph spoke to me. Walt and Winnie Dette are known for their beautiful Catskill dry flies. At least that’s…

  • Buz’s Float N Fool Multi-Color

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Buz’s Float N Fool Multi-Color. The Float N Fool Multi-Color (AKA – Flot’N Fool Multi-Color, Float-n-Fool, Float N Fool, even Flot-N-Fool) is a parachute fly tied with calf tail for the tail and wing post, a peacock herl body, and a hackle that varied in color from Adams…

  • Teaching and Tying Flies

    I have several topics for today’s post. First of all, I’ll be making a presentation to Central Oregon Flyfisher’s Wednesday night (3/16/22). The topic is Selecting Flies from a Fly Tyer’s Perspective. If this sounds interesting, I’ll be sharing my thoughts in next week’s post. In addition, I’ve been tying and teaching flies. I finished…