Winter is a great time for restocking and organizing your fly boxes. How many fly boxes do you carry? How do you organize them? It’s been too long and my fly boxes have seen some serious neglect the last few months. I fish over 100 days a year. How many over 100? I used to…
Snow and cold weather have made a big impact on my fishing lately. Perhaps I’m getting older, but as I write this post, it’s 11 degrees and snowing lightly. So I’ve been at the vise tying nymphs to fill up the provider box. Here is my recommendation of a few nymphs for a well stocked…
I’ve said for the last couple of years the fish gods flip a switch and the fishing changes in November. But this year, the weather forecast is such that I might get another week of good fishing. Each day is different and the hatches are getting shorter, just like daylight hours. What this means is…
Over the last few weeks, I’ve written about our Montana Road Trip where we fished the Madison, Depuy Spring Creek, Stillwater, and Slough Creek & the Lamar. I thought I’d provide a summary of the effective flies we used in our Montana fly box. When selecting flies, I always try to imitate the insects I think…
Every once in awhile, I create a Recent Changes post to catch you up on what’s been happening behind the scenes at RiverKeeper Flies. And this is the week for it. Did you notice the Youtube video my wife took recently at the Central Oregon Sportsman Show in Redmond, Oregon? She was there with a few…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Lingrens Olive. I found this fly in the American Nymph Fly Tying Manual (1975) by Randall Kaufmann. It imitates many mayfly nymphs and the fly pattern sheet suggests tying these nymphs in sizes 10 – 18. It was named Lingren’s Olive. But after writing this TBT post, I’ve since…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Lightning Bug. I recently added the Lightning Bug nymph to the Fly Patterns list on RiverKeeper Flies. As I searched for the original fly pattern and who developed it, I thought it would be a good candidate for a TBT fly. I was surprised the Lightning Bug was over…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the WD-40. The WD-40 was developed by Mark Engler for the Frying Pan River in Colorado back in 1982. The WD is for Wood Duck, which is used in the tail and wingcase, although I’ve seen the fly tied with Mallard Flank as well. The fly can be used…
I was fishing East Lake again on Monday. But before we went, I had to restock the “provider box”. So I tied up some Callibaetis Sparkle Dun and Harrops Callibaetis Paraspinner flies along with my latest favorite Callibaetis pattern, the RiverKeeper Callibaetis Emerger. My latest theory about Callibaetis fishing is to not bother fishing with a Callibaetis dun. That’s the…
Pale Morning Duns (PMD) are the major hatch I’m fishing lately. The Green Drakes are done, so PMDs are what I’m looking for. This is a picture I took of the real Pale Morning Dun. The distinguishing features of a PMD are 3 tails and light gray wings with a leading edge of yellow stain. The body…
