Green Ant | www.johnkreft.com

Green Ant

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Green Ant. I was doing a little research to determine which flies to tie for a fly plate the Central Oregon Fly Tyer’s Guild is making for the 2016 NW Fly Tyer & Fly Fishing Expo. The plate’s theme is flies for the major steelhead rivers in Oregon….

Max Canyon | www.johnkreft.com

Max Canyon

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Max Canyon steelhead fly. It was developed by Doug Stewart in the early 1970’s. Our fly club has an outing in Max Canyon on the Deschutes River next week to fish for steelhead and I thought it timely to highlight this fly. You may have seen it spelled differently…Macks…

Maxwells Purple Matuka | www.johnkreft.com

Forest Maxwells Purple Matuka

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is Forest Maxwell’s Purple Matuka. I first started tying this fly in the 90’s after I met Forest. At that time, he worked part-time at Keith Burkhart’s Valley Flyfisher fly shop in Salem, Oregon. Forest talked me into a couple Powell steelhead rods for Karen and me to fish….

Freight Train | www.johnkreft.com

Freight Train

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is another steelhead fly pattern – the Freight Train. This fly was the creation of Randall Kaufmann. The Freight Train was developed along the Deschutes River where the railroad track follows the river for many miles. Other steelhead fly patterns were developed with the railroad theme…Coal Car, Signal Light, and…

Green Butt Skunk | www.johnkreft.com

Green Butt Skunk

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Green Butt Skunk. I would venture to guess it is one of the most popular steelhead flies of all time! It was developed by Dan Callaghan, date unknown, but sometime after 1950. He took the original Skunk steelhead fly and added the green butt. Just that minor change…

Purple Peril - Original | www.johnkreft.com

Purple Peril

This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Purple Peril. Since I wrote about Purple Flies in this weeks blog, I felt it appropriate to select it as a Throw Back fly. The Purple Peril was developed by George McLeod from the Seattle area before World War II. Paraphrasing from Classic Steelhead Flies by John Shewey, George’s…

Steelhead Green Rock Worm | www.johnkreft.com

New Fly Patterns

Here are a half dozen new fly patterns I learned to tie the last few months during the Winter Fly Tying Classes that look pretty good to me. I’ll give you a caveat…I haven’t fished these, but they sure look fishy and I can’t wait to try them out. Here are a trio of flies Peter Bowers…

Golden Demon | www.johnkreft.com

Golden Demon

How about an updated version of an old classic steelhead fly for this week’s Throw Back Thursday…the Golden Demon. Zane Grey brought this fly from New Zealand to the Rogue River in the mid-1920s.  OK, perhaps this is a spey version of the original…

Lady Caroline | www.johnkreft.com

Another Spey Fly – Done!

A few weeks ago, I wrote a blog Tying Spey Flies – I’m Scared! Well, I’m back to report I’ve successfully tied another spey fly! Actually…two. If you recall, I wanted to tie some spey flies and settled on the Lady Caroline, an old-time pattern from the 1800’s. Here was my first fly:

Lady Caroline | www.johnkreft.com

Lady Caroline

I thought it appropriate to offer the Lady Caroline as this week’s TBT fly. Yes, I just blogged about tying it in the last week in Tying Spey Flies – I’m Scared, but it’s perhaps the most famous spey fly. John Shewey in his Spey Flies & Dee Flies book suggests there is evidence “Geordie”…