• Orange Comet

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Orange Comet, a steelhead and salmon fly. I’m heading out salmon fishing and decided to tie up a few Comets and found reports that the Chartreuse Comet is a great tide water fly pattern. I’ve read where the Orange Comet works well in clear water and the…

  • LaFontaine Diving Caddis

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the LaFontaine Diving Caddis. If you’re a frequent visitor to RiverKeeper Flies, you might recognize a theme of several LaFontaine Caddisflies, including the LaFontaine Deep Sparkle Pupa and the LaFontaine Emergent Pupa. Brown & Green Diving Caddis In the past week or so, we’ve been fishing later and…

  • 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…

  • Quill Gordon

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Quill Gordon. I think there’s something elegant about Catskill style flies. And the Quill Gordon is one of the originals. It was created by Theodore Gordon before 1906. Gordon was born in Pennsylvania in 1854 and is recognized as the father of dry fly fishing in America….

  • LaFontaine Emergent Pupa

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the LaFontaine Emergent Pupa. Anyone see any continuity from last week? Just checking… The LaFontaine Emergent Pupa is the final phase of a caddis as it climbs out of its pupal shuck and makes its way to the surface to finally fly away from the water. The earlier stage…

  • LaFontaine Deep Sparkle Pupa

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the LaFontaine Deep Sparkle Pupa. Here is a fly I tied many years ago. I first learned of the Deep Sparkle Pupa when I purchased Gary LaFontaine’s book entitled Caddisflies in the 1980s. It took him 10 years to write the book because of the research he performed. When Gary…

  • 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….

  • Henryville Special

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Henryville Special. I’ve had this fly in my caddis box for awhile. Not sure where I bought it. The Henryville Special is a caddis imitation and was created by Hiram Brobst of LeHighton Pennsylvania in the 1930’s for the Broadhead Creek section of river called the Henryville…

  • Woolly Bugger

    This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Woolly Bugger. Like many flies, fly tyers are always tweeking tried and true flies to make them fish better. The Woolly Bugger is very similar to the Woolly Worm, but with a different tail of marabou. The picture above includes a bead head as well. The fly…

  • 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…