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…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Grizzly King…at least that’s what I think it is. Check out how the leader is attached to the hook…without an eye.
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Chernobyl Ant. It’s an attractor fly pattern and can imitate cicada, crickets, grasshoppers, and stoneflies. Larry Tullis of Orem, Utah relays the fly’s development in Tying Flies with Foam, Fur, and Feathers by Harrison Steeves. Larry tied up a foam body cicada from a beach sandal in the late…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Dougs Damsel Nymph. And here is what it looks like when wet. And a picture of the real damsel nymph. I began tying and fishing these flies in the mid-1990’s. I found the fly in Tying Nymphs book by Randall Kaufmann. I tied a lot of flies from that…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Alder Fly. This fly is an old English fly pattern that is hundreds of years old. In fact, some quick Internet research suggests it may have been developed around 1496 when it was included in Dame Juliana Berners first fly fishing book Fysshe and Fysshynge. I wonder if…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Bi-Visible. Ever use one? I have…many years ago. But I haven’t had one in my fly box for some time. The Bi-Visible was created in the early 1920’s by Edward Ringwood Hewitt. In his book Telling on the Trout (1926) Hewitt stated: “Dark colors are more visible to the trout…
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…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Partridge and Orange Soft Hackle. Soft hackles are an old style of fly and were developed before Izaak Walton wrote the Compleat Angler in 1653. I’ve used various versions of soft hackles and eventually developed the RiverKeeper Soft Hackle Cripple and fish it as a dry fly. Others…
The Tellico Nymph is this week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly. This is one I probably tied in the 1970’s. It was a fly pattern out of the American Nymph Fly Tying Manual by Randall Kaufmann. I tied many flies from this book as I learned new fly tying techniques. It fishes well today and is…
This week’s Throw Back Thursday Fly is the Brassie. Here is a fly I tied many years ago. I found the fly pattern in Randall Kaufmann’s Nymphs book. As you can tell, it’s a simple pattern to tie. The Brassie was developed by Gene Lynch in the 1960’s. Lynch among other South Platte River fly tyers…
