It's on My Trout Fishing To-Do List...

Last season seemed to start slow and end prematurely in a blur.  Weather, delays, and excuses translated into time on the water lost in the early season.  Indeed, I went nearly fishless in the usualy good month of March in 2009.  Welcoming a new puppy to the house in August claimed most of the time I'd have otherwise spent fishing late-season isos and caddis.  I DID manage to make up for some of that time lost by getting to Erie for steelhead a few times more than I'd planned, but overall, I'd missed alot of my favorite fishing. This year, I'm determined to do it right. Rather than deciding where to go as I get in the car,...

Read more »

Tying Small Flies: Tips for the Beginner

cp put up a great tutorial for a simple, small emerger yesterday, so naturally, I had to pick up a pack of #20 curved hooks on my way home and give it a try. While tying flies at this size isn't for the faint of heart, with some sensible thread and material management, it's a fairly straightforward process. cp's fly fishing and fly tying: BWO Biot Emerger Tutorial This emerger really stands out to me from so many other patterns designed for hooks of this size in that it really gets the most out of all aspects of the tie. That's not to say that a fly like the Zebra Midge won't catch fish (it certainly will), but cp's fly really manages to get a surprising amount of detail out of a relatively simple tie. My advice concerning hook size for any beginner is to start large and work your way to...

Read more »

10 Tips to Improve Your Fly Fishing (& Tying) Photography

So you've been flipping through your favorite fly fishing magazine, gawking at the beautiful photos for years and you finally decided to take the plunge, get a new digital camera, and do this yourself.  You got yourself a modest camera and a memory card and for the first few months, it was fun taking pictures on your fishing trips. Little by little, though, you started to see that all of your pictures looked more or less identical: a fish lying on the ground, or a buddy holding a fish, smiling.  While this certainly helped capture the memory of that day, you'd hoped it'd be more interesting than a series of the same shots with different...

Read more »

Winter Nymph: A Simple, Productive Fly

I finally got out to fish for the second time this year on Sunday, being forced to park at a restaurant and walk to the stream from there.  Managed to land my second fish of the year, too: a decent 12-14" rainbow on this simple, no-name nymph. This is one of those great flies that is everything and nothing, endlessly customizable, that can be tied with all the bells and whistles, as I've done in this tutorial, or stripped to next to nothing when you lose your fly box on the first day of the trip, and need a few dozen flies to fish tomorrow morning.  Without further ado, the tutorial: Simple Nymph Hook: Any standard or slightly long...

Read more »

Hackle: What Kind Should I Use?

Neck hackle, saddle hackle, hen hackle, cock hackle, spade hackle...for the fly tying beginner, all these variations on what are essentially the same feather can be very confusing.  Add to that the variation in quality, and suitability for certain flies, not to mention grading, and you've got a real mess.  In this article, I'll explain some of the key differences in these feathers. FUNCTIONALITY The most important factor when determining the correct hackle for your fly is the function that hackle will serve.  The most obvious and important role of hackle is the role they play in a hackled dry fly, where the hackle keeps the fly...

Read more »