New Video- Tying the F-Fly

Here is a great fly to stock your box with. It is a quick and easy tie. I have been using it for the past year with great results. Two weeks ago it took 5 fish during a midge hatch on Rapid Creek. Check it out!

New Video- Tying the F-Fly

Here is a great fly to stock your box with. It is a quick and easy tie. I have been using it for the past year with great results. Two weeks ago it took 5 fish during a midge hatch on Rapid Creek. Check it out!

Tying a Czech Nymph

Here you go, video numero dos- Tying a Czech Nymph

New- Tying Whitlock's Red Fox Squirrel Nymph

Tying Whitlock's Red Fox Squirrel Nymph

Warm winter day brings the fisherman out

It hit 40 today and the fly fishermen knew, or at least four of them did.

Ryan Gabert (pictured above) was perfecting his czech nymphing skills and testing out new fly patterns. Shaun Lazotte was nymphing up a storm. Kevin Woster got in a few casts and managed to tackle an M-Hill hike. Me? I made my share of casts on Rapid Creek.

The sun was out and the midges were hatching. I managed to bring one fish to hand with a nymph and 5 with midge patterns on top. The best fly was an olive F-fly. (This pattern is so easy to tie and it always fools fish. It is an Ev Hoyt pattern if I have ever seen one. More on this fly another time.)

We are so lucky to have Rapid Creek fishing the way it is. Where else can you enjoy an afternoon of fishing on a beautiful stream less than 5 minutes from your front door? Dry flies in December is a blessing.

Get out and bring the holiday season in fly-rod fashion.

European Nymphing- Part Duex

My last several outings on Rapid Creek have been experimental in nature (maybe all of my trips are that way, but these seemed especially so.) I have been working on strike indicator free European style nymphing. It has been successful. At home I have been experimenting with tying the nymphs needed for such fishing. The fly pictured above uses a tungsten teardrop to achieve the weight needed for Czech style nymphing (I demonstrated using these at Saturday's tying demo). The fish pictured at the bottom was caught using a polish style woven grub (I demonstrated those a couple Saturday's back). This coming Saturday I plan to give a brief seminar on how to rig and fish these style nymphs. This is a style of fishing worth trying if you tire of fishing with cumbersome indicator and split shot rigs. See you this coming Saturday!

New Hopper Hatch

They are still hatching, but this time they are hatching indoors. I was tying flies the other day. (My current fly tying desk, much to the wife's dismay, is on the kitchen table.) As it happens, I am setup next to the thyme, oregano, and rosemary plants we overwinter in the house. In the hunt for some material buried under the piles of dubbing, hackles, and miscellaneous ziploc bags I saw something jump. Not just any jump, but a grasshopper-esque jump. Sure enough, there on the table was a freshly hatched hopper. I must have brought the egg in with one of the plants. I chased the little devil around with the camera and finally snapped this photo. I should have put a penny or something next to him for scale, but if you were to tie an imitation of him you would have needed a size 20 hook.