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Voices from the River: Confessions of fly tying junkie
By Dave Atcheson It was one of those perfectly still, fog-draped mornings on Trout Lake, so tranquil its surface looked as though it might shatter if I put paddle to water. My buddy Jim and I, as we had so many mornings, angled the canoe toward a favorite weed bed and glid ed to a…
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Fly tying: The Casual Dress
I love fly patterns that incorporate a bit of inventiveness, or include some new tricks that I never considered at the vise. Polly Rosbourough's Casual Dress is one of those patterns. Not only is a fairly simple endeavor to tie a few of these small streamers up, but the tying itself incorporates some nifty procedures…
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Fly tying: Clipping, cleaning and stacking hair
One of the toughest fly-tying skills for new tiers is using the hair-stacker that comes with the beginner tying kit to actually stack hair for flies like elk-hair caddis, stonefly patterns, Stimulators and the like. I know when I first tried it, I ended up with quite a mess—nothing like the instructional video promised. Video…
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Fly tying: The Cream Variant
As Tim Flagler notes in the video below, the Cream Variant is "an oldie, but a goodie." Indeed, I remember seeing this pattern for the first time as a child—it is the epitome of delicate fly fishing, and I remember thinking that all flies used for fishing should be this beautiful. Video of Cream VariantAlso,…
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Fly tying: The Slumpbuster
The Slumpbuster is a John Barr creation, and it's intent is exactly as the name implies. It's big. It's heavy. It pushes water. It's the "look at me!" fly that we all search for when things are slow, the action suddenly ceases or under high water when finding fish might be a bit of a…
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Fly tying: Mercer’s Missing Link
Stumped. We’ve all been there — thrown everything in our boxes at a handful of rising trout until, one by one, we’ve put them down.Fishing the Snake River with some friends, we watched fish after fish slash at stoneflies and completely ignore our imitations as the cleanly drifted past. We’d tried every stonefly imitation we…
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Fly tying: The Renegade
Years ago, I navigated our old Toyota Landcruiser high into the mountains off the shoulders of Monarch Pass in southern Colorado. The gravel road was a nightmare, even for my seemingly indestructable beast of a vehicle, and I was forced to come a stop when I reached a snowbank even the Landcruiser couldn't charge through.…
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