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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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Fly tying: The Flying Squirrel Nymph
I love "mash-up" flies—inventions at the vise that work on trout for no particular reason at all. Just this week, I tried a simple wet fly pattern I "created" at the vise a couple weeks ago for Firehole River trout, and I was rewarded with some of the most aggressive brown trout takes I'd ever…
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Fly Tying: The Crackleback
While I love spending time tinkering at the vise, I'm always looking for ways to cut down on the number of patterns I tie regularly. Ed Story's Crackleback fits my style of fishing perfectly. Part dry fly, part wet fly and part micro-bugger, this easy-to-tie pattern mimics naturals on the surface, emerging caddis and just…
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Fly tying: The Muskrat Nymph
Tying flies that don't really imitate anything specific, but might contain a hint of this or that is always fun for me. When a fly isn't supposed to represent a specific prey base, I almost feel as if I have license to be a bit creative at the vise. As expected, the results have been…
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Fly tying: The Adams
It's almost summer, which means it's almost time to get out on the small waters here in the West and prospect for wild and native trout. There may be no better "attractor" pattern for trout than the venerable Adams. First tied in 1922 by Leonard Halladay to imitate a basic mayfly, and first fished on…
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