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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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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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