Wooly buggers. Egg patterns. Griffith’s gnat. I suppose I could switch it up a little bit and tie something crazy like a wooly worm or a green weenie, but why spread myself thin? I’ve had the materials and a little bit of the knowledge to tie flies for about fifteen years now, but I’ve only …
You’re a mean one, Mr. Nymph. You really are a heel. Even though you catch all the fish, You make me fish by feel, Mr. Nymph. You’re a bad little hare’s ear with some tungsten steel. You’re a monster, Mr. Nymph. You disappear in holes. Why can’t you be a spider? Or some other …
Being seasonably relevant, Hatch Magazine recently sent links out via social media to the 2014 article Winter Fly Fishing: Leave the Cotton at Home. It is a brief, but sufficient public service announcement that makes a great case for eschewing jeans and sweatshirts in favor of much more efficient materials. As the piece mentions, efficiency …
I don’t think it has ever really happened to me. One time, I came close. I’ll get to that in a minute. Perhaps coming close doesn’t get you in Field & Stream, or it won’t even justify somebody telling others to “come over and hear this!” I’m talking about catching a fish on the last …
Maybe I’m alone in living through this phenomenon. Or perhaps like anything else in human experience, it is one of those constants that every angler comes to know numerous times in their life. I’m talking about catching a fish right off the bat, and then getting skunked for the rest of the day. This all …
Of all the reasons that a summer camp counselor would come into a room full of teenagers to tell them to be quiet, it might have been one of the most unique. It wasn’t the camp movie comedy tropes of cigarettes or coed mischief. That night, after lights out, four or five of us were …
Last week, the second Fly Fishing & Outdoor Company Holiday Meetup took place in Boston. In the basement of West End Johnnies, a handful of New England enterprises and around fifty attendees spent the evening talking fishing and fishing products. This was by no means the Somerset Fly Fishing Show. It was something completely different, …
Scrolling Instagram and Twitter, there are a lot of “wishing it was summer” posts. Pictures of short-sleeved anglers against ardent backdrops do make you wish that the weather – and the hatches – was a little different. But it can’t be, at least not for much of the world. So suck it up and deal …
After thinking and writing about the progress on Big Spring Creek in Pennsylvania last week, it got me thinking about other famous streams that have fallen on hard times. Largely due to the impacts of poor fisheries management and/or environmental neglect, some of the rivers that our grandfathers lauded as destination waters have declined in …
