I’ll be speaking at two fly-fishing clubs—one in southwest Washington and one in southwest Oregon—this coming week. The first engagement is at the Clark-Skamania Flyfishers in the Vancouver/Camas (and by default, Portland) area on January 20th. The second engagement is the next night in Grants Pass, Oregon at the Southern Oregon Fly Fishers. If you’re [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Keys-style tarpon fly. Old-school, with a bit of flash thrown into the wing. Nothing fancy, but it would work… Tech info: 8-1/2″ x 11″ recycled inkjet paper, inked with an Office Max fine-point roller ball pen (only 79-cents!), and colored with watercolor pencil, watercolor crayon, and a dash of Prismacolor marker. Decided [...]

[ Javascript required to view QuickTime movie, please turn it on and refresh this page ] Nail knots can be a pain to tie—especially when you really need one and there is nary a tool in sight (or you don’t know how to use said tool). Well, a “Nail-less” Nail Knot is a slick and [...]

One of my favorite ways to illustrate is to rough sketch with an added story line. Three more like this yet to come (those of you who own Presentation have already seen these, but expect a bunch more in the new books). Update: Found a color version of the above (from a series of hand-colored [...]

Yet another fly-fishing friend has died—Jim Greenlee. It’s likely that not many readers will recognize Jim’s name, but I know that some of you still wade in the boots that he shepherded into being—along with my father—many years ago. Jim was in charge of Weinbrenner when he and my father got together and made the [...]

Since I’m going to soon be heading back to my old column in “Fly Fish America,” I thought that I’d post what is perhaps my favorite column from the “old days.” I suspect that parts of this story will show up again in another guise in a future column (and I can pretty much guarantee [...]

After a hiatus of a couple of years, I’m returning to writing my techniques-based column in ”Fly Fish America“ magazine. The refreshed column is scheduled to appear in FFA’s annual “Trout Issue,” with a May/June 2010 dating. The column, barring space or other issues, should appear in every issue thereafter. With a distribution model that is based heavily [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Humpy done in charcoal. Drawing time was about five minutes. One of the cool things about Humpys: they catch 8-inch brook trout and 8-pound browns just fine, thanks. Tech info: 9″ x 12″ charcoal on Strathmore coldpress watercolor paper. Decided to go about 180-degrees from 01_Mickey Finn. Grabbed my pad of paper [...]

Another sad week for the fly-fishing community with the passing of Charlie Meyers (so close to the passing of Rusty Gates). Much more about Charlie from his close friends and colleagues here and here than I can write on FF&W. My mother has a funny remembrance about Charlie, though, involving a particularly rough plane ride across [...]

Recently got an e-mail asking: “What do you feel is the end-all, be-all in casting? Super distance or super accuracy or some other skill that defines ‘best’? What’s your opinion?” My answer is “Being able to make the needed cast—and if necessary, the needed mend—in any situation.” In other words, the end-all, be-all is being [...]

While there is still plenty of fishing to be had for some of the FF&W readership, others may be finding themselves staring at hard water and closed seasons. Well, it may not be fishing season for all of you, but it’s definitely MPR season! As many FF&W readers know, I am a fan of Echo’s [...]

We started 2010 with fly drawings, so why not tie one on? Kel leaned over my shoulder and took this shot one day as we were fishing an old spring creek haunt. No real set-up, no real intent, just literally a quick snap-shot using dead-stock camera settings. Art? No. But it still means a lot [...]