Drawing Fish 52 Mako shark. My favorite shark as a kid. Wanted to continue the feel of my old file-folder and construction-paper drawings forward with this piece. Has the feel I was after, even if all the construction paper was manufactured in Photoshop. As with some of my 2010 DF52 flies, this piece is a [...]

Was digging through a pile of salmon photos earlier today, looking for shots to use in this year’s DF52 project (Jeff and I will hopefully manage to get through all five Pacific salmon). I came back across this one, and was instantly reminded of two things: 1) Wisconsin may not be Alaska, but there is [...]

I’ve been watching the radar images (and video streams) today, and am hoping that my fly-fishing friends in the Mid-South and Southeast U.S. are doing okay dealing with what appears to be a tornado outbreak that could possibly rival the historic one of 1974. Some familiar fishing spots are under red or yellow in that [...]

Up-close-and-personal fishing can be one of fly fishing’s most exciting aspects. At very close ranges, however, “normal” casting is often not possible or desirable. What to do? No problem, just break out your Bow and Arrow (cast, that is). I consider it a “must-have” technique for any angler who likes fishing at super-close ranges. Also [...]

Friend and now shop-owner, Matt Paluch, has been busting it hard to get the old Deschutes River Camp back into shape for a new season. He picked up the Camp relatively recently, and invited me down to see what was going on and to do a day of casting clinics. When I arrived on Thursday [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Grayling. This fish came from the trip on which I caught my first-ever grayling as a kid. One of the most interesting painting experiences I have had in a long while! Some readers can probably guess generally how this was made. Let’s just say I have to do this again. The way [...]

Hard to believe this shot of me was taken in Tasmania some 15+ years ago. What happened to the time? It feels like my angling life is rushing by and I’ve become strangely disconnected from some of the places that I know and love. 15 years?! How can that be? Well, in any case, it’s [...]

Drawing Fish 52 taimen. Went for the biggest of them all, especially considering that today is Jeff Kennedy’s 50th birthday. Happy birthday, my friend! And, a special thanks to Mark Johnstad at Mongolia River Outfitters for allowing me to use some shots from his website as the basis for this drawing. Expect to see at [...]

Spent much of today playing the part of a surgeon to a stack of fly-rod handles. Basically just reaming to match blank diameters/tapers. Hadn’t done this much cork work in, well, a rather long time (actually, I don’t think ever). Some of you might be asking why I would be doing this much cork work, [...]

Friend, and fellow casting instructor, Matt Paluch, recently acquired the Deschutes River Camp property and fly shop on Oregon’s famed Deschutes River. He has asked me to come over and do a series of casting clinics for his grand re-opening on Friday, April 22 and Saturday, April 23. I’ll be doing two, four-hour clinics on [...]

Almost have the illustrations and layout for Reading Waters finished. Plowed through a few of the larger drawings last night, including four brown trout (all caught by GB in one location—have to read the book to get the story). Thought that they would make for a nice bit of visual enhancement here. While they are [...]

Just a little slice of something I wrote a while back for those readers who like to push their fly-fishing skill sets a bit. In any sport, there are those athletes who can develop and utilize the “last five percent” of their abilities. Five percent may not seem like much, but it is the difference [...]

Amazing what a simple “invert” command can do to an image. This is just the inverted version of a Yellowstone cutthroat that I painted for a friend. The frosty X-ray look really gives the image an ethereal nature, versus the much more solid sense one gets when seeing it in its natural oranges and yellows. [...]

A little non-traditional exercise with Adobe Illustrator and the CMYK color space. Almost need your 3-D glasses for this one… More later. Update: Just checked out Jeff’s LMB. We both went digital, but Jeff really ran with it, and did something very cool. Love it. Update 2: So I’ve been asked twice now about tees. [...]