Want to change-up your holiday fly-fishing gift-giving this year? Do the fly fishers you know seem to have everything they need/want already? Then it appears that you’re in luck, since the Eclectic Angler specializes in fly-fishing gifts that are definitely not mainstream. I myself have a build-it-yourself reel kit from the EA (itself a very [...]

After posting that little pic yesterday with the blurb about brookies and mice, I got an email asking about mouse flies. Here’s a simple pattern—little more than a few tails and some lashed-on hair—that works. No excessive trimming, no ears, no eyes, no whiskers. Nothing wrong with eyes, ears and whiskers mind you, just that [...]

With this week’s talk of big brook trout, I figured that a big brookie would be in order today. This is a Sutton River (Canada) fish caught by a much younger me. This fish was hardly the largest caught on that particular trip, but it still makes for some nice eye candy. Even better? Those [...]

Drawing Flies 52 False Albacore (“Albie”). Wanted to stay with the East Coast fishing this week, and keep it in the salt, too. The colors and marking on Albies are well-suited to an artistic palette, in this case the digital CMYK palette in Adobe Illustrator. Update: I had pretty much this image in my head when [...]

This week is your last chance at “eternal fly casting glory” from the boys over at Jazz & Fly Fishing. Think you have the world’s most creative (or at least funniest) Shadow Cast? Then don’t delay, get your video cam out and make the rainbows rise (or run, more likely). Fabulous prizes and international fame [...]

Comments have been acting up (again). Got it fixed now. Thanks to John L for the heads up! A little insect art to make this post more than just three short sentences:

Just thought that a few FF&W readers might enjoy a look back at one of the books that influenced GB so deeply in his youth. This is actually a later version of the book after it transitioned to the Noll name. It was originally a Family Circle book, which is the version that my father [...]

One of my clients at last week’s fly-casting clinics in Grants Pass, Oregon, presented me with a rather nice gift: A vintage Bunyan Bug tied by Norman Means himself. This is the “poster pattern” from Norman Maclean’s, A River Runs Through It, and is a fly that, to me, speaks of “old school” Montana like no [...]

I know that some FF&W readers have seen this fish before (a few of you of in the last week). This is a big rainbow (right around five pounds) that Kel caught a couple of summers back. It came from a small lake in central Oregon, and it has ended up in nearly every e-slide [...]

DF52 Bluefish. Done raw, fast, and uncertain in form—sorta like the real thing in a blitz. I’m too worn down right now to worry about anatomical perfection, so I went for roughness of shape and boldness of color. Hope you like it (I actually do). Jeff’s cool blue is here.

I was gone most of last week, putting some dusty mileage on Oregon’s passes and backroads. One place I ended up was the Yamsi Ranch in southern Oregon. Some of my time was devoted to a fly-casting clinic, but the rest of my hours were spent exploring the section of the Williamson River that runs [...]

I’m on the road, I’m in a hotel, and I’m fried. This week’s DF52 bluefish is going to be delayed here at FF&W. In the meantime, go have a look at Jeff’s really nice blue here. I’ll get my drawing up as soon as I can….

No fish in today’s photo, just water (but I guarantee that there are fish in the photo, just not showing themselves above the water). This was taken on one of America’s crown-jewel rivers, the North Umpqua. If you’ve never been to or fished the North Umpqua, you need to do so at some point in [...]

I remember the first steelhead that I ever hooked. It was a Great Lakes fish, and it had taken a big, black stonefly nymph with a deep, leaden heaviness. I pulled back—several times—thinking that I had a branch or perhaps the bottom. The big trout popped out of the water in a purely vertical fashion, [...]