Drawing Flies 52 Gray Ghost. Overworked this one nearly to an untimely death. Decided that the only way to do something interesting was to scan it and hit it with a Photoshop filter. A cheap way out, I know, but I felt that I had to do something with it, so that’s what I did. At [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Winter’s Hope. Attended a dinner party last night, and it unexpectedly ran well into the early part of today, so I ended up with a Friday morning DF 52 drawing. More info later. In the meantime, go see Jeff’s Winter’s Hope here.

Drawing Flies 52 Bright Fox. Liking Jeff’s choice of wet fly this week. Based this drawing directly on the pattern shown over at “Hatches” (which is a nice tying mag, by the way). The whole process went so much better than last week’s debacle. Jeff and I have been talking wet flies a fair amount [...]

Top: Original drawing (not so great). Bottom: Enhanced version (a brighter not-so-great). Oh well. Drawing Flies 52 Turkey Spey. Seems like an appropriate fly given the U.S. holiday today. Drew this one dressed heavily for dark, cold water (no gravy, though). Frankly, my approach didn’t work out right, I feel, and I’m not happy with [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Blue Butt Caddis. A tribute to Tom Helgeson. As many FF&W readers likely know, Tom died recently after a battle with cancer. He was a driving influence in the fly-fishing scene in the entire Great Lakes region (and in much more than that). Tom was a family friend, and I presented and [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Durham Ranger. Thought that this came out OK, kinda the sketchy-cool that I was aiming for. Then I clicked over to look at Jeff’s rendition…so much for my little chicken-scratchings. Jeff just killed it. Chewy strokes of color, lots of depth and shine, pillows of softness in the background—and no paint. Almost [...]

A little piece that I posted over at the FlyTalk blog. The post is no longer on the front page there, so I’m re-posting here (with bigger images and a few extra words). – – – – – – – – – – – Midges are the trout-angler’s constant. Regardless of what’s happening with other [...]

A static view is nice, but with this fly, I wasn’t after static—I was after swung. Drew the fly with motion in mind, and then gave it 78 pixels of blur at a 21-degree angle via Photoshop. An anadromous-eye view is the end result. Some might like it, some might not. For those who do, [...]

I actually blogged about Gaylord and his work a few years ago—before I decided to do a major blog upgrade and killed my old database. Since that time Gaylord has been working on a variety of projects, but his mayfly art is still available (as is his beautiful book, Mayflies of the Driftless Region). If [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Jack O’ Lantern Spey. I think that Spey (and related) patterns are some of the most aesthetically pleasing in all of fly fishing. I am a real fan of how the flow of these flies works from a visual standpoint, and the fact that they are often a balance of brilliance and [...]

Assuming I got the materials to them in time today, there should be new fly-tying post up on “Field & Stream” magazine’s FlyTalk blog either tomorrow (Tuesday) or perhaps Thursday. The subject is “3 Materials for 6 Midges,” and covers some easy ways to use minimal materials to create simple, but effective patterns. No dedicated, [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Floating Nymph. A pattern that I started fishing when I was pretty young (and still fish regularly today). This particular Floating Nymph uses a Harrop-style dubbing ball for the bunched-up wings, and a split tail (more for me than the fish). Notes: Wanted to do a Buddha Board fly, so here it [...]

Drawing Flies 52 Gray Hackle Peacock. Not a great day today, and I just had to drag myself to the drawing desk. Had thought about the fly for a while, but with the way I was feeling, I realized that I’d have to go digital and hope for the best. My initial pencil sketch was [...]

If you dig the pain and joy of micro-flies in your trout fishing (I still remember the first decent fish I caught on a #28), then check out Small Fly Funk. Tarpon fanatics need not apply (but then again…I think I’ll post something about that. Stay tuned).