Fly Fishing Life

On Father’s Day I drove with my family to a nice little cascading waterfall on a small stream near the southern end of Lake Tahoe. We let the doggy dip his toes in the cold water, took a few photos, listened to the water, and generally decompressed.

The Blue Ribbon Big Hole is certainly one of the top ten rivers to fish in southwest Montana. It experiences good, consistent Salmon fly hatches every year in June that draw a lot of out of state anglers.

You can never be alone on a Southwest Montana or Yellowstone River at dawn. Where ever I go, nature – the birds, mammals and fish – are there. In some places they are almost omnipresent. Their absence would be noticed. I fish a stretch of the Big Hole River outside of Twin Bridges at least a half dozen times every season. Less than a mile upriver from the put in there’s always a watchful Bald Eagle high up in a Cottonwood snag. At times the Balds are accompanied by a pair of Golden Eagles. They watch as I slowly fish past their home rarely leaving the snag.

After weeks of big river fishing with streamers, I needed a break. So on a cool Tuesday morning in July I set off early for the headwaters of Stinking Water River (better known today as the Ruby River) in southwest Montana. The Ruby flows some 76 miles from its origins on the flanks of the Gravelly and Snowcrest Ranges to its confluence with the Beaverhead near Twin Bridges, Montana. Nestled in the valley between the two 10,000 foot mountain ranges, the main stem of the Ruby starts at a modest 6800 feet just north of the remote Centennial Valley in a lovely, willow filled meadow. Dozens of small streams flow into the Ruby near its headwaters as it grows on its journey down the Ruby valley. The Ruby got its name in 1877 for the prolific garnet finds in the valley.

This book was written primarily to encourage the non-professional craftsman. The purpose of this book is to help you on your journey to make a bamboo fly rod by minimizing frustration and confusion. It is intended to take some of the anxiety out of the process, which often prevents a fly fisher’s desire to go ahead and make a fine bamboo rod. Making a fine bamboo fly rod is not as difficult as you may think. My son, Tor, made a fine rod when he was twelve years old.

Of course I am not talking about hot spots marked on maps but those hot spots we add to our flies, those little bits of fluorescent thread, yarn, and floss or dubbing that somehow standout over the other parts of the fly. I’ve been incorporating “hot spots” in some of my ties for a while now, but wanted to learn more about where they originated and why they work. (Yes, they do work).

Any fly shop owner will tell you that wet flies, whether winged or wingless, represent a very small fraction of their fly sales. When it comes to insect imitations, most fly fishers use dry flies and/or nymphs. Although we now have variations on this theme in the form of various emerger patterns, most of them look like and are fished as either a dry or a nymph. You can find books on wet flies, and magazine articles discussing their lengthy history and extolling their effectiveness. Yet still, few people use them.

In Part 1, we looked in detail at how to layer clothing to stay warm when fishing in cold conditions (25-45 °F). This time we are going to look at how to stay dry and comfortable when it is raining and how to handle those hot, and often humid, days.

Guest Blogger: Joe Dellaria, Woodbury MN Years ago I was fishing with a friend when the weat...

A separation is always difficult despite the time involved and always leaves you feeling lost. Miles and miles of explored river will always lead to parts that you have never set your foot on. A new part of a river can be intimidating, you have to decide how to fish it, feel out all the underwater features, and take your best cast and try and hook something. That is where I am at, feeling out this new, scary unknown part of the water to see if I will take a wrong step or have sure footing. Fortunately, beyond the face of fear is freedom. That is what we are all after, the freedom to be happy and cast again no matter what the fates have in store.

  The polar opposite of this situation occurs when an angler chooses to carry and use only a single fly or fly pattern.  Perhaps the best known example is the “One-Fly” contest. The basic rules are simple.  A team of anglers draws a beat on a river, and each participant chooses one fly to use for the duration of the contest. If you lose that fly, it’s game-over for you.  The team that catches the most total inches of fish wins.  There may also be individual awards.  These contests are commonly done to benefit some charity or other, often involving stream conservation.  So whether you approve of competitive angling or not, it is for a good cause.

Many fly fishing anglers rely on emerger flies to target trout. Guest blogger Mike Cline explains what an emerger fly pattern is, and what they imitating that makes them attractive to trout.