What makes fly fishing the Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota area special is this is the wild native range of warm water species.

When most people think about fly fishing Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, they think of trout. When you think of Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, you think of warm water species.

We have some of the best smallmouth bass and muskie fishing in the world. It's all right here, as well as arguably the best carp fishing when it comes to pursuing them in the Great Lakes. 

The upper Midwest is such a rad area for fly fishing and there's a very small group of outfitters that are providing guided trips at an elite level. We offer single day and multi-day trips, and if you've never done a multi-day guided fly fishing trip, I'd definitely recommend one to the Midwest. It allows you as an angler to get into a groove, especially if you're a busy person that generally doesn't have a lot of time to fish. 

Bass like to party, which is what makes them the most chased game fish in the United States.

Aggressive eats, jumps, and willingness to eat on the surface make bass a fun fish to chase, especially on the fly. Personally, I think the topwater takes are where it’s at in bass fly fishing. Part of the fun is getting the fish to eat what you want it to eat.

If you’re set on getting bass to eat on the surface and it’s not working, before you give up and switch over to fishing a streamer, try dialing it back first. That’s where the topwater finesse comes into play.

Everyone Can Use a Few Good Crawfish Patterns in Their Fly Box

The thing with crawfish fly patterns is you tend to lose them in the rocks faster than you can tie some of the intricate flies that imitate these bottom-dwellers. The Fish-Skull CrawBody on the Sparkle Craw makes tying a crawfish imitation foolproof and fast.

But what is a Crawfish pattern if it doesn't get to the bottom? The Fish-Skull Shrimp & Cray Tail gets the Sparkle Craw to the bottom in no time.

Fly Recipe

Learn To Tie Chase Howard’s Extended Body Drake, a Nymph With Movement That Is Out of This World

Dead drifting this fly into a swing works flawlessly as the Nymph-Head Evolution tungsten beadhead will get the fly deep quick, and as the fly swings, the Wiggle-Tail Shank offers tons of extra movement.

The weight of the bead isn't a compromise for realism as the Evolution Mayfly Swimmer & Burrower tungsten beadhead is molded after the common mayfly swimmer and burrower head profile – oval, elongated, and gracefully curved at the front but flattened at the back near the thorax with prominent, egg-shaped eyes.

We hope you enjoy tying and fishing this fly!

Fly Recipe

Rear

• Rear Shank: Nymph-Head Wiggle-Tail Shank
• Tail: Pheasant Tail 
• Wing Case: Pheasant Tail
• Body: Rabbit/Synthetic Dubbing Blend

Front

As I pull back on the oars my eyes settle on a small current break with nice holding water and some overhead cover.

It’s a solid spot that has produced many times throughout my years as a fly fishing guide.

I relay the information to my clients, and what happens next is...

A) The client lands the fly an inch off the shore, lets it sit for a couple seconds, strips, pauses, and the smallmouth eats the fly.

B) The fly lands 3 feet off the shore, well short of the current break, and the client fishes the fly back to cast again.

C) The client false casts so many times that the fly is never given a chance to catch a fish, even with me frantically pulling on the oars trying to hold the spot.

D) The fly lands in the spot but is quickly stripped well out of position, the fish chases and turns off.

E) The fly lands an inch off the shore, the client lets it sit for a couple seconds, strips, pauses, but no one is home and hungry today.

The following 3 tips will help make option A more likely of a situation for you on your next smallmouth fishing trip.

The fact that redfish can be found everywhere throughout Florida’s Atlantic and Gulf coasts makes the Sunshine State an obvious hotspot for anglers looking to slip a fly into a school of tailing fish.

With world famous fishing destinations like the lagoon systems on the east coast, the Everglades to the south, and the crystal clear grass flats of the Nature Coast to the west, there is certainly no shortage of epic environments in which these fish can be targeted.

Learning a fish species like this from scratch was a challenge but also allowed me to learn from my mistakes. Hopefully sharing what I learned the hard way will help you the next time you target redfish on the fly.

Intruder Style Flies Are Designed to Provoke Aggressive Strikes From Steelhead.

As the name suggests, the idea is to "intrude" on the steelhead's territory and trigger the "fight" response of fight or flight.

Meahan's Intruder is an approachable pattern for all fly tyers. So many Intruder fly patterns call for some exotic material, but with everyday materials Meahan's Intruder is a good fly for beginning steelhead tyers, but also a quick, good-looking fly for veterans as well.

The small rear loop on the Fish-Skull Senyo's Articulated Shank makes it easy to attach the rear Kona Big Game Hunter hook and allows the shank to be held straight in any vise, avoiding the need to tie the fly at strange angles. Not to mention, the splash of color added from the Senyo's Articulated Shank and the different variations available give you nearly endless color combination options for this fly.

Fly Tying Recipe

Hook Section

Shank Section

Pocket Water Can Be Some of the Most Exhilarating Waters to Fish

What makes a pocket water fishery are the boulders that block the general flow of the river, forming hydro-breaks where fish lie in wait in the darkness, ready to dart at a moment's notice for food.

As a trout guide, I can’t see myself guiding or fishing anywhere else during the peak season but on my home river in the Adirondacks, the West Branch of the Ausable. Here are some tactics I've picked up from guiding and fishing these waters that may help you next time you're on the water.

The Body Tubing Baitfish Is a Great All-around Baitfish Pattern

This fly can be sized up to chase peacock bass in the Amazon, or sized down to target small-stream smallmouth — any fish that eats baitfish will eat this fly!

The extended portion of the Body Tubing Baitfish has 2 main benefits for fly performance:

1. Keeping the flash well behind the hook point makes it impossible for the flash to "foul" around the hook like is so common with flash tails.
2. The Body Tubing acts as a rudder, giving the fly great movement in cross-current situations.

Fly Recipe

• Hook: Kona Big Game Hunter hook, size 2/0
• Tail: Flashabou
• Tail Extender: Fish-Skull Body Tubing
• Underbody: UV Polar Chenille
• Body: Craft Fur
• Underwing: Bucktail
• Wing: Craft Fur & Ripple Ice Fiber
• Eyes: Surface Seducer Dragon Eyes
• Head Sealer: UV Resin

3 years ago, we visited a remote mountain location in Northern Sweden for the first time to target pike on the fly.

The plan was to make a really cool pike film with meter-long fish slamming mice and lemming patterns on the surface. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen because the water was already too warm by that time and most of the fish had moved out of the shallow coves.

So, fast forward and we decided to try again later on during the first week of the open season. During spring I had developed a pattern based on the new Surface Seducer Howitzer baitfish popper heads that was more of a subsurface pattern with 2 hooks, a Fish-Skull Articulated Shank, and a big Dragon Tail at the end. I wanted a pattern that would work well both when fished roly poly as well as with strong pulls.

The helicopter brought us out the Tjuonajokk fishing camp, located way above the Arctic Circle.

The plan this time was to drive with the river boats through the rapids upstream to a big cove were the pike had spawned a few weeks before and were still hanging around waiting for whitefish and grayling to come in and feed in these shallow areas.

We took turns poling the boat forward and with only one of us fishing at a time so our cameraman could catch every single take in slow motion. How did it turn out? See for yourself.

The Devo Diver Is a "Best of Both Worlds" Sculpin Fly.

Most sculpin flies that we see are designed to do one thing — get deep in the water column.

While these flies certainly are useful in many fishing situations, a lot of flies tied in this style of fly do not have much swimming action. The Devo Diver, with its multiple articulation points of the Articulated Fish-Spine, is a fly that will get deep but also have lifelike movement in the water.

Fly fishing small streams for wild trout is without question my favorite piscatorial endeavor.

Aside from the lack of crowds, the gorgeous surroundings, and the all-too-eager trout, small streams offer endless learning opportunities. The lessons garnered from creeks, streams, and brooks can be applied to all aspects of trout fishing.

The following are a few of the tactics I have learned from my experience on smaller waters that I fish frequently both on my own and when guiding clients as well.

Imitations of craneflies are very popular in Europe and not without reason, they are great, buggy fishing flies!

Even though it’s not that often you encounter a real “hatch” of these insects, they tend to be present during most of the summer and trout will take them if they crash land.

I tie these flies in 3 sizes and fish them quite often, not just to imitate craneflies, but more to show fish something that looks very tempting when they are opportunistic (which they are most of the time).

Learn to tie this next-generation stonefly.

Being known as a pretty major streamer lover, I often get lumped into the crowd that only ties big, gnarly streamers. But I'm also a fly fishing guide, and not everyone enjoys throwing streamers on 8-weight rods with sinking line all day, so nymphing is a huge part of my guiding.

The Wiggle Stone is my standard when nymphing deep in a stream where stoneflies live. As with any Stonefly pattern, the most important question is "How quick does it get to the bottom" and with the Nymph-Head Evolution Stonefly tungsten beadhead, this pattern goes straight to the bottom and into the strike zone.

Fly Recipe

• Hook: Kona Nymph Streamer 2XL (NS2), size #6
• Antennae: Sili-Legs
• Bead Head: Nymph-Head Evolution Stonefly tungsten beadhead, brown, size large
• Underbody: .025 Lead Wire
• Tail: Sili-Legs
• Ribbing: Mono Thread
• Case: U.V. Chewee Skin
• Wax: Loon High Tack Swax
• Body: Wiggle Dubbing (in a dubbing loop)

As streamer fly fishing has risen in popularity, streamer designs have taken off like never before.

If you haven't noticed, there are a lot of designs out there. One thing I've noticed about the plethora of new streamer patterns is that many of them (other than a few highly specialized designs) are designed basically around one thing: catching trout in fast-moving water.

So when I grabbed a handful of cleverly crafted baitfish patterns and headed out to my local warm-water bass lake, I found them highly lacking in some important qualities. They didn’t catch very many fish. I quickly realized that something designed for moving water didn’t automatically fit the bill when things became more static.

My answer was to just develop my own streamer patterns and fish away, but if you don't tie your own or have countless hours to experiment and design your own stuff, I realized that the already established cold-water patterns can be just as effective for warm-water species — they just need some adjustment in rigging and common sense when it comes to fishing techniques.

Here are some tricks I’ve used to adapt some commercial fly patterns to be as effective on your local warm-water lake as they are in the famous rivers they were intended for.

You have the fishing reports, a spanking new streamer outfit, and a leave pass to go chase some predators.

Your fly boxes are crammed full after hours watching videos while tying at the vise — heck, you probably know more about Brian Wise’s hands at this stage than his wife does.

Flies, lines, and water are all essential tools, but it's not going to work out if you can’t make those bugs swim.

When the Flymen crew asked me to work up another streamer piece for the blog I went back to my 2016 article, “Beyond Banging The Banks”. What we didn’t cover was how to make that fly swim when it hits the water. Consider this Chapter 2.

As a trout guide I like to think that there are no mistakes in fly fishing, rather there are learning opportunities — lots and lots of learning opportunities.

With each client I try to place an emphasis on proving yourself wrong, and by that I mean, take some rule/tactic/method and try to disprove it. After all, how many times have you done what was considered to be wrong and yet still caught a fish?

Habits on the other hand, are another story. Unlike mistakes, habits — especially a certain few — can be detrimental to catching trout. I'm going to address three of the worst habits I see on the water and how you can go about improving your habits to catch more trout.

Autumn is one of the best seasons for pike fishing.

Catching them in rivers is very exciting as well as an extreme fishing experience. Not only do you have to fight against these river wolves, but also against the wild environment.

Without a Doubt, Golden Dorado Rank Among the Most Exciting Gamefish on the Planet To Catch On a Fly Rod If it happens on the surface, not to mention with a popper, your adrenaline levels can raise to new all-time high levels! When fishing with a popper it is not...

How Do You Decide Which Streamer Color to Fish With? Choosing the right color for your streamers based on the kind of water, depth, and brightness of the day is quite important in fly fishing. Like many casting or spinning anglers do with their lures, we must tie our fly patterns...

The Machaca Is One of the Baddest Freshwater Fish in Costa Rica, Hands Down. When I first started talking to my friends back in Florida about how awesome catching machaca on a fly was, most of them had no clue what I was talking about. So let me give you...

Having a dedicated fly tying space is critical for taking your tying skills to the next level.

If you always have to set up and break down your fly tying area you are apt to tie less often. Setting up and breaking down will soon become an unpleasant chore. If there is any negativity associated with your tying sessions you will tie flies less often, guaranteed.