Enter today with the form on the blog page! Sweepstakes end on Friday, March 16 at 12 P.M. EST.
Massive streamers don't have to mean sore shoulders from casting all day. This large variation of the Double Deceiver streamer is kept light and easy to cast with the combination of Fish-Skull Faux Bucktail, which sheds water, and Body Tubing, which helps create the illusion of a large body without adding too much bulk. A Big Game Shank gives it lifelike movement, and it's cleanly finished off with a Fish-Mask and Surface Seducer Dragon Eyes. Learn to tie it today!
The dictionary defines the phrase, “One trick pony” as “a person or thing with only one special feature, talent, or area of expertise."
I see fly anglers all the time who are one trick ponies — for example, only fishing with dry flies or dry and dropper rigs no matter what the stream conditions are. Even guys who nymph fish can get caught up in only euro nymphing or only indicator nymphing.
We've all been guilty, myself included, of sticking to a favorite technique or fly for too long when it’s not producing.
I don't know about you, but before I started tying flies full time I would get super excited at the beginning of fly tying season only to have my excitement fade into disappointment heading into spring when the fishing started to get going and I hadn't even tied 10% of the flies I planned on tying.
It doesn't have to be this way for you.
The Double Barrel Cicada is a fun pattern to tie while daydreaming about warmer weather and will prep your fly box for late spring and early summer. This foam fly pattern is tied with small and medium Surface Seducer Double Barrel popper & slider bodies, 4 mm Dragon Eyes, a size #2 Popper Hook, and Fish-Skull Body Tubing.
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There is something seemingly primal about these fish — maybe it’s all their teeth in that crooked grin. There are a couple of puzzles to figure out when designing and tying big flies for big fish.
To get bigger fish interested in your flies, they have to be of sizable equity to the fish. In other words, you throw a big fly to a big fish because they need a bigger meal to sustain their weight. Smaller patterns will more often than not get the results that a larger fly will, especially in waters known to house bigger fish.
Big flies can often be mistaken for a lot of materials stacked onto a hook. The more materials you tie on a hook, the heavier it will be. With some musky flies being a foot long, you don’t want your arm to fall off halfway through a fishing trip.
A Flymen short film featuring Lefty Kreh and Walt Cary chronicling the rise and fall of a legendary fishery in Coastal Virginia.
If you want to share this trailer with your friends on Facebook, use the Facebook video link.
The Flymen team chose a winner each week, and now it's up to YOU to decide the final grand prize winners and have the chance to win an Orvis Helios 3 fly rod (value: $849) just for voting!
If you're going to lace up your wading boots and go fly fishing (especially in cold weather) you should have these types of flies in your fly box: a sculpin imitation, a baitfish pattern, a wide-bodied fly, and a wild-card pattern. The four flies in this part cover these categories.
Herbert Hoover once wrote, “Fishing is much more than fish. It is the great occasion when we may return to the fine simplicity of our forefathers.” The thing to take away from that quote is our forefathers did not have Articulated Shanks, Chocklett's Body Tubing, or Sculpin Helmets to tie with. So many great materials are available now to tie virtually any kind of fly pattern you can imagine.
When tying these flies, I chose materials that move and breathe well in the water (if you've never tied with black bear, it is a wonderful material and moves great in the water). Examine the water you'll be fishing for the native baitfish and tie these patterns in according colors.
No one will be able to say you didn't help decorate!
Back Bay recounts the tragic loss of a legendary fishery in Virginia and its stunning comeback. The short film will premiere January 13, 2018 at an official showing at the Virginia Fly Fishing & Wine Festival (VFFWF) and will be released online.
To learn more about how to attend the Festival After-Party for the official viewing, visit the VFFWF After-Party page.
If you want to share this trailer with your friends on Facebook, use the Facebook video link.
As a fly tying instructor, I often have clients who have designed and tied a new pattern, but there is some flaw in the design (e.g. the wrong hook, articulated when it is not needed, too big, or too small) or material selection.
These are integral parts of fly design. The large cunning fish you'll be targeting know how their food choices move and will shy away from flies that do not move naturally.
We love tying articulated flies and if you ask us, winter is one of the best times of year to whip them up at the vise. We've seen more and more photos on social media of amazing articulated flies tied by tyers like you with shanks from the Flymen Articulated Shank family.
The flies we've seen are just the tip of the iceberg, so we're holding a fly tying contest on Instagram to help you show off your patterns to the world and give you the chance to win grand prizes from Renzetti, Taylor Fly Fishing, and Ahrex Hooks as well as weekly Flymen prize packs!
Orvis had to get in on the fun as well. If you take part in voting in the final round to decide the winner you'll have the chance to win a Helios3 Fly Rod!
This gets a bit trickier, in my opinion, when you are imitating creatures other than insects.
A mayfly’s movement will change depending on what part of its lifecycle is occurring or if wind or weather is a factor in the hatch, whereas a creature like a frog, on the other hand, will desperately move all kinds of different ways when a hungry largemouth is chasing it.
A lot of this is due to all the new materials and hardware now available for fly tyers. Ranges of articulated shank systems and heaps of new synthetic materials that easily shed water are changing the way we tie flies.
Articulation used to be a term for wire and beads joining two hooks in order to do the S-curve movement in the water.
Modern innovations in fly tying materials give you the ability to step beyond purely mimicking the appearance of a prey item – you can mimic its movements as well.
But while plenty of parents hand their child a spinning rod and head down to the local farm pond, relatively few try to teach their kids how to fly fish.
This is understandable, given the complexity of the activity, but unfortunate too. The truth is, most youngsters are perfectly capable of learning to whip a fly through the air. No, fly fishing isn’t an ideal pursuit for very young children, but most kids can learn to handle a fly rod by the time they are 10 to 12 years of age.
However, it's always important to have success while introducing children to any type of fishing, otherwise, they’ll get bored and lose interest.
And while it is slightly more complicated to do so when you are trying to teach them to fly fish, you can still set yourself up for success by keeping the following four considerations in mind.
If you’re like us, you fish all the time.
When I say all the time, I mean literally every available moment of your free time is spent fishing or thinking about fishing in some way.
I have a tendency to be super focused on things that are of interest to me – the rest of the world disappears kind of focused. My wife contends that this leads to the detriment of our relationship from time to time. I can’t argue with that.
Over the years, I’ve been trying to create balance here by getting my wife involved in fishing. The experience has been great.
My wife and I have traveled to quite a few renowned fisheries around the U.S. and just recently, Canada. She’s indifferent to whether or not she catches fish (somehow, she always does). She claims she’s just happy to experience some of nature’s beauty and to see me happy. I’m happy to oblige her those opportunities.
What follows is how to execute a couple’s fly fishing vacation on a budget. If you put aside a small sum of money and go on this trip, you’ll come home closer to your significant other than when you left.
I have repeated this mental checklist at least 1,500 times over the last 10 years.
Being organized from the moment you leave the house to having an organizational system in place for when you’re on the water will keep you fishing more and spending less time looking for that stream thermometer you left at home anyway!
I started getting organized in my fishing habits after arriving at the South Holston River (a 2.5-hour drive for me) one winter day and realized that in my morning grog (or hangover if I’m being honest) I took off with no waders and no reel.
I vowed that would never happen again.
Here are my tricks for never again showing up at the river without a rod or boots or a reel or fly boxes – something that each of us has done, even if we’ll only admit to ourselves that we went on a hike that one day instead of fishing because we packed two left-foot boots!
Through a lot of trial and error, I’ve picked up on a few things that I’d love to pass on to you.
Throughout the South you can target redfish year-round. Each season is different, so you need to switch up your tactics to stay successful.
When most fly anglers think of summer redfish, they envision flood tides and copper tails waving in the green Spartina grass. Me too. Tailing reds are a definite favorite of mine.
Unfortunately, the reality is that you only get a handful of tailing tides that fall during daylight hours each month.
Low tides, on the other hand, are available on a daily basis and can provide for some great fly fishing opportunities.
Enter today with the form directly below! Sweepstakes end on Friday, August 18 at 12 P.M. EST.
I look at them all at the end of my "work my ass off" day. They make me happy.
One from Flymen Fishing Co. had a cool new synthetic deer hair called Fish-Skull Faux Bucktail with great colors and a contest where you could vote on your favorite fly tied with it.
Finalists from the #FauxBucktailThrowdown2017 fly tying contest. Check out all the entrants here.
CLICK – my vote was cast.
A week later I got an email from Flymen Fishing Co. saying I had won the random drawing for a free guided fly fishing trip.
Yea, right. I deleted the email thinking it was a scam.
These beasts' senses are tuned to the max.
One sense that is important for pikes/muskies is the lateral line, a system of tactile sense organs located in the head and along both sides of the body, used to detect movement and vibration in the surrounding water.
They use their lateral line in conjunction with their sight to give them a more accurate picture of what’s going on – how far away their prey is, how fast it's moving, and its size.
The lateral line is often forgotten by the fly angler. We tie pretty flies, but most of them have a very small footprint in the water. I'm not saying these don’t work, but why not maximize your chances of attracting more fish or perhaps bigger fish?
So how can you make a loud fly?
This Strolis streamer pattern uses a Surface Seducer Dragon Eye and Fish-Skull Fish-Mask combo with an Articulated Shank for extra action.
It just might save the day next time you're on the water.
And because all fly anglers are magnetically attracted to every fly shop within a 100-mile radius, this means visiting new fly shops too.
After many years working in and guiding out of a fly shop, I compiled a list of the do's and don'ts of fly shop patronage to help you make your trip more successful.
