With the recent Drawing Flies 52 emphasis on wet flies (another to come this week) I though that I’d post a bit on “adding a swing.” This really is an “add-on” tactic, not a full blown wet-fly approach, but it can still give your presentations an extra, and sometimes effective, element.
August of 2005 saw Montana’s [...]

If you’re not into fly tying the above title could give you pause, but if you are into the “vice of the vise,” then here’s a post for you. This has already been up over on GB’s blog, but I figure why not post it here, as well? This is from GB’s 1991 book, Designing [...]

A bit of writing from about 10 years ago in which I actually use the term “most-subtle” with a straight face. Hope you find it useful (even if the wording gets a bit fluffy in spots).
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Fly fishing for trout can be a most-subtle affair. The flies can [...]

I often read passages and sections from Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It. What so often jumps out at me about great narrative writing is how even the sparsest language can convey sweeping ideas and emotions. Many who have read (or seen) River Runs are familiar with the opening and closing lines. The close is [...]

Yet another fly-fishing friend has died—Jim Greenlee. It’s likely that not many readers will recognize Jim’s name, but I know that some of you still wade in the boots that he shepherded into being—along with my father—many years ago.
Jim was in charge of Weinbrenner when he and my father got together and made the Ultimate [...]

The GB/JB book series that I’ve been talking about here at FF&W continues to move ahead. GB and I finally decided on a trim size (7″X10″), and I finally got the layout and font choices figured out (we hope). While it’s not exactly a thrilling bit of news, GB and I want to keep interested [...]

GB has a good post up about the 5/7 Blood Knot, a variation that I grew up tying (the “School of GB” was a great, if sometimes demanding, one). Personally, I use this knot for leader butt/taper interconnections, then move to a three-turn Surgeon’s (or Water) knot for tippet section(s) (talking trout/salmon, etc. here, but [...]

The old boy is fast if anything, that’s for sure. The first book in our upcoming GB/JB educational series has been uploaded to our shared FTP server. Granted, we’ll have to edit, polish, illustrate and layout before printing, boxing, warehousing and (hopefully) selling, but all 70,000(!) words are in their initial places.
GB and I are getting [...]

It’s getting into fly-tying season in the farther reaches of the North Hemisphere, so here’s a little QuickTime video of an alternative tie-off knot for those FF&W readers who are lurking near a vise (vice?).

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This is the tying knot I [...]

I grew up camping out of the back of Ford van, a van that eventually became known as the Boar’s Nest after an extended trip my father took with a couple of fishing friends. I’m sure you can imagine the reason for the name (Official Boar’s Nest equation: Canned Food+Wet Waders+Moldy Fisherman*Total Number of Days).
The [...]

The Upside-Down Leech is the fly up above, but down at the bottom.
The educational content in the latest E-List mailing was focused on streamer techniques, specifically “subtle streamers.” One of the flies mentioned was the Upside-Down Leech, which promptly elicited an e-mail asking, “What’s an Upside-Down Leech?” I also promised the E-List that I would [...]

Just a little nostalgia from the way-back days of my youth (well, when I was 21)…

As a few FF&W readers may know, I did a small portion of the fly-fishing-specific storyboard work on A River Runs Through It (especially some of the pick-up shots that needed to be acquired after principle photography was finished).

If [...]