There’s a warning and a promise in the below; the warning is for those that have never tied flies, and the promise is for those that do..
When you find something really special, you don’t linger, you don’t think about it, you don’t wonder - you pounce. Worry about storage later.
For those thinking that fly tying [...]

Lang’s Auctions will be auctioning off the estate of Helen Shaw Kessler, one of the US’s preminent fly dressers. Known for her meticulous craft, Ms Shaw is represented by nearly 100 lots of flies tied by her - and an additional 50 lots tied by Walt and Winnie Dette, the cream of the Catskills. The auction will start November 7th at 8AM.

First glimpse of the Snailfish in the wild, 21000 feet deep - a worthy addition to anyone’s life list, assuming they can get access to the excess capacity of those Iranian centrifuges.

Gathering all the necessary feather dander to tie flies is a lifelong pursuit, especially when you’re learning from an old book. Urine burned fox, primrose silk, and Gray Jungle Fowl can turn an optimist into a someone that’d rather buy their flies than submit to the pain and suffering of material accumulation. It’s part of our legacy - to ensure each subsequent generation is weeded of weakness and partial loyalties. It’s the fun part actually, as all the best tyers are SOB’s of the highest order.

The Bass bite has been winding down even with the weather being stable. The Central Valley of California lacks seasons and much of the deciduous foliage that marks the change in weather patterns, and right now the fish are the best indicator.
This weekend the weather was in the mid 80’s, which is hot enough to [...]

Every military entity has it’s elite shock troops - those fellows with polished braid, erect bearing, and starched berets. Sometimes they represent the best in us and sometimes the worst, depending on their leadership…
Bite Back magazine - a glossy rag appealing to the radical fringe of the anti-meat, anti-fur, crowd, lists among it’s victories [...]

It’s the senseless exploitation that makes fish hate us, demeaning a noble foe by toeing him into the brush, worse yet, making him lick the feet of his master, that type of brutality is carried down into the gene pool and remembered.
I bet fish were once like slippery dogs, you throw the fly - they [...]

The Living Rubber company makes all manner of rubber and silicone skirt material for bass jigs. Jobbers buy it and repackage it as fancy fly tying rubber and taking home 10X the profit for a hint of cellophane and a fancy label. My war on six dollar items continues, mainly because I keep getting pissed at the practice - and pass the saving onto you. It’s a sawbuck, and those are getting to be precious in this age of $800 fly rods.

Nikolay Zaremskiy has made $53,000 dollars in Pikeminnow bounty season to date - and in these troubling economic times with loss of jobs and plunging markets, what better way for a fisherman to supplement his income than to ply his craft.