Fly Tying

• Fly of the Month: Skwala (part 2)
  Prior to the writings of G.E.M Skues emphasizing the importance of the nymph, most of the old English wetflies and Yorkshire spiders were dressed to simulate the adult phase of waterborn naturals, a phase that, at times, can be more important than the nymph, particularly with larger insects like green drake, October caddis, or the…
• Fly of the Month: Skwala
  In the West, skwala stoneflies signal the beginning of the year’s parade of water-born insects and are a real opportunity for hatch-matching while there is still snow on the ground. 
• Homemade Shanks with Jeff Mishler
  There are many commercially made shanks available, but customizing mine by cutting the shank to the right length proved to be a huge benefit when designing winter steelhead flies that are easy to cast and effective at getting into the zone quickly.
• Fly of the Month: No Fear Tube Fly
  “So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself” – Franklin D. Roosevelt

Atlantic Salmon

• Episode 66 – David Bishop
  https://www.spreaker.com/user/11272357/episode-066 I got the chance to speak with David Bishop this week. Listen in as we discuss fishing at two-years-old, the beauty of casting, working for yourself, running lodges, the Gaspe Fly Company, Atlantic Salmon, river ecology, the outdoors resurgence that came with COVID, river etiquette, and canoes.
• The Last Salmon
  I sometimes feel as if Angler #1 (Dry Fly Guy) is perched on my left shoulder and Angler #2 (Bottom Ranger) sits on my right shoulder. Angler #1 whispers quietly in my left ear, “Dry or die!” Angler #2 mumbles simultaneously into my right ear, “Go deep or go home!”
• Terminal Thinking
  Terminal thinking seems especially prevalent as we contemplate the changes to our lives in a post-COVID-19 world. It’s a tough time to be a swinger of flies. On the West Coast, steelhead guides and fishermen lost a good chunk of their season due to the closure of rivers and non-essential businesses. Here on the East…
• A Handful of Flies from the Kola Peninsula: Part I
  The Belousiha River Lodge is a small fishing camp on Russia’s Kola Peninsula.

Great Lakes

• Spey Casting Class with Rick Kustich & Topher Browne!
  Don't miss this one of a kind opportunity to improve your casting with Rick and Topher!
• Outfitters North
  "It's great to see the fly fishing community putting more of a focus on us as Great Lakes steelheaders and designing these products for the way we fish our Great Lakes streams and rivers."
• Sink-Tip Leaders
  How long should the distance be between the end of the sinking tip or sinking leader and the fly?
• Book: Matching Baitfish by Kevin Feenstra
  Matching Baitfish is so much more than what the title lets on. In fact, I'm not sure any title could do justice to what lies within: incredible photography, an education on baitfish you won't find in a lifetime elsewhere, innovative techniques and tactics for the swung fly angler, and one of a kind fly patterns.

International

Brought to you by:

• An Adventure in Argentina
  Southern Patagonia is known for its windy days.
• The P.T. Slow Swing
  So simple and so effective, I cannot say how often it‘s saved my day, from my rivers at home, to along the classic rivers in England, where Frank Sawyer invented and published it in his book Nymphs and the Trout in 1958, to the wide rivers in Montana, like the Bighorn and many more.
• The Green Machine and the Rio Grande
  Last January, Michael and I finally stood on the banks of the Rio Grande in Tierra del Fuego. Like always, we booked on a relatively short notice, but we made it. We even man-aged to fill our fly boxes with all kinds of differnt flies, from Wooly Buggers to tube flies, rubber leg nymphs and…
• Skjern Å: A Real Life Fairy Tale
  Like the ugly duckling from Hans Christian Andersen’s famous fairy tale, there is a hint of metaphor in my small story about a “ditch” that, after many years of mishandling, turns into a prolific and beautiful salmon river.

Spey Casting

• Linespeed Jedi Exclusive: Gillespie’s Golden Rule
  Mr. Linespeed is back with another exclusive vid for Swing the Fly and some tips on improving your sweep stemming for guru Robert Gillespie's climbing curve and incline plane instruction.
• Linespeed Jedi Exclusive: Snap T Essentials
  ed Jedi's extensive collection of spey casting tips on YouTube; but you haven't seen this one. Here Tim Rawlins joins Swing the Fly for some exclusive tips just for STF members:
• Kruk’s Spey Casting Secrets: The Fulcrum
  The final installment of the series deals with the concept of the fulcrum. Thanks for watching!
• Kruk’s Spey Casting Secrets: Practice
  Sounds simple? Bruce is back with some tips for making the most of your practice.

Trout Spey

• Pick Your Water
  Our guide felt that anglers are more successful if they stick to one type of water and fish it well instead of trying to fish all of the good-looking runs.
• Hatches: Spotted Sedge
  Spotted sedge (Hydropsyche), with at least 25 sub-species in the West, as well as Midwestern and Eastern counterparts (all very similar), could be considered one of the most important, if not the most important, insect to practitioners of trout spey and swinging wetflies.
• Opening Day: An Ode to the Firehole
  Of all the famed water available in Yellowstone, the Firehole is just about as pleasant as fly fishing gets.
• Salmonflies: Swinging the Hatch
  The memory of a Henry's Fork rainbow cartwheeling multiple times over a waking muddler in the glow of a May sunset still has me grinning years later. And I can almost feel the warmth of the June sun as I recall working a flooded willow bank. The plump brown trout that I eventually landed nearly…

West Coast

• Guide Gossip #10: Dealing with Pressure
  How can you better your odds, when the odds are against you? I always think creatively and have a positive attitude, and that seems to help with most anything. However, these helpful tips below from guides might find you thinking outside of the box.
• Mossy’s Fly Shop: Addiction to the Swing
  Mossy's Fly Shop provides two-handed expertise in the heart of Alaska
• Guide Gossip #9: Setting the Hook
  hearing your reel scream and telling yourself, “Be patient…be patient”? I have heard it as “the 10 second rule” or “wait for 3 seconds” or “wait for 1-2 feet of line pulling off your reel.”
• Spirituality and Steelhead in the Aleutians
  On that day, a fisherman was born; if it has fins and swims, I want to cast a fly in its direction and see what happens.