How long should the distance be between the end of the sinking tip or sinking leader and the fly?
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.
Guide Gossip #6: Player Fish
If you have a ‘player’ fish what are your first steps to your approach to get it to come back?
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.
Episode 46 – Matthew DeLorme
This week I got the chance to talk to Matthew DeLorme. We talk fishing with family, learning languages, photographing for Trek, woodcuts and printmaking, entomology, cutthroat, and peanut butter offerings to our overlords. … Become a member of Swing the Fly To read this article and receive other special member-only benefits, including the Anthology annual […]
Tyler Corke Part VII, the final chapter
He’s graceful for a farm boy fat on PBR. I’ve already made a pass. Tyler is just getting to the good shit. The cold weather has lost its lock on the river valley for the first time in seven days, and a small shaft of teasing sunlight is warming my right side. I have about 20 minutes to bask in it before it fades into a cold tree shadow and I freeze my nuts off.
Guide Gossip #5: Superstitions
I asked fourteen EXCEPTIONAL spey guides from the most infamous West Coast steelhead rivers the same questions. Every guide was given the task of answering sixteen questions, some with a specific river in mind and others just as a general guide of steelhead tactics.
“Circling Up” in Spey Casting
If we have an anchor that is pointing towards our target and provides the proper amount of water tension (e.g. our leader or sink tip laying flat on the water), it guarantees we have our hands in an acceptable position to make a forward cast …
Scandi-Style Trout Tube
Recently shifting a lot of my tying focus to Trout Spey, I realized that I still had an abundance of fur in the 2.5-3-inch range; perfect for the trout flies I desired. And the Scandi-style was the perfect recipe for a decent-sized, lightly weighted fly that would still cast easily on any light trout rod and line. Bingo.
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 V-Loop
As it pertains to Anchor-Centric Spey Casting You might be expecting an article on how to create the magical “V-loop” and the ensuing super-charged Spey casts you have always heard of. My apologies. Instead you are going to get an article on why the V-loop is a bad idea and possibly even fallacy — … […]
Guide Gossip: Does the Fly Matter?
It’s the question we think every time we open our fly box; the question we think of when you have been fishing all day with nothing to speak of; the question we think when your buddy hooks a fish behind you; the question we all lucidly dream about: Does the fly matter?