Fly of the Month

by Matt O'Neal of Savage Flies: Find him on his YouTube channel at Savage Flies ...

Well it is officially terrestrial season. I was out mowing a field this past weekend-- Grasshoppers and crickets were all over the place. But this is not going to be another hopper pattern. I'm sure I’ll tie plenty more this summer but right now I've got plenty in my box. I'm going to tie a beetle pattern for you this month. But oddly enough, it's about as big as a hopper.

Now I’ve got an interesting dry fly for you today, that you probably won't find in a lot of books out there. I came across it recently when flipping through Kenneth Bay's 1979 American Fly Tier's Handbook.

This tactical pattern is most useful in flat, slow-moving water where trout get a long look at the fly before making an eat-or-don’t-eat decision. It suggests a “stuck-in-the-shuck” dun, and can work well when targeting rising trout that have refused more conventional patterns.

by Matt O'Neal of Savage Flies: Find him on his YouTube channel at Savage Flies  This month’s pattern is a d...

by Matt O'Neal of Savage Flies: Find him on his YouTube channel at Savage Flies  Now there’s been a bit of c...

Learn to tie the Woodruff Dry Fly, a pattern with roots in the Catskill Mountains of New York

J. Stockard Pro Tyer: Paul Shurtleff, Springville UT, You can find Paul @: www.instagram.com/insectinside/, ...

by Matt O'Neal of Savage Flies: Find him on his YouTube channel at Savage Flies  Merry Chris...

This Sulphur nymph variation is a trout pleaser. With a tungsten bead, it gets down in the zone quickly and goes right to work. The flashback not only helps to draw attention, but also helps minic the splitting thorax during emergence. If Sulphur Mayflies are in your watershed, this is a great one to tie on as part of your nymph rig.

by Nathan Wight, Durham ME, J. Stockard Pro Tyer Again this year we called on the talents of the J. Stockard...

The flies that I tie are made out of necessity, the necessity to create art, and the necessity to create fishable flies. Sometimes both of those driving forces combine and align, The All Night Diner is a great example of this. Named after one of my favorite Modest Mouse songs, The All Night Diner is fun to tie and an effective dry fly. This parachute emerger pattern is a great example of how the tying art flies leads to new techniques for effective fishable patterns. I first tied this pattern late at night on a long project fly using a VKsteelworks hook.