At The Vise
At the Vise: 50 Clousers
Of the handful of good decisions I’ve stumbled into during my fishing career, none seems…
At the Vise: A Better Hopper
It’s been some time since I did any serious hopper fishing. But when my old pal Peter Syka…
At the Vise: Adult Crane Fly
My buddy Jeff Cottrell first told me about crane flies. I was headed to an out-of-state…
At the Vise: All Syn Minnow
We’re going to have to get past the fact, right here at the start, that this column was…
At the Vise: Ally’s Shrimp
Deep into steelhead season, it’s easy to grow fidgety. Among those of us who practice…
At the Vise: Amiocentrus
I remember the humiliation as sharply as yesterday. The river was becoming my favorite. I…
At the Vise: Aqua Buddha
Is it too early to begin thinking about steelhead? My buddy Jeff Cottrell doesn’t think so,…
At the Vise: Badger Shrimp
One of the grave misconceptions shared by many inexperienced or misled fly fishers is that…
At the Vise: Baja Baitfish 9.9
Some problems don’t change. Ideas for imitating baitfish in Baja go back as far as the…
At the Vise: Balanced Peacock Bugger
As you settle into your winter tying season, you might want to consider doing yourself the…
At the Vise: Big Jelly
My buddy Joe Kelly is a hunter, noted within a small circle of friends as the guy who finds…
At the Vise: Blowfly Humpy
I’ve always called them “attractor patterns.” Dave Hughes, on the other hand, in his…
At the Vise: Bruce’s Little Red Steelhead Nymph
There’s a certain kind of day on a certain kind of water when all I try to do is catch a…
At the Vise: Claret and Hope
It’s hard to know what to say about steelhead flies anymore. With a number of runs this year…
At the Vise: Cock Robin Caddis
We were up north, just across the border, swinging flies on a wide river for rising trout,…
At the Vise: Czechish Nymph
An old acquaintance of mine, Gary Davis, was kind enough to give me a place to crash for a…
At the Vise: Dabblers
I shake the rain off my jacket and push through glass doors of the county expo center,…
At the Vise: Design Spiral Double
We’ll get to flies in a moment. First, some background. The idea of a design spiral comes…
At the Vise: Ed’s Grub
Just to put this in perspective, I should mention, right here at the start, that Ed Simpson…
At the Vise: Flymphs
We reeled in lines at dark. Joe was cold, shivering some, and when we waded the fast water…
At the Vise: Gabe’s Fly
When it gets you early, there is no escape. — Paul Gartside They’re building a hotel where…
At the Vise: Gledswood Shrimp
The good news is, we still need steelhead flies. This time last year, I wasn’t so sure. Runs…
At the Vise: Grey Duster
If you’re restless, like I am, and you feel life’s too short to quit looking around trying…
At the Vise: Hen and Harelug
Fires in my neck of the woods knocked out a little stream that has always been a good place…
At the Vise: Jingler
I’m overseas, fishing a famous river for sea-run fish, when a scatter of resident trout…
At the Vise: Joe’s Wine Cork Popper
Here’s how it works. Come late June through early July, about the same time the juvenile…
At the Vise: Kinky Muddler
I’m not sure anybody needs another baitfish pattern. If you’re like most saltwater fly…
At the Vise: Light Cahill Wet Fly
Has there ever been a lovelier material for tying flies than lemon wood duck flank feathers?…
At the Vise: Liquid Wrench
Anyone who glances at this column with any frequency knows that I’m the last angler in the…
At the Vise: Little Foam Beetle
I’m not sure who first introduced me to the idea of fishing beetle imitations. Probably that…
At the Vise: My Mullet
We had seen the mullet when we first walked up the beach as we were stalking a fringe of…
At the Vise: Neo-Freschi Bulldog
I rarely write about stillwater fly patterns in this column. My attention rests on flies I…
At the Vise: Not Quite Koga’s Charlie
In a pinch, I could claim this a surf fly, one that can reliably fool surfperch and…
At the Vise: Peacock Caddis
This isn’t a hunting story. But there’s a rifle-shot animal involved, a cow elk felled…
At the Vise: Peanut Envy
Don’t blame me. I didn’t make up the name. Funnier still, in Chile, where guides and anglers…
At the Vise: Perdigón
In a scene almost identical to one I wrote about in these pages last year, I was tying flies…
At the Vise: Peter’s Pheasant Tail
The mayflies are small and few. If you look closely, you see them spotting the water, one…
At the Vise: Rusty Rat
Few things capture the spirit of fly fishing quite like the school of thought that directs…
At the Vise: Scott’s Carp Fly
I’m not much of a carp angler. In fact, it angers me sometimes when I find myself…
At the Vise: Shad Darts
The question, to begin with, is whether a shad dart should actually be considered a fly.…
At the Vise: Silver Sedge
I’m not an expert on anything — except maybe postures of self-deprecation — so when an…
At the Vise: Smallmouth Something
The river was out of its banks, dark as peanut butter, and though I liked seeing the water…
At the Vise: Snowshoe Hare Emerger
With trout season in full swing and many of us tempted again to reach for another iteration…
At the Vise: The Albertino
Pay attention. In the wake of devastating fires throughout California and so many of our…
At the Vise: The Alder Fly
When my fishing buddy Joe Kelly shot a turkey last spring, I felt complicit enough to lay…
At the Vise: The Beetle Bug
I’ve never fished a Beetle Bug. Last year, though, while fleshing out a box of large dry…
At the Vise: The Dark Hare
Off on a weekend trout binge recently, I noticed something odd. Odd for me, at least.…
At the Vise: The Governor
The most remarkable aspect of Charles Frederick Holder’s Recreations of a Sportsman on the…
At the Vise: The Intruder
Over the last three decades of steelhead fly design, the Intruder has proved to be the most…
At the Vise: The Muddler Minnow
If you haven’t done this lately, let me remind you what you’re missing. You come out of the…
