Fly Fishing

Orvis has exciting news for customers and fans in the greater New York City area, as we announce that Yonkers, New York, will soon be home to an Orvis retail store! We are searching for the absolutely right people to become our new Store Manager and Fishing Manager in this new location.

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Orvis Western ELOG Director Tom Evenson and his son Oscar show off a nice Owyhee brown trout that fell for a small grasshopper pattern. photo by Bonnie Evenson

Tom Evenson, director of the Orvis-Endorsed Lodges, Outfitters, & Guides (ELOG) Program for the western U.S., sent us this great picture and a story to go with it: . . .

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This aged, 27-inch brown trout was taken from a high-and-muddy Big Hole River. photo by Chuck Page

On Tuesday, we posted pictures of a monster brown trout caught by a novice angler on the Big Hole in Montana. She was part of a group of female anglers known as The Quality Chicks (check out their story over on the Women in Fly Fishing blog). Well, the saga doesn’t end there. Here’s another update from Wade Fellin, of Big Hole Lodge:

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The Yellowstone River

The EPA updated its site yesterday regarding ExxonMobil’s clean-up plan for the oil spill on the Yellowstone River, which, though it did affect ranchers and other landowners, has NOT affected fishing. In part, the EPA stated: . . .

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Salmonflies cluster on streamside vegetation along the Madison River above Ennis. The combination of dropping flows and huge bugs means killer fishing ahead. photo by Toby Swank

After a wild and unpredictable couple of months, it now seems like things are settling down and our season is finally underway here in southwestern Montana. The runoff is almost over, and flows on rivers such as the Gallatin and Madison have been dropping at a rapid rate. Just a week ago, we were all wondering when it would happen, and then all of a sudden…it’s here!

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Gordon M. Wickstrom at the London Fly Fisher’s Club. photo by Linnea Wickstrom

Editor’s note: For the next few months, we will be featuring entries from Gordon M. Wickstrom’s The History of Fishing for Trout with Artificial Flies in Britain and America: A Chronology of Five Hundred Years, 1496 to 2000. In this chronology, Gordon marks significant events—the publication of seminal books, tackle developments, important social changes, the dissemination of trout species beyond their native ranges, etc.—on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Wickstrom is the author of Notes from an Old Fly Book (2001) and Late in an Angler’s Life (2004), editor of The Boulder Creek Angler newsletter, and writer and director of The Great Debate—A Fantasia for Anglers, an imagined debate between Frederic M. Halford and G. E. M. Skues.

Click “Read More” for Part II.

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In many parts of the country, mayfly hatches are dwindling, and midsummer means caddisflies. For decades, the standard by which all caddisfly patterns have been judged has been Al Troth’s Elk-Hair Caddis, which first came to the fly-fishing public’s attention in a 1978 article in Fly Tyer
(but which Troth had been tying for some years). In the article, Troth claimed that he had set out to develop a wet fly for his Pennsylvania streams, but his design ended up floating so well that. . .

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