I fished the Purple Haze in Montana a few weeks ago, so I was excited to see that Tim Flagler had chosen it for his newest video. The pattern was invented in 2000 by Andy Carlson, who guides on the Bitterroot River, and it has become very popular as both a searching pattern and as
Read MoreUntil recently, Simon Perkins—Senior Manager of Sporting Traditions—sat right next to me here at Orvis HQ, where we spent a lot of time talking about fly-fishing videos. My interest stemmed from my weekly curation of the Friday Fly-Fishing Film Festival here on the blog, and Simon came at the subject from the perspective of a filmmaker. So it was pretty exciting news when we learned that Simon took. . .
Read MoreHere’s a beautiful video of Kami Swingle dry-fly fishing in Shenandoah National Park for wild brook trout and talking about her love of the sport. Along with her husband, Nick, Kami is TwoFisted Heart Productions, which produced the great Urban Lines earlier this year.
Read MoreWritten by: Tom Evenson, Western ELOG Program Director
The Hex hatch was going off on the Williamson River when my colleague Doug Best and I were traveling through Oregon. The guys from Tailwater Fisheries called and said, “You have to check this out!” We also fished the nearby. . .
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The best brook-trout waters near the Orvis HQ in southwestern Vermont are fast-flowing freestone streams, which feature lots of pocket water, so I need a high-floating fly that I can see even in frothy, turbulent water. In creating the Hi-Vis Coachman back in the late 1990s, I copied/stole aspects of the traditional Royal Coachman, the Hi-Vis Royal Wulff, and the. . .
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As the story (perhaps apocryphal) goes, someone once asked the British scientist J.B.S. Haldane what we could infer about the Creator from studying nature, and Haldane replied, “I’m not sure, but he has an inordinate fondness for beetles.” Haldan’s point was that beetles make up some 40% of known insects. And since trout eat insects, it’s only logical that trout share this inordinate fondness for such readily available sources of. . .
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Although multi-fly rigs have been around for centuries and have always remained popular in Europe, fishing more than one pattern was nearly a forgotten science in this country until about 20 years ago. In fact, even when angling magazines flooded the market with tandem-rig stories, many anglers outside the Rockies took a long time to catch on. For instance, my older brother, Brian, has been fly fishing since the. . .
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If you think terrestrial imitations are only for summer fishing, you’re missing a great deal of dry-fly action. The normal thought is that trout ignore land-bred insects in the spring and early summer, until mayfly and caddisfly hatches dwindle with the heat of summer. They ignore terrestrials about as much as you ignore chocolate mousse when out to. . .
Read MoreMost of us are in prime dry-fly season now, so enjoy it while you can (or after runoff ends, depending on where you are). You can learn a lot about how to present your fly by watching rises for a few minutes before jumping right in with. . .
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