The Wet/Dry fly is an “accidental” discovery design. I had tied some of them as wet flies to fish during a hatch of Blue winged Olived (Ephemerella rotunda/invaria), and on the first cast the fly floated. The little brown rose and confidently sucked in the rumpled-looking wet fly that was riding the film. I tried it as a floating fly on another fish, and it too rose confidently. Since those first fish, over four decades ago, I have cast this imitation over many hundreds of trout on rivers around the world, and always with excellent results. It’s a simple to tie design that imitates Stage Four of the emergence cycle—the insect up on the film, out of the nymphal or pupal husk. The imitation shown below is an excellent color match for the Small Wester Green Drake (Ephemerella flavilinea); use whatever colors are needed to match caddises, midges, and the small mayflies (typically size 14 and smaller).

Wrap rearward to cover the back half of the shank with thread. Then, wrapping forward, tie in a thin tail of poly yarn or sparkle yarn for a shuck..

Spin a bit of dubbing on the thread, leaving about 1 inch of bare thread between the top of the dubbing noodle and the hook shank. Wrap rearward, tying in a piece of yellow silk thread for the rib. Wraping rearward will bring the dubbing up to the shank.

Wrap the dubbing forward to form the body and then counterwrap the rib.

Prepare and tie in a soft hackle, tip first.

Wrap the hackle and finish the fly.

My old friend, Jake Jordan, is back in Florida and hunting tarpon at night. Here’s the latest report. If you want to fish with Jake or see more about his operation, go here.

April 4, 2012: This evening my old friend Jerry Gibbs (retired  fishing editor of Outdoor Life Magazine), joined aboard “Fly Reel” at 11:30 PM for a few hours of fly fishing for big Tarpon. The wind was blowing at 10 knots from the south, southeast, and the water temperature was 81 degrees. The near full moon lit up the night so you could read your watch without a light, a beautiful night.

I drove over to Pelican bank and Jerry began to cast the “poon bug” at the feeding Tarpon, on the first drift, Jerry hooked a 110 pound female which headed south at a high rate of speed. The TFO Blue Water Medium Duty fly rod along with the Mako (ugly betty) #9550 fly reel, filled with a RIO Clouser, Tarpon Taper floating fly line, proved too much for this big Tarpon. Jerry dialed that drag up to 7 pounds and that tarpon pulled my boat into the wind and Jerry wound the fish closer to the boat.  After a 15 minute battle Jerry wound the leader through the tip top of the rod, making this a caught Tarpon, then out of nowhere came several 12 foot Bull Sharks attacking that poon. Jerry grabbed the spool and I gunned the boat in reverse, the 20 pound tippet broke, and then that Tarpon escaped from those big Sharks.

Jerry jumped seven Tarpon and released three before we got chased off the water by a big lightning storm at 2:00 AM, another great evening of fly fishing for Tarpon.

Tarpon On! And in the dark, yet.

Long Flies, book three in our Fly Fishing series is coming off the presses and headed into the bindery. It will be done in just a few days, and I will have copies to ship to those who have pre-ordered inscribed copies.

For those that still want to purchase a pre-release copy of Long Flies for $25.00 postage paid,  the offer is open until April 15th. You can order at www.ebay.com/itm/200728537970?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649#ht_500wt_905

Here are the Table of Contents pages to give you an idea of the material covered in the book:

The weather and water are not cooperating for me this spring. The day after I got a good report from my fishing friend, John Beth, it rained and the rivers leapt out of their banks one again. The water had dropped to about twice what I consider really fishable, and John managed to find another day to get on the water. He and Dan “Doc” Zavadsky each took two steelies, but had to work really hard to find them. Again, before I could even get my rods packed in the motorhome, rain filled the river to overflowing. It is again approaching the sane level for fishing, and John will be trying again tomorrow. If the fish remain in the river, and the water stays at a reasonable level, I will be there next week, chasing steel.

At least someone is catching the occasional stelie this sporing in Wisconsin..

Carrie J. Frost was born in La Crosse Wisconsin Oct. 14, 1868, and educated as a teacher. She started tying flies for her father and his friends in 1880, but in 1896 opened a fly tying firm under the name of Miss C. J. Frost. She employed other women in the Stevens Point area to tie flies, and soon gathered a nationwide clientele. Her brother, George W. Frost became involved in the business in 1906, and the flies were offered under his name. In 1919, the Company became the Frost Fishing Tackle Company, and Carrie was employing about 150 people, which included many women tyers. A group of local businessmen bought her out in 1920 and hired Oscar L. Weber to run the business. A year later he founded his own company, and in 1926 merged it with the firm Carrie Frost had established. The Weber Lifelike Fly building was constructed in 1928 and later expanded. The company closed in 1985. Carrie died on Oct. 7, 1937, leaving a truly great fly tying legacy. She has long been considered a pioneer in the American Fly tying industry, and is responsible for putting Stevens Point, Wisconsin, on the map as the Fly Making Capital of the World of the early 1900s.

When the firm closed its doors in 1985, I had an opportunity to look over the inventory of materials and other items, and purchase what I wanted. These great posters are part of the collection that I acquired, and great piece of the fly tying history of this country. Looks great in a fly tying room.

There are two page images on each poster. Overall sheet size is 11 x 17 inches. Each poster is signed (Gary Borger) to verify their authenticity of originality.

Se it at www.ebay.com/itm/200738130193?ssPageName=STRK:MESELX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1555.l2649#ht_500wt_1152

The poster features two pages of Frost Flies from the early 1900s.

It has always been a great piece of water. It’s especially known for its Trico hatches and runs for big rainbows in the spring. It has been renamed the Charlie Meyers State Wildlife Area after my old friend who wrote for the Denver Post, but to most it is still the “Dream Stream.” It’s the section of Colorado’s South Platte between Spinny and 11-Mile Reservoirs. Jason and I filmed a portion of “Fishing the Midge” on this section of water, and we’ve fished it several other times, always with great anticipation that has not been disappointed.

Timm Tews sent me a photo of his friend, Doug Martin, with a lovely spring-run rainbow, up from 11-Mile looking for spawning gravels. No doubts now, about why it’s called the dream stream

Doug Martin with a lovely rainbow from the "Dream Stream."

Long Flies will be off the press in about a week. I should have my advance copy by April 5th. Copies should begin shipping the next week. In the meantime, here’s another look “under the hood,” as it were. Below is a story about the Baitfish from L, a tactic that I developed for fishing long flies that combines Joe Brooks’ Broadside Float, the Greased Line Tactic, and the Down-and-Across Swing. In this instance, I used it as an upstream presentation tactic

Long Flies is still available in the inscribed edition (signed specifically to the buyer) for the pre-release price of $25.00 postage paid. To purchase, please go to my eBay store.

Alaska’s Alagnak supports superb runs of chum salmon. I think that these are by far the strongest, pound for pound, of any of the Pacific Salmon. Add to that the fact that they school in great numbers on the chum bars of this impressive river, and you have a fly fisher’s delight.

This day, Dave Graebel, Les Adams, Scott Snead, and I had been successfully fishing the Nushagak for king salmon, and decided to stop at the Alagnak on the way back to the No-See-Um Lodge, and fish for chums. John Holman, the lodge owner, and our pilot for the day, circled the plane above the river’s bends, until we found a chum bar heavily dotted with fish.

As we climbed out of the plane, our guide, Caleb Hitzfeld, told me he had seen a good concentration of fish at the top of the bar and on its outer edge. I headed up and began to wade out. Suddenly, right there in front of me, in water only mid-calf deep, was a pod of six to eight chums. I cast and immediately took one.

When I’d landed it, I began to look closely at the water around me. There were pods of chum dotted all over the bar, stretching off to the limit of my vision. Just upstream, a small group finned softly in the shallow, but steady flow on the bar. I waded a bit to my right so I could cast up on the right side of the pod. The line stretched out over the water and then flipped around in an overpowered curve layout. It was The L fished upstream (Figure 8.10). The fly drifted down, sinking as it came back, and a chum moved foward and took it. The fish’s every move was clearly visible.

On the next cast, I stripped the line, drawing the fly across the face of the pod, and one of the fish surged forward and grabbed the magenta leech. And so it went for the next two hours before the tide pushed in, forcing us off the flat and into the float plane.

It had been the best day of chum fishing in my life. Not because of the numbers of fish—true, I’d caught chums to near excess—but it was the total sight-fishing experience that made the day so spectacular. That and The L fished upstream.

Don’t think in compartmentalized terms of long-fly fishing, nymph fishing, dry fly fishing, saltwater fishing, freshwater fishing, and so on. Rather, blend and churn, mix and match, think both vertically and horizontally. Use past experiences to expand your vision. Long flies offer a great opportunity to explore an array of old and new methods for success.

Silver bright chums are my favorite Alaskan salmon for just plain hard-fighting and eagerness to take the fly.

A magenta Down and Dirty Leech is a surefire fly for Alaskan chums.

This imitation apes Stage 2 in the emergence process. It is meant t suggest the nymph as the wings are just beginning to emerge from the case. The insect is riding in the surface film, its legs extended its body simply trapped by the surface tension, and its wings pushing up and out. This is by far my most favorite fly during the hatches of Baetis and several other smaller mayflies. It’s fast and simple to tie and will outfish any other imitation during these hatches.

Step 1. Tie in a tail of hackle fibers and dub on the body—use the same color as the nymph’s body.

Step 2. Tie in a hackle (I use the same color as the wing ball) and spin dubbing on the thread to make the wing ball. Taper the dubbing at each end and keep it thick in the middle.

Step 3. Make a couple of wraps of the wing dubbing immediately ahead of the body, then hold the thread straight up and push the dubbing down onto the top of the hook. Wrap figure-8 style in front and behind the wing ball, and then make several turns of thread around the base of the ball, above the hook shank. This tightens the dubbing and makes a good base onto which the hackle is wound. It is not critical that the dubbing form a perfect ball because the unfurling wings of the natural assume all sorts of rumpled shapes. Spin a tiny bit of dubbing on the thread—this will be used to finish the thorax. Leave a inch or so of bare thread between the shank and the top of the dubbing noodle. This bare thread is used to tie of the hackle.

Step 4. Wind the hackle three turns around the base of the dubbing ball, tie off, clip away excess and wrap dubbing to form thorax. Finish the head.

The Parachute Floating Nymph, top view.

As I’ve noted a couple of times in the past few weeks, the next book in the Fly Fishing series, entitled Long Flies—Streamers, Bucktails, & Other Big Fish Flies, is at the press and will be available the first week in April. Below is an excerpt from Chapter One. It’s a story about fishing for fall-run browns here in Wisconsin with a most valuable lesson at the  end. This new book is currently available at a special pre-release price of only $25.00, postage paid. The books are inscribed to the buyer and signed. These books are limited in quantity, so please order early to assure your opportunity to get a copy inscribed to you. They are available on my eBay store.

As I type this, I am just back from fishing a Great Lakes tributary stream for very large, fall-run browns. My biggest fish of the trip, taken right off the bottom on a dead-drifted, size 4, black, rubber-leg, stonefly nymph was 34 inches long by 20 inches girth (approximately 18 pounds). During our fishing days, my friend, Lou Jirikowic, and I had spotted a male brown that we were certain was at least 36 inches long. We always saw it moving about, but never holding where we could unload a cast to it. On my last day at the river, my long-time friend, John Beth, showed up for one day’s fishing. I told him of the big brown that we had seen but not been able to fish to, and indicated that we’d seen it just a few minutes before. He asked me where, and I jokingly said, “Well, from up there about a hundred yards to down there about a hundred yards.”

John was with a couple of our mutual friends, Dale Thompson and Dr. Daniel “Doc” Zavadsky, and the three of them were fishing the riffle together. I didn’t want to jump into the middle of their water, so I told them I was going to check out some other water and would be back in an hour or so. When I got back, John was sitting on shore, and Doc yelled, “John got the 36-incher!”

“I want to see pictures,” I yelled right back, not sure if this was the truth, or if I was in for a good story and a good ribbing.

Well. They had the photos, and the tape measured it at 36 x 21; it was a 21-pounder. Amazing. Seems John had started at the top of the riffles—a hundred yards up, and was swinging a large white and black, lead-eyed strip fly he calls John’s Silver Bunny. Half-way down the run, he spotted a couple of nice fish and started working them over. They wouldn’t even consider his fly.

After a bit of intense casting, he extended the line about 10 feet and cast again. The fly swung around and hung just a few inches under the film. It only just “hung,” because suddenly, out of the depths, came a huge white mouth that ripped the fly out of the film’s feeding zone. John was so “startled,” as he put it, that he didn’t even have time to take the fly away from the massive brown. He just stood in numb disbelief. There was no chance that the fish was going to spit the fly. It just wolfed the Silver Bunny, and the hook was set against line drag before John could come to his senses.

After the hook-up, the big fish hung tight and wallowed powerfully. John was fishing his nod to times past—a 7 foot, 8-weight, Deschutes Steelhead model cane rod, built by Steve Pennington. The rod has the butt power to lift the front end of a Volkswagen, and John had it paired with a silk line and a 1939 Pfleuger Medalist, model 1495 reel. The equipment performed as hoped, holding the big fish to two deeper pockets within the riffle until John was able to work it to the landing zone—a spot at about the center of the riffle where there’s a little gravel beach with a pool of quiet water. A big fish will lie still there, and can be netted or tailed easily without hurting it.

A brown that size did not get that size by eating dainty mayflies, or even not-so-dainty mayflies. It got big out in Lake Michigan by eating smelt, alewives, gobies, smaller trout, and any other meaty thing it could sink its fangs into. And that was the very thing that triggered its feeding response.

The story doesn’t end there, though. I had to leave the fishing to head home late that afternoon, but John stayed and fished the next day. His final score included two more big beauties: one 35 x 20.5 and the other 34 x 20. The total estimated weight of these three browns was 58.9 pounds. The formula we use for calculating weight (W), which seems to be quite accurate for these fish, is girth (G) squared times length (L), with the result being divided by 750 (in other notation: (G² • L) / 750 = W). So John weighed in with three browns on long flies that totaled nearly 60 pounds! That’s astounding, but that’s the effect that long flies have on big fish.

John has two rules that drive his fishing for such monster lake-run trout.

Rule I – The Four Elements of Logic. You can’t catch big fish: (1) where there aren’t any; (2) before they arrive; (3) after they leave; or (4) if you aren’t there.

Rule II – The Anchor of Success. There are three types of strikes made by the lake-run fish: (1) Investigative; (2) Food instinct reflex; and (3) Territorial aggression.

It’s obvious that John has hit the nail on the head about all long-fly fishing, not just searching for migrating trout and salmon. Keep these rules firmly in hand as you move into the world of the long-fly angler.

The big brown that I caught during the fall run.

John's huge brown that fell to his understanding of the way these fish feed.

Fly Tying in Germany The fly show season is winding down here and in Europe. My old pal, Theo Bakelaar, was tying in Germany a few days ago, demonstrating his squid imitations. True to form, he had to do something to help the audience more clearly understand not only the tying, but the tyer as well. So, the specially camouflaged helmet. It was a great place to store the freshly tied squid imitations. One will never be able to claim that Theo does not have a great time at the shows, tying and entertaining.

Theo tying squid flies at a show in Germany and wearing his special camouflaged squid helmet.

The end result of a day's tying. The squid imitations blend nicely with the camouflage of the helmet.