Jason is having a Christmas special sale on his designer T-shirts. I love mine and will be ordering a few more myself. The info is below.

Even us old guys look great in Jason's designer T's

Jason’s Designer T’s (from his FF&W Blog)

Yes, I suppose that FF&W should jump on the “Black Friday” bandwagon and offer something (we don’t have much) for a special sale. I’ll let this one run until January 1st, or until supplies are gone. Either way,this is the last print run for this tee image. I’ll be retiring this trout art after this run of shirts is sold out!

FF&W Trout Tees are available in Unisex 100-cotton shirts in “Stone Gray” color. All tees are sewn and printed in the United States. Unisex Cotton – Sizes: S – 3XL; Stone Gray. There will be more and less coverage in smaller and larger sizes, respectively.

So, with that said, here’s the deal:

ALL sizes of tees are $18 SHPPED in the U.S.

ALL sizes of tees are $20 SHIPPED to Canada.

ALL sizes of tees are $22 SHIPPED to the rest of the world.

To order click here.

The International Fly Tying Symposium and its attendant days of fishing are over. There will be a separate posting on the Symposium. This is a story about the fishing. Variations of this story will appear in the forthcoming books, Long Flies, Designing Flies, and Stillwaters.

The International Fly Tying Symposium was celebrating its 20^th anniversary. Held yearly in Somerset, NJ, the symposium draws tyers from across the world. It’s a true celebration of not only tying, but friendships as well. Theo Bakelaar, from Holland, introduced bead heads to the world at the first Symposium, and we became good friends from that time forward. Now, at last, we were going to have the opportunity to fish together.

Chuck Furimsky, founder and ongoing father of the Symposium,  had been after me from the start to spend a few days around the event fishing for stripers and blues off the shore of southern New Jersey. It was something that I had long wanted to do, but my university responsibilities and speaking events seemed to always get in the way. Not this time. I arrived two days early and stayed an extra day to plumb the ocean depths with Theo and our mutual friend, Harry Schoel–a Dutchman living in Belgium—and with Chuck and his son, Ben. And plumb we did.

The seas were mildly rough the first day, and the fish stayed deep. Ben and I, and Theo and Harry fished together, while Chuck fished with another friend. We used type V sinking lines, pitching them as far as we dared in the wind, and then stripping off the rest and dumping it overboard in order to sink the flies the necessary 25 to 35 feet to the fish’s level. Then it was strip, strip, strip—fast and a bit erratic. We found blues first, and soon I was tossing a 6 to 7-inch long sand eel imitation that Ben so generously supplied. The takes were very positive and heavy. We hit the fish hard with a scissors strike, often several times. They were deep, and the line had a great deal of resistance against all that water; a weak strike would have meant a lost fish. Theo’s 13-lb blue was the top fish the first day, but I was plenty happy with the ones I caught. They can certainly pull string.

The second day, it was just Ben and I, and we found the fish in mid-morning. It was a big school of blues with a few stripers circling about. Again they were deep and eating sand eels. This day they were also extremely cooperative. We were fishing a hump in the bottom that rose from 60 feet of water to 25-30 feet, and nearly every drift we doubled. Then it was ten minutes of hard pulling, often to regain 50 yards or more of backing that the feisty blues tore off the reel before we could get them under control. We both took many fish in the 8-11 pound class, and I found one cooperative 12-pound striper that fleshed out the mix.

On the Monday after the Symposium, all five of us fished together again. The seas were rougher than earlier, and we bobbed about in the 4 to 6 foot swells, chucking line and stripping a variety of flies. Harry was soon into something big that kept him at bay for over 15 minutes. When we finally say it, we all cheered; it was a striper that weighed in at 24 pounds. That only intensified our casting and stripping. Theo was casting several variations of his eel skin designs—flies with a question mark tail cut from cured fresh-water eel skin. The action of the fly was too much for the fish to resist, and he was soon into a 20-pound striper, followed by a couple of 16-pounders. In the meantime, Chuck was catching spiny dogsharks one after another, while Ben and I had to work hard for a couple of blues. The blues were big—10 to 13 pounds—so we weren’t in the least disappointed.

Then it happened. Theo leaned back hard on his rod, It flexed deeply at the strike, and then popped apart in the middle, the top two segments sliding down the line and into the briny deep. The rod hadn’t broken, but still there was the peril of loosing the top half of his rod if the fish broke off.

The first words came clear in the wind and tossing spray, “Do you have wire on?” If it was a big blue, and Theo wasn’t  equipped with a wire tippet, he’d lose the  fish and the top half of the rod for sure. “Yup, you betcha,” came Theo’s enthusiastic reply. So we all settled in for the half-rod fight. The fish ripped line off the reel without seeming recourse, finally settling down for a more determined fight. “I’ll bet it’s a big dogfish,” someone yelled. “Nah, it’s a big ray or other “alien” that Theo always seems to catch,” yelled another. But the look of determination on Theo’s face said that he didn’t care, he just wanted the other half of his rod back. Minutes passed before the fly line could be seen, and minutes more before we had a good look at the creature from the deep. It was a big striper, and it ripped off again, as if the gaze of human eyes put fire in its belly. Several minutes more passed, and Theo got the fish close enough that Harry could grab the rod tip and stick it back onto the naked butt section. The fight started again, and it was still more minutes before we boated the 16-pound slab of white-hot muscle. A magnificent fish to be sure, but the great sigh that came from Theo’s throat was one of relief in having a whole rod again at his disposal.

Theo's 13-pound blue was the big fish on the first day.

On the second day, Ben and I doubled on blues like this one nearly every drift.

A nice striper that gave me a break from the second day blues.

Theo and I started the third day with a mixed double.

Wow, 24 pounds of striped bass! (and Harry, too)

Theo looking very happy with 20 pounds of striper in his arms--and well he should.

Chuck took as break from catching dogsharks to nail a nice blue

I took a break from being seas-sick to catch a couple of nice blues on day three.

Half Rod, Will Travel

My old friend, Tom Helgeson, passed away on Friday, November 12th after a tough battle with cancer. Tom and I had known each other for many years, and I enjoyed writing for his magazine, “Midwest Fly Fishing,” and speaking at his shows in Minneapolis and Chicago. I’ll miss you my friend. For more information on Tom and the upcoming memorial service see http://www.mwfly.com/contents.html

I will be at the International Fly Tying Symposium this weekend, offering a class in tying with spinning loops, demonstrating tying tactics, and presenting programs on fly fishing, including the new program on “Fishing the Film.” Our new book, Fishing the Film will be available and I’ll be happy to inscribe copies. For more info see http://www.internationalflytyingsymposium.com/

Hope to see you there.

The Icicle, one of the flies that I'll teach at the International Fly Tying Symposium this weekend.

My old friend and tarpon maniac Lee Haskin was in Belize, and has sent this report. Seems he had a rather good time and got to prove his tying efforts yet again:

Back from Belize.  What a great trip. Bad weather most of the week, but plenty of tarpon and permit! The bait was VERY small, and glad I had my fly tying kit along. I needed a short, 2”, VERY sparse, subtle fly to catch the tarpon. The big 100 lb. tarpon was caught on a “factory” black/red Neutralizer!!!

The Targus rods performed incredibly well, even in the high wind. The 10 wt. was a bit light for my largest tarpon (around 100 lbs.), and took a bit longer than it should to bring the fish to hand.

The Crusty Crab was a huge hit with the permit (both tan and green). I had one permit suck the crab down in to crushers and bent the hook flat against the body of the crab! Amazing stuff.

Biggest surprise was that I had a big permit eat my Shrimp Neutralizer the last day. I was busy fishing/testing the crab all week, and only used the Neutralizer the last day. The guides went crazy.

What an amazing, beautiful place to fish!

Bowing politely to Mr. Tarpon.

Hurry up and take the photo, this guy's heavy!

Yes, Mr. Permit, you are permitted to eat my crab fly!

Holy Cow! Have a look at the size of this tiger that Jeff caught in Africa while filming with Confluence Films. He says:

Our fishing and filming in Africa these past two weeks far surpassed our expectations!  Wait till you see this Confluence Film segment on the big screen! There are no words to describe it. Check out some photos and stories from the trip on my blog: http://flyfishingbum.blogspot.com/. I’ll be doing a live interview for Ask About Fly Fishing Internet Radio Wednesday night at 7 PM Mountain Time about the trip. I hope you can listen in: http://www.askaboutflyfishing.com/.

Careful, Jeff, That's a serious tiger you've got by the tail.

Yesterday was the last day in a series of warmer that normal days for November in Wisconsin, and John Beth, Doc Zavadsky and I met on one of our favorite Wisconsin tributary streams to search for browns. I was up at 3am, on the road by 4am and casting by 6:30am. Right away I had three salmon take the fly, one king and two cohos. Two of then fought their way off the barbless fly, but the third one stayed pinned.  It was a nicely colored male that took an egg and fought long and hard. Ya gotta love the cohos.

I then moved to another section of the river looking for browns, and soon found some fish working under overhanging trees. In the early morning glare, all I could see was an occasional tail and dorsal. They were browns and big ones, but I couldn’t see their heads, only an occasional tail and dorsal. The fly swung through several times with a touch. I switched to a black and blue Collared Leech. On the second swing the water erupted and an obviously very large fish ripped out of the shallows and into the deep water of the pool. Its weight was heavy and it fought like a demon. From the angle of the line I could tell the hook was on the correct end of the fish, and I got very excited. But that lasted for only a few minutes. As the fish swung past I could see the fly was anchored just behind the left gill plate. Snagged! Ugh. But it happens. The fish was so big, however, that rather than break it off, I decided to land it and get its dimensions. The big female was 35 inches long with a 24 inch girth–26.9 pounds. The biggest brown I’ve ever seen in a Wisconsin tributary stream. Ah well, next year it will be over 30 pounds, and then it will worth catching correctly.

John and Doc arrived and we pounded the river senseless. We saw no other browns but we did manage several more cohos and a couple more old kings. John and I were spotting a section of riffle from a high bank when I noticed a wrinkle in the water near the opposite bank that didn’t look like it was caused by a rock. As I watched it, a tail stuck out and then disappeared.  Glare prevented me from seeing the fish, but the tail told me it was not a brown. The browns have a distinctly black band at the end of the tail. This was a salmon–probably a coho, but its size said it could be a king.

I decided to have a tray at it. I crossed well above the fish and crept into casting position up and across from it. Sitting back on my heels, I watched it for a while and then began casting. The fly was positioned so that it swung across right in front of the fish. I tried a big collared Silver Leech, a black Collared Leech, and a red-head purple Collared leech without a connection, and yet the fish remained, moving about a bit and looking aggressive. I changed to an Icicle and on the second swing the fish grabbed the fly and tore off downstream, splashing and thrashing on the surface as the hook popped out.

I stripped in and checked the hook point. It was fine. And suddenly there was the fish, coming right back to the same spot. I pitched the Icicle back in, and the big coho slammed it. This time the hook caught firmly and the battle was on. Both John and I were surprised at the size of this coho. Years past, we had caught big cohos, but the average had fallen and now the ones we caught were smaller.  This looked like a vision from the past. Handsomely marked and with big male tusks, it did indeed seem like a blast from the past.

A bit later, John was swinging his fly through a riffle below me and suddenly a male coho came racing out of seemingly nowhere and grabbed his fly. It wasn’t a huge one, more average in size, but it fought like it was twice as big. That’s always a plus.

The day ended without any browns except the bit foul hooked female, but the warm weather and cooperative cohos made the outing very pleasant, indeed.

The first Coho of the day took an egg fly hard and fought with great vigor

One big momma brown.

A nice male Coho that took a swinging Icicle.

John and his feisty male Coho that acted like it weighed 20 pounds. Even now it's trying to bite him.

I mentioned this in an earlier post, but wanted to show it in photos to make clear what I was discussing. This is a tactic that my friend, Dr. Gary Eaton, uses when fishing minnow imitations on the spring creeks of Missouri and other streams with a gravel bottom. The shot is attached to the tag end of the knot used to connect the fly to the leader. An overhand knot is tied in the tag end so that the shot doesn’t slip off. He keeps the tag end short, usually 1/2 inch to 1 inch long. It’s nearly impossible to tie an overhand knot in such a short piece of leader material, so I thread the fly onto the leader, tie the overhand knot in the end of the tippet, and then tie the knot that attaches the fly to the leader. The shot can then be hung under the nose of the fly with ease.

The fly is fished right on the bottom so that the shot bumps and bounces over the gravel, giving the fly a most enticing action. It works great with any fly, but is particularly effective with sculpin and stickleback imitations.

Thread the leader through the eye of the fly and then tie a knot in the end of the tippet.

Tie the knot attaching the fly to the leader, and clamp on the shot.

This is a note from my fishing friend, John Beth, who was chasing trout and salmon last week.

I found a few coho when we first got there, and went 3 for 4. But they were nowhere to be found by early afternoon. There was, however, an abundance of kings. Every area that we normally fish was full of kings–a fair amount of fresh ones, too. We didn’t find any browns or steelhead, nor any other cohos.

So, if you have a hankerin’ for salmon, the waters are full of them. They take the fly well. We use leech style flies in black, purple, gray, white, and tan, with or without flash in them, and often trail an egg pattern about 15 inches behind (Oregon cheese is the color of choice for the kings).

The best overall tactic is to work the fly carefully with a jigging motion across the face of the fish. If possible the approach is made down and across—more down than across. Using lead eyes on the fly allows the imitation to be danced with a distinct up and down motion. If the fly is unweighted, allow a short tag end (about an inch) to hang out of the knot used to attach the fly to the leader. Tie an overhand knot in the end of this tag end, and then crimp a shot or two onto it. The knot keeps the shot from slipping off the tag end. It’s a great tactic.

To easily make a short tag end with a knot in it, thread the fly onto the leader, tie an overhand knot in the end of the tippet, and then tie the clinch, improved clinch, or other attachment knot, keeping the tag end to the one-inch length.

A nice fall coho. The run has just started.

The day after the Old Pueblo TU Seminar was Halloween, and Mike Mehrer and I headed south to fish for bass. The following story from that day’s fishing will appear in two of our forthcoming books: Really Matching the Hatch II, and Stillwaters. The story will change slightly  to emphasize that aspect discussed by each book, but this is thee core of iit.

Mike Mehrer and I bounced down the dusty dirt road that led into Arivaca Lake in the mesquite savanna-lands of southern Arizona. It was Halloween day, and I had spoken the day before to the Old Pueblo Chapter of Trout Unlimited. Mike and his wife, Julia, has hosted me at their home, and Mike had graciously agreed to take me in search of bass. The small johnboat that we towed with Mike’s F250 would be a great platform from which to explore the narrow, twisting arms of the lake. We rigged quickly, and headed along the western shoreline, pitching a variety of big flies back under the overhanging limbs of the shore-side willows.

Noon found us around on the eastern shore with nothing more to show for our efforts than some good casting practice.  We eased into a narrow alley of water that curved back out of sight and began working the shoreline. Mike’s fly tangled in a patch of aquatic weeds, and his removal method left the line somewhat snarled around him and draping in the water next to the boat on his back side. Immediately a nice bass smashed the fly, fussed for the briefest moment, spit the fly, and bolted for the deep cover of the weeds. At last, a take. We were encouraged. Our shoulders squared, our casting became more purposeful, and we stared just that little bit harder at the water as the flies were retrieved, trying to will the bass to strike. But alas, nothing else happened in that back-bay.

In the next arm of the lake we saw a bass rise along the shore-side grasses, and we cast long and hard but with no evident interest from the fish. It was certainly time to eat the tuna-fish sandwiches that Mike had assembled early that morning. As we sat in the shade of the willows and mesquite, we heard a rise. Looking we saw the rings. Then another. Before our food could be choked down, we had pinpointed a half dozen fish that were rising freely, sometimes jumping clear of the water.

Obviously, they were feeding, and obviously on something abundant. Back on the water, it became evident that the bass were taking a small, light rusty brown dragonfly. The insects were highly abundant and working up and down the shorelines, wheeling tirelessly over the grasses that grew in the shallow edges. The bass were cruising along the outside of the grass, or swimming along totally within it, and jumping to seize the darting insects or to pluck them from the vegetation. I had seen this before, and had managed to catch a few fish by tossing my fly as tight to the grass as possible, even into the grass. But this was not to be a Halloween day filled with treats. The season had tricked us, and it was not to be a day for anything but the right fly.

I had arrived with a few poppers and a box of long flies that ranged through the colors from jet black to flashy white. I had not counted on selective bass eating dragonflies so late in the season, and neither had Mike. By the end of October I figured the bass would be feeding hard on minnows and leeches to bulk up for the coming cold. We unloaded the boxes on them. We tried every bass ploy that we knew, including the Popper and Dropper, only to watch the bass feed blithely on the dragons without so much as a nod to our best efforts. Finally, one small bass had pity on us and took my Icicle with a splashy grab. The barbless hook slipped out easily, and we eased the fish back into the water. It darted off swiftly with a loud “Thank you” from both of us. . Such fishy zeal, even though motivated by pity, deserved to be rewarded with a careful release and a hale and hearty farewell.

Though Mike had another take on a little popper, my small bass proved to be the only fish of the day. It was not a day without other rewards—a beautiful sky, fresh winds, a sense of exploration, and a reminder that selective feeding is selective feeding, whether it’s bass or trout, salmon or blue gills, pike or payara.  Next time, I’ll have my box of bassin’ dries as well, Halloween or not.

Mike setting up to ravage the bass of Arivaca--Ha!.

The bay where we got a serious whuppin' from Mr. and Mrs. Bass.

The bass with a tender heart that took pity on two old guys and threw itself at an Icicle..

The Icicle that even selective feeding bass couldn't resist--at least one small one, anyway.