Striper fishing is picking up along the Jersey coast, and our friend, Theo Bakelaar, has been tying his Eel Skin Sand Eels for a shop in Ocean City. These flies really are tied with freshwater eel skin, and they are extremely effective, as our past fishing experiences have shown. Eel skin is very tough and […]
My good friend, Theo Bakelaar, from Holland, has been tying a great selection of foam flies: beetles, ants, caddises, and on. He sent the tying steps for a really great foam caddis. It is profile fly, and a really good one. Have a look.
Theo Bakelaar, our Holland Connection, has graciously agreed to share his tying steps for the House Fly. This tying strategy would make a great cicada, wasps, bees, and other dipterans.
My friend, Theo Bakelaar, from Holland, sent me photos of some house flies that he is tying for the coming season. Scary good! He notes that the trout and other fish sip them off the surface with absolute confidence. This design would make a great cicada imitation in larger sizes. He will send tying instructions […]
Here are two of Theo’s flies that do well anywhere in the world. He and others have fished them very successfully here in the States. They both have peacock herl bodies, and I think that is the major appeal of the flies. Trout just like peacock herl, period. The tying is straight forward, so make […]
Those who use the various long-leader nymphing tactics will find this fly a very good one to get deep and stay deep. And although Theo ties it in 10 and 12, it is effective down to 18—adjusting the bead size to the hook size, of course. I like to use it as the top fly […]
Show season is always a crazy time for me, simply because I am traveling and working the shows. This activity leaves little time for me to keep up on my blog activity, and yet I want to put up new posts as often as I can. My friend, Theo Bakelaar, has come to my aid. […]
I have friends that help me to search for and find the latest in fly tying and fly fishing. Henry Kanemoto sent me a URL to the Dubspeed. It’s a great tool that I saw at the 2013 EWF in March in Munich. I had forgotten about it (where are those show notes??). It is […]
I first saw this brush-parachute hackle winding style in “Entomologie fur Dliegenfischer” by Walter Reisinger, Ernst Bauerfeind, and Erhard Loidl (2010). It’s a very easily executed tactic, similar to the umbrella hackle technique developed by Tatsuhiro Saido. The brush-parachute technique is useful in many more ways than the umbrella style, however. T.H.E. Fly (Tilted Hackle […]
While at the International Fly Tying Symposium, I had an opportunity to examine Jim Mattson’s new Pulse Disks for the fly fisher. These thin, plastic disks are place on the leader just ahead of the fly, and cause it to swim with a side to side motion that is truly astounding. There are seven sizes […]