Ever wonder why the buckles on your wader straps are opposite, male buckle on one strap and female buckle on the other? Most wader companies today incorporate this feature into their wader straps for good reason, its super handy! Odds are you may have found a use or two for the opposing buckles on your…
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Tips
Silver Salmon in Sunny Conditions – 5 Tips
Fly fishing for silver salmon is awesome.. At Alaska West, we are fortunate to have a great run of silvers each August and we look forward to their return every season. We target them on both single and double handed rods, surface and subsurface patterns, and in a multitude of water types. While most of the…
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Be Nice to the Juveniles
A couple months back we ran a post reminding you to be nice to non-targets, those species that voluntarily climb onto your fly when you’re on the search for something else. All fish deserved to be handled with care and if catching too many fish is the problem, that’s not a bad problem to have!…
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Selecting Sink Tips
When swinging flies for salmon and steelhead, a question we get asked a lot is ‘what sink tip should I use?’ or ‘how do I know what sink tip to start with?’ Like all things fly fishing, there is no rule of thumb that pertains to every situation. There are far too many variables from…
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Adjustable Indicator Rigs
We’re on the back half of our season here in Alaska and that can only mean one thing.. It’s steak and eggs season! This time of year, our resident rainbow trout are taking full advantage of the continuous supply of salmon parts tumbling down river. Therefore, we ‘match the hatch’ and fish our share of flesh and…
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Tying the Intruder Without a Dubbing Loop
Last week, our buddy Stuart Foxall gave us a great tying tip on a better way to create dubbing balls when tying intruder style flies. Stuart is a commercial fly tyer/designer for Aqua Flies, and is a master at constructing modern intruder style flies (among many, many, other patterns). When Stu takes to the vise at Alaska…
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Storing Rigged Fly Rods
We see a lot of broken fly rods over the course of a season. Although we’d love to dish out stories of huge, rod buckling fish, the majority of the time rods are broken getting in and out of a boat, sticking them in a ceiling fan, or other less glamorous ways. Safely storing your rods…
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Stuart Foxall on Better Dubbing Balls
We recently ran a post asking you what topics you’d like to see more of. More posts on fly tying was a common request and guess what – we listened! In fact, we reached out to Stuart Foxall, world class fly designer and Deneki host for some state of the art tying content. Part of Loop Tackle’s development…
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Set With the Swing
When swinging flies for salmon and steelhead, we find setting the hook to the side (as opposed to straight up) will result in more fish to the net. We often use the phrase ‘set towards the bank,’ however we realize this can be confusing when fishing anywhere other than a big long gravel bar. The…
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A Lesson from Ol’ Chumley
The chum salmon are in at Alaska West and that can only mean one thing – it’s rod breaking season! While we certainly witness our share of broken rods throughout the season, we tend to see more rods break while targeting chums than any other species. Why? Because chums are some of the scrappiest fish we’ve ever…
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