Today we present you with some rigging wizardry courtesy of Alaska West guide, Jerry French. You may recognize Jerry’s name as part of the original brain trust behind the Intruder. However, intruder style patterns are hardly the only flies Jerry fishes.. In fact, he’d be the first to tell you that great anglers evolve, constantly…
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Search Results for: fly tying
The King Sling Loop
Bad knots are a bummer.. But even a knot tied to perfection is often still the weakest link of any setup. That’s why successful anglers are usually pretty particular about the knots they use. We’re asked all the time what our ‘knot of choice’ is for particular rigging situations, and one question we hear often is…
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Measure Nets – Why We Like Them
Not all nets are created equal. A quality landing net is a guide’s most important tool, and when it comes to trout, we’re really particular about the nets we use. We recently outfitted our guide staff with measure nets for our trout population and we can honestly say they’re one of the better landing nets we’ve…
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Rigging Tube Flies – Leave Your Tag Long
If you’ve spent any time with us in recent years at our lodges in Alaska or British Columbia, you’re probably well aware that we’re a big fan of tube flies for a whole bunch of reasons. When fishing tubes, we generally rig them using two different methods – ‘Stinger’ style to hang a trailer hook at…
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LeaderCalc 2016
Ever considered tying your ownn leaders but wasn’t quite sure where to start? Hand tied leaders can offer a number of advantages over standard ‘knotless’ tapered leaders, but it can be a little daunting at first. After all, there are virtually endless formulas out there depending on where, how, and what you’re fishing for! However,…
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FireLine for Stinger Loops
Our guides are in the process of turning out a whole bunch of flies for the upcoming season. We use a lot of stinger style fly patterns at our lodges – Flies tied to incorporate a trailing hook positioned at the back of the fly. They offer a number of advantages over flies tied on…
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Selecting King Salmon Flies
In just over a month we kick off our summer seasons at our Alaska operations. That means it won’t be long before we’re swinging flies for big, bright, king salmon.. Heck, we’re getting antsy just writing about it! When selecting flies for king salmon, most of the time exact fly pattern is not overly important….
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Eric Robbin’s Nymphing Rig
Last week, we presented you a clever way to rig up when digging deep for western Alaska rainbows shown to us by Alaska West guide Eric Robbins (in case you missed it, check it out here!). In fact, we liked it so much that we asked him to give us all the nitty gritty details of…
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Modern ‘Spins’ on Classic Flies
Last week professional fly designer, Stuart Foxall, shared with us a brief background on two classic styles of flies still used today for salmon and steelhead – Spey and Dee style flies. We thought it was pretty darn interesting, and judging by some of your comments, you did too! So, today Stu is back with…
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Time to Learn Your Spey’s and Dee’s
One thing we love about tying flies is the rich tradition and history associated with our craft. There’s a whole bunch of history wrapped up (pun intended) in just about every pattern available today, and today our buddy Stuart Foxall put together a great write up on two classic styles of flies still used for…
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