Warning: this is a very technical post about fly tying. If you’re not interested in the subtleties of tying one of the most influential modern steelhead and salmon patterns, click here to look at a bunch of pictures of fish. Jerry French may not have a household name in the world of anadromous angling in…
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flies
Purple Chubby Chernobyl
Our team at Chile West recently spent some time on a spring creek that has been fishing well. This creek has an abundance of dragonflies and they seem to be the staple food for these fish. While there are some beautifully tied dragonfly patterns, they are often not aerodynamic and thus hard to cast. As…
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Tube Fly for Barracuda
If you’ve hung around our blog much, you know that lots of different flies work for barracuda on South Andros. Today Matt Hynes walks us through tying instructions for a ‘cuda fly that comes from a slightly different angle – it’s tied on a tube. Barracuda Tube Recipe Hook Stainless saltwater hook, size 2/0 to…
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Mr. Hankey
Jeff Hickman knows rainbow trout. He spent a bunch of years guiding at Alaska West, and during that time he came up with a really popular mouse pattern called Mr. Hankey that’s now available from Idylwilde. Jeff now combines his Larimer Outfitters guiding with conservation work with the Sierra Club’s Hunter and Angler Heritage Program. He…
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Veverka’s Mantis Shrimp – From Its Creator
One of our go-to flies on South Andros Island has always been Bob Veverka’s Mantis Shrimp. We were pretty excited a couple of weeks ago when we got a response to one of our email newsletters from…Bob Veverka. We immediately began twisting Bob’s arm for some information about the design and construction of his fly,…
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Silver Salmon Fly Selection
We’ve written in the past about some silver salmon flies that we like to use at Alaska West on the Kanektok River, but that was in boring old words-and-pictures blog format. Today we’ve got a video featuring George Cook, Northwest angling mainstay and Sage/Redington/Rio rep, telling us about his approach to selecting flies for silvers…
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Bonefish Flies – 5 Favorites For South Andros
Something in here’s gotta work. Compared to most in the bonefishing world, the flies that we like to fish on South Andros tend to be an unusual combination of big and light. For anglers wanting to load up a fly box before their trip, that can make it a little hard to buy commercially available…
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Just Another Cool Underwater Trout Picture
We like rainbows and mouse flies. Photo: Cameron Miller Sometimes it’s hard to pick which super-cool Cameron Miller picture from Alaska West to post, just because we’ve got so darned many. Today’s edition is just a nice, normal, beautiful Alaska West rainbow trout underwater shot- heavily spotted, nice red stripe, and with a very run-of-the-mill…
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Alaska Silver Salmon Flies – 5 Favorites
Got one. Photo: Cameron Miller The period from late July through early September at Alaska West is just one big mess of silver salmon mayhem. At this time of year the leopard rainbows, dollies and other salmon species in the Kanektok make room in already crowded waters, because they know as well as we do…
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King Flies – The Mikey Prawn
Looks shrimpy, no? Photo: John Ford Brian Niska will be one of our spey instructors at Alaska West in 2010, for the third year running. Today Brian tells us a bit about one of his favorite king flies, the Mikey Prawn. One of Brian’s spey weeks is sold out, but there’s still space in his…
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