At Alaska West our guides are constantly pushing the envelope as it relates to fly design. Big, beautiful composite hackle king flies, innovative new mouse designs, dangerously articulated flesh flies and more are routinely born in our staff quarters next to the Kanektok River. On the other hand, there are some patterns that have produced…
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flies
20 Incher by Idylwilde
During a trip with Chile West, our guests fish a whole bunch of different fly patterns that pretty much cover the world of trout fishing. From giant streamers to tiny dries, blunt terrestrials to imitative nymphs, we fish a lot in a typical trip and our fly boxes are evidence – they’re loaded! We’ve definitely…
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Lightening the Load
Today we continue our series of weekly posts straight from The Little Red Book of Fly Fishing – a new collection of 250 nuggets of fly fishing wisdom from Kirk Deeter and the late, great Charlie Meyers. We’re lucky enough to have gotten permission to post some excerpts from the book – read on! Our…
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Rigging Stinger Hooks
Tube flies and stinger hooks are very popular with anglers who chase salmon and steelhead with fly rods, for a few reasons. They allow you to change your hook without changing your fly. They allow you to fish a big fly without fishing a hook with a long shank, which helps you land more fish….
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King Salmon Fly Selection
George Cook pays us another visit today in video form, this time to talk about what 22 lucky anglers are going to be doing a week from today – selecting flies to use when chasing king salmon at Alaska West on the Kanektok. We filmed George in February of this year. He was looking forward…
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Larimer’s Reverse Marabou Tube Fly
One of Tom Larimer’s go-to flies these days for winter steelhead, summer steelhead and king salmon in Alaska is one of his own designs – the Reverse Marbou Tube. NOTE: If you’re viewing this in a newsletter or a reader, click here to hear Tom talk about his steelhead and salmon fly on YouTube. The…
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Not Your Average Fly Box
Reason #21 that it’s fun to go fishing with Michael White: he brings a few flies along. These are all by Idylwilde, if you need to know. More on Flies Bonefish Flies – 5 Favorites for South Andros The Intruder The Mikey Prawn for Kings and Steelhead
Selecting Steelhead Flies
In the past month we’ve had Tom Larimer stop by our blog to give a 6-minute master class on spey casting anchor placement, and a 1-minute diatribe (well, for Tom it was a diatribe) on fishing your fly actively. Today we hear Tom’s thoughts on picking which steelhead fly to fish – especially which color to…
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The Intruder
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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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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