George Cook is back today with some more video commentary on fly fishing lakes. The topic de jour is some techniques for dealing with a difficult backcast. In this video, George talks about The fact that some of the best spots in lakes, like bays, can have very tough backcast conditions How basic rollcasting can…
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George Cook
Lake Fly Fishing Introduction
Today we begin a short series of videos about lake fishing, featuring one of the deans of modern fly fishing in the Northwest – George Cook. In addition to his day job repping Sage, Rio, Redington, Tibor and more, George hosts guests each year at Back to the Wall, a pair of private lakes in…
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Top Salmon Fishing Posts of 2010
Congratulations – you’re about to endure the last of our ‘Best of 2010’ posts. You’ve seen which of our articles about trout, and bonefish, and steelhead were most popular in 2010. If there’s anything we know well it’s fly fishing for salmon, and today you get to see which of our top 10 salmon fishing…
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Switch Rods, Scandi Heads and Polyleaders
In the world of spey fishing there seem to be three types of gear that generate a lot of confusion – switch rods, Scandinavian heads and polyleaders. Here’s our quick-and-dirty, way-oversimplified primer on each of the three. Look down below for a video from an actual expert, with an example of a situation where all…
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Switch Rods and Heads – Sage TCX and Rio Steelhead Scandi
Last weekend at IFTD we told you a little bit about two new products in the world of spey – TCX switch rods from Sage, and Steelhead Scandi heads from Rio. We thought they were both pretty interesting, so we asked George Cook, Pacific Northwest angling stalwart, to make a few casts at the spey…
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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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Sinktip Secrets
George Cook is the Northwest rep for Sage, Redington and Rio. He’s done a boatload of fishing over the years using sinktips (especially on the Kanektok and the Dean), and today he stops by our blog in video format to chat us up about sinktips. Here’s what he covers: Sink rate and the ‘type’ system…
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Future Spey Anglers
Looking for the next generation of fly anglers? Here you go – they’re in Quinhagak, Alaska. And you know what? They probably know more about salmon than you do! More on Culture at Alaska West Job Requirements: Facial Hair Native Crafts The Arolik Bus
Switch Rods – Different Uses
We’ve told you before that we think you should try out a switch rod if you haven’t already. We’ve also told you that we tend to think of switch rods as basically being little spey rods. They definitely can be fished like little spey rods and that’s maybe the use that’s most applicable in our…
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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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