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(Before you read this article, please click on the image above or the song title here to cue Richard Wagner's piece, Ride of the Valkyries).With Wagner now providing a soundtrack for this article, imagine with me hundreds of thousands of mature mayfly nymphs, caddis pupa, and midge pupa staging among the rocks along the bottom [...]

Sitting alongside the river in the morning and surveying the spread of fly boxes that surround me, each with closely-packed ranks of flies, I feel like a general inspecting his troops before battle. At this point, I face the perpetual question of which fly to deploy to outwit my foe, the trout. Before [...]

I kept the True Flies installment of the Fly Selection 101 articles until last because these patterns are near and dear to my geeky, invertebrate-loving heart! Not to be confused with the broader invertebrate order Diptera that also goes by the moniker "True Flies" and includes midges, mosquitoes, crane flies and black flies, we are [...]

 Like a high-stepping line of Las Vegas showgirls or the cast of Baywatch, the family of flies called Attractors rely more on flash and embellishment than attempting to represent any true invertebrate species. Making up roughly 20% of dry patterns and 30% of wet patterns, flies from this family are dressed in tinsel, copper, mirrored Mylar, [...]

A perennial complaint that I have heard from customers over the years is their inability to remember the names of their flies, what invertebrates they represent, and when to use each. We have all at one time or another visited the local fly shop to pick up "must have patterns" only to add them [...]

Trout are among some of nature's most astute investors. The habitat in which fish reside, the invertebrates they pursue, and ultimately the artificial flies they take are all weighed in a purposefully applied cost-benefit analysis. In the case of the trout, this equation takes into account the amount of protein and calories provided [...]