Jeremy Hunt

Yes were are having class. I posted it in the fly recipe page. Go check it out. You will like class this week. jh

I thought you would like to check this pattern out.

Wapsi still carries it, so you can get your local fly shop to order it for you. The only thing is they don't have the baby blue. The color has been discontinued which I think is one of the best colors. If you are able to pick this color up somewhere I would buy it all. I have some, but one day I will use it up and wish I had bought more. They have a royal blue that you can order and it works to.

I would say the one in my hand is a 22. I don't tie down to that size though. I tie mine on 18 through 14. Rule of thumb on the size is. It is always one hook size down in size. So if you tie an 18 the true size of the fly is a 20. jh

We will be playing with three new types of material. The first two are magic tails and EP fiber to tie baitfish patterns. And the other is this new stuff to tie some really good looking leech patterns. It comes with sili legs already in the material. Really cool stuff. Here are a few pictures of some baitfish patterns I have been tying.

I was just wondering for all the night time fly fishers. What is your favorite pattern that you think catching the most fish for you on a consistent basis out of any other pattern you throw at night? I'm sure there are alot of people who want to know so I thought this to be great topic. Believe it or not... mine would be this wooly that I tie with diamond braid in the blue colors. I catch more fish on this over anything else I throw at them. Try this sometime, I think you will see what I'm talking about. You can use this on a full moon or no moon.

Randall That is stretch tubbing in meduim slid over the eye and ribbed with either thread or wire. The thorax is antron dubbing. Very simple pattern. I usally use this fly only as a drooper because it is so light. jh

Thanx for the heads up Tim. I will give a try and let you know how I do. I'll be back your way on Friday. Any suggestions? Were you fishing the slack water right on the seem line? (Edge) jh

I was down at the boat ramp and wanting to get some different pictures of midges and here is what I came up with. This is why zebra midges are so effective on our tail waters. If you look closely at the white segmentations on the back you will see why it's important to use copper wire or some type of wire to copy this same look.

Hey Kansas, Just want to let you know how I tie them and maybe this will help you a little when you are learning how to tie this fly. I've been playing with this fly a little and found a few things that might help you along the way. As you now and I know there are always things that might make you think about how to do this or that to make the fly look like the original pattern you are trying to copy. What I have found to be a few key things to make this fly do right and look right is make sure you find a hook that has a wide hook gap. The reason being is the hackle will be longer than the gap and might hurt you on hook sets. I have found that the sproat bend style hook seems to be the best one as far as keeping fish on without getting off as much. The hook is the new line of mustad signature hook in a size 6 or 8. The style number is the R50 Dry/Wet standard hook. It's also a really strong hook just in case you have that big one on. The next thing I have found to really make this fly ride right is the hackle. I have played with Keogh, Metz and some other cheap grizzly hackle types and they seem to not tie it the way it should look. The best hackle is the Whiting brand. They're two types you can buy and I have found the cheaper stuff is better. They retail for around nine dollars. I have heard people tying them in all kinds of ways, also tying in two or three hackles. I tie in two hackles and tie them on the side of the hook shank after I tied in my foam. When I tie in the hackle I want the hackles to kick out when I tie them to the bend. I wind one hackle in one direction and the other one the opposite. This makes the fly more durable and it really rides high on the water. Another thing you might want to do is make sure you tie in the ends of the foam in a taper look on both ends. This will make the hackle wrap smooth without grabbing or slipping around the foam. One thing before I forget is the foam is called Darice Foamies 2mm thick. It is 9"x 12" sheets and don't cost that much. I forget what I paid so I will leave it at that. Hope this helps you out. Here is a picture how I tie it.

11-10-06 Thursday while we were fishing that evening, I was telling my dad about Roaring River and that my friend went by there on his way home to Broken Arrow, Oklahoma Wednesday. Ron said he saw a ton of big bruts that were stocked for opening day catch-n-release starting on Friday. My day was supposed to head out this morning to go to Iowa, but once I told him that he was up for trying that out. We got there around ten in the morning and headed to Tim’s fly shop. I had to get the scoop on what it was going to take to catch those big trout. He showed me three patterns that he was having a lot of luck on. One was a good ole egg pattern and the other two were wooly buggers in ginger and small midge patterns in black. I was eager to get down there and see what was in store. We drove around first to find some big fish holding in some of the pools. I was also surprise to see that there were not a lot of people fishing opening day. You could walk anywhere and find a place to wet a line. It was clear skies when we started, but I knew a cold front was coming in around 2pm. I started out fishing while my father said he just wanted to watch. I was fishing my new Sage XP in a three weight. I tied on a black v-rib midge in a size 18 with a 5/64 silver tungsten bead. I immediately started catching fish. This was my second time ever fishing this river so I didn’t really know this water. All I knew was what I thought these trout would eat and from what Tim told me at the fly shop. I ended up catching a dozen fish or so in about fifteen minutes. It didn’t take my dad long to get in the game. We just fished midge patterns for most of the day walking pool to pool. I saw a lot of big fish in every pool and try to catch them on midge patterns, but they weren’t in to that. We caught a lot of smaller fish, but seeing all those big fish was definitely getting my attention. I would say three hours went by and we started feeling the cold front moving in. We really didn’t dress for the occasion. So while we were fishing, we would go up to the truck and re-tie while the heater was going. We would warm up and go do it all over again. We did this for about an hour before we would call it a day. I did end up changing flies right at the very end. What I’m about to tell you is….. this is where the whole trip switch gears for me and what I thought about fishing egg patterns. I really never fished egg patterns, not because I was too good to fish them. I was not into fishing eggs so I really never did. I felt like it was cheating in a way. Well…. I have changed my theory on fishing eggs. The reason why I say this is… about the last thirty minutes I tried an egg pattern that I bought from Tim. I had three of them so I gave my dad one and we both tied them on to see if they would work for one of those bigger fish that were sitting under the water where it drops off from each pool. I figured that it I would throw it up in the front pool and let it fall like it was just coming down the chain, they would think it was real and it would look more natural. It worked and caught some bigger fish. Not anything that was over eighteen inches, bit the big fish were coming over and looking at it. So I thought to myself that if I would throw it and let it fall like they see the pellets fall they would think it was food. I was right; those fish went nuts on this presentation. I thought how a trout would relate to the feeding behaviors of a trout park. You could throw this anywhere you saw trout and they would take it. All you had to do was watch the egg disappear and set the hook. We had ended up losing these in the trees from setting the hook and had to call it a day. I was eager to try this again and told my dad I was going back for more. He wanted to as well so that was the plan. Tie eggs and see if we could spend all day trying this out. 11-11-06 So that night I called one of my clients and told him about how we had this cool bite figured out and asked if he wanted to go as well. He didn’t hesitate at all, his reply was what time do you want me to pick you up. I told him we wanted to get there early so we could get a good spot. I was thinking it would be crowded for opening weekend at the park. When we got there it was less crowded than the day before so we were really happy about that. It seem like we had the whole park to our self. We did drive around again to spot the bigger fish like we did the day before and find out what holes they were holding in. I know our goal that day was to only concentrate on catching those bigger bruts. So to make a long story short…. We caught fish right off the bat so I knew we were onto something. We weren’t catching anything of any size when we first got there, but by the day was over we caught three big fish. We stuck with the egg pattern all day because I knew one of us were going to catch something big if we covered alot of new water were these big fish were at. That was our discussion while we were in the way there. Who was going to be the one to get that big one. The first one was caught by Bill Badley. The next one was about an hour after that by me and the biggest one was caught about thirty minutes before the park closed down. And the funny thing is…they were all caught on the big egg pattern. My dad didn’t catch any big ones, but I’m sure he was just as excited to see one of us catch ‘em. The first big fish we caught was around 7 pounds. The second one was 5 pounds and the last fish we caught was the biggest weighing around 13 pounds. They were all rainbows. I was a little disappointed that we didn’t catch any browns. I did see some, but they were all small, maybe one big one out of the whole bunch. I would tell anyone to go over and catch one of these big rainbows if you live close by. It is well worth the drive over I guarantee you that. They’re real easy to catch and felt real nice on my 3 weight!! How is the egg tied you ask? This was tied with three different colors all divided in the same diameter when tying the in.. Pink, yellow, and orange, and orange was always the color tied on the top. It was tied on a 1/100 jig head hook with no shoulder on the shank. If you don’t what that is it is the way they pour the mold. The ones that have just a round ball on the head are not the shoulder ones. That seems to be the key with this fly. It had to fall slow. If you used the heavier heads they didn’t want anything to do with it. I think the slower the better. I fished Taney the last couple of days doing this same technique and was surprised to see how many fish actually like this presentation. I was fishing in the rebar hole doing this same thing I did at Roaring River and had about ten fish hit it in about an hour.

My dad had one day left so we decided to fish Taneycomo. I guess this was our last stop of making our rounds. We decided to go wadding and really spend time fishing for big browns in the rebar hole. My dad started the day fishing scuds at the rebar hole and I wanted to fish wooly buggers on a full sinking line. I saw a man do this about a week ago and he caught two browns that weighed around five pounds stripping size ten bead head wooly buggers. He caught one on olive and the other on a black. So that had my attention and I really wanted to try that as well. I’d say about the second cast I had a hit on an olive color with a gold bead. It was a brown that weighed about three pounds. The next thing I started to do is dead swinging in the current. I got a few hits, but nothing of any size. The good thing about it was they were all browns and that’s always a plus. I brought a floating line also so I switched over to that and started fishing different types of scuds. I know lately all the big fish I’m hearing that are being caught down by the rebar section are scuds tied with the awesome possum. And the color of choice seems to be the gray color. I did catch some fish on this, but could not get the big ones to take it this day. My dad was down about hundred yards and sometimes I would look up and see him with a fish on. I knew he was fishing with a indicator so that led me to believe he was fishing some sort of scud pattern as well. I would look up every once in awhile and see his rod bent so I knew he was fishing some sort of scud pattern. I went back to doing my thing fishing all kinds of scud patterns. I must have re-tied and switched back from a sinking line to a floating line ten times. I could see me dad getting tired of walking so we called it a day. I did ask my dad what he caught his fish on and he said mostly on a dead scud pattern tied with a swiss straw back ribbed with thread to match the body. This is a pattern that was invented for White River and it works well on Taneycomo as well.

As we were fishing the Norfork I got on my phone and wanted to see what they were doing on the White. My buddy Bill said on the way down that he always wanted to fish Wildcat Shoals. We wanted to split the day and get fishing time on both rivers if we could. I knew they started generating one unit at 6 am in the morning so our plan was to fish the afternoon if the water cooperated. I always like fishing Wildcat Shoals when the water is off. Those fish seem to like feeding when the water drops out. They really seem to like bead head midge patterns and you can catch trout after trout. I was really shocked to see that there were no cars and nobody fishing it when we got there. I guess we lucked out having this whole stretch all to our self. The water wasn’t all the way down so the current was a little slower than usual so I didn’t know how good the bite was going to be. We really didn’t have a lot of time to fish because by the time we got there it was around 4 pm and we only had about hour and a half of good daylight left. We all tied on black zebra midges in size 16. All I can say is we one fish after another. Someone always had a rod bent. We didn’t catch anything of any size and they were all rainbows, but what a great weekend fishing with my father and the weather couldn’t have been any better to us. Another good thing about this trip is Mr. Bill Badley caught his first Norfork brookie and that seem to be the high life of his trip to Arkansas. I can’t lie either… it is always fun to catch those cute little guys. I don’t care if they are six inches.

We headed for Arkansas around eight in the morning. We wanted to fish both the Norfork and the White if we were going to make a full day out of this. They were running one unit at the White and two at Norfork when I called that morning. I thought the Norfork would be a better bite to start off with because they were running two units. I noticed when we got there that it was a low two units and it would be a nice drift fishing out of a boat. I have fished this current many times before and knew we had a good chance of catching a lot of fish with this type of water. We all started fishing san jaun worms in red and pink because it has worked every other time we have fished this river. One thing I have learned fishing worms is to up the size of the chenille and tie them on a straight shank hook instead of a curved hook. .I have lost a lot of fish in high water until I figured out to change the hook style. It really doesn’t matter in low water because the current is different, but fishing faster water you will find the straight shank is a better way to go. The ones we fished were tied on a TMC 3769 size 12 in the standard chenille. Standard chenille is one size up from the micro. The micro is perfect for low water, but when fishing the micro chenille in faster water the fish can’t see it from a distance. Ask your self this question. If you catch fish on a small san jaun worm in low water? Why can’t you just up the size so the fish can see it. The reason why people don’t catch fish in high water is because they think they have to figure out a whole new way to catch trout for the most part. I have learned that because the water is going faster, you need to stick with the same patterns that worked in low water just up the size so they can see it. If the current is fast they really won’t see those smaller flies from a distance, but they will see those bigger ones and that will get their attention to come over and see what you have in store. I usually tie the standard chenille on a 12 or 14 hook instead of a curved, you will find that you get a better hook set when fishing in high water. We caught most our brook trout on pink while the rainbows liked the red. We didn’t catch anything real big. A lot of the brook trout that we caught were in the 10 to 15 inch range, always a pretty fish to catch! Rainbows seemed to be a little bigger, ranging anywhere from 16 to 19 inches. We only ended up catching one cut throat and my dad caught that one. At the end of the day fishing Norfork I wanted to change it up and try some kind of shad imitation to see if I could get one of those big browns attention so I tied on a rabbit type streamer and fished it under a indicator about eight feet dead drifting like a dead shad coming through the generators. I only caught two fish doing this for about thirty minutes, but two nice fish. On my first drift I caught a 19 inch rainbow and the other one was a 16 inch brown. I wish that brown was going to be that big one. I guess I’m asking a lot considering the day I had before at Roaring River. Most of our fishing we did was up at the dam because that seem to be where we were having most of our hits. We did drift a few times downstream, but the bite was slow. We finally called it a day at Norfork when they turned the water off and it gave us a reason to head out and fish Wildcat Shaols for the rest of the day. jh

That's funny. I see father's teaching there son's how to do the "Taneycomo Shuffle". Anyways.. What about when you walk, you shuffle to. So everyone shuffles free food. Trout are smart to get a free meal. I would to

Oh, I know that pattern. I thought this was a River Run Outfitter fly tied by Carolyn. I think she called it the lighting something....I never fished it though. It's a catchy fly, kind of like an attractor pattern.

I would say up to 2 units. Anything after that you could end up in Hollister. Lol

This was actually caught on Taneycomo way downstream. Russell from tying class caught it the other day.

That fly is like feeding candy to a baby. Trout seem to like everywhere you go. Great back up fly if it is a rough day!! jh

It would have the same fly so we could make a fair vote, but a great idea. I think we could add our own touch, but you would still have to know it is the pattern. You never know, sometimes by changing a fly pattern makes it better and more durable. I guess that’s what we all tiers try to do.

I notice yesterday when I was fishing. They’re were a lot of big fish in this one stretch feeding very shallow. I could see that they were four in the eight to ten pound range. So I thought to myself this would be great night to go fishing. And that is exactly what I did. I started around midnight and went right to the spot to see if I couldn’t get my hands on one of them big brownies. I only saw four cars in the parking lot so I knew there were a lot of places to fish. I could see people’s flash lights as I was walking down and saw them all to be up in chute two or at the rebar hole. So that told me where I was going those fish more than likely haven’t been bother yet. It was cloudy so the first thing I thought to put on was something big and black. So I threw this rabbit streamer tied with a deer hair head with a tungsten cone in a size four. My goal was to comb as much water as I could with this big fly and only fish it. I would say fishing was fair. It was a slow bite at times but every once in awhile you would catch a few in a row. I didn’t catch anything real big, but a lot of the fish I caught were browns. I caught a few I in the 18-20 inch range but most were 16 inches or so. I would say in a four hour span I caught twenty fish or so. I was a little disappointed that I did not catch anything big because I had this gut feeling that I’m sure we all get sometimes that I was going to catch that big one tonight. Maybe next time huh. I am going again tonight so I hope my luck changes.

I just wanted to wish everyone a Happy Halloween. Classes will not be held tonight. I guess everybody is busy on this festive day. I wanted to let everyone know that Phil and I will be working on some more how to steps on tying in the up coming weeks so please let us know what you all would like to know how to tie so we can put the ones you really want to learn. Season is finally slowing down so I got some free time to get this going again. good day... jh

Where did you hear about this one? And can you give me some idea what materials it calls for. jh

I agree as well. Are they not stocking as much as the previous year?

What day are you thinking? And what does work for some of the people who are interested in making it to class. Let me know. It has been Tuesday forever, but if another day works for more people I'm sure we can change it. jh