Mr. Norm... what is your mission on the forum.... I realize you can tie beautiful flies, but what do you do with all of them? 1. mission? - to show other tyers different fly patterns that they may never have seen before and just might want to tie 2. what do i do with all of them - some i fish (when...

Cookshill is being difficult; does anybody have another source for high quality Starling that they could share with me? Thanks. What do you mean about Cookshill being "difficult"? I just checked Steve's website and there's no notation that starling skins or wings are in short supply. Did ...

Everything stated so far, and a couple more. Any of Oliver Kite's books. 'Summer on the Test' -John Waller hills. Not a how-to, but a wonderful record of British chalk stream fishing at the turn of the 20th. 'Trout Hunting' -Bob Wyatt Ed Engel has some good ideas floating around. Rick Hafele, too. '...

Beautiful, Norm. I've got a bunch of raffia just gathering dust; I may have to revisit it now...

...such a great pattern, beautifully tied; it has so much more inherent dignity than a Griffith's Gnat.

That's a great idea, Ray; I never would have thought of that. It certainly sounds better than my method, which is to glue a small piece of emery cloth on one of the jaws.

Syl's Midge! I'd forgotten about that pattern; Nemes was the perfect voice for the renaissance of the soft hackle.

Scraggly? I think not. This is the pattern that the Bread Crust has always aspired to be; the Bread Crust grew up tattooed trailer trash, while Norm's Scraggly is kin to John Houseman and Hah-vahd.

What Ron said: I love the woodcock tie. Nicely done.

One thing I try to do when I've blasphemed a classic is pay homage to those from the past with a wee dram of a good single malt. Ahhh, nice! Wait, ...define 'wee' for me. Washing away all the backsliding with wee drams of Speyburn is a habit here as well. I even tweak my scotch; I started putting a...