I thing of my winged wets as mini-streamers. I fish two #12 wets--a Hares Ear and a Leadwinged Coachman. Try 'em sometime, when nothing seems to be happening. You'd be surprised. My favorite tactic with this setup is to find a super slow flowing pool that's around 3 to 4 ft deep. I'll cast the rig o...

I love the illustrations. It must be some kind of lithographic technique, made after photographs. They are gorgeous. And, yeah, much more about wet fly tactics in this tome

I prefer real muskrat dubbing to the synthetic equivalents. Gray sythentic dubbing is gray, and looks gray in the water. But Muskrat is actually silvery when wet. And you can see the silvery muskrat dubbing from a fair distance. I feel the real fur is more appealing, and visible, to the fish.

The old recipes mention "red," but even the original Sawyers exhibited copper. I'm thinking that they called the copper color, "red."

Thanks for posting. Although I hail from the country once called Great Britain this is the first time I’ve seen a genuine Saywer Nymph. Is there any chance of a close up of his Red PT and the Killer Bug? I’m interested to see the colour of the wire etc he used. He did write a very small book on his...

I sold my bamboo off during the Great Recession. But things improved and I'm "back on the grass." I own a perfectly restored Granger 8-ft. Special, finished by Mike Sinclair. It's a classic. I also own two RK Bolt rods, and 8 for 5wt, and a 7 1/2 4wt. All I need now is an 8-foot Jenkins (m...

Leaders are an obsession to me, a sort of madness. I fish mainly dries and wets. I've tied Borger's formulas, the 60/20/20 formulas. Furled. Favorites for me are the George Harvey "slack leader" formulas, the ones with the stiff mono in the butt sections. Another I'm quite fond of is AK Be...

Muskrat is magical fur. I've tied flies with synthetics. Synthetics are gray. But muskrat--you can see it yourself when reeling in, say, a large Dark Cahill wet, that it's SILVER in the water. Big difference. Stick wit da rat!

I can tie flies with starling hackle, but I don't like working with the stuff. It's flimsy, breaks off all the time, and I find it hard to make a good looking wrap with it. How does one judge starling hackle. Perhaps I didn't get a good one. Any thoughts? I'm dreaming of just going back to black hen...