I've just listed a new leather fly book on the Hand Stitched Leather Accessories page of this website. Made completely by hand, this book is much bigger than my traditional leather fly wallets.

​This book is made from a heavy oil stoned leather that is tough, rugged, & gorgeous. Since it's tanned in oils it will hold up to the weather for a lifetime of heavy use along the stream. It has rich grain & range marks in it, showing true character in the leather. It also has a deep, rich leather smell that is very pleasing to the nose every time you handle it. The book is lined on the inside with a velvet soft suede leather. The suede is made in such a way that water will bead up on it &, if allowed to soak in, will quickly dry.

​This book contains 8 pages of a soft felt material, the same pages in my leather fly wallets. I recommend barbless hooks, as I do for my fly wallets. Each page measures 5 1/2" x 6", giving you ample room to store a huge selection of flies.

To see more photos & to read more info about this fly book, please visit the Hand Stitched Leather Accessories page.

If you have any questions about this book, or anything you see there, please contact me & I'll be happy to help you.

Start the new year out right with this classic hand made leather fly book!!

As I write this summer may seem like a far off dream, as it's the dead of winter, but it will be here before we know it. In thinking of summer, one fly you should never be without along the stream in the heat of summer is a good ant pattern. 

If you ever see trout in the heat of a bright summer day, sipping something on the surface while the sun shines bright & hard down onto the stream, take a close look & you'll probably see that they're taking ants. These ants fall into the stream & become trout food. They struggle on the water's surface, drawing the trout's attention. Once the trout have recognized them as food they'll hone in on them & you can do really well with a good ant dry fly.

I like to keep things simple & this ant pattern is just that. You need to make sure you match the size of your fly to the size of the real ants on the water. Fortunately, this fly is easy enough to tie that if you have to go down to, say, size 20 hook, it shouldn't be too bad at the vise. If you're like me, you get frustrated tying complicated, small patterns as my fingers just seem too big to handle those small hooks & feathers at the tying vise.

Thinking of summer makes me think of ants on the water. This is one fly you can use when nothing else will work on those hot days when the trout are being selective to the natural ants. In fact, this fly can save the day when those conditions are present. Give it a try & enjoy the great video below, showing how to tie it up!

Trout are not really a 'schooling' fish, instead preferring to be independent. That said, it's a good rule of thumb that where you see one trout, there's probably more somewhere close by. This is especially true in still-water fishing, like on ponds & lakes. In those instance, you'll find trout cruising for food.

In the video below, I have a problem. In it the angler is demonstrating how to pick off trout in a group so as to give yourself the best chance of not spooking every trout there when you tie into the first one (I like how it assumes the trout will obviously be wanting what you're offering). Well, you can try, but since you can't ever predict exactly where the trout will run, it's impossible.

However, when you're fighting a trout (or any fish), one thing you never should do is put the butt of the rod above the tip. You've heard that old saying to keep the rod tip UP when fighting a good fish. There's a lot of reasons for this, but mostly it's to keep water tension off your delicate leader, so as to have the line's full strength against the fish & so you can use the full strength of the rod if need be. It would be a very rare instance to put your tip in the water when fighting a fish.

Also, when you shift the rod from one side to another across your body to direct a fish, don't do it too quickly or forcefully. It should be a smooth motion, nice & gentle, because if you're going to lose a fish & have it escape your hook, that's probably when it will happen (that water tension thing again). 

Just one more item, if I may: the video discusses how to fight the fish so as not to disturb the others, but in it the angler has no choice but to move - walk / wade from one location to another. That alone could put down all the other fish. That's why what he's attempting to do in this video is so hard, & he does a good job at it (other than the rod waving all over). 

I was always taught that when you hook up with a fish, you are "playing" the fish, not fighting it.......can you see the difference using that term might have on your actions to bring the fish to hand or net? It's all in your approach which should almost always be as graceful & effortless as you can make it.

Here's an all-but-forgotten oldie, but goodie  that I think most of you would enjoy reading. Rising Trout, by Charlie Fox was published in 1967 & revised & published again in 1978. Don't worry about that, as most of the information in it is timeless.

For those of not familiar with who Charlie Fox was, he was one of the Pennsylvania limestone anglers who, in the mid-20th century, advanced much of what we know about flies & how trout interact with them. This group of dedicated anglers discovered a lot of the tools & techniques we still use to fool difficult trout today.

What I like about the book is that while it does give you tons of tips & how-to info, it's not an instructional book like most others are. Fox gives you great lessons while telling you stories. It's a lot like you're sitting down to coffee with this very experienced & skilled angler. His writing is smooth & easy to follow, making it a pleasure to read. In fact, flipping through these pages I was chuckling to myself, thinking that while things in fly fishing advance, some of the core tactics & principals never change.

This book won't take you from beginner to advanced angler, but it will help you tweak & adjust the things you do on the stream already. It will help you to look at fish & the water better & give you inspiration for ideas on how to fool trout more efficiently. More than that, it will strengthen your love & appreciation for fly fishing.

If I could offer just one warning for the book: be careful to remember that most (but not all) of Fox's experienced in this book focus around the limestone streams of Pennsylvania. While the techniques that he offers will work anywhere, you should know that these limestone streams are, in many ways, a completely different world than most freestone streams. That difference alone could be the topic of an entire book, but please keep this in mind - especially when Fox writes about fly fishing in the winter.

The last section of the book talks about stream & fish conservation. It's interesting to look back & see what the state of our streams was back then. In many ways we've come a long way & our fish & streams are in better shape than they were in the 1970's, but in other ways we've fallen short of the efforts we should have taken to make better fisheries. I'll leave it to you to decide where & how we've fallen short, but this book makes you think of those things & that's always good when folks have conservation on their minds. 

Overall this is one book I would recommend for you, to keep you company on these long winter nights. If you can't physically cast your flies to rising trout right now, at least you can in your mind & this book will most certainly take you there.

It's been very cold here lately, with no relief in sight for the next several days. If you live in the Eastern US, than that's not news to you. Air temperatures are in the low single digits with wind chills well below zero. 

When it gets this cold for an extended period of time, one thing we stream & river anglers need to be concerned about is anchor ice. What is that, you ask? Well, anchor ice is ice that forms on the bottom of the stream. You might have heard that moving water never really freezes. Well, that's kinda true, but when we have prolonged nasty cold spells of arctic air, the rivers & streams can freeze not only on the surface, but also from the bottom up. That ice on the bottom is called anchor ice.

We need to be concerned about this because anchor ice can kill fish. Not only does it limit the space they have to live in, it freezes any food from the bottom they might need. You can't very well eat any bugs if they're frozen to the bottom. Plus, when it does finally thaw, all those bugs are now dead & mostly out of the food chain.

The other danger to trout & other fish from anchor ice is during a thaw. The ice doesn't just melt off the bottom, it breaks off sending large, rock-hard pieces shooting downstream below the surface at extremely fast speeds. At this time nowhere is really safe for a fish to hide, as all the cover they would use to avoid such dangers (rocks, underwater logs, etc) all have ice breaking off of them. The hit to a fish from a large piece of anchor ice can be lethal.

I wanted to show you folks who may have never seen anchor ice before just what it looks like. I found this video (below) while searching around that shows you some pretty good views of what a stream looks like when the surface ice & anchor ice are present on a stream. I think it will give you all a good idea of what I'm talking about here.

​I hope your new year is off to a great start & that you're all staying warm!!