GFF heartbeat
Published Jan 1st 2009
The articles published on the Global FlyFisher neatly ordered by year and month
Articles published in 2012
See the Global FlyFisher heartbeat
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If today's tyer wants to tie the Mary Orvis Marbury Lake flies, they would be wise to think 'old school', and transport themselves back to a time when the hooks had blind eyes, the materials were natural, and the flies were colorful and uniquely adapted to the American fly fishing experience by Mary Orvis Marbury and her crew of women tyers.
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A classic style documentary about the history, the current state and the future of the Atlantic salmon on the east coast of the north American continent.
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It has been a while since I did a Merry Christmas post on GFF, so I thought I'd make one this year. A few pictures from this year and a handful from earlier.
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A very nice, thorough and easy to understand introduction to tying the super simple tenkara flies used for this ever more popular type of fishing. You get 17 patterns and 2.5 hours of video on fly-tying, but little on the fishing itself.
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Harsh shadows from a bright source like the sun are usually not very welcome in our images, and we often jump through hoops to avoid them. But how about making the shadows a part of the image, and maybe even the most important part?
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A truly different - and truly epic - fly-fishing DVD, which is very unlike most fly-fishing DVDs inasmuch as it has a story, a narrative. The story of two Scandinavian anglers fishing in New Zealand and getting lost, only to find a desolated cabin and a diary left behind. The diary possesses especially one of the anglers who relives the story in the booklet and seeks out the author.
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Located close to the river Tweed, Eoin Fairgrieve developed a passion and skill for photography through shooting images for articles on fishing for Atlantic salmon. We approached him with our usual row of questions.
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Fish.Drive.Survive. That very well sums up what it's all about. The Geofish team of four goes on a mildly crazy trip to Mexico in a well worn truck running on vegetable oil and a good dollop of enthusiasm and defiance.
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Nize is a tube fly tied the environmentally friendly way - reusing tube scraps from other flies. It's an efficient fly for salmon.
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Over the past eighteen years, Barry Ord Clarke has built a niche market for himself within game fishing writing and photography. We approached Barry with our usual set of fishy photographer questions.
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A mixed bag of very good looking flies with great illustrations and step-by-step tying instructions. A book right after my heart. No-nonsense fishing flies presented in a clear and appetizing fashion with really excellent pictures.
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This story is an excerpt from Tom Alkire's latest book, River Stories: Headwaters to the Sea, a full of stories about rivers and most of them are about fishing as well. Sometimes meditative, other times humorous.
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First a foremost a DVD covering 10 very neat and fairly easy patterns tied for chalkstream use, but also very useful in many other waters. Accompanied by a 30-page booklet with some general tying advice and supplementary instructions on each pattern.
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Vanishing points, golden sections, rule of thirds. Oh yes, image composition is full of mathematics and geometry. Here's how you can apply it all to your fishing photography. You can even test your own pictures' composition.
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It's been some years since The Global FlyFisher's huge article series on tube flies started, and a lot of things have happened in the tube materials market. We try to catch up.
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We haven't ever done any of these traditional Christmas articles before. Lists of stocking stuffers are very common everywhere, but this is the first ever on GFF. We have spotted 24 new and classic Christmas gifts for the angler, fly-tyer or just outdoors person.
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Long ago we had a blog thread here on GFF about the World's Greatest Sandwich. Here's a step-by-step description of my fishing trip lunch pack sandwich. I'm not saying that this is the world's greatest, but it has gone down well on many a fishing trip.
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The fascinating history of breeding and stocking rainbow trout in the US an many places in the rest of the world seen from a historic and scientific perspective.
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Drink your coffee in style - or tea or anything else for that matter - from these beautiful GFF Clasic Salmon Fly coffee mugs.
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A simple shrimp pattern that does not use the popular but expensive Spey hackle
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One of the very best halibut recipes is Halibut Iliamna, a baked dish with a white cheese topping, an Alaskan iconic offering not seen except for in Alaska.
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Fish speak out for the first time ever! Learn why trout don't think a Royal Wulff is edible, why they jump when hooked and much more in this exclusive interview with the world trout spokesfish.
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We have featured Danish Niels Have's beautiful full dressed classic salmon flies before, but here's another take on them. He ties these flies for fishing, but in a very high quality.
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Most of the rivers in Northern and mid Patagonia are lined with trees, most of which are willows, and in summer they supply one of the trout's favourite meals, the willow worm.
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Everybody's wearing them and you should be too! Get the brand new GFF T-shirt here. More than 50 different models and dozens of colors.
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A slight variation of an really old fly of mine, which again was a derivative of Bob Nauheim's famed Crazy Charlie. It's simple and really mundane, and simpler than the already very simple original!
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The crane fly or daddy longlegs is a simple insect with some very distinct characteristics, in particular the very long legs, which are a key ingredient in any crane fly pattern. This pattern uses two materials and is dead simple to tie.
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These new fish shaped foils from Bob Popovics are really great for making baitfish imitations. They come in several shapes and many sizes, and stick on the side of your flies, ready to be covered with resin.
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Another crowdsourced video is emerging, and we at GFF think it deserves some support, so we call upon the GFF army to chip in and get some nice perks.
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This is a muddler design type of fly that is more or less a derived idea based on something that has been copied many times, but never the less an efficient fly that has caught the author many fish.
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We have tried selling merchandise a couple of times before, but with no great success. Handling chores and costs just grew out of control, and the income... what income? But now we have a new store!
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Blogs are very common these days, and we have one too. But ours started back when blogs were an almost unknown concept - in 1996!
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Golden Pheasant must be one of the most versatile fly-tying materials you can get your hands on. The wealth of different feathers on one skin is simply overwhelming. And the skin is inexpensive too.
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Steaming materials has a fantastic effect! Feathers, fur, hair deserves some steam. You will be amazed what a little vaporized water can do.
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I can still remember the fist fish I caught on a streamer, a stocked brook trout on a Royal Coachman streamer. Since that time I have had success many times fishing these long flies. In my early days of fly fishing I bought all of my flies.
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This is a real classic written by the renown fly tyer and tying book author AK Best. The book was overhauled in 2004 and reprinted in a second edition with color images. It's the bible when it comes to dying fly tying materials, and is extremely thorough and useful - even for those that have no plans of dying, but just want to treat their materials as well as possible.
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A wonderful book about a crazy project, literally introducing salmon fishing in the Yemen! The book is from 2007, but has been brought into public attention by the recent movie made based on the novel.
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Flatwings - "the new black" in Denmark and Sweden. Are they really that good. Not too big for casting? For the trout? Will they twist? Are they better than other sand eel imitations? Are they better suited for pike? Kill your skepticism and take a
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Finnish photographer Harri Hytönen was brought to my attention through Facebook and I got both a set of great pictures as well as Harri's replies to our usual questions.
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If you never tried washing a newly bought saddle, neck or bucktail, it's about time you try! Proper treatment can transform the useless to useful and the mediocre to sublime.
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A book on fishing photography by Matt Hayes who according to the cover notes is "the most popular angler in Europe". Well, that might be so, but I never heard of him before... Never the less a very nice book on shooting fish, anglers and fishing scenes with lots of beautiful illustrations.
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Rubber legs and a zonker... in orange. The Ronker is a fly for deep dwelling trout, featuring some weight bright colors, mobile materials and not least rubber legs.
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This article features a handful of zonker patterns, which we cover in connection with our thorough theme on tying zonker flies and cutting or buying zonker strips.
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Here's a description of how to cut zonker strips yourself and some advice on getting the best store bought material - both as strips and whole skins.
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Zonkers are great looking flies with a lot of volume and motion, and the zonker style lends itself well to many types of small fish and worm imitations.
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This is an update to one of the first patterns ever featured on the Global FlyFisher. The old article about this fly is from 1996, and has been in the site with its scanned B/W picture since then.
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An entertaining and educating journey though the fishing seasons and waters of New Zealand.
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The subtitle contains the words "no-nonsense patterns" and that is exactly what it is. A book just after my heart and a perfect beginner's fly-tying book. 34 no-nonsense fly patterns and a lot of tying techniques nicely explained.
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A really fantastic book about a single type of streamer - the Thunder Creek. Beautiful and of course very thorough with excellent photos and lots of advice, stories and general thoughts on fishing.
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Patagonia based photographer Isaias Nicolaevici has been fly-fishing since he was a boy and taking pictures for almost as long. We have asked him our usual series of questions.
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It might sound crazy, but you can actually help hospitalized kids by tying flies for them! Tie flies in support for this science project for kids.
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The Kickstarter fundraising campaign for the Fish On project is done and Travis Swartz can now move forward in the process of producing the film about men fly-fishing as a part of the process recovering from cancer.
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Every style of streamer from the Aztec to the Zonker is covered here. All manners of streamers, bucktails, muddlers, buggers, matukas, and "others". If it's tied on a long shank hook - or even if it's tied on a short shank book but is a "long" fly, chances are it's here.
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We follow Swedish Gunnar Westrin and his friend Palle Andersson on a nice and cozy fly-fishing trip to the northern part of Sweden. You can almost smell the campfire and taste the Ardbeg.
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More than a hundred classical salmon flies tied without a vice by Swedish Svend-Olov Haard accompanied by a text on the history of the salmon flies, a lot about the House of Hardy and equally much about tying and fishing the flies. A beautiful book.
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Travis Swartz spends a lot of time on the water alone, but this past weekend he spent a couple days on the Big Wood River in Ketchum, Idaho fishing with his friends Reese, John and Zach.
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We contacted the team behind the video Uncharted Waters and asked them some questions. Read their replies and learn what drove them and how the trip and the DVD came to be.
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The account of a fantastic fishing trip to the atoll Bassas da India, a place in the middle of nowhere between Africa and Madagascar. The fishing is fantastic, the food seems delicious, the beer is cold and the spirit is high
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Stu Hastie is a New Zealand photographer whose work first came to my attention through our user's image galleries and his posts on Facebook. The quality was top notch, and being in NZ he didn't seem to have a shortage of subjects.
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OK, this is not for all our readers, but the German translation of Danish Thomas Vinge's books on Danish coastal flies will be interesting to a large number of our German speaking readers, and they are the best books you can get on the subject.
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Coming from the hands of one part of the pair behind the fabulous video Tâpam - Daniel Göz - this time teaming up with fellow countryman Anton Hamacher, we thought it would be suitable to contact the duo and inquire about the background and process of making the video Gaula - River of Silver & Gold.
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A beautifully filmed portrait of the Norwegian salmon river Gaula made by Germans Daniel Göz and Anton Hamacher. A documentary about the fishing, the people, the problems and the promise for the future.
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This week's "Fish On" blog post comes Reese Ferguison. Reese will be participating in the September Reel Recovery Retreat in Idaho and will be one of the central stories in this documentary.
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Get the fascinating story of the video Itu's Bones when Carl McNiel, the man behind the video, answers our questions and tells how the whole thing started and developed.
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A fantastic and in many ways touching story about a bonefish gillnet fisherman who helps his community turn towards guiding bonefish anglers and protect the fantastic bonefish population on his home island in the Pacific.
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A fascinating journey with the salmon passionate Sasha Savic visiting some of the world's most fantastic salmon rivers, telling a very personal story about salmon fishing and the preservation of Atlantic salmon.
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These foam flies were sent to us 10 years ago, and this article has been long underway... High time we did something about it! Digging into the digital archives we found
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Travis Swartz spent the last two weekends fishing his favorite stream in the world… Silver Creek, just down the road from Sun Valley, Idaho. He grew up fishing Silver Creek. The trails, the water, the fish, the clouds and even the occasional wind are all home to him...
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The Danish company Veevus has surprised the fly-tying market with its strong and thin tying thread. We have contacted Emir Ceric, the man behind the project, and asked a few questions about the thread, the market and the future.
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Charles contacted me as a result of having seen our long-running series on fishy artists, and after having seen his fish carvings I found him more than worthy as a participant. Charles also paints and draws - cartoons and caricatures in particular.
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Several keen fly fishers now use this salmon fly most of the season. This pattern is good for rivers in a higher state of flow.
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You have to love this kind of book! Published by a local enthusiast and full of patterns that are used locally. Nothing any large publisher would probably touch, but thanks to Damian Welsh and a self-publishing project the book is available to the whole world as print-on-demand.
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The introduction to the project "Fish On - A Reel Retreat" by Travis Swartz. The first steps towards a video about men recovering from cancer and finding their way to a normal life through fly-fishing. And you can help!
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Growing up on the West Coast, I learned about East Coast fly patterns and tyers mostly from books, and the occasional television show. I remember seeing Lee Wulff and Joe Brooks on the American Sportsman show as a youngster, fishing for Brookies.
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Jonas is a young Danish photographer in pursuit of a career as a freelancer. His photo of a trout rising towards a small frog brought him in line for our fishy photographer questions.
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We posed a series of questions to Nick Reygaert, the filmmaker behind the fabulous video Hatch, which shows a row of different "hatches" around the world. Hear about (video) gear, tight schedules and future plans.
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Beautifully filmed video about hatches of all kinds in many different places. A little less than an hour of exquisite footage of fly-fishing and nature. Mayfly hatches, grub hatches, krill hatches and even ant hatches!
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Subsequent to his retiring Dennis Collier abandoned most things that could be construed as work, but he still shoots a lot of fishing photos. We asked him our usual set of photography questions.
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Marcel Siegle is a professional photographer who splits his photo time (unevenly) between weddings and fly-fishing. His fly-fishing work is widely used in magazines and catalogs. We asked Marcel our usual photo questions.
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Another extremely beautiful video from Robert Thompson. Driftless has nothing to do with the drift of a fly, but with glacial traces - glacial drift - in this case in southwestern Wisconsin. The DVD also features the portrait of a punk band that has a common passion: fly-fishing in the form of the video Reverb. Chuck full of great footage. 2½ hours altogether.
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Trout beads aren't beads in the traditional fly tying sense but perfect imitations of salmon eggs and deadly efficient for rainbows. And they can be fished on a fly rod.
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What makes small stream fly fishing so special that there is enough material to write an entire book on the topic? After all, has anyone ever written a "big river fly fishing" book? The short answer is yes - small stream fly fishing is special in many ways. The long answer is ...
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The Green Yarn Mullet Fly. Few flies are as easy to tie, provided you can get a hold of the special yarn used. Martin found the material for this fly in his wife's knitting scraps.
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Icelandic salmon guide Nils Jorgensen's annual report from 2010 was "The Year Of The Giants". An unbelievable season, which for me seemed like once in a lifetime with many monster salmon. Well, the madness continued from day one in 2011…
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Henry Hegeman got the crazy idea that maybe he could make some extra money to help support his hunting and fishing endeavors by writing articles and illustrating them with his photos
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If you're still messing around with two-component epoxy, it's about time to lift your head from the vice and discover the new Light Curing Resins, LCR's.
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Here are some general tips on composing a Scandinavian style salmon tube fly - and a bunch of flies to inspire. Learn some basic methods and you can experiment wildly and still get some beautiful flies.
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When Canadian Nick Laferriere is not on the water, he's blogging, tying flies, and drawing fish. Recently he started combining the manual drawings and digital processes to create a new expression.
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Having seen, tied and fished shrimp flies for many years, Martin feels a need to do a little lecture on the real appearance of shrimp, especially targeted at fly tyers.
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Early spring brings exciting trout fishing on one Detroit-area river. This is the Huron River, which circles the western half of the metro area a mere 20 miles or so from such local landmarks as Henry Ford's original automobile manufacturing plant and the historical Motown Music Museum.
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The Djihad is a bright fly with a shiny body, silver combined with black and red. Just my kind of fly. I like the Irish Shrimp tradition flies, and this is such a fly on steroids. It even uses one of my favorite materials: Golden Pheasant.
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An extremely lightly dressed and delicate fly that imitates a mysid originated by Danish fly tyer Per Karlsen. Per has made the Variant himself, and it's really simple!
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The Baltic seatrout community has been going berserk over a huge pink fly called the Pink Pig. I find that the Mini Pig is a more sensible alternative. This article covers two versions.
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I met the Rolled Muddler in BC while fishing for Pacific salmon, but like it so much that I'll tie up a bunch for my local seatrout, and I'm sure they will work.
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Frida is the little sister of the beloved Grey Frede, and that alone is a recommendation. It's a small and compact, yet shiny fly meant for sea trout, but definitely useful for other species too - panfish in small sizes, bonefish in larger.
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Bright, colorful and visible. A perfect fly for slow fish in cold or murky water. It earned its name because the creator hooked his own nose with it on its maiden voyage! Seatrout like it, but other trout will too.
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The Brenda is a beautiful, harmonic and productive seatrout pattern from Danish fly tyer Ove Monrad. It features a brass bead to add some weight and a sexy, jigging motion.
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The seatrout season will soon be upon us here in northern Europe, and Martin thought he'd expand his horizon a bit and add some new seatrout patterns to his flybox before the 2012 season.
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The Grannom is a small sedge (caddis to those in USA), which hatches in large quantities in April and is regarded as the first fly to prompt trout to "look up".
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Guiding in Idaho is Nick Price's main source of income and photography is second. Nick is particularly fond of B/W pictures and shooting bugs with macro.
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Before you know it, the summer is upon us, and a hopper pattern can suddenly be what makes a day. Tom Biesot's hopper is a good bet. Using a foam body and a couple of neat tecniques
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Lake Vintter may be the mother of all Patagonian lakes. Huge, rough, windswept high in the mountains and full of huge brook trout and rainbows.
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Another simple, three-material fly. This time a shrimp, well suited for seatrout and probably fine for a number of other saltwater species not least bonefish. Super simple to tie and with easily accessible and cheap materials.
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Only few people know anything about Estonia and even fewer know that the country is full of beautiful, clean, undisturbed rivers with wild brown trout.
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It might seem futile to try to improve one of the world's most proven patterns, but there's room for improvement. Trevor Morgan gives some classics an overhaul.
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I first noticed Jason Tison's neat pencil drawings when watching a video on YouTube where he shows the process from blank paper to a finished and stunningly beautiful drawing of a blue marlin. I approached Jason, and he replied to my usual set of Fishy Artist questions.
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While scouting for photographers I found Corey Kruitbosch's almost 2,000 beautiful images on Flickr. Like before I approached him with our usual set of questions and he cordially replied and sent some samples of his work.
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We feature a ton a fly pictures on this site and emphasize good quality in these pictures. This is an article about how to get the best shots of your flies.
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"A Passion for Tarpon" can almost be considered two books inside one cover, as there is an alternating cadence where chapters of instruction are followed by chapters which transcribe a discussion between the author and some of the legends of fly fishing.
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This book is a delightful road movie style novel with a great plot, lots of character development, and a host of world class supporting roles - and not least some fantastic locations. And it contains some fly-fishing... and quite a bit of poaching.
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When Argentinean artist Juan Jose Serra approached me and showed me some of his amazing paintings and inquired about being in our Fishy Artists series I was all excited! You will probably understand why when you
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Angus Drummond is a Colorado based guide and photographer whose images have been used in magazines and books as well as on web sites. Angus' images are also available as fine art prints. We summoned Angus and asked him a few questions.
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The flies of Ora Smith that have captured my imagination were the little casting streamers with duck flank wings. They are like elongated wet flies. I sat down one weekend and tied up a selection, imaging some late spring day when I could cast these flies on a light line to some spooky trout.
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In this new book Martin has tried to cover his favorite fly patterns, and has included 29 of the flies that he and his best fishing friends use 90% of the time when they fish for Danish coastal seatrout.
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Jim Levison specializes in saltwater fly fishing in Montauk, New York. He guides and he takes pictures. His stock of photos is more comprehensive than just the salt.
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Croatian photographer Aleksandar Vrtaric has a slightly different photographic style compared to many other fly fishing photographers. He likes to go close and often uses very tight compositions. We asked him a few questions
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Mark Lance's wife caught a grand fish, and Mark took a snapshot with a mediocre point-n-shoot camera. He was so disappointed in the printed version of that photograph that he vowed to raise the bar.
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We have joined the half billion users on Facebook, and you can now become our Facebook-friend and subscribe to our updates from your Facebook-profile.
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Photographer and fly fisher Jim Klug tells that it all started with fly fishing and travel. These days, however, he is much more likely to be found in great fishing situations with a camera in his hand instead of a fly rod. Read Jim's story
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The overview over our series of fly fishing photographers AKA Fishy Photographers.
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You know Murphy's Law; what can go wrong will go wrong. Accidents happen, even on a fishing trip, so be prepared. Mike Hogue helps you be ready for the unwanted eventuality.
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Occasionally visitors ask whether they can contribute a fly pattern to this site, and the answer is a clear and loud YES!
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Sand eels are very common in most waters around the world. This is a very simple flatwing style sand eel that can be tied easily with very few, common materials, and make a great imitaion that is easy to cast on a light rod.
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This is the Mundane Fly Manifesto: Few and cheap materials, easy to find in the shops. Simple tying methods. Mundane flies. The whole idea is to make it simple and efficient to tie flies that work.
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Having more than one fly on your leader actually makes pretty good sense in the very simple way that presenting more than one temptation to the fish increases the chance of a bite. But there are many other reasons.
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This is definitely going to get me in trouble! But I guarantee you that if you learn this knot you will be able to get very far in almost all kinds of flyfishing. Use this for your daily knotting and use loops for the rest (backing to fly line, fly line to leader), and you will be able to make it through many, many fishing days.
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Someone asked me how to create the "slightly tapered" body on an Oatman Silver Darter and it was pretty difficult to describe in words, so I tied up a sample and took some photos along the way. Here for your enjoyment is a Lew Oatman favorite, the Silver Darter
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While looking at steelhead flies with a BC guide, one fly in particular stood out: a somewhat ugly contraption with a deer hair wing and not least an "overhanging" head, in other words tied so that the hook eye was under the fly and not in front.
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Grantham Sedge was originally designed by Ron Grantham in 1993. It is a unique solution to creating a fly which produces a substantial wake without having to be bulky or riffle hitched. Ron Grantham writes "When used with a floating fly line this unsinkable fly will stay on the surface as long as it is moving
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Who else than epoxy wizard (and madman) Bob Kenly would take on tying... eh, building... eh, constructing a Mantis Shrimp as a fly? Follow the project this article where you can read Bob's story about the fly and see pictures of the process and the finished fly.
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For many saltwater anglers the term "worm hatch" has a magical ring to it. When the polychaete worms swim freely to spawn, the fish usually go berserk, be it trout, stripers, tarpon or a number of other species. As one writer puts it: It's like yelling "free lunch" to a high school football team.
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About 5 years ago after seeing so many really bad knots connecting the fly line to the butt leader section, Captain Mel Simpson came up with a knot that does not break, is a permanent part of the fly line and will easily go through the guides if necessary.
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Captain Mel Simpson is a fly fishing guide operating out of St. Petersburg, Florida.
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The excellent DVD-series The Fish and the Fly are made by Danish filmmaker Niels Vestergaard and fly tyer and flyfisher Morten Oland. We contacted them regarding the videos and got them to answer to a few questions about the project.
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A series of DVDs covering dries, nymphs and terrestrials with nicely filmed fishing sequences from several destinations as well as a very thorough fly tying section covering the flies fished.
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I am as likely to sit down and tie six different flies as I am to tie six of the same pattern. Speed is not a concern, but I don't want to waste my time either. There are things I can do to make my life easier which may be different from a professional production tyer.
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A fishing guide should be the kind of book that is dog-eared and spends most of its life bouncing around your car. It is not the kind that should get a plastic cover and placed gently on the shelves of your fly tying room. This is the best fishing guide book I've ever seen.
