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The story of a long lasting love for classic steelhead flies – and some flies that illustrate why the love is still there

Art Lingren's book on Syd Glasso and his flies pays well deserved homage to a very influential salmon fly tyer

Large feather rooster saddles are different beasts. Here are some tips on buying them.

The March Brown is one of the all time classic fly patterns, the origin of which must go back almost centuries.

The Mörrum fly has been named after the south Swedish river Mörrum, but is also sometimes referred to as The Grünewalder after its originator, Danish Jan Grünwald

The traditional method of "stacking the stems" did not work for me right from the start. The wing would have a tendency to roll and make me very...

Wet flies are once again very popular, but most we see are tied for presentation and not so much for fishing. Bob Petti enjoys tying wet flies and tries to style his after the fishing flies that are popular in the UK using colors and materials that work well in the water.

A beautifully illustrated book covering the classic wet flies with a detailed picture and materials list for each

The soft hackle is supposed to be - as the name implies - soft. Soft hackle can come from many birds. Chickens, gamebirds like partridge, grouse and quail, pheasant and even crows and jackdaws.

Some might consider it a bit mad or even crazy, but when Danish Niels Have ties full dressed, classic Jock Scott salmon flies, he ties them by the dozen... and then he fishes with them!

Sometimes good things don't have to cost a lot of money, and this is one of them

Having wrapped my share of thread over the years, I thought it was time to revisit a long held interest of mine - traditional salmon flies. My first attempt years ago was pretty disappointing, and I was hoping my skills had evolved enough for me to take that next step and produce a better result.

Awhile back, I received a shipment of hen necks and saddles from Whiting Farms. The saddles struck me with their intense colors and solid web, then necks with their stem length and shortish barbs. These feathers were perfect for the wet flies I was working on.

Wet flies have been around as long as fly fishing itself. Are they starting to see a renaissance? In fly tying circles at least, that may be the case, as tyers look for new challenges and new sources of inspiritaion.

A fly which is just a piece of imagination created one evenning in march. I have been fooling around with a plain type of steelhead or salmon flies this last year. These are all signified by simple feather wings and the use of classic materials like floss, tinsel and plain feathers

Hen hackles have long been the source of confusion to many fly tyers. Whether they are looking for wings for their dry flies or hackles for their wet flies, there seems to plenty of head scratching when it comes time to purchase the appropriate feathers.

No page featuring New England Streamers would be complete without a portion dedicated to Carrie G. Stevens, of Madison, Maine. Mrs. Stevens is the originator or the Grey Ghost, one of the most well-known and effective New England Streamer patterns to have been tied, and still a popular choice as a trolling and casting streamer today.

I came upon an idea. Actually I combined two incidents into one idea. First of all I was going through my heron feathers (yes, I have more than one) and found some butts that I had saved after having tied whole body hackles. I wanted to use these feathers, which still had a lot of useful and long barbs, but unfortunately a very thick stem.

The name and appearance of this fly owes a bit to the New Zealand Mrs. Simpson flies in which a couple of feathers are roofed on each side of the fly. These flies are also known as Killer flies or tied in the Killwell style.