If you find yourself stumped by picky trout with any regularity, it’s probably time for you to learn how to fish a soft hackle fly. These time-tested patterns are characterized by their wispy, “buggy” ...

The winter issue of Trout Unlimited’s “Trout” magazine inspired me to want to return this spring to my fly fishing roots — swinging a type of wet flies known as “soft hackles.” Soft hackles are simple ...

Have you ever wished there was an easy way to get into fly tying and fly fishing for trout? There is: fishing soft hackle flies. Soft hackle flies are simple wet flies, consisting at their most basic ...

I don’t know if you’d consider it a clinical condition or not, but I have a long-standing predisposition for old, soft hackle wet flies and Catskill-style dry flies. The logical result, no doubt, of ...

Fly fishing for trout on a stream or river could be addictive. The ability of an angler to try and present an imitation fly that looks very much like a natural in the current and allow it to move in ...

A close second would be, “What (or how many) fly patterns do I need to have to be successful most of the time? Those are both valid queries, and ones which reflect the quintessence of fly-fishing. On ...

Successful fly fishing is largely dependent on using the right pattern. Lists of “go-to” flies exist in many publications and online resources, and every seasoned angler has those few patterns they ...

As I embark on my fifty-first season of fly-fishing and fly tying, I find the many changes that have altered these pastimes over that timespan to be nothing short of mindboggling. And of course they ...

"She was a nun, and made her own flies, rods, lines, the whole nine yards," says Gray. "And those flies actually still work today." The classic wet flies that were commonly used in England, Scotland, ...