I guess if you stick with something long enough, eventually you either surpass your mentors—or, more realistically, you simply reach the point where you have to start trusting your own observations. I certainly don’t think I’ve surpassed mine. In fact, I’m still a firm believer in Bill Gammel’s Five Essentials. Those principles remain the foundation … More It’s the Back Cast, Stupid

In fly casting, I pre-load by slipping a little line at the end of the back-cast. I do this for both accuracy and distance. More precisely, I allow a controlled amount of fly line to slide through my line hand during the back-cast so the rod loads more deeply and smoothly before the final delivery. … More Slipped Pre-load for Accuracy and Distance

Last summer my son and I made a trip to the Mississippi River to try for white bass. Well, really we wanted stripers but we pretty well know that would be a miracle. We haven’t seen any at the rocks in years, but, we had hopes for a striper anyway. So we were on a … More Mississippi River Flathead on Fly

Back in February I made a trip to a friend’s pond that has a large population of triploid grass carp. This lake would be choked with water lilies if it weren’t for the numerous grass carp. They really do their job. I think the carp were spawning because there was a large number of them … More Early Spring Grass Carp

I was at a friend’s lake recently. It is an old lake with the oldest portion of it being over 100 years old and the newest portion was built in the 1950’s. The 100 year old portion has silted in and so has become very shallow over most of it and naturally the fish like … More Big Fish on Little Fly

Check out this video of a guy having a good day using the Pultz Camo Popper from Breambugs.com. on an ultralight spin rig. I can testify that it works well, here’s one I caught using the similar, Crazy Legs Popper on my 9wt flyrod: I tied it on with a non-slip loop to give it … More Pultz Camo Popper used on ultralight