Moxie

SmallieHunter - In NY state according to the manuel it is illegal to bowfish for anything besides carp.

Today me and a couple friends went fishing at a local hot spot for monster trout and salmon. My friend (this is probably the 5th time hes gone fishing) hooked and landed about a 16 inch rainbow, wth beautiful colors. The fish totally swallowed the hook and there was no way it was coming out, so with my forceps I cut the line at the knot and tried to revive the fish the best I could and released him. He wasnt doing so good, swimming slowly at the top of the water but he gradually was getting better and he definately wasnt dead. Then two men who were bowfishing walked over, saw him and shot him, reeled him in and chucked him in the woods. It angered me so much that they did that so I reported them to the DEC and hopefully something is done. I had to vent this out, it was so irritating. Anyone else ever experience something like this?

Thanks everyone for the responses :-) I will work on trying to make the head smaller, it is an issue I have with all flies unfortunately. Soft-hackle: Thanks for the websites, your flies are beautiful. Where did you get that purple thread for that Snipe fly? I've never seen that color before.

I am pretty new to tying soft hackles and have not got it down pat yet. I am trying though, here are some attempts at some simple soft hackles. Id like to hear some honest opinions and advice

Im jealous, its snowing here...I wanna go catch some steelies and browns!!! Nice fish btw!

Hmm thats really interesting, I especially like that bright orange hackle. I have some flies I think that would work well with. I think all of these flies would catch fish! I caught my first trout on a bright almost neon yellow dry fly, and these are great

Make a couple of loose wraps around the bundle first, then tightly wrap it after you have it under control. Also sometimes it is easier to put the bucktail you are about to tie at a little angle to the hook shank.

This is awesome! Thanks Mark for supplying that prize Imma try my best with my 4 new pike patterns, load them up tomorrow!

Hmm this is pretty interesting to see all these different patterns For me for trout my go to pattern usually is a size 12-16 cream caddis. It always seems to get fish. I think its the peacock haha For bass and warmwater, probably just some sort of popper, bass love the sound

Hmm I like this pattern I think Imma tie some up! Thanks!

Looks good to me, that should be a killer color. Try using white and red, pike seem to tend to hit those patterns more.

Inconnu - Its kind of late but I know what you mean. I messed around with a couple backgrounds and I was getting a little frustrated. Im gonna go out and look for some thread, Im currently using 140 denier which I think is on the thick side, but its old because when I started out I had a lot of thinner line and I constantly broke it and I think now with 1+ year of tying under my belt I wouldnt break it (as often ) Thanks for the response! panfisherteen - thanks!

Hello everyone. I am getting ready for trout season this spring and today I decided to tie some new flies (I have two old ones I got good pictures of so Im posting them haha) Well here they are, please tell me what you think of them! This fly is one I created after looking at a Danish sea trout fly called a Red Tag. The only things I did different, is the size of the fly (this is a 10), the tail on it is chenille, while the real Red Tag I believe is a red poly yarn. Also some other modifications (no eyes on this either) but it is almost the same. For the flash, this one is thin copper wire. I have the same fly also with a few strands of rainbow Krystal Flash spun together as the flash and one with thin red wire. I know this fly works fairly well, I've caught many brownies on it Edit: Im posting the pics of the other two flies. I just noticed but on these flies I also palmered the hackle along the entire hook shank...not sure why but here they are! This one Im calling the Kitty Nymph. It is based off of a Baetis Nymph (sp) and I was looking at my cat today and was looking at his belly (got this idea from the thread about it on this site actually) and snipped some hair off and it made the buggiest most awesome dubbing ever so I thought why not make a killer nymph? I really like this pattern for some reason. This is the same pattern, different tail. Now for the really goofy flies...haha. I have two..wet flies I guess you can say with very over sized hackle that I tied probably a good six months ago. I know you could tell me a lot about how bad they are, I just think they are pretty and hey, Im gonna try them and see what happens! Thats all I have for now, please tell me what you think!

I would let her explore and mess up...and make her flies look bad haha then hopefully she'll be like "ok maybe I'll try to learn the basics then practice the more advanced stuff" Id just be scared she'd break some exspensive stuff!

Judging from what your talking about, I would reccomend getting the elk hair where you want it (Im not familiar with this fly, I dont tie it often to be honest), make two or three loose wraps around the elk hair, then pull tightly and make 4 or 5 tight wraps. This will stabilize the hair so it doesnt slide around the hook on you. This works for a lot of materials like this, such as buck tail.