switch10

Those look great!

In my opinion, the improved clinch is weaker than a well tied clinch knot. There have been other tension tests like the one SilverCreek posted above that show similar evidence of the improved clinch being weaker than the standard clinch knot in some cases. Here's a good article; Classic Tip: Which Knot Should You Use to Tie on a ... - Orvis

I stopped using the improved clinch knot a few years ago. These days I prefer the plain old clinch knot for 90% of my fishing. Super fast and easy to tie, it's also really easy to regulate how much tippet you're wasting. I do the non-slip loop knot for streamers and anything else that needs more movement.

Istripbuggers, I got him @ popcorn. It was slow on Sunday for us too. 3 small fish each, and the water seemed to be pretty cloudy down south, so we moved around quite a bit without much success. That place is weird. I've spent 2 consecutive days double hauling to my backing until I could barely move my arm without even feeling a tug. I'm glad I didn't give up. I live in mammoth lakes in central California, and I'm pretty nervous about our water levels... We need to stop LA from sucking down all of our water!

I've been fishing Pyramid lake in Nevada for a few years now. I caught plenty of the "smaller" 24 or so inch average fish. I've always wanted one of those hogs. Well last weekend I landed 2 of them within about a half an hour, unfortunately the other one slipped away as my buddy was snapping the photo. I caught him on my secret beetle pattern that I just whipped up, and also a new 8wt that I just built.

I'm a big fan of UV resin on my midges. Here's a few lake midges in wine and gray. I used Silvercreeks crystal UV resin on these.

I disagree strongly, Allen hooks are 10X better in quality then what GCO offers. At first it seemed GCO had a good run of hooks, but my last two orders was filled with lots of defective hooks and the quality is just not there. Allen on the other hand had issues in years past with hook quality so moved operations to a new factory in Japan from what I understand and the quality of stuff they are selling now rivals major hook brands IMO. Allen for hooks hands down. I have to agree, Allen hooks are top notch. I actually prefer some Allen hooks to their TMC, (etc) equivalents. The Allen 205BL thin wire caddis pupa/larvae hook is an excellent example. I've ordered well over a thousand hooks from Allen by now, and the quality and consistency is only rivaled by hooks 2-3 times the price in my opinion.

I think there is a fair ammount of overlap in the skiing/ fly fishing industries. Buddies of mine are snow makers/groomers in the winter and trout guides in the summer. As cool as your picture was, that's the view at the end of your day. This is the majority of your shift... Which I still think is pretty awesome. I love the hum of the guns running and the cats are amazing. I like when you guys do your job right, results in fewer injuries for me to treat. This picture looks like they were in the middle of a pretty decent push job. Is that for your half pipe build?? Taking your tiller off like this guy did really makes this job fun... I mean like playing in a sandbox with a huge toy fun.. I've noticed a huge overlap here as well. I'd say 60% of our crew are fisherman that fish at least once/week!

Minus a short stint as a hardware testing engineer at a tech company in Austin, TX (absolutely terrible), I've been working in the ski industry since I was 16 years old. I'm currently working as a terrain park snow cat operator. I get to build jumps and set rails in the coolest machine imaginable (google "park bully" or "piston bully"). Which has been my dream job since I can remember. I've also gotten to travel all over the world to build terrain parks at other ski resorts. One of the best parts of the job though is I work from midnight until 8:30am, leaving my days free to fish! The view from the office isn't too bad either....

The blue wing olive hatches have been heavy around here lately... Around size #16 too! Here's a few photo's from the other day.... Then, a few days later it snowed. They didn't seem to mind. I usually use an extended body bwo (extended body made out of silcone so it floats like a cork) Here's the tying instructions... My Trout Fly: Extended body parachute blue wing olive. I've also been experimenting with the klinkhammer style of flies lately. They imitate cripples pretty well... http://mytroutfly.blogspot.com/2014/02/klinkhammer-quill-body-blue-wing-olive.html

Beautiful fly man!

Looks pretty good, all you need is more content. A solid colored background (green or blue seem to work well) would help to see all the fine details of the fly, and make you focus on just the fly and not the background. To build content, my original goal with my blog was to post at least one post every week for a year. I know when I follow a blog I don't follow it long if it's not updated often... Become a member of Facebook and Google+ fly fishing/tying groups, and when you submit your new post, share it with the community. I've had so many people message me and thank me for my step by step articles for some not-so-popular fly patterns that couldn't be found elsewhere. I've also made many new friends, and I've had some of my blog posts re-posted on other blogs. All of which really boosts your page views. I've had a few days with over 200 page views, mostly from a particular Google+ fly fishing community. Make sure you are using good tags so people can find your stuff easily with a Google search. Quite a few of my articles are the first search result listed on Google. If someone searches for a "split wingcase BWO" for instance, my article is the first SBS listed. This is quite valuable since Google is my main source of page views on any day that I haven't posted something new (30 or so already as of this morning). I hope you have a good time writing your new blog! Dave

Yeah, adjusting the jaws on the Danvise can be touchy. I put the hook in the vise, and start to close the lever. I'm looking for the jaws to start grabbing the hook when the lever is about half or 3/4 closed. If it grabs the hook before half way, open up the jaws a bit and try again. I've tied several thousand flies (size #2-26) on my Danvise, and the jaws are still in great shape.

Some caddis pupa, punk perch, and tungsten psycho's.

I use both. I tie my #16 and under with foam, and #14 and over with elk hair.

Step by step tying instructions here: http://mytroutfly.blogspot.com/2014/01/zonker-strip-sculpin.html

I've watched several videos on youtube of people spey casting in still water. It is completely possible. I'm not planning on over handing at all. I've seen people at Pyramid using spey/switch rods, and throwing line much further and with much less effort than us single handers putting in tons of effort double hauling. Sorry if it makes you cringe , but after 3 days of standing on a ladder for 13 hours/day straight, double hauling every 5 minutes gets pretty old for me.

The baby boy hopper is my favorite. Here's how to tie it: http://mytroutfly.blogspot.com/2013/07/baby-boy-hopper.html

Thanks for the suggestion whatfly. After some reading, it looks like a switch rod would be perfect for me. I'm ordering a blank today! Thank you.

Piker, thanks for the suggestions. Skagit it is then! Khoss, I want to be spey casting, you don't think this would be possible from a ladder in still water with a strip basket? I'm looking to add more distance. Double hauling my single handed rod throws line far, but I was under the impression that I could get even more distance with a spey rod.

Yeah, I'm planning on getting down pretty deep 30-50 feet in most situations. I'll check out that Rio line, thank you. Will a 13 foot rod have trouble casting that line? Should I just go with a 15 foot?

I'm thinking about building a 13 foot 7 weight primarily for fishing pyramid lake in Nevada. That is, standing on a ladder in about 4 feet of water. My goal is to get more distance throwing big heavy streamers than I get with my single handed 7 weight. Which type of line would be ideal for this kind of situation (skagit, scandi, etc.)? I should also mention that I've never casted a spey rod before, but I don't mind a learning curve if it means better results in the end (I've read that some line types are much easier to cast than others). Any and all help is very much appreciated.

A few more bunnys... I've been adding some marabou to the body. I really like this one.

Double bunny http://mytroutfly.blogspot.com/2014/01/double-bunny.html

If you're looking to go cheap, I strongly recommend making mono furled leaders as shown here: No tools/jig required. I put the ends of the mono through 2 coffee cup handles to keep the tag ends from twisting around each other. I also add a tippet ring. I use 8 lb mono, which gives me a 32 lb butt section, and 16 lb mid section. From there I tie on anywhere from 7x tippet to 2x tippet, 2-6 feet (when midging in the lake I'll often use 8 feet of tippet!). I started using furled leaders about 8 or so months ago, and I will never go back to tying knotted leaders (much more time consuming), or buying knotless tapered leaders (expens