Mark Knapp

I'm just waiting for my check from the Nigerian Prince to arrive. Once I get that then you guys will all get paid. What a coincidence, I'm still waiting for mine too.

Woo hoo, a promotion already. Does that come with a pay raise? yep pretty good one 50% raise the next ones even bigger, after that they are a little more normal like 10 percent until you become a moderator that's like a 500% raise but there's all this responsibility, so it might be more trouble than it's worth. That's what I'm talking about. A 50% raise in the first week. I'm already circling stuff in the Orvis Catalog. Just one question though, when does it start to show up in the pay check? I don't see it anywhere.

Woo hoo, a promotion already. Does that come with a pay raise?

I just went through Oct. flies from the vise. I can look at you guy's fly ties all day. ( I can't say that three times real fast though)

All of the flies I see in this thread are very nice, but this one just does it for me.

I mostly use 9 and 10 wts, that's what I enjoy the most, but I do use my 13 wt, 14 wt. and 16 wt. rods too. I have broken the 9s and tens more than I want to admit. And you are right, the casts aren't pretty.

Welcome to the group...and nice catch Thanks everyone.

These are all very beautiful, nice work everyone.

Yes, I cast and let it sink naturally. I make my own fly lines, they consist of thirty feet of T20 line, welded to 90 feet of T17 line. We set up the drift so we will drift toward the structure we want to fish. We cast toward the structure, as we are drifting toward the cast, the fly is sinking straight down. Lets just say the structure we're fishing is at 120 feet, we know that because we have a graph. As we drift closer to the sunken mount, we strip line from the reel. We know when we have 120 feet out because we have 120 feet of fly line. 120 feet just happens to be the maximum amount the IGFA allows you to strip (mend) in fly fishing. If our structure isn't close to 120 feet I just count 2 feet per strip (mend) from the weld in the fly lines. If everything goes right, the wind and the current are right, we pass over our structure and tickle the top of it with our fly. It's not possible to fish like this everywhere and certainly we can't fish like this everyday. On days with high winds or days with extreme tides we have to do other things. We have used sea anchors and that helps, but mostly we just find a place where the wind is blowing the same direction as the current so the boat moves at the same speed that our fly does thus allowing us to keep the fly fishing as long as possible. Where we fish, the area is full of islands and fjords. It's not always possible to find favorable conditions but we do OK. It's possible for us to go out for a week and only be able to fly fish the ocean for 1/2 a day. ( then we hit the streams and lakes) but there have been times we fly fished the salt the whole week. We have done very short drifts over single sunken mounts but when conditions are right, there are places we can drift for up to an hour. During one such drift a couple of years ago, I casted 14 times and caught a fish on each cast, I missed a fish on one cast and then cast seven more times with a fish on each one.

OH, OK pictures will do it. I hate showing pictures but if you insist. ' Here's a 23 pound ling cod caught on my Sage 10 wt and a fly I call the Non-Pelagic Squid. One of my most favorite things to do is fish the salt for halibut, rock fish and ling cod. Here's my biggest halibut to date, about 25 pounds, this one caught on a tiger rockfish imitation. Someday I hope to catch a real barn door on regulation fly gear. Here's a yellow eye rockfish. This was pretty funny, I caught the rockfish and put him on the deck to unhook him and this crab crawled out of his mouth. Then the sea lance came out and the shrimp. We let both the crab and the yellow eye go unharmed. Here's a black rockfish on a sea lance imitation. That deep-sea rod you see behind me is how we let the rock fish go using a deep water release. Otherwise the swollen swim bladders in the fish won't let them go down and they die. A copper rockfish on a sea lance imitation. There's about 30 species of rock fish in Alaskan waters but I've only caught about a dozen of them on a fly rod. A yellow eye on a non-pelagic squid. I call it a non-pelagic squid because we fish it near the bottom. I put a monofiliment loop at the bend of the hook to try to cut down on the snags. That's enough for now, I wouldn't want to wear out my welcome too soon.

I don't like that "bait fisherman" thing by my name. How do I get rid of that?

I live in Fairbanks, but I have fly fished all over the state from the Brooks Range to the Aleutians. This laker was caught in the Brooks Range. I made it my goal six years ago to catch all of Alaska's game fish on a fly pattern of my own. I'm up to 26 species now. That includes salt water. I tried for six years to catch one of these, a tiger rock fish. I had to make my own fly lines in order to get down to some of the deeper species and catch them conforming to IGFA rules.

Hello fellow fly fisherman. I just found this site a week ago and think I may like to spend some time here. As a way of introduction, here's a shot of my most exciting catch this summer. It's a 32 inch, 13 pound laker caught from shore on a 5 wt sage with a polar bear hair streamer with a jungle cock eyes and pheasant feather cheeks. I giggled like a kid the whole time he was on. So much fun. Thanks for looking and again, hello to everyone.