Bill Sunderland and I spent last Friday and Saturday at the Fly Fishing Show in Pleasanton.  It was smaller than last years show, as most of the major rod companies failed to appear, but over all, the show was good.  It’s always fun to see everyone again and reminisce about old times and the past [...]

Saturday was TENKARA DAY!   Tenkara is the traditional form of Japanese fly fishing.  There is no fly reel and no line as we know it, instead the line looks more like a ten foot furled leader.   The line is attached to the tip of an 11 to 13 foot 10 section telescoping [...]

Unseasonably hot days and warm nights were the order of the day for Montana this trip.  The locals felt like their summer had finally arrived.  All the heat, however, had an adverse effect on insect hatches on most of the rivers except for the Firehole which had some excellent Baetis and White Miller hatches.

The heat also [...]

For the dry fly-fisherman who enjoys the warm days of early summer when hatches are prominent and the fish rise steadily, winter can be a long dreary experience. Happily, the Lower Yuba River can make those winter days fly by with good fishing and plenty of hatches to keep things interesting. This is [...]

Materials

Hook:
TMC 2457 or 2487 sizes 10-16 (I prefer the 2457 because of its heavier wire).

Head:
Gold or brass bead.

Thread:
Prewaxed 6/0, color to match abdomen.

Ribbing:
Fine copper wire.

Abdomen:
Light brown sparkle yarn cut into 1/8-inch to 1/16-inch pieces.

Thorax:
Dark brown sparkle yarn cut into ½ -inch pieces.

Collar:
Hungarian partridge.

Tying Instructions

Step 1

Debarb the hook and slide the bead up to the hook’s [...]

The RW Pupa is intended to serve as an easier-to-tie alternative to Gary LaFontaine’s Deep Sparkle Pupa, which itself is a highly effective fly for California’s caddis-filled streams. The RW Pupa is not so much a new pattern as it is a combination of two different dubbing methods. The first is Gary LaFontaine’s “touch dubbing” [...]