From the Tying Bench

All made especially for some big hungry brown trout!

Thinking Spring Skwala's

There is a hatch of Stonefly's that comes in the late winter early spring months around these parts. It can be a bit of a tough hatch to predict or depend upon with much certainty but it sure is a good way of breaking you out of the winter doldrums. Just thinking about big bugs being gulped by hungry trout gets my mouth watering. I have been at the tying station trying out some patterns that I think will work for the local Skwala hatch come March. I can't wait to try them out anyway.

Here is a picture of a Skwala egg sack at it's tail which is one of the characteristics of this fly:

Using that model I had what I believed to be the perfect material to use for that egg sac. It came in a box of shoes Kyla ordered online. Some black semi-transparent foam was used as packing material for the shoes and it had a lot of bubbly pattern to it. My first try I didn't put much of a head on the fly and here is what I came up with:

I liked the basic concept but with a foam tail this fly is going to need more buoyancy in the head to float good and level. I then tied it with a bullet head and liked the results much better:

Now all that remains is a good test run with a handful of patterns come March.

Tied Some Matuka Streamers Today

I am still learning this fly tying thing. Today I focused on some Matuka's and they all turned out better than the first Matuka fly I tied when I first started anyway. Hope they work on the river this fall for some big browns. I tied several color combinations but I really liked how these yellow ones with a splash of red thrown in turned out. Kind of a Mickey Finn color combination in a Matuka.