Extreme Fly Fishing

Fly Tying Desk

Keeping It Simple Isn’t Simple   by Andrew Cox

Ever since making “Keep It Simple” my main goal I have kept a sign that says “KISS – Keep It Simple Stupid” where I can see it all the time I’m at my desk and computer.

It is so much easier said than done. I wrote an article a few weeks ago about keeping things simple, and making it my top goal for 2008. Not a SMART goal – but certainly a behavior shift that can keep the main things the main things, and keep me from – as a former boss put it – “getting tangled up in my own underwear.” Homely little description, and funny, but if you’ve been there, you know what it means.

I have made a conscious effort to simplify things – and have been successful in looking at a number of issues and cutting through self imposed crap and being better for it. Progress is being made – some underwear has definitely been untangled.

But at the same time, it continues to be tough to untangle and get going.

A story to illustrate the point:

I am looking forward to a Fly Fishing trip with my son in law in the mountains around Lynchburg VA at Easter time. Really excited about it. I’ve been researching the flies that are most likely to catch trout at that time of the year in that area. Turns out there are a lot of them. Plus, every fly fisher has their own favorites. And the magazines all have killer patterns. And even the patterns that are personal favorites have many variations. And then the question of what sizes to tie…….. Do you see where this is going?

Every time I sit down to tie flies, a decision has to be made as to which of twelve patterns to tie – in what colors – in what sizes – in what variations. Talk about getting tied up in one’s underwear! This is supposed to be fun – not an exercise in frustration.

Uncle Jimmy – the ultimate minimalist – a product of the Great Depression and World War II -one rod, one reel, two flies that he tied just before going fishing – one brown, one black. And did he catch fish! If he could see the equipment, the materials, the books, the videos, the magazines that I have accumulated, he’d just shake his head and roll another cigarette.

How to get out of this self inflicted, fly tying rat trap? The first step is to simplify – reduce the number of fly patterns down to three – a tough thing to do. And then pick just one hook size, and then take action – start tying flies. Replace this process and analysis paralysis with some straightforward action. I’m gonna feel a lot better for it – I know it. I’m gonna keep it simple – or at least simpler.

This behavior of getting tied up in one’s underwear will happen again and again. It’s been a part of my behavior for a long time. But by keeping my KISS goal in front of me I’m going to do a better job of recognizing it and taking action to stay out of it. I’m going to have to replace the behavior I don’t want with KISS behavior.

Keeping it simple isn’t simple, particularly when our behaviors, our values, our skills all have been conditioned to complicate matters. And let’s face it- a lot of things are complicated. But we all can be more effective in every part of our lives by adopting a behavior of action, rather than of analysis paralysis. If you see your own behavior in this confession of mine, press on, persevere and open up a whole new level of effectiveness for yourself.

About the Author

Andy Cox helps clients align their resources and design and implement change through the application of goals focused on the important few elements that have maximum impact in achieving success – as defined by the client. He can be reached at http://www.coxconsultgroup.com or acox@coxconsultgroup.com

Tying with Hans- Sipper Midge

Hand Made Knotty Pine Fly Tying Desk – Wooten Patent Desk Style $499.00

PORTABLE FLY TYING bench desk Saltwater fly fishing bonefish tarpon snook permit $324.95

Denver Fly Fishing Show

10 Things to do in Breckenridge   by Chad Rutt

In addition to the ski resort, the Breckenridge area offers fly-fishing in the Blue River, historic gold mining sites, hiking, mountain biking, and white water rafting in the Colorado River. Here are some of the town’s highlights.

Winter Sports at Breckenridge Ski Resort
Winter activities include skiing, snowboarding and dog sledding with huskies and summer visitors enjoy the Alpine Slide and mountain biking. Four impressive mountains contain 155 trails, 5 terrain parks, and 2 half-pipes.

Bring the Kids to Ripperoo’s Enchanted Forest
The Breckenridge Ski & Ride School offers lessons and activities for children with the aid of their mascot, Ripperoo. There is a themed trail incorporating a magical forest, a dragon, and a castle, and a separate trail for snowboarding. Other activities include skating, swimming, and sledding.

Join the Iowa Hill Tour
The one mile guided hike is a fascinating insight into the history of mining for gold. The trail goes through the mining area and features a miner’s boarding house and various relics.

Pan for Gold at the Washington Gold and Silver Mine
This was a successful working mine in the 1880s and visitors learn about the mine’s history and early equipment is on display. There are lessons on how to how to pan for gold. Open in summer only.

Visit the Red, White & Blue Fire Museum
This museum traces the history of fire fighting in the town from 1880 with displays of equipment and uniforms from the earliest days, including a ladder cart and a hose cart. It is located next to the current working fire station.

Get a Ticket for the Backstage Theatre
A fine example of community theatre, Backstage Theatre has been presenting shows and plays since 1974, some of which have won awards. Past productions include ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’ and ‘Steel Magnolias’.

Skate at the Stephen C. West Ice Arena
Public skating and public hockey has a home at this arena with two ice rinks. The indoor rink is open all through the year and the outdoor rink is open from mid-September through mid-April. There is a pro shop and a ski rental facility.

Marvel at the Rotary Snowplow Park
This unusual collection features past rotary snowplows, the huge machines that were used to clear snow from narrow gauge railroad tracks. One exhibit is a machine built in 1901 that was used in Alaska.

Visit the Barney Ford House Museum
The museum tells the extraordinary story of Barney L. Ford, an escaped slave who became the first black businessman in Breckenridge and went on to own businesses in Denver. He was a self-educated man who inspired the civil rights movement.

Visit the Edwin Carter Museum
Edwin Carter was a taxidermist who turned his house into a museum with his exhibits of thousands of animal specimens from the Rocky Mountains. He was much admired by scientists and the collection went to a Denver Museum following his death. This museum has interactive displays about his work.

About the Author

Chad Rutt is the Director of Marketing for the online lodging site ABetterStay.com and the Managing Editor of its accompanying Vacation Blog.

UKGameFairs.com talks to Herman Broers at The Spring Flyfishing Show 2010

Fly Fishing Steelhead Techniques

Fly Fishing   by AlexxE

For those of you who, like me, have memories of fishing that pre-date memories of school, think back to as many fishing partners and trips as you can. Even those people you only went fishing with once. Then try to recall times where the success or failure of a fly fisherman seemed to lie strictly on the fly fisherman’s confidence. If you think about it in these terms, I bet you can remember numerous times when an angler’s confidence, or lack thereof, either doomed them or buoyed them until they started catching fish.

At times the success of a confident Fly Fishing angler can be attributed to persistence. An angler, confident in their abilities is just going to fish longer when things don’t start hopping right away. But other days when all things are equal, the fisherman with the most confidence often catches the most fish.

Three quick stories come to mind illustrate this. First off let me say there have been plenty of times when I have been on both sides of the confidence equation. A few years ago, I was steelheading with a couple of Fly Fishing buddies. Unlike me, though there guys weren’t purists. And we were using terminal gear. Although were just dead-drifting jigs, very similar to Fly Fishing, I felt about as coordinated as a monkey performing brain surgery. As the day wore on more and more steelies were caught. Huge steelies, the biggest I had ever seen! None by me. I could feel my confidence shrinking. And I mean my confidence in all kinds of things, like being able to read the river, being able to detect a strike. Things that had no connection to me using unfamiliar gear. The pressure inside my head built, until I HAD to catch a fish. I didn’t catch one fish that day, although I finally had a strike, and set the hook so hard I jerked it right out of the fish’s mouth. And I fished longer and harder than anyone else on the trip.

Another story is almost reverse. Here in Maupin, the Deschutes River fills with fly fisherman every May and early June for the Giant Salmonfly hatch. It is a carnival of fly fishing. One year I was drifting with a couple of accomplished angler’s, who were nevertheless apprehensive about fishing such a well-known hatch, A hatch documented throughout fly fishing literature. With crowds of angler’s as spectators to one another. Despite all the drift boats and bank angler’s I know a spot or two constantly overlooked and are rarely fished. I set both guys up with the exact rigging I use. Put them in the best two spots and made lunch, while they flogged the water to no avail. Despite their long fishing experience they were unaccustomed to the big water and the feeling of being in a spotlight, and seemed to do every action with uncertainty. After lunch I nailed numerous trout with virtually no effort. Pointed out fish lying behind rocks and caught them. It was a display they still talk about some years later.

Another day I was fishing alone, in water I know like the palm of my hand. And was getting skunked. Fishing all my usual water, using all my usual techniques I couldn’t even get a strike. Yet I knew I could and did catch fish in this spot, lots of fish. I kept at it, until I heard a fish jump behind me, in a riffle I hadn’t fished in years. I turned around and cast right at the head of the riffle, and nailed what was to be the first of many beautiful trout I caught that day.

If I hadn’t been confident in my abilities, and in the water holding fish, I would have stopped long before. That was an instance where confidence led to perseverance. But the other two days, it seemed to be confidence only, that led to more fish being landed. Maybe there was something subtle in the presentation of the confident angler, something that can’t be taught. Like the way some quarterbacks always seem to win. Or maybe like in other endeavors confident people just seem to do better. At any rate the only way I know of to develop confidence is through repeated success. And in fishing the only way to catch fish is to do more fishing.

If you are thinking this is all a stretch, I bet you can come up with very similar stories that have happened to you. Especially if like me, you have been fishing since you had a Leave it to Beaver lunch box. Give yourself the possibility that confidence in your fishing ability does play a role, in your catch rate. And the end result will be you spend more time fishing. And if that is the end result of you reading this article, then it was time well spent. Now let’s go out there and build up our fly fishing confidence!

About the Author

And the end result will be you spend more time fishing. And if that is the end result of you reading this article, then it was time well spent. Now let’s go out there and build up our fly fishing confidence!

Steelhead Fishing in Steelhead Alley NY PA OH

Steelhead Guide: Fly Fishing Techniques & Strategie $27.12

Steelhead Guide : Fly Fishing Techniques and Strategies for Lake Erie Steelhea.. $17.47

Fly Tying Furniture

How the 5 Fanciest Sports Shops in the USA Began   by Jayesh Bagde

The Sports Authority, Gart Sports Company, Dick’s Clothing and Sporting Goods, Academy Sports and Outdoors and Cabela’s are USA’s fanciest sports shops.

Read and catch some hint of how five of USA’s fanciest sports stores began.

THE SPORTS AUTHORITY, INC.

The Sports Authority, Inc. is the largest sporting goods retailer, with its offering of the most complete line of products for sports enthusiasts. It was in 1987 that Jack Smith, then chairman of Herman’s World of Sports, opened its first Sports Authority shop in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Smith applied the idea that made Home Depot a hit in his conceptualization of the Sports Authority.

Three years later Smith already had eight giant stores in Florida. That same year, Joseph Antonini, former CEO of Kmart Corporation, backed him up by acquiring the sporting goods small chain for 75 million dollars. With enough capital, Smith designed an expansion plan that soon made The Sports Authority rise to a hundred stores in four years.

Almost 140 shops are scattered all over US and Canada that bear over nine hundred famous brands including K2, Nike, Adidas, and Coleman. With its sturdy finances and technological advantage, The Sports Authority continues to lead the sporting goods industry.

GART SPORTS COMPANY

The Gart Sports Company is United States’ second largest company specializing in the retail of sports equipment and goods. Its creator Nathan Gart, and his family moved from Russia to Colorado. Nathan sold newspapers and utilized his earnings to buy and sell watches and rings from his patrons. Saving an ample amount of capital, Nathan purchased a tiny, limited-spaced shop worth 500 dollars at downtown Denver in 1928. He then launched Gart Bros. which is a family business focusing on selling outdoor sporting merchandise such as camping, hunting, and fishing gears. A pocket knife was Nathan’s first sale.

Before long the shop developed into a family business in a new direction. Nathan’s brother George joined him in 1932, his brother Kibby two years after and another brother, Melvin joined in 1946. That same year, the company turned into Gart Bros. Sporting Goods Co.

Gart Sports Company introduced its first Sports Castle store, a renowned, pioneering superstore in downtown Denver in 1971.

Gart Sports Company merged with Sportmart, Inc. in 1998. It has now more than 180 stores located in Western and Midwestern America under the Oshman’s, Gart Sports, and Sportmart names.

DICK’S CLOTHING AND SPORTING GOODS

In 1948, Richard “Dick” Stack created the Dick’s Clothing and Sporting Goods. He was 18. The owner of the Army and Navy shop where Dick was a salesman asked him if it’s feasible for the store to offer fishing gear. Young Dick devised a business plot over a series of nights without sleep. When he approached the store owner with his plan, the owner’s reaction was surprising. Dick was taken aback to hear from the owner that he would never be a good businessman.

Frustrated Dick found comfort in his grandmother who after learning Dick’s story, pulled out her savings worth $300 from a cookie jar, gave it to her grandson, and encouraged him to pursue his dreams. Dick then used the cash in opening his humble fishing gear store in Binghamton, New York.

After ten years and inspired by his faithful customers, Dick expanded his merchandise scale that include a large amount of what is offered at Dick’s Sporting Goods stores nowadays. Presently, the company has more than 300 stores situated in 30 plus states nationwide.

ACADEMY SPORTS & OUTDOORS

Academy Sports & Outdoors started its business in 1970. Arthur Gochman, an attorney, and his business associate bought Southern Sales, a chain of army and navy surplus that included 6 shops that was already into business failure. The idea of surplus business was learned by Arthur from his father, Max who then operated a chain of surplus outlets. In 1973, Arthur took over from his business associate. He then gave the company its commercial name Academy Corp., the name that he borrowed from his father’s shops.

Arthur gave up law in 1978 and transferred to Houston where Academy store is located to take on full control of the business. He ceased the selling of military surplus items and soon responded to new market trends of latest lifestyles. With the soaring prevalence of leisure wardrobe and sports footwear, Academy began offering sports apparel and goods, as well. The 1980s found the company transforming into a chain of stores supplying a varied and economically priced gamut of branded, superior sporting goods and apparel that gave the Academy Sports & Outdoors the perfect picture that remains until now.

CABELA’S

Cabela’s is the globe’s leading company to deliver the finest outdoor equipment and supplies. The story of Cabela’s spawned from modest domestic beginnings. In 1961, Dick Cabela bought a set of fishing flies at a furniture show and thought it’s a good idea to sell them. When he came back home in Chappel, Nebraska, he placed an advertisement in a newspaper offering 12 hand-tied flies for 1 dollar. Inadvertently, Dick took the initial measure in making a thriving mail-order business and a multi-billion dollar venture.

Toiling at their kitchen table, Dick and his wife Mary began filling orders from sports lovers here and there in US. As demand for the fishing flies rose, Dick bought other outdoor leisure goods and sent a catalog of other merchandise offered. Their inventory escalated quickly as multitude of orders was generated from the catalog mailed. The following year, there was a requirement for a warehouse to meet the demand.

Cabela’s expansion is unstoppable with almost 80 catalogs delivered each year, and its online division soars higher.

About the Author

For more information on Sports Stores please visit our website.

custom Fly Tying Desk plans

Custom Upholstered Fly Tying Chair $16.99

Mustad Fly Fishing Hooks

Salt Water Flies: The 3 Essential   by Ted Demopoulos

All fishermen have their workhorse flies, the flies that account for most of their fish. Unfortunately they rarely think about why those flies work, why that assortment should cover most of their fishing situations.

Often fishermen simply have their favorite flies and use them without any real logic. If you take a more scientific approach you are likely to catch more fish. I’ve learned from experience over the past 2+ decades that the following three flies cover most salt water fishing situations, ranging from bonefish to stripers, tarpon to king salmon, and much more.

The three salt water flies I depend most on are Leftys deceivers, Clouser minnows, and snake flies. Like most flyfishermen, I seem to have 100 different types of flies, but these are the three that account for over 90% of my fish.

Leftys Deceiver:

The deceiver is an incredibly versatile fly. You can fish it on top, deep, and in the middle. It can match short thin baitfish, long thin baitfish, fat baitfish, and quite an array of other critters: grass shrimp, lobsters, and just about everything else.

I like both long and short ones, usually in the 2″ to 5″ range.
I tie my deceivers primarily sparsely, in all black, all white, all chartreuse, and white with a green top, but also tie a few bulky ones to imitate thicker food sources.

I tie the majority of my deceivers on size 1/0 hooks. I like to tie a few on bigger hooks, for example 3/0 or 4/0 hooks, partly because they sink faster with a big hook. I always have a few tied on smaller hooks too.

I usually add a little bit of flash on top, maybe 4-10 stands of whatever I have on hand, trimmed to random lengths for maximum effect, and sometimes top my deceivers in peacock hurl, especially the all white ones.

I’ve caught just about everything with deceivers, from tarpon to stripers to rainbow trout, and many offshore species as well.

Clouser Minnow:

You need a fly that sinks rapidly, and the Clouser is my choice. Sometimes getting your fly a few inches deeper makes all difference between steady action and no fish.

I like my Clousers in pink, white, chartreuse, and white with a green top. I tie most of these between 2 to 2 1/2+ inches long, but tie some much smaller and some much longer.

I tie them primarily on 1/0 hooks and I always have a few smaller sized ones, usually size 4 or 6, just in case. These are great flies for catching ‘miscellaneous’ species, and I tend to catch lots of strange miscellaneous species, especially when fishing in the tropics.

What won’t eat a Clouser? I don’t know, but I’ve caught fish ranging from king salmon to bonefish, and sharks to barramundi on Clousers.

Snake Fly:

I love snake flies!

Snake flies can match a wide variety of baitfish and critters, just like the flies above, and imitate a bigger bodied baitfish easier due to the deer hair head.

I trim the deer hair head pretty thin, and tie them both smallish, around 2″, and bigger, maybe 4-5″, in all black, all white, and with an orange head and chartreuse body.

I pretty much use white ones in the day and black ones at night. The orange/chartreuse ones, which I only tie in smaller sizes, around 2″ long, sometimes work phenomenally well, although I have no idea why!

Miscellaneous Saltwater Flies:

I try to always carry a few flyrod poppers, usually “Bob’s Bangers” tied on 2/0 Mustad 34011 hooks, and a few very sparse flies, often Rays Flies or Eelies.
And of course I also carry all kinds of strange stuff — sometimes to match the prevalent bait, but usually because I just got creative when tying!

About the Author

Of course knowing the best retrieves for larger fish is also important!

Visit http://www.flyrodstripedbass.com for more fishing tips and techniques, including plenty of “how to” as well as informative striped bass stories.

Mustad Fly Tying the abaco shrimp

Mustad S74SZ-34011 size 2/0 hooks 1000 pack $150.00

O Mustad & Sons Fishhook Advertising Display Olslo Norway-Rare $99.99