in 1922, leonard halladay tied up a mayfly imitation on the banks of michigan’s boardman river, and then handed the fly to his friend charles adams to take with him fishing. so now we get stream-of-consciousness monikers from the likes of galloup or even john barr (the john in copper john), who tied the first slumpbuster and then apparently opted not to put his name on it. but what’s best about the slumpbuster — aside from its uncanny ability to …

there are different ways to make this fly work, but most people use it as an indicator/strike indicator for fishing nymphs or wet flies downstream, where you fish it high in the water column on sinking lines and let it sink down on its own. the head of this fly rises as it is stripped and goes between strips. this snag-resistant fly is ideal for bottom fishing and is a great pattern to use with nymphing techniques. the zonker streamer …

fly fishing has developed rapidly in the last decades. there are almost infinite facets of fly fishing and there is hardly a fish in the world that cannot be outwitted by the fly. these so-called “streamers” imitate prey fish in the narrower sense of the term, which in our native waters are pike, zander, perch or even trout as a source of food. however, this is in contrast to the classic methods with dry fly and nymph, where potential trout …

tossing the fly to the upstream side of a likely lie and ripping it back. it plays on the predatory instinct of large trout by imitating a fleeing baitfish. on the other hand, no fish wants to engage in the pointless pursuit of a bullet train. slow your retrieve down and give the fly a twitching action like a wounded baitfish. swinging the fly is an effective way to reach fish holding in deep water. this will let you put …

this is a signal to think about tying a zonker onto your fly line. much deeper than 5 feet and it becomes difficult to get the fly down to the fish. on to the fly line, i’ll attach a sinking tip. you will lose a little bit of the suppleness that a branded fly fishing tippet has, but the “invisibility” is comparable with both. guide tip: casting a heavy fly and a sink tip requires you to strip in a …