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Tarpon Toad
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The Fly of the Month
The Parawulff
IN THE SPRING of 1931, the fly fishing duo of Lee Wulff and Dan Bailey could be found fishing the prolific trout streams of up-state New York using Lee?s new and revolutionary hair wing dry flies. Adorned with buoyant and sturdy buck tail fibers on their wings and tails, Lee?s new creations were a far departure from the sparse dressings of the day. As these flies first hit the water, we began a whole new era in dry fly trout fishing ... sturdy attractor flies with meaty silhouettes that rode high in the water and fished well in fast currents. Exactly forty years later, another fly fishing duo, Doug Swisher and Carl Richards, were busy setting the stage for the next era in the history of dry fly design with their launch of the parachute dry fly.
Fly Tying
Tying the Toad Fly
THE TOAD FLY was invented by Gary Merriman (owner of the The Fish Hawk in Atlanta, Georgia). It is a light-weight, slow-sinking fly designed for tarpon fishing in the flats. The original version employed a rabbit strip for the tail. Later, the fly was changed by Captain Tim Hoover when he tied some toads with marabou for Andy Mill. The marabou version is now more popular than the original. I recently spent some time with Gary and learned about the history of the fly and the proper tying techniques for success.
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Fly Box: Carl Hiaasen | Fly Box: Gary Merriman |
| Fly Box: Steve Huff | Fly Box: Diana Rudolph | |
| Fly Box: Jerry Kustich | Fly Box: Ray Schmidt | |
| Fly Box : Craig Mathews | ||
Fly Tying
Tying the Original Copper John
THE COPPER JOHN went through several design changes over a period of about three years beginning in 1993. The early patterns caught fish, but I didn't consider it finished until 1996. After trying numerous hook styles, I settled on the Tiemco 5262, a 2XL, 2X heavy hook. (For those new to fly tying, this simply means a hook with a shank that is twice as long as a standard dry-fly hook, and wire that's twice as heavy.) I tried many hook styles, but the proportions just came out the best on the Tiemco 5262, and it was a good strong hook.
Fly Tying
Muddlers Made Easy
THE ORIGINAL Muddler Minnow was actually a very simple affair. Minnesota angler Don Gapen invented the pattern back in the 1930s to tempt the big brookies of Ontario's Nipigon River, and it has been undergoing constant tweaking, revisions, and reinventions ever since. For example, digging through some fly-tying books from the early 1960s — not long after Joe Brooks popularized the pattern in the pages of Field & Stream — we can find examples of Muddlers that consist of nothing more than a tinsel-body streamer with a short bucktail tail and wing, and a single untrimmed clump of deer hair for a head.
