John Likakis

ALTHOUGH DAVE HUGHES'S exhaustively titled Wet Flies: Tying and Fishing Soft-Hackles, Winged and Wingless Wets, and Fuzzy Nymphshelped bring on a minor resurgence of the wet fly more than a decade ago, for many fly fishers, these old-school patterns remain something of a mystery. A wet fly is not quite a streamer and definitely not a nymph, so what are you...

FLY TYING looks intimidating. Creating something a fish might eat out of a hook and pieces of strange materials can seem like alchemy to many beginners. And it is a sort of alchemy; it blends equal parts of science, art, craft, and folklore. Happily, it's not at all difficult to become a proficient fly tier. With a little guidance and practice, almost...

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...