Fly Box Hero - Pete Gray

 

I have never met Pete Gray personally, but I have studied his fly tying online.  Pete's tube flies are just as nice as his regular flies.  I hope you find the images below as inspirational as I have.

 

 

Bassassins Videos

Amazing footage from Ottawa, Ontario. I received an email from Rob and Rob from Bassassins last night with links to these videos.  The videos are fantastic.  I like that they used both spin and fly fishing in the videos.  This blog may be called the Smallmouth Fly Box, but we still use spinning gear all the time.

I'm not sure about you guys, but by the looks of things I need to visit Ottawa very soon.  Healthy smallmouth with plenty of jump.....just a great job you guys.  Reminds me a bit of St Paul with such great smallmouth action within a stones throw of the city.

Make sure to stop by their Facebook page and pay them a visit.

Great job you guys, thank you for sending me these clips!

Bowmanville Creek Salmon Crossing

Got some information from one of our readers, what a great story!  Apparently the fish crossing is running behind schedule and the salmon are running a month early.  Volunteers are catching the salmon and running them above the dam via a zip line.

Good luck to all volunteers, God bless you for giving your time to such a great cause.  I hope you can get a bunch moved and the crossing gets back in high gear.

Here is link to an article.

Thanks for emailing this information to us Paul!

The Clouser Swimming Nymph

I know, I know.....enough about Bob Clouser already.  This is an awesome pattern though and I love tying it.

The Mississippi

The Mississippi River is one of my favorite places to wade for smallmouth.  Earlier this spring and early summer the river was very high and the current was swift.  The levels made it very difficult to fish and wading was out of the question.  The DNR hydrograph shows the levels has dropped over 4 feet in the past month.

The Mississippi is definitely down from where it was in July.  I spent the day wading in boulder fields and small gravel.  Had a great time, but the fishing was slow.  The pike were active and I managed to catch a few 14" smallmouth, but for this river 14" is a baby.

No doubt the low water levels will concentrate the fish.  Hopefully the fishing will explode once the temps start to fall.

Fly Box Hero - Jack Gartside

The Legend Himself - Jack Gartside

I was reviewing the Smallmouth Fly Box archives and was shocked to see that we never called Jack Gartside out as a Fly Box Hero.  Jack Gartside was one of the primary reasons I started this blog.  After numerous fly tying classes (mostly geared for trout) I found Jack's patterns.  Jack's flies seemed simple and practical compared to the complicated and tiny trout patterns I had been learning.  Hard to believe that was over fifteen years ago!

A few years back I was standing in a fly shop looking at fly patterns and noticed most of the offerings were nothing more than large trout flies, even the Clouser Minnows were geared for trout.  At that point I decided to embrace my hobby and focus on bass patterns.  The first flies I turned to were Jack Gartside's Gurgle Bug and Beastmaster partly because of their history, but mainly because of their elegant simplicity.

Jack passed away on December 5, 2009 of lung cancer.  He was a true legend in every way.  His use of sheet foam, corsair tubing and pheasant skins (all affordable materials) have revolutionized a generation (or two) of fly tyers.

Our hats are off to Jack Gartside.  His website lives on and is a great resource to study Jack's patterns and writings.  His books are also for sale on the site.

Some of my favorite Gartside patterns are shown below.

Gartside Gurgler

The Coondog

The CoonyJack

The Beastmaster

My All Time Favorite - The Silver Fox Streamer

The Softhackle Streamer

Bob Clouser's Suspender

I have been tying many of the flies in Bob Clouser's book - Clouser's Flies.  The Suspender doesn't look like much, but it is a fantastic smallmouth streamer.  This video demonstrates exactly how to tie this fly.  Not complicated at all, but the action in the water is very nice,

If you haven't picked up a copy of Clouser's Flies and you are a serious smallmouth fly tyer and fisherman you need to add it to your library.  You can get it from Amazon or you can order an autographed copy directly from Bob Clouser.