Drawing Fish & Flies 52 Driftless Brookie & X-Caddis. This is the fourth in a series of four fish and flies in the same style (and may end up on a set of greeting cards). Next week, I’ll be moving on to another approach to drawing/painting. The brookie that I used here is from Canada’s Sutton [...]

Apologies for the lateness. More later, but for now this is the third in a series of four fish and flies in the same style. Got “peeling paint” this time, as well as eroded plaster (frustratingly, the third rinse I did to get that peeled paint cost me too much time elsewhere). May not look [...]

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 brown trout & stonefly nymph (two-tone, rubber legs). Like last week’s two-for-one, a brown-and-stonefly combo is a classic one in fishing (at least to me—and to Jeff, since this was his pick). The first truly big brown I ever caught, I did *not* catch on a stonefly nymph, but black [...]

Drawing Fish & Flies 52 rainbow trout & Royal Wulff. It’s late…more later. For now, think tattoos and corroded plaster. Hardly the stuff of trout streams, but this is DF& 52 and anything goes! Well, now it’s early, but I’m up, so I might as well flesh this out. The ‘bow and RW combo is a [...]

GB’s early 1970s synthetic take-off of the Elk Hair Caddis is one of my own go-to patterns. It not only looks right and fishes right, but the synthetic aspect allows enormous color/texture variation. And as any red-blooded fly-tying geek knows, being able to mess around with colors and textures is one of the best things about [...]

Whether abbreviated as “DF&F 52″ or just “DFF 52,” the 2012 art project that I’ll be working on with Jeff Kennedy will encompass the subject of our two previous years. Yes, 2012 is the year of Drawing Fish & Flies 52. In other words, we’ll be doing both fish and flies this year, alternating between [...]

Below is the first page (not yet proofed) in the color section of GB’s soon-to-be printed Long Flies book. To keep book prices in the “Fly Fishing” series consistent, we are printing color in single, large sections like this, versus scattered throughout the text. This can make things a bit tricky in terms of book [...]

Merry Christmas Eve from FF&W. “Christmas Spey” from last year’s DF52 project.

A bit of educational info now that tying season is upon those of us in the northern hemisphere. Well, if you’re anything like me, tying season is whenever and wherever you manage to break out the vise. When I was younger and living in the winter wasteland cross-country skiing paradise of northern Wisconsin, though, November [...]

The Drawing Flies 52 image from last year at this time: Winter’s Hope. This was one of my favorite fly drawings of the 2010 project. The full post is here.

A little bit of Photoshoppery on another of Bill Sherer’s massive musky flies—this time a Figure 8 that also happens to be fly 10.19 in the upcoming Long Flies book. The original is 9.5 inches long (and is not purple, of course). I just felt that the fly looked cool (literally) in inverse colors, a la my “Icethroat [...]

Fly 10.67 from Long Flies shown as two halves (hey, it’s a *long* long fly). This is one of Bill Sherer’s beastly 4/0 BP muskie patterns. Don’t try to be a “hero” with a seven-weight when it comes time to cast these….

Yes, Long Flies is taking its time in getting done, but at least GB is well into book #4 of the “Fly Fishing” series, so once I get caught up with LF, I’ll just jump into that. But, in the meantime, I am plowing through fly photos for LF. Here is fly 10.75, an Ulf Hagström [...]

Yeah, I know, DF52 week 41 is not in order (this is week 48), but I was thinking about big, late-season streamers, and had to re-post this. This Yellowstone Sculpin is vying to be my favorite from last year, and it is for sure in my top-five. I did one commission based on this painting, [...]