Great Waters Expo 2019

One of, if not the, biggest fly fishing events around these parts is the annual Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo in St. Paul. This year's event is happening on the weekend of March 15th-17th at Hamline University near the State Fairgrounds.

Photo courtesy of Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo

For several years I have spent the weekend tying in the Fly Tying section of the event. Essentially I tie flies all day, let the event attendees watch me do that, hand out my Blog-related SWAG, and chit-chat with people about fly fishing and fly tying. When I am done with a fly I usually give it to someone who has watched me tie, so even though I put in a lot of hours of tying, I usually finish the weekend with the same amount of flies I started with. Not that I am complaining; I am happy to do it if it helps get people interested in the sport!

This year not only am I going to be tying all weekend in the Fly Tying section, but I also was asked if I wanted to put on an actual presentation in one of the theater/showrooms. My hands and tying tools are going to be projected up onto a big ol' screen so everyone can see... Better get myself a manicure beforehand! Check out the full list of Presenters, including me, HERE!

My presentation is titled Highly Adequate Parachute Flies and Other Stuff. It's at 3:45PM in Presentation Room B, wherever that is... Hopefully I will find it before my show starts.

A typical parachute fly, adequately tied by yours truly.

I will be demonstrating my patented techniques for tying parachute hackle for dry flies, along with some other crazy techniques I have learned over the years. It should be fun. If you have a chance, stop on by!

For more info on the great Waters Expo, go HERE!

Fly Focus: Female Adams Parachute

I love to tie a lot of Female Adams Parachutes, but I'm not really sure why. If you aren't familiar with a Female Adams, it's pretty much just a regular old Adams, only with a little yellow egg sac on the back end. I don't know if it actually looks like a female mayfly to the trout, or if they even notice the little yellow egg sac. Maybe they do. If I was able to think like a trout I probably wouldn't be typing this right now, because I most likely wouldn't have fingers. Let's just assume they do, and I will continue to tie them. Sounds like a plan to me!

Female Adams Parachute

Hey, I will also teach you how to tie a Female Adams Parachute. What a guy, huh? You can tie them in pretty much any size, but I usually tie mine in 14s and 16s. If you get much bigger than that, there aren't that many mayflies of that size around here. And if you get much smaller than that, the egg sac gets so small that you might as well just tie a regular old Adams.

All of the Female Adams I have ever seen have had a yellow egg sac, so that's what I am going to tie. I have seen a bunch of mayflies with orange egg sacs, though, so you could probably tie them in that color scheme. And trout seem to like pink, so you could probably tie some of those, too... just remember what my boss at Bob Mitchell's Fly Shop always used to say, "There are no rules in fly tying!"

Let's tie one, shall we?

Female Adams Parachute Pattern Recipe

Hook: Tiemco 100 or any other standard dry fly hook, Size 10-22
Thread: Gray 8/0 (or Red 8/0, if you like that look, like I do)
Tail: Brown Mayfly Tails
Post: White Antron yarn
Hackle: Brown and Grizzly rooster, sized for the hook
Egg Sac: Yellow dry fly dubbing
Body: Gray dry fly dubbing

New Flies!

Hey, I just updated the Store page here on The Riffle, and added a ton of new flies you can buy, plus our stickers are now on the Store page as well. Just click on the My Store tab up on the top of the page, or click this link right here to go to the Store and check it out. Yay flies!