Fly Fishing the Ozarks

For the last several years I have been secretly stealing ideas from the insanely awesome hunk of flies produced by Idylwilde.  Everyone knows when you come across a pattern that you just KNOW will produce the sound that one makes is always the same weather it is “MMMMMM” or “UUUUUGH” and trust me browsing the flies on the site will make you go horse from said sounds.   Actually the fly above was “featured” in Day 3 of the ‘09 Missouri Trout Odyssey Video while night fishing Taney….it works.

So check out their site here www.idylwilde.com and their new blog here http://www.idylwilde.com/wordpress/index.php

Fishadelic Foto Friday….Pounding the banks with a streamer with crooked glasses edition.

Well, it has been about a year of Fishadelic Foto Friday….kind of a crazy year full of color,  tie dye, big fish, cool fish, cool people, and even a mention on Moldy Chum.  So in honor of a full year of the Fly Fishing the Ozarks readers sending in photos and giving us great feedback on this crazy idea we upgraded our editing program a little (don’t kid yourself we spent none of our hard earned money on this.)   So expect to see a little more across the board kind of cool editing…not all psychodelic but FOR SURE some insanely cool editing, every, single, Friday!

Thanks guys!  And as always if you have a photo that you would like me to completely mess with and post for all the world to see send it to bnwise@gmail.com

In her second appearance on Fly Fishing the Ozarks Fishadelic-Foto-whatever is Pat with a super sweet Crappie.  I was jealous of the Koi that was her first appearance and the Crappie–NEITHER of which have I caught on the fly.  Keep on keepin’ on Pat…that a girl!

Hey all,

I just wanted to introduce you to the new Fly Fishing the Ozarks.  As you can tell we have made some pretty drastic changes to the blog and now it is more like a site/blog….if that makes sense.

The first thing you’ll notice is how different the blog looks.  We now have several pages listed at the top and below is kind of a map explaining those pages(not in any specific order):

Home -  This is the Blog….probably the reason you came to Fly Fishing the Ozarks in the first place–unless you came to see more of Matt Tucker.

Guide Services -  Pretty self-explanitory.  I am a guide, it has a bio and contact information–mostly River of Life stuff.

Photo Archive -  This is, well, a photo archive.  This is going to be changing as much as possible.  There is an archive of all of the crazy Fishadelic Foto Friday photos along with some guiding photos and personal fishing photos.

Fishing Videos - Just some fishing and distance casting videos including the epic 2008 Missouri Trout Odyssey videos.

The Authors – Introduces you to the guys that type on the blog.

Tying Videos – An archive of the Fly of the Month videos (or the Fly of whenever I can get them uploaded)

So there it is, browse through and check everything out…let us know what we can do better, let us know what we are AWESOME at (if you have that much time to type) and let us know what you would like to see or see more of.

Thanks!

Again, a throw-back fly of the month brought back from the ages with a video.

Dave Whitlock’s crazy-awesome pattern that is supposed to be equally good for smallmouth as it is for trout…or so we hear. 

It is HIGHLY recommended that you watch the above video in “HQ” so you can see how poor my skills are that much clearer.

As a new fly fisherman there is NO better way to learn how to hook, fight, and just plain catch fish than fishing for bluegill.  Notorious fighters, and absolutely gorgeous, these fish are the reason a LOT of fisherman got hooked on fishing at a young age….not a lot of species can say that.  

I learned how to catch fish on a fly rod with bluegill.  I have 2 little boys (6 and 4) and both of them are trout fisherman, and on the fly at that.  Recently I realised that neither of them had caught a single bluegill on the fly rod and we really needed to change that.  I loaded a fly box full of floating foam bluegill bugs along with some small colorful woolies, stopped by the store to fill the cooler with Capri-Sun and Oreos and we were off.  Florence C. Cook’s landing on the Bryant Creek is where I caught my first fish on a fly rod (and MANY more after that) so that had to be where we went.  With the drift boat in-tow we were after it, there was a rowing lesson in store for the boys too.

As usual the bluegill were quick to eat…real quick.

The bow of most drift boats fits a kid nicely…and is often a source of a fight among my boys as to who gets to sit in it first.  This trip the youngest won with a sweet left hook that big brother didn’t see coming at all.

The rowing lessons went well, the anchor was down to get the most out of the training but it went well.

So while little brother was on the sticks and protecting the boat from supposed somali pirates:

big brother decided to bust out some slabs….

The thing is, they had a blast.  We did some swimming lessons (none of that pansy pool swimming lessons, they fought the current like little men) but I can honestly say that this was a fishing trip where I fished WITH my boys…catching fish right along with my eldest and handing the rod off to my youngest to strip in a fish.   Some nice bluegill were caught but the thing both of them keep talking about and rolling belly laughing about is the little fish—that unmistakable sound of a tiny bluegill that is too small to take a floating bug is a sound that I hope all three of the Fly Fishing the Ozarks readers know….

We are still running some throw-back fly of the month stuff.  Several months ago the Rubber-Leg Stonefly or “Rubber-Legs” made it’s appearance on Fly Fishing the Ozarks, not long after we had a TON of requests (3 or 4) for a step-by-step article on tying this ‘beautiful’ fly…..that article can be found here.  Since we started doing these videos we thought we had better do the Rubber-Legs.

So between the link above and the video below you may get enough information about how to tie this fly…doubtful, but possible. 

Disclaimer: The music in the video is the view of Stephen Lynch and not necessarily the view of  Fly Fishing the Ozarks or those who may or may not be affiliated with Fly Fishing the Ozarks–we just thought it was hella-funny.

This weeks photo features a serious  striper….and Bill Butts.  Bill is easily one of the top temperate bass fly fisherman in the mid-west and luckily for us here at Fly Fishing the Ozarks he sent a pile of striper photos for us to mess with– so expect to see Bills mug with a beast on here several times in the next few months.

For more information on Bill and the White, Hybrid, and Striped bass he is obsessed with see the links here:

Mountain River Journal-Spring White Bass–Bill Butts

Itinerant Angler Podcast  – White Bass and Striper Masterclass with Bill Butts

We completely suck here at Fly Fishing the Ozarks….and we know it.  The “Fly of the month” has taken an unpaid leave of absence after a drunken brawl and cross-dressing incident (all at the same time=not pretty)but when we decided to let it come back—–it came back with a vengence, and a sense of nostalgia. 

The Psycho Prince that I tie that has been dubbed the “Slacker Psycho” has had a lot of pattern request so I thought we would bring back the fly of the month with a video of it.  Again, this is not meant to be a super instructional video which I’m sure you would have noticed as soon as a song titled “Half a Man, The One Testical Song” from Stephen Lynch started playing in the back ground.

Enjoy….