USGS Stream Data

Kenai Rvr @ CooperLndg

  • Water Temp: 34.16 ° F
  • Flow: 511 ft³/s
  • Water Level: 5.20 ft
USGS

Middle Kenai @ Skilak

  • Flow: 929 ft³/s
  • Water Level: 6.14 ft
USGS

Talkeetna Rvr

  • Water Temp: 32 ° F
  • Water Level: 4.23 ft
USGS

Situk Rvr

  • Water Temp: 35.06 ° F
  • Flow: 768 ft³/s
  • Water Level: 67.27 ft
USGS
Ask About Fly Fishing

Archive for the ‘Fly Tying’ Category

Spear-It™ Hooks

Confession time; as a fly tyer I have an addiction to hooks.  Not just your “run of the mill” everyday hooks, but to really nice, custom, specialized hooks. Hooks that, like micro-brewed beer, are built for those of us that will spend a little more money for something special.

Cool looking hooks!

Cool looking hooks!

Even when I’m not shopping for hooks, I have to at least seek a glance at the hook rack; which is how I ended up with the new Spear-It™ Sickle Octopus style hooks. And not just a single package of a specific size; but four packages in a range of sizes. I just had to. I couldn’t help myself.

Spear-It Sickle hooks are not designed specifically for fly tying, although they are listed as a fly hook; but rather are designed to be use as a stinger, or trailing hook. Almost any short shanked hook will work as a trailing hook, although most tyers prefer an Octopus style of some sort. If you’re using something stiff to attach your trailing hook, you can position it so that the hook point rides up, with the hopes of minimizing snagging. The problem with a standard Octopus style is that the gape is usually big enough to have the hook point out away from the body a bit. (I’m not talking about offset bends, that’s a whole other design feature.) This new Sickle design seems to have overcome that design flaw. The hook point is in-line with the eye, and the bend is angular instead of a continuous curve. Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Indie Alaska and Pudge Kleinkauf

Indie Alaska is one of the production arms of Alaska Public Media and they do a great series of short videos about people who help make Alaska the unique place that it is (Real Alaska, not Reality Alaska as portrayed on the cable channels…)

This episode is about one of the pillars of our fly fishing community – Pudge Kleinkauf. Check it out. You’ll like it…

Share

Fly Flasher

Hey! Hey! Lance discovered (via Mossy’s Fly Shop) a  new and exciting site that just for flies and fly tyers.

FlyflasherAppImage

 

Fly Flashers has been around for just over a year, but is gaining speed. We decided to help. Both Lance & I joined today and I listed several of our favorite patterns. We’d like to encourage you to give them a look see; and if you’re a tyer, or just want to share the patterns that you use that work, sign up and join us. Nothing like networking to get the creative juices flowing.

FlyflasherComImage

 

 

 

 

 

Find them on Facebook, or go online to Flyflasher.com for a visit.

We’re fans!

Search Lance Hankins or 2 Guys FlyFishing.net

Share

Lots of new Fly Patterns available!

HankinsSelect-a-Bead-2up

A Select-A-Bead fly developed by Lance and Rich

Rich has been working like a mad man trying to get the Fly Patterns section of our site up and loaded. Go there and take a look! These are all great patterns and specifically are the ones WE use! I’m sure you can find something there worth trying. Many of these are available commercially in local Fly Shops if you don’t tie. And if you happen to run into us on the river, we’ll be happy to share a couple with you…

Sharp Hooks and Tight Lines!

Share

New Catch Magazine available!

One of our favorite e-magazines – Catch Magazine  – has a new issue available online!  Some of the best Fly Fishing, photography, and videos available! Worth every penny of the subscription cost!

Catch Magazine Issue #33From the album: Timeline Photos
By CATCH MAGAZINE
CATCH MAGAZINE ISSUE #33 IS LIVE!
This is a BIG issue. Really, really packed with great photography and video. Get it here!!!!
www.CatchMagazine.net

Photo by Pasi Visakivi
Contact: pasivisakivi@gmail.com

Share

Talkeetna River Musings…

Hevi-Beads

This Spring at the Great Alaska Sportsman’s Show I watched a demo for a product being sold through Mountain View Sports called Hevi-Beads. Back too them in a minute…

Now anyone who knows me very well knows that Rich and I have not been great fans of the practice of using beads for trout despite their undeniable effectiveness. They just didn’t seem to be flies to us. So a couple of years ago we set out on a quest to come up with a way to fish beads – with the ability to make quick changes – and we came up with the Select-A-Bead system. A fly with a plastic tag that could be threaded through the bead (or two) and allow you to fish it like a bead head. We’ve tried them in a variety of patterns from standard eggs through Wooly Buggers and Bunny flies to Sculpins. Sometimes they work sometimes they don’t. We had days where they outfished everything else in the box and days where they didn’t catch a thing but regular beads on the line above a bare hook caught many. It was very frustrating.  Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Fish for Tarpon from a Float Tube!

Fishing for Tarpon from a float tube…

Nuts, maybe, but we approve of this! Next summer we’re thinking of going out for Salmon sharks in ours… Let’s dangle our legs in the water around something thata can bite back!!

Tapâm – a flyfishing journey from tapamthemovie on Vimeo.

Fly Fishing in Salt Waters” started this. Read the whole story HERE.

Share

It’s Fry Time!

 

Fry

For most Alaskan fly fishers spring brings melting snow and thoughts summer fishing, with (hopefully) sunshine and green things growing everywhere.  But some of us have discovered we can have frys with our spring.

Salmon eggs laid last fall have been hatching under the ice, slowly developing into alevins (yoke sac fry). As ice pulls away from the spawning beds, the alevin, having used up their yoke sac, become fry. New fry swim to the surface, gulp some air to fill their air bladder, and begin free swimming and feeding. It’s at this point in their young lives that fry become available to all the other fish that have been on minimum rations through winter.

Read the rest of this entry »

Share

Tubular Smolt – Tying instrucions

The Tubular Smolt came from my desire to have a fly that imitated the young fish I grew up seeing in the shallows of lakes. In my younger days we had small Flatfish and Rapalas for our ultra-light spinning rods. Once I started fly fishing I missed that basic minnow shape, and the desire to imitate it never really left the part of my brain that fishes. When I began learning more about bait fish, I kept thinking that there had to be a way to create a pattern that would mimic the head down attitude of a crippled fish. I also reasoned that a pattern that floated head down could be twitched back to horizontal creating an impression of struggling to stay alive. I wasn’t so concerned about movement, there are plenty of flies for that, I was mostly focused on size, color, and shape.

Although I had played with a few different patterns over the years, it was the thermometer probe cover that finally got my creative juices flowing. Here was the shell for an underbody. I knew I wanted to use Mylar tubing as an outer cover; all I had to do is figure out a way to get this long, thin walled tube onto a hook. After a few failed attempts at prototypes I became frustrated in that I just could not come up with a way to create a solid enough union to a hook to tie materials onto and over the tube. So the probe covers sat in my material box for almost a year. Then, while looking at some tube fly materials, I noticed cone heads designed for small tubes. “Tube flies” I thought, (mentally smacking myself on the side of the head) that’s the answer! I had toyed tying tube flies in the past, but being a bit of a traditionalist, I had failed to think past the shanked hook school of design when working on this baitfish imitation.

It took three attempts to create a tube fly that suspended head down, looked like a small fish, and did not have the disadvantage of an extra-long hook shank. The material sizes listed in the instructional PDF are based on getting the fly to suspend with neutral density. I’ve since subsisted foam for the head, for a high floating fly, and I’ve been stuffing the front part of the probe cover with fluorescent glo-bug yarn and/or Everglow fibers. You can alter the length of the body to create a shorter or longer baitfish and color the body to match any local baitfish. It is important that the body (Mylar tubing) be sealed. I’ve used regular epoxy, rod wrapping epoxy, and am currently playing with a couple different UV cured coatings. All seem to have their pros and cons. I use nail polish, especially ones with sparkle, to add color and extra bling to the body. Once you have the basic pattern, variations are endless.

Rainbow that took Tubular Smolt on the Agulawok River

Rainbow that took Tubular Smolt on the Agulawok River

The pattern’s name come from the fact that I now fish areas where salmon smolts are a prime baitfish; and the fly has proven itself on a couple of different river fisheries for rainbows. The interesting point is that I’ve yet to get the chance to fish one in a lake, where the process started years ago. But then, life is still young!

For a PDF of the Tying Instructions for this pattern, go to our Patterns page.

If you have questions or other comments, please feel free to post them here or email me at Rich@2GuysFlyFishing.net.

Share

Sculpin Tube Tie

Bruce Berry of Pro Tube Fly Systems demonstrates how to tie really cool sculpin pattern on a Pro Tube Micro Tube.

Posted on YouTube by Caddis Fly Shop

Share