Steelhead season is upon us.  The shop is buzzing with critiques, questions, and colorful fly patterns. Today, even Wren got into the action. Offering her texture for the wing of the: "Girly dog" fly. Kyle snipped a piece of under belly hair from Girly aka: Wren, to finish off a fly he'll be taking with him on his adventures up north. Wren is pleased how they turned out. …

PART I: Yellowstone Journals Finally, a bed. Kelly, Wyoming is a very welcoming place post hours of after-work driving, and a dizzying snow storm. After the glam of Jackson Hole, Kelly is quaint and lovely and without fanfare. The small cabin where we stayed was on main street, perhaps the only street in Kelly, and after the night we had sleeping in was required. The ideal, was an early morni …

In my own fishing and guiding - I am a hatch matcher. I would like to think that when a trout takes one of my flies, I know exactly what insect the fish saw my fly as. This game keeps me constantly entertained through studying insects on the water and experimenting with new fly patterns. This has been a busy year of guiding for me, and I want to share some hatch matching stories I had this …

"Billy Baroo" (my fly rod, not the putter) and I have fished together for over forty years. In the early 70’s I bought "Billy", an 8' 6", 5 weight Winston, from my good friend and mentor Emmett Heath. Every penny from a summer of work went into that purchase, and even today the fondness of those anxious months and the years we've since fished ring loud."Billy" is now a "collectors item” along with …

At the end of another increasingly hot Utah summer, crisp cool mornings are a welcome sign of autumn. While it signals the end of another great summer trout fishing season and the prolific hatches that we in the mountain west set our clocks to, fall brings new opportunities. For many of us in the shop we begin to think about the large rivers up north, frosty mornings, and the anadromous fish that …