Shameless Self Promotion
We all get our 15 minutes of fame. I've been very fortunate to have some interesting opportunities with some various magazines. Here are a few of them. If you click on the thumbnails below you'll open up a page that will be readable.
(I have resized all the scans of these article pages to be as small as possible, in order to make for speedy loading while still being readable. For most browsers, this more or less works. If you click on a thumbnail and find that you are still looking at a fuzzy page, float over the image until you get a button like icon in the lower-right corner of the image. Click on that, and it will open to full size in your browser. Or, you can use the right click function, and print one out to put in a binder!)
Miramichi Spring Fling
This was an article I wrote after several trips up to Doaktown, New Brunswick. The article lists several of the traditional hairwing patterns, as well as the new West Coast steelhead patterns that have moved east.
State Supported Fly Tying
This is a nice article written by my sometime fishing buddy Dave Klausmeyer for his Editor's Bench column. It describes the NH Traditional Arts program I was in when I apprenticed with Bob Wyatt in Concord. No, that's not my Gray Ghost on the cover, I just wanted to show you which issue the article was in.
Art Fuller's Notebook
As part of my historical work with the Monadnock Chapter of Trout Unlimited, I stumbled onto a notebook that belonged to a Monadnock Region fly tyer. This turned into quite an adventure, and eventually an article in the Spring 2009 issue of Fly Tyer.
Do Your Flies Measure Up?
This was a fun article for me. It gave me the opportunity to pull together all the obsessive-compulsive measurement techniques I use with my salmon flies, and show how they can make better (and faster) conventional flies. The equipment is minimal, the learning curve is low, and you'll make better flies right off the bat.
Full Dress Finery
In the January 2009 issue of American Angler, editor Phil Monahan wrote an
article on the intricacies of Classic Atlantic Salmon fly tying. He contacted me
to get a fly to use for the illustration. I was working on a Bulldog, so sent
that along.
The article was a two page spread. This might have been the largest fly image
ever published. (If I would have known how big he was going to make it, I would
have done a better job...)
Lost Treasures Discovered
This was a nice little article about the Lost Treasures column that Dave
Klausmeyer started in Fly Tyer magazine, based on my Art Fuller's Notebook
article. He gave me a nice plug or two.
$300 Salmon Fly
Late in 2008 I was contacted by the editor of Outdoor Life (thanks to Phil Monahan). They were looking for an article that would make fun of the "over the top" activities of the obsessive salmon fly tyer, to be used in the April Fool's issue. I worked on an article for quite some time, and came up with something that was terribly witty, overall brilliant, and downright hilarious. I also tied up a cartoon version of a Jock Scott - ostentatious use of feathers, a big, fat body, and I even put googly eyes on it, like a bass fly.
The magazine hated the article, and trashed the whole thing. (In retrospect, I think it was indeed quite funny - it was just that there were only 7 people in the universe who actually got the jokes.) They did like the fly, however, and the article became just a juxtaposition for the worm-and-bobber articles that followed it. The title came from a discussion we had on what a well-known classic tyer would charge for a Jock Scott, using all authentic materials. The $300 was an educated guess on my part, but I actually had people contact me and want to buy one after the article was published. (I talked them all down to a more reasonable figure, using subs for many of the exotic materials.) Still, the fly I sold to Outdoor Life went for - well, more than $300!
I have to say I was amazed at the coverage of Outdoor Life. It's pretty cool to have an article in Fly Tyer, but where I come from, Outdoor Life (and/or Field and Stream) are just fixtures in the average household. I actually had people call me up from Wisconsin and congratulate me on getting a fly in Outdoor Life. And these are people who wouldn't know a fly rod from a broomstick, but they somehow saw my name on the article. Amazing. So to have a fly right on the cover of a huge magazine like that, well, it's pretty neat.
Scottish Salmon School
In the fall of 2009 I was living back in Nottingham, England. I took advantage
of this to attend a week-long salmon fishing seminar up near Lockerbie,
Scotland. This was put on by Fly Fishing and Fly Tying magazine, who of course
produced an article. That's me tying flies just to the right of the bright light
in the main picture, and also standing in line on the banks of the River Anan
(4th from the right). We were getting Spey casting instruction from Glynn
Freeman. It was a great week, filled with fly tying, rain, casting lessons,
rain, whiskey tasting, rain, late night philosophical arguments, and rain. I
have been thinking of attending again when it's not raining, but my friends tell me that's not possible.
In Quest of the D7
Sort of a spin-off on the Art Fuller's Notebook article, this article
describes some further work I did trying to track down the origin of a frame
full of flies I noticed at CastleArms, down in Springfield, Mass. It turned out
to be a bit of that, and a bit of a biography of Phil Castleman. As usual, Dave
Klausmeyer at Fly Tyer did a great job of laying out the article, choosing the
photos, etc.
I have received quite a bit of email concerning the D7, which is most likely a "Queen Bee." This turned into a second follow up article:
Flight of the Queen Bee
