Once upon a time I did quite a bit of fly fishing, and it shouldn’t be surprising I got involved with tying my own flies to match the bugs emerging from my local streams. In the past few years, fly fishing has become more of an occasional pastime for me and I haven’t been doing nearly so much tying either.

This coming summer, my buddy East Texas Red and I plan to go on a week-long canoe trip into Quetico, so I’ve been thinking about what kinds of flies I’ll need fishing for walleye, bass and pike. This means a variety of streamers imitating leaches and minnows and it also means floating flies imitating critters such as frogs. I don’t have a lot of experience tying these types of flies.

I bought various materials which I thought I’d need online, and I’ve been looking at the work of other tiers who create flies for lake fishing, and since I have a restless imagination, I’ve been messing about with different variations at the vice without a lot of planning involved.

When I tied a lot of flies I became fairly fast at it as I improved my skills. I’m not nearly so fast anymore, so I’m starting early and tying just 1 or 2 flies at a sitting. By the time August rolls around, I expect to have a full box of flies for the trip, enough for both East Texas Red and me.