Tying Small Flies

When fishing gets tough, you might be tempted to use flashier flies, but Ed Engle has learned that small, sparsely dressed flies often work when nothing else will. With a little attention to tying the flies and fishing technique, you'll take trout on flies as small as 24, 28, and 30. Small flies have the support of legendary tiers and writers like Vince Marinaro, Ed Koch, Arnold Gingrich, and Darrel Martin, and Engle has deftly covered the small-fly history of how and why these flies have developed. Tying tools, special materials, specific patterns for aquatic insects and other trout foods and general-purpose flies, tying techniques, and even a discussion of the smallest size 32 flies complete the book. Learn to imitate midges' trailing shucks and drowned adults, tie tiny parachutes and white-winged Tricos, and create patterns that mimic microcaddis and microscuds. Choose the right hook, thread, wire, and amount of weight for small flies. Tips on fishing techniques come from Ed Engle's thirty years of experience fishing small flies on the South Platte River. Ed likes tying and fishing small flies because of their simplicity. "Tying small flies and fishing them is fly fishing stripped to its bare essentials," he writes, "It's the trout and me with as little in between as possible." Book jacket.

Ed Engle began writing a column about small flies for Fly Tyer magazine in 1996. He lives in Colorado, where he guides and instructs fly fishers on the South Platte River, one of the premier small-fly waters