Thankfully I’ve been doing a lot of fishing lately which has delayed me writing this post. I took a swing up to Yellowstone last week and enjoyed a great trip with my friend Scott Berrett fishing in the park and on the Henry’s Fork. I’ve also been hitting our local lakes and rivers trying to get as much time in as possible before only the tailwaters are fishable through the winter. And if I’m honest, I haven’t been very excited about writing this post because my final two sessions weren’t exactly the finest sessions I’ve ever fished in a world championship and it’s a bit painful to reflect on ..read more

In my 3rd session during this year’s World Fly Fishing Championship I fished the Poprad River, which was one of the two smaller rivers in the championship. The Poprad is one of the sadder examples of man’s effect on river form and function that I’ve seen. The river runs through several industrial towns and (I assume during the time of the Soviet Union) it was put in a cobbled dike through each of the towns it runs through. I could describe the ill effects that such practices have on a river based on watershed science and fluvial geomorphology, but that’s for another time. Needless to say, the ..read more

Fly Fishing Team USA member Josh Graffam fishing the upper Bela River on our first day of practice. In this installment, I’ll take you through my second session during the 2017 World Championships in Slovakia. Session 2 Bela River: After a mediocre start on the Orava River I was looking forward to a change of pace on the Bela River in my second session. The Bela is a much smaller river and apparently has the clearest water in Slovakia. Despite that clarity, it was pretty much impossible to spot fish in the river as they were very well camouflaged and/or just not large enough to be easily seen ..read more

2017 World Fly Fishing Championship Introduction and Session 1 My Fly Fishing Team USA mates and I recently traveled to Slovakia for the 37th World Fly Fishing Championship that occurred the 5-11th of September. Our team was comprised of myself, Lance Egan, Pat Weiss, Josh Graffam, Norm Maktima, Russ Miller, our captain Bret Bishop, and our manager Jerry Arnold. After two years of consecutive team and individual medals and several other recent top 5 finishes, we were more than disappointed to finish 14th this year, our worst team finish since Poland in 2010. If I had one word to describe our s ..read more

Two New Videos There is a lot of fun and instructional content headed your way. Yesterday we released a new video called Plan B. In it Kramer and I have a really fun day of stillwater fishing from a couple of weeks ago. We originally wanted to head to a high lake and chase cutthroats that day, but we ended up chasing rainbows in the plains due to weather.  If you click the image below to watch the video, you'll see Plan B turned out alright I think.  To add to the fun, Tactical Fly Fisher was lucky to be one of the sponsors for this year's season 3 of the Fly Fishing Buffet Ser ..read more

Our latest YouTube video reviews the popular Diamondback Ideal Nymph Rod lineup. In the video, I take you through some of the overall characteristics of the Ideal Nymph series as well as the individual models themselves. Overall, I have had a good experience with the Diamondback lineup as have our customers but as you'll see there are some models that have become my favorites while some I favor less.  Thanks for watching. We appreciate your support of our store at www.tacticalflyfisher.com ..read more

The Thomas and Thomas Contact II Euro nymphing rods have been out for a few years now. I've spent quite a bit of time with each model and they are among my favorite Euro nymphing rods. In this video, I walk you through each model and share my thoughts on the pros and cons of each.  ..read more

Fly hook sizes are all over the place. As the fly tying hook market has expanded greatly over the last few decades, the consistency of sizing between and even within brands has become ever more problematic. It is hard to buy any size of hook these days with a realistic expectation of what the length of that labeled size will actually be. To address this issue, over the winter we measured the total hook length of every hook that we had in stock in the shop. Now when you go to purchase fly tying hooks in the shop, the measured total hook length for each available size is listed in the product d ..read more

We recently posted two new videos on our YouTube channel.  The first video gives you a look inside several of my nymph boxes and the recent reorganization I just completed. Hopefully it will give you some ideas on how to organize your own nymph boxes. The second video explains how I evaluate Euro nymph rods. It takes you through the characteristics I like and what separates the performance between Euro nymphing rods in my opinion. Hopefully it will help you understand what divides the great from the good from the mediocre in the Euro nymphing rod realm and think of some more targeted que ..read more

In this post, I will take you to my last session of the 2022 FIPS Mouche World Fly Fishing Championship in Asturias, Spain. This session brought me to Arenero Lake. Lake was a misnomer when describing this venue. It was a pond about two acres in size that the organizers decided to put 23 bank beats on. Some beats gave you back casting room and access to good water. Other beats provided little to no back casting room and put you in a corner or shallow shelves where the trout retreated away from after being caught or fished to repeatedly. There was one beat that even had a cliff behind it and a ..read more