... Betty, the FEB O.C. was an FAOL FOTW, as were the other three mentioned in my earlier post on fishing the other day.

Those four are among twelve or thirteen original flies presented for the FOTW articles years ago, and are in the Archives, mostly in 2012 and 2013, as I recall. A couple of them demonstrated fly tying methods that I haven't seen anywhere else - the JARS and Duck's Green Drake, for example, have tails incorporated into an FEB, and a couple others demonstrated the 9DH aka 90 degree hackling technique. On the latter, a couple years ago I ran into a fellow who had been fly tying for 30 plus years, had published a number his own flies, who had never seen that technique, but understood it and took to it immediately.

Getting back to poly leaders, the only time I have even touched one was a couple months ago. I ran into a couple of guys, one from Texas and the other from North Carolina, fishing on my home water. The fellow from Texas remembered meeting me a year earlier at exactly the same place. The fellow from North Carolina had never been to Idaho nor fished for trout. We got into an hour long discussion about the essentials of fishing for trout on moving water compared to stillwater fishing for bass, during which time he handed me a poly leader sold to him by a Missoula fly shop, for something like $17. Shame on them.

I provided the North Carolinian with a furled leader, suggested that he return the poly leader and get his bucks back, gave him an FEB Salmonfly and directions to the six most likely places on the river where he had a decent chance of getting into some cutthroats. It's what some of us fly anglers and fly tyers out here do to help a stranger be successful and have some fun during his / her visit.

John