This caddis pattern is a great guide fly because it's fast and easy to tie and if it's fished properly very effective. I fish it as a trailing fly tied about 12-18 inches behind a dry fly like a; Korn's CDC Spent-wing Parachute Caddis, X-Caddis or a hopper.  This is my go to fly and it works just as well in the East or West.

Living just outside the Washington, D.C. Beltway wasn't exactly conducive to finding a fishing spot that afforded much privacy. However, a chance stop at a small gas/convenience store led to the discovery of what turned out to be a place of solitude and unbelievable quiet in an otherwise frenetic world.

It is a day off with nice weather. Not hot, but comfortable temperatures in the early morning. Everything had been loaded the night before because I wanted to hit the pond at first light. I had four rods with me. I attached a Goldie Jr, a black furl tailed mohair leech, a white boa yarn leech and an olive hares ear type fly. My target was crappie.

For many, March Madness is a period of time when collegiate basketball dukes it out for top honors. Where mascots are plastered all over ESPN and the pools at work are in full swing. But for others like me, "March Madness" means a size#14 mayfly that rings in the spring season by bringing those early risers to the surface. While not the first hatch, it's the first real identifiable hatch that sends both novice and longtime fly fishermen yelling as if they were Paul Revere, declaring the March Brown hatch to have arrived on their waters.

Grey skies and miserably cold weather make for happy duck hunters and unhappy fly fishermen. Disconsolate fly enthusiasts, who curse the lack of fishing opportunities, spend most of their winter hours indoors, working on flies and equipment they may not use for months. Everyone has cabin fever and struggles with depression. In this environment, many a fly fisher might only dream of opportunities to use new patterns or improve casting skills. Of course, those who can afford to do so will escape for a while to more tropical zones and re-energize their fishing karma, but for a large portion of American fly fisherman, it is an unpleasant few months.

The mist rose and swirled in the cold predawn twilight giving an otherworldly feeling to the scene. The mist is tinged with the smell of sulphur and somewhere in the fog shrouded meadows across the river a bull elk bugled, the high pitched whistle added to the ethereal feeling of the moment.

I created the Big Furled Leader Formula, after about 4 years of working on the mathematical formula, and then I gave it to the world for free use by all the people who make their own furled leaders. So if you want to created a furled leader that has a loop sequence of 13½-12½-11½. That gives you total thread count for the combined thread segments sequence count would be 26-24-22-20-18.