I had a day off and it was time to hit a pond. I had some other things to do early in the morning so it was late morning before I got to the pond.

We were experiencing the drought in this area, as many in the Midwest, and the pond was down about four feet. The break line where I catch many fish was now the new shoreline. The edge of the water was about seven feet farther out than it had been before, and there was a heavy bloom of algae on the surface.

I remember spending many hours sitting in a 12 foot aluminum boat in Southern Lower Michigan back in the 60's fishing for crappie. Mostly I was using a live minnow and a bobber, but occasionally I thought it would be fun if I could catch those slap-sided beauties on a fly. If I would have access to a book like this one I might have been more inclined to give it a try.

The best tied fly in the world can't catch fish that don't know it's there.

Once again we'll discuss bluegill vision. We've been there and you might also want to look at: WHAT BASS SEE (Part I) and WHAT BASS AND BLUEGILL SEE (Part II).

The winter is quickly coming to a close and it's time to go home. Winter in southern Arizona is real nice when the snow is piling up along the trout streams of my Montana home, and the soft warm breezes feel good on my skin when I receive word from home that the temperature is hovering near zero and the wind is gusting to 60mph.

PROLOGUE: I'm in the middle of enjoying spring weather and great fishing at DePuy Spring Creek (www.depuyspringcreek.com) in Paradise Valley, MT. I may be supposed to update my blog or tie more flies in my house but I asked the editor to let me write about a very interesting situation I'm experiencing at the creek. It's amusing: what really makes a spring creek technical and challenging. At a certain spot of the creek, insect hatches and trout behavior are offering me a very enjoyable yet very challenging situation.

Over the past couple of years I have written fairly extensively about the effectiveness of Soft Hackle imitations and I written about the **history of Soft Hackles and now I wish to impart my thoughts and experiences on fishing Soft Hackles are surface flies.

I am not the first to fish soft hackles on the surface of the water as a matter of fact I believe that fish have been taken on floating soft hackled imitations since they first appeared on the scene of fly fishing.

My son just turned 4 over Easter weekend. For his birthday we bought him a gift he's been talking about for nearly a year; Spiderman fishing pole. He was so excited. After opening the gift he demonstrated to anyone who would listen how he was going to use it. And in his mind, he pictured landing a whale, despite the fact the pole is maybe 30 inches. :-)

This series of flies came about because of the death of a friend.  Bob Anderson got me started in Fly Tying long ago. He gave me his equipment and a few books. That got me started in this art. Bob died a couple of months ago. About this same time I saw a fly by Dr. Korn

In late August through early September this is the time period that I want to on the Lamar River as often as I can and the reason is simple as this is the time period when the massive flights of ants appear on the water. Before I delve into any of the fishing days that I have enjoyed on the Lamar River I wish to discuss the importance of ants to both the angler and the trout. One should never forget that the wonder and beauty of the park, this morning as we came into the park heading for the Larmar we found the Big Horn Sheep out and about along the Gardiner River, and we stopped for photographs and then resumed are journey.