The lower Yellowstone River in Yellowstone Park is that section that runs from Knowles Fall to the park boundary at Gardiner, Montana. This is the section that I choose when I want to fish the Yellowstone and have the majority of water to myself. It is fully loaded with brown trout, rainbow trout, cut-bow's, cutthroat trout and whitefish. Above Knowles Fall there are no brown trout or whitefish. This section is also fully loaded with insects and the hatches are good in this section.

Many fly fishermen consider measuring their leader/tippet critically important. Formulas are everywhere to be found, from complicated line tapering for long trout leader/tippet to simple straight line for bass. Tippets are a curious product and when sold as tippet are expensive. The least costly tippet monofilament (Cabela's Climax) is approximately 10¢/yd. while the most expensive non-tippet monofilament fishing line (Spiderwire Mono) is approximately 2¢ per yard. Which raises the question, is it worth the difference?

It had been a hard year in trout country. The winter snows had been thin and the spring runoff never really developed. By early summer the streams were low and warm, and the trout were lethargic and spooky in the warm shallow water. The prospects of having any quality fly fishing this season were quickly fading with the last days of summer. I had given up hope of any fall fishing and was preparing to store away my gear for the season when my wife called me to the phone.

It was a day to be outside. The weather was fairly warm and there was not much wind. Besides that, after a long winter, any chance to be on the water was a good one. I grabbed two rods, the fish basket, some flies and headed out.

I went to a pond that it is easy to walk into. There is garden type gate about 100 yards from the pond. In order to drive in there are two fields and three gates. Being lazy, and not sure it is safe to drive through the fields, I walked in.

As a fly tyer, one tends to live in a world where the battle between artistic flare and practicality is in a constant state of flux. Most tyers love to "create". We're always in search for that new perfect pattern, style or particular attribute that is going to set all other applicable patterns to the sidelines. Yet the practical or utilitarian side of our mind tends to come to grips rather quickly in our tying endeavors with the fact that more often than not it's the simplest and most basic patterns that bring more fish to the hand than any other.

I love hopper fishing during the late summer and early fall months. I will usually abandon my local haunts and seek out rivers where the banks are full of meadow grass.

There are over 600 hopper species found in North America alone. They range in hook size from a #14 to a #2 and come in a diversity of chromatics. No specific times for a hatch, they're on the water during most of the daylight hours and they elicit some 'titanic' strikes.

My husband, JC (or Castwell), our good friend Neil Travis and I were walking along a winding path from the old Canoe Harbor campground down to the South Branch of the Au Sable in Michigan to fish, and a blue butterfly flew in front of us. It was a lovely warm summer day when you could smell the heat in the jack-pines left over from yesterday.

I have had this small pamphlet in my angling library for many years. As you can see it cost a total of fifty cents back when it was for sale at Jack's Rod & Fly Shop in Roscommon, Michigan in the late 1960's.

As you can see from the cover it claims to contain the "Angling knowledge accumulated in 45 years of fishing," and "contains the knowledge of some of the nation's best fishermen." Quite a purchase for a mere fifty cents, however when you open it up the pages, all twenty of them, are blank!