Describes patterns for twenty-five families of flies, and offers practical advice on fly tying and fishing

A detailed survey of the history and use of wet flies, with information on the insects they reassemble, fishing techniques and tying instructions.

Dave Hughes has long believed that wet flies have an essential place in everyone's fly box and repertoire of trout tactics. That's why he has updated this 1995 classic with the benefit of the last two decades of developments in materials, tying, and fishing techniques. Includes instructions for making over 60 soft-hackled flies, flymphs, winged wets, and all-fur wet flies—now in full color.

61 fly patterns: Partridge and Orange, Iron Blue Dun, and many more historically proven flies Ten new chapters on tiny soft hackles and how to tie them New color photos of 38 tiny soft hackles Sylvester Nemes is singlehandedly responsible for the popularity of the soft-hackled fly in American fly fishing today. "The Soft-Hackled Fly," Nemes's first book, written in 1975, was the catalyst for the resurgence. Now revised with ten new chapters on tiny flies and full-color photos, Nemes shares colorful experiences at home and abroad, the history of the soft-hackled fly, and illustrated step-by-step instructions for tying the flies. He also describes his technique of fishing the flies.

This is a guide book for those totally new to the art of tying flies. Until now, learning flytying from a book has not only been challenging, but often the cause of great frustration, with photographs or diagrams making even the elementary techniques difficult to grasp. Step-by-step images help a reasonably proficient flytyer understand the stages in making a fly, but for the new beginner, there will always be a gap between each step-by-step image, which can be bewildering. Seeing the manual maneuvers that take place in these pages can make the different between success and failure for a beginner. The techniques you will learn in this book are the building blocks for which all successful fishing flies, even the most complex ones, are based.

Mayflies are the most important aquatic insect to the trout fly-fisher. In order to fish them successfully, it is essential to understand their four life stages and the best fly patterns for each phase of the life cycle. Dave Hughes has been studying mayflies, tying flies to match them, and honing presentation techniques to fish these flies for more than 30 years, Matching Mayflies is the culmination of those years of experience.