Like its companion volume, Top 12 Nymphs for Trout Streams: How, When, and Where to Fish Them, this little book puts a guiding hand on your shoulder and introduces you to a team of popular, versatile, deadly fly patterns. This book, Top 12 Dry Flies for Trout Streams: How, When, and Where to Fish Them, teaches you—step by clear step, through words and photos and illustrations—how to fish each of its dozen varied floating flies for trout in creeks and rivers. The team of flies in Top 12 Dry Flies is made up of absolutely proven trout-catchers (the Royal Wulff, the Griffith's Gnat, the Parachute Adams. . .), flies that should be easy to collect. And you get alternate flies in case you can't find one on the list. The flies run dark to light, somber to bright, tiny to big, high floating to floating halfway submerged.
You also get all the information you need so you can tie the flies yourself, if you prefer, rather than buy them. Still, this is not a fly-tying book—it's a book about how to select dry flies and how to fish them effectively. A book for the beginner, yes, but with lots for the experienced fly fisher too.
The author of 19 ink-and-paper books on fly-fishing and fly-tying topics, books published with Stackpole Books, Nick Lyons Books, and Amato Media, Skip Morris will teach you how to select an effective floating fly and fish it so that it convinces cagey trout; teach you about the insects that emerge from the water in mobs to turn trout into greedy but fussy feeders, and tell you which of your flies imitates each of those insects; teach you how to make up effective rigs of two flies; teaches you casts that let your 12 floating flies drift naturally, on complex river currents, like the insects they imitate; teach you how to assess what's going on on the river— what the trout and the bugs are doing—then help you select a winning fly and strategy; and teach you a lot more besides.
Top 12 Dry Flies is heavy with pro-photographer/painter Carol Ann Morris's straightforward instructive illustrations and color photographs: 15 illustrations, 47 photos. And another 10 elegant photographs and paintings just to please your eyes.
At about 50,000 words of clear instruction along with all those images, this little book will set you up with the right flies and get you out catching trout on them in your creeks and rivers. And will entertain you in the process.
Click here to hear Skip's interviews on popular podcasts...
Skip has an essay in Big Sky Journal's annual Fly Fishing issue, called "Montana Hoppers: the Princess and the Brute" released February 1, 2023. Skip rewrote it a bit; I painted and illustrated it here, on our website. Here's the link on our web page to check it out:
Click here to read Skip's essay Montana Hoppers: The Princess and the Brute...
Top 12 Dry Flies for Trout Streams: How, When, and Where to Fish Them, is now available on Amazon as an ebook...check it out! Click on the links below to go to the information page on Top 12 Dry Flies (the link to Amazon is at the bottom of the page...)
Top 12 Dry Flies for Trout Streams: How, When, and Where to Fish Them
Click here to get more information about
Top 12 Dry Flies for Trout Streams: How, When, and Where to Fish Them (the link to Amazon is at the bottom of the page)...
Top 12 Nymphs for Trout Streams: How, When, and Where to Fish Them, 2nd Edition, originally published as an e-book only, is now available on Amazon as a paperback...check it out! Click on the links below to go to the information page on Top 12 Nymphs (the link to Amazon is at the bottom of the page...)
Top 12 Nymphs for Trout Streams: How, When, and Where to Fish Them (2nd Edition)
Click here to get more information about
Top 12 Nymphs for Trout Streams: How, When, and Where to Fish Them (2nd Edition). . .
Click here to get more information about Skip's e-book,
500 Trout Streams...
365 Fly Fishing Tips for Trout, Bass, and Panfish
Click here to get more information about Skip's latest book,
365 Tips for Trout, Bass, and Panfish...
Go to Skip Morris's Trout Fly Proportion Chart
Skip's ultra-popular Predator—a hit fly for bluegills and other panfishes and largemouth bass (also catches smallmouth bass and trout)—is being tied commercially by the Solitude Fly Company.
The Predator
CLICK HERE to learn more about or to purchase the Predator...
Tying the Predator
CLICK HERE to see Skip's detailed video on how to tie the Predator...