Rip Rap May 2025

by Ed Constantini | Apr 29, 2025 | Latest News, Rip Rap

The Drift Well, I made it through my first year as president of Kiap-TU-Wish. The chapter is still functioning, and I am happy to report that we’ve had many successes this past year. You as members continue to support our mission and our efforts to see it through. Your support is paramount to the chapters success and I personally want to thank each of you for helping to ensure that Kiap-TU-Wish continues to stand out as one of the premier chapters of Trout Unlimited. When I look to our future I see that our participation and cooperation with our DNR friends will continue to thrive and that we as a chapter must provide them with both financial and volunteer help when the needs arise. Our efforts help enable projects, such as Nate has listed below, to come to be completed successfully. Habitat improvement not only benefits angling opportunities and fish retention but directly impacts our entire community. The stream-easements Kasey has worked so hard to obtain provide positive environmental opportunities for our members and the public. I have a hunch there will be more to come. Over the summer and throughout this upcoming season I and my fellow board members, will be working very hard to assure you that our chapter will continue to be successful and will be available to help, in any way, the projects that protect the warm and cold water systems in ours and surrounding watersheds. Have a great season, enjoy our streams, catch lots of fish, and make every adventure a memorable one.  Suzanne

Habitat Improvement, 2024-2025 By Randy Arnold Last year I recruited volunteers to help on 31 habitat related project days. Twenty-eight were brush and tree removal, two were for seeding/mulching and one was for tree planting. In addition, volunteers were recruited to assist Kasey’s team with shocking surveys on two days. Volunteers were also recruited by me to staff our booth at the Pheasants Forever Youth Field Day where we demonstrated fly tying, fly casting and fly fishing.  Brush and tree removal work was done at multiple sites this year. Maintenance brushing was done at both the Red Cabin and Cty Rd. JJ sites on the Kinni where stands of 2–3-year-old buckthorn were cut, and the stumps were treated with herbicide. At the Quarry Rd. site across from the glass blowing studio where we have hosted the Greenwood Elementary service-learning day brush burn the past two years, newly sprouted buckthorn was either cut or sprayed. Volunteers helped in late October and early November to cut and pile brush at the Aldi parking lot site on the Kinni for this past year’s Greenwood brush burn.  The bulk of our tree and brush removal efforts this past year was at the Steeple Drive site on the Kinni where 14 workdays were held starting in late December through the end of our fiscal year of March 31st. Other sites where brush and tree removal were done included the South Fork of the Kinni where a small crew of volunteers spent 3 workdays removing large willow trees from the streambank in preparation for the installation of more ERO features later this summer by Nate and his crew. Two days were also spent cutting brush and trees from the easement just downstream of the first bridge on Cty Rd. O south of Hwy 10 in preparation for our second year of working with the Ellsworth High School FFA students who turned out to help burn the slash.   Both volunteer hours and numbers of participants were down again over the previous year. A total of 53 different individuals attended at least one ‘brushing’ day, down from 73 the previous year. Of those 53 individuals, 32 attended multiple workdays. The box elders and buckthorn on the easements we are responsible for maintaining are growing at a faster rate than what we can do to control them. Hopefully we can increase our habitat volunteer participation in future projects and not get too far behind in our maintenance efforts. Over 90% of our volunteer opportunities occur after the trout season closes in mid-October and before it resumes in May. I am grateful for the core group of volunteers who turn out week after week to support the work of our chapter, sometimes under less-than-ideal working conditions. I should start to keep a running tally of the number of hot dogs and cookies which are consumed around a bonfire at the end of our workdays. I make no apologies for any effects which it has on volunteers’ waistlines. I tip my hat to them and even occasionally give them some of my favorite dry flies or share my favorite fishing spots.   Tree planting recently took place Martin easement on Plum Creek and at the Moody easement on the Kinni. There will be seeding/ mulching opportunities in the coming months at the new Von Holtum easement on Plum, some possible work on the South Fork and a possible chance for involvement on the North Fork of Wilson Creek in Dunn Cty if the Clearwaters TU chapter needs additional volunteers. I hope to meet many new volunteers during next season’s habitat work. If you haven’t yet participated, come out and give it a try. I think you will like the feeling of community besides knowing that you’ve done something special that will benefit the entire eco-system that each project encompasses.

Recap of 2024 WDNR Trout Habitat Projects by Nate Anderson  I want to give a quick recap of what trout habitat projects took place in 2024 and share the field season plans for 2025. I will be giving a full description of each project along with photos at the Kiap-TU-Wish chapter meeting on May 6th.   The Eau Claire habitat crew started the year working at Parker Creek, which was the second and final year of the project. This site is in St. Croix County just northeast of River Falls downstream of Pleasant Ave. We started the season off on May 8th, had 8 rain days while there and finished on July 1st. We were able to complete 8,392 feet of integrated bank treatment while using 7,000 tons of rock. We installed 78 root wads, 3 ERO structures, 13 spawning riffles, 13 rock clusters, 7 rock v-weirs, 3 islands, 19 overwintering deep-water pools, and 4 backwater refuges. Total cost was $172,851.93 or $51 per stream foot.   The second project for us was the Plum Creek-Martin easement. This project is south of Plum City along Highway U. The goals of this project were to increase and protect the amount of instream habitat available to trout and thereby increase the number of trout within the project area and increase fishing access and fishability for anglers. Total project length was 2,680 feet of both banks and 911 feet of one bank. We installed 77 root wads, 5 rock V weirs, 1 double ERO, 6 spawning riffles, 3 backwater refuge, 10 mid-stream boulder cluster, 1 island. Total cost was $95,483 or $15.22 per foot. We also installed a new parking lot along HWY U for anglers to be able to park in a safe spot while fishing.   Our final habitat project was on the Kinni-Moody easement which is upstream from East Division Street (HWY M) This project is a highly visible and very accessible project due to the location right in the town of River Falls. Access for fishing is from Hwy M bridge. We started August 26th and ended September 24th. This was a very tight location with my crew only working on one side. We used a lot of rock to protect the high bank next to the house. This bank was steeper than we would have liked but were limited on what we could do. There are still a lot of nice Cottonwoods, Bur Oaks and Black Walnuts on site which will make this a very nice-looking project soon. On the upper section of this site, we just added rock to the inside of the bank because the stream was overly wide, and this allowed us to save a lot of nice Black Walnut trees. We spent a lot of time in the track truck making the long hauls but were able to save the trees. We completed 2,700 feet of streambank protection and installed 28 root wads, 1 log spur, 4 spawning riffles, 6 deep pools for overwintering habitat, 5 rock deflectors. Total streambank rocked was 2,685 feet. Total rock used was 4,331 tons or 1.6 tons per foot.  Total cost was $151,000 or $56 per foot. Total stream length for 2024 was 8,786 feet (1.66 miles) for a cost of $412,408.   We were able to do some upland work on South Fork Kinni Fee Title Property. Correct size rock for making ERO’s were delivered to the site this winter, at a cost of $8,200 which KIAP paid for. (Thank You!)  4 Control spraying was applied in the fall to help eliminate unwanted woody vegetation. The total cost to spray the site was $8,054. Pheasant Forever paid $5,000 for the spraying and Kiap paid the remaining balance. Kiap donated $5,000 for equipment use so Josh and Nick spent 68 excavator hours in October and November removing large trees that were too large to spray. Total cost for equipment of was $11,818.57 with $6,818.57 coming from Trout Stamp funds.   Our 2025 field season will consist of:   Wilson Creek-Manwarren project Wilson Creek is in Dunn County and just north of Knapp. This is a NRCS partnering project to take an existing ditched section of the North Branch of Wilson Creek and put it back to somewhat the original channel. We were able to work a couple days in October to remove trees and knock down reed canary grass in hopes the site will freeze better. This site is very wet so we wanted to be able to try and work while the ground was frozen. We were able to create the new channel and fill in the old ditch section with the fill from the new channel. This summer, we will add habitat features such as root wads and double wing deflectors. We will do this project during a dry spell this summer and it should take us about a month and a half to finish everything we need to complete.   Plum Creek-Von Holtum 2025 This site is in Pierce County south of Plum City on the upper Von Holtum easement. This project will take place upstream of our project last year and the project consist of 4,400 feet of stream length to be completed. The crew removed trees this winter and hauled 7,500 tons of shot rock at a cost of $8.95/ton for a total cost of $67,125. This will be our first project of the year starting sometime the first week of May. It should take us about 2 months to complete.   South Fork Kinni ERO building/ 1 week of Feconn work It was recommended to burn the South Fork of the Kinni property this spring for best management practices on reducing woody vegetation but not having that as a viable option for many reasons, WDNR will borrow a state skid steer with a Feconn head attachment and spend a week of mowing. The Feconn is like a large brush hog that will mulch all vegetation flush with the ground. Any resprout of woody vegetation will be sprayed by 4-Control in the fall. This should give us the advantage of getting the woody vegetation under control.   North Branch Wilson Creek Stoll Easement If time allows this summer, we will start another project on the North Branch of Wilson Creek. This site is an old pasture and is being overtaken by reed canary and tag alders. This section is 1,800 feet of stream length, have good access and help take angler pressure from Wilson and Gilbert creeks. This will be a more typical project with rocking the banks and adding instream habitat for all size structures for trout.

Skips Loose Threads: My Spinning Rods for Trout Skip’s Loose Threads, Layton James Boo! Hiss! Spinning rods for trout? Where’s your flyrod? Let me explain. Over the years, I have fished for trout in places where a flyrod is not the “tool of choice.” My first spinning rod was a 3.1oz number by Shakespeare, 6 ½ feet long, 2-piece, with those white spiral wrapping marks called the Howald process. The catalog called it a “Sporty.” It was part of a pair of light rods, the other being a 6 ½ foot flyrod that weighed only 2.5oz. I still have that one. I had asked for the pair of rods for my 16th birthday, and my dad came up with the spinning rod. I bought the flyrod later with my own money. With that spinning rod, my boyhood friend Billy White and I caught our first Rainbow trout in a park lake that had been stocked the week before. It also was used for trout in the brook trout streams of New Hampshire, where my former wife’s family lived. It acounted for plenty of fish from the White Mountains streams, particularly the South Branch of the Pemigewassett River. All those fish went for a Number 0 Mepps Aglia spinner with no feathers. The same combination fooled trout in the Big Sur River south of San Francisco. That rod was replaced later by a Fenwick FS74 in the mid ’80’s. I used to play the harpsichord at a festival in Petoskey, Michigan, for several Summers. That’s on the East side of Lake Michigan, and I needed a rod that would cast far out into the lake to fool the trout. That one was an 8’ 3” two-handed rod that could heave a ¾ oz Little Cleo from here to eternity, it seemed. That rod was just fine for the big browns that were cruising the waters around Ephraim, WI in the Fall. But I found that when Linda and I went up to the North Shore, I needed an even bigger rod for Lake Superior. That was an 8’ 6” two-hander that threw a 1 oz Little Cleo. All of these rods were equipped with Mitchell reels: a 308 for the lightest, a 300 for the middle one, and a 306 for the biggest. Now don’t get me wrong. To my left, as I sit at my desk, is a Sage 389 fly rod, the original 2-piece version, and a LRH Lightweight Hardy reel loaded with a 3-weight line is within reach. Maybe I’ll request that that rod be added to my casket. Or is that a little too Egyption a request? That sounds like something a Pharaoh would do.

Views From My Side of the Vise: The Thin Tim by Paul Johnson To put this story in the right context, you need to know that I am writing this on an April afternoon sitting in the comfort of my basement fly tying room. I am sitting in my comfortable chair surrounded by my tying materials, photos and other fishing memorabilia. I guess I have had two lives in my lifetime. For most of my life, I was a contributing member of society. In the past couple years, I have become a full time fly fishing bum. I have learned a great deal from both of my lives. I guess I would not be able to enjoy my current life as a bum without my previous life? There has been one constant from my professional / public life and my fly fishing bum life and that is that the best ideas I have ever had were borrowed from someone else. Maybe that is kind of true about all ideas? My newest good idea is a fly that I call the Thin Tim. I borrowed the idea from Walter Wiese of Yellowstone Country Fly Fishing. He calls his fly the Triple Wing BWO. Walter borrowed the idea from Charlie Craven’s Timmy Fly. I am not sure where Charlie came up with the idea. Maybe he borrowed it from someone else as well. This is one of those flies that just seemed to catch my eye when I first watched the video of Walter tying it. I made some slight modifications to the pattern when I started tying them up this spring. I have had the opportunity to fish this fly and I am happy to report to you that the fly seems to catch a trout’s eye just like it did mine. I have been tying the fly primarily on a size 16 emerger hook. You could easily tie it down to size 18 or 20. The fly does ride a little lower in the water so it can be a little challenging to see if you are fishing it in broken water. Hook: Size 16 emerger hook Thread: Olive 70 denier UTC Tail: Mayfly Brown Improved MIcro Zelon Thorax: BWO Superfine Dubbing Wing / Post: Silver Congo Hair Just one helpful tidbit for tying this fly and that is to save yourself extra room between the wing and the hook eye. It is very easy to crowd the eye. I found out the hard way! As always, if you have any questions / comments / suggestions, please feel free to reach out to me. Paul Johnson  Waconia, Minnesota  Paulwaconia@gmail.com  952-334-4688  Click HERE to watch Paul tie the Thin Tim on his YouTube Channel

Upcoming Events: 1. Chapter Meeting, Tuesday, May 6th. Dinner at 6:00 pm, meeting starts at 7:00 pm. Juniors Restaurant and Tap House, River Falls Wi. Presentations by Kasey Yallaly and Nate Anderson of the Wisconsin DNR. 2. STREAM GIRLS, May 17th, 9:00 am. Ellsworth Rod and Gun Club. 3. BIC/ TIC. Volunteers are still needed for each. Contact rainbowbarry@kiaptuwish.org if you want to participate. To view the volunteer schedule click HERE. 4. Fly Fishing Clinic, Saturday June 7th, 2:00-9:00 pm. If interested in helping with this event, please contact board member, Matt Janquart directly to share availability and volunteer interest. mattjanquart@kiaptuwish.org

Rip Rap – Mar 2025

by Ed Constantini | Mar 3, 2025 | Latest News, Rip Rap

The Drift

As spring approaches, I hope all of you fly tyers and fly buyers have filled your fly boxes with your confidence patterns and maybe some unfamiliar ones as well that  perhaps popped up during a cold winter night when you decided to check out YouTube’s numerous fly-tying channels.   As of this writing, the Kinni at River Falls is running at 114 ft3/s with minimal turbidity, and the Rush is running at near normal levels and is slightly off color. Brian at Lund’s Fly Shop reports that midge larva (emergers and dries), winter stone flies (nymphs and dries), small nymphs and scuds, and buggers and small leech patterns are good options to try. My main source tells me that the fish seem to be congregated in the deeper pools and the slower water just off the main flow.   I want to thank everyone who continues to volunteer for the buckthorn and box elder removal downstream of the Steeple Drive bridge on the Kinni. Randy is hoping to clear this spot through the end of March.   Our fundraising efforts for the auction were very successful. Thanks to all the auction donors for their art, vacation stays, guided trips, gift cards, gear, swag and other fun stuff. The net income for the online auction is $10,560, the 3×100 chance board is $4,820, our Hap Lutter Memorial Appeal as of February is $8,290, and a donation from  Tattersall of $3,000 gives us a total is $26,670. WOW!!! I want to give a special thanks to the auction committee members: Greg Olson, Ken & Missie Hanson, Michele Bevis, Jeff Himes, Tom Schnadt, Ben Belt and Matt Janquart. The auction requires extensive planning and I am amazed how it all comes together and runs so smoothly. Kudos to you all! Winners of the 3×100 Chance Drawing: Sage rod (#19) Gary Horvath, Debra Kovats Cunningham painting (#68)  Norling bamboo rod (#47) Ron Kuehn. Congratulations to the winners and thank you to everyone who bought a ticket(s) for a chance on one of the items.   Recently, I met with Kasey Yallaly (WDNR) and Amanda Little, a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Stout, to discuss the chapter’s sponsorship of a DNR internship program for students enrolled in Environmental Sciences at the University. A formal agreement between the DNR and Stout is currently being processed to create a DNR gift fund that will provide funding for a summer intern to help Kasey and her team with the many fisheries projects scheduled for this upcoming season. Kiap-Tu-Wish will  be the donor source to the DNR fund. At the February board meeting,  a motion was made and approved to fund up to $6,000 / year for a 3-year period. Any additional donations to the program from outside sources, grants etc., will be used to offset the direct cost to the chapter.   Maintenance Committee Items: Rock for the South Fork of the Kinni project has been delivered at a cost $6,407, Needs for Plum Creek for grass seed/mulch: $6,000 A proposed mowing budget came in too high. The committee will review the proposal with the WDNR in order to revise the projected mowing costs. Kiap-TU-Wish board members who are up for re-election: Gary Horvath, Randy Arnold, Rainbow Barry, and Ben Belt. Please take some time and read their Bio’s below. Elections will take place at the chapter meeting on April 1st.  Happy Spring, Suzanne

Board Nominees

Randy Arnold Board Member / Volunteer Coordinator Randy was raised in Monticello, Minnesota, three blocks away from the Mississippi River. He usurped his father’s fly rod at 10 years old to pursue panfish in any of the lakes he could reach via bicycle.While working in technical theater in the Twin Cities, a coworker related stories of fly fishing in Montana; soon the two of them were exploring trout fishing options in the metro area. A visit to a local south Minneapolis fly shop steered them to western Wisconsin where Randy saw the chapter’s positive impact on the streams in and around River Falls. He joined the chapter and his now the passionate leader of the Kiap-TU-Wish volunteer workday crew. He enjoys fishing, but also enjoys the time spent working on stream restoration efforts.

Ben Belt       Active TU member since 2016. Live on a small farmette in Arkansaw, WI with my wife Valerie and our three sons, Huxley (8), Sawyer (6), and Moby (5). I try not to give them all fly rods at the same time in the same boat. My passions include letting the boys be boys, guiding them in the right direction (fishing of course), and on occasion, finding time to soak a fly with a friend or two. Typically I focus on trout, musky, and bass. But very much opportunistic when a bite is on no matter the species. Time on the bench is limited but sometimes a necessity. I’m looking forward to meeting you all and encouraging our youth to participate and finding good mentors to keep the chapter and sport going strong. Thank you for your continued support within the chapter.

Rainbow Barry  Board Member / Education Coordinator    I initially learned to love water in the lake country of Oneida and Vilas County, Wisconsin.  But after moving to River Falls in 2006, I became enamored with the Kinnickinnic and its tributaries.  My husband persuaded me to stop looking under rocks and try fly fishing a few years back.  Finding new pockets of trout in headwater streams is a wonderful addition to my natural wanderlust. Environmental education has driven my vocational pursuits. I have led ecological restoration parties at the UW-Madison Arboretum and studied aquatic ecology on the front range of the Colorado Rockies.  More recently, I ran a small, organic CSA farm and I am now a Children’s House (Kindergarten) teacher at the River Falls Public Montessori Elementary.  As an employee with the River Falls School District, I hope to expand on opportunities to educate and engage youth in our outstanding coldwater resource, especially children who would not otherwise have access to these experiences.  I am also an enthusiastic participant in Kiap TU Wish’s on-stream work including restoration work days and water monitoring with the Wise H2O app.  Looking forward to meeting and working alongside more of our dedicated and knowledgeable chapter members!

Gary Horvath Treasurer Gary spent his most memorable times as a kid in the outdoors with his father wading wet as they fished the Jump, Yellow and Fischer Rivers near his grandmothers’ farm in Taylor County. He attended the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point where he received a B.S. in Water Resources/Chemistry. He was introduced to trout fishing in the streams of the central sands west of Point.He worked on his first stream improvement on the Little Plover River, which is currently ravaged by groundwater withdrawals. In 1985, he took a job as a chemist at the Minnesota Department of Agriculture analyzing groundwater for pesticide residues. Gary moved to River Falls and has been active with the chapter since 1989 serving in all officer positions including 5 years as President.

Stream Highlight: Isabelle Creek

by Kasey Yallaly The Baldwin area DNR fisheries crew completed a watershed survey of the Isabelle Creek watershed in 2023. Watershed surveys are basically a comprehensive look at the fishery within the entire watershed and valuable information can be gained from these types of surveys including interactions between the mainstem of Isabelle Creek and its tributaries, areas of importance for natural reproduction, trout species composition throughout the watershed and size structure and densities of trout and non-game species. I have received many inquiries about Isabelle Creek after the large fish kill occurred in 2022 so hopefully this article will give folks a good update on how the stream is recovering. Isabelle Creek is little gem of a stream with its watershed sandwiched in between the Trimbelle and Rush River watersheds. The stream flows south from Ellsworth and enters Lake Pepin in the town of Bay City, WI. Most of the stream features high gradient limestone riffles and pools with the stream flowing through a picturesque valley like its neighboring streams in Pierce County. Access to the stream is mostly limited to bridge crossings, of which there are many, other than 2 DNR easements. The northernmost easement on Isabelle is located upstream of the Esdaile town park at the intersections of CTH EE and 620th Street. This easement is only on the east side of the stream from the town park up for a few hundred yards at which point it becomes easement on both banks. There is some nice water and trout within this reach of stream. The lowermost easement is located just outside of Bay City, and it can be accessed from STH 35. There is a distance between the highway and the easement that is not public access on the banks. Otherwise, there are many stream crossings off 620th Street and at CTH EE that provide great access. During the survey, brown trout were found at all stations that were sampled one year post fish kill. The 2 upstream-most stations were located within the area directly impacted by the fish kill and brown trout were found in low densities within this area, but evidence of limited natural reproduction was found. The uppermost station at CTH V revealed mostly yearling brown trout that were likely the result of the restoration stocking that occurred in the fall of 2022 after the kill. The fish kill did not impact the area downstream of the 4th  bridge crossing (as you are moving downstream or south) off 620th Street and this was apparent in our surveys based on the status of the trout population. Brown trout densities within this reach of stream were high and fish were found up to 18 inches and natural reproduction was strong. Our trend site, which is located along CTH EE downstream of Esdaile, has documented a steady increase in brown trout densities for almost a decade. Stocking was also previously needed to supplement the fishery in the Class II section, but stocking ceased in 2018 in order to evaluate the fishery. Because of this increase in densities and natural reproduction within the mid and lower reaches of the stream, the current Class II portion of stream will be reclassified to Class I and the Current Class III section will become Class II during the next reclassification cycle. We will continue to monitor the recovery of the fishery within the impacted area in 2025 but barring no future fish kills, the fishery should continue to recover nicely. See you on the stream!

Another Leader

By Mike Alwin There are billions and billions of trout fly patterns out there. You can walk into any fly shop on this continent and buy an Adams. And if you look long enough, you’ll probably find a pattern you’ve never heard of and never seen before. Buy one, it might work. If it doesn’t, there’s always that Adams to fall back on. If an Adams will work, why is there such a dizzying array of patterns? Now the cynic will tell you that if you publish a magazine article about the next big deal fly, you’ll make a few bucks on the article and gain yourself a slice of fame, but there’s more to it than that.   There are two other factors involved. One is the inherent creativity of our species, and the other is our perceived need for an improvement. Bob Mitchell once said, “The reason you tie your own flies is because that way you get exactly what you want.” Tying your own flies is one of the adjustments you make to further your success on the trout stream. If you’re fishing a dry fly, there are two adjustments you can make: change flies and change the tippet. If you’re fishing nymphs there are three adjustments you can make: change flies, add or subtract weight, raise or lower the strike indicator.    When I started trout fishing in the early 70’s, short of money, I bought one leader and a spool of tippet material. How do you think that worked out? Like everyone else I gradually added longer leaders and more spools of tippet material, trying to adjust. I also spent a lot of time at the kitchen table practicing knot tying. That skill came in handy when I bought a copy of JOE HUMPHREY’S TROUT TACTICS and became semi-obsessed with his leader formulas. He had leaders for dry flies, nymphs, streamers and wet flies, all of which were designed for various conditions. So, I bought a leader wallet and filled it with leaders for the specific situations I envisioned for myself. They all worked, but I got tired of retying the dry fly leaders. Now most people don’t carry around a dozen leaders like that. Most people buy a leader and shorten or lengthen it to fit the situation. One of my friends, nameless, said I was crazy; I prefer to think of myself as thoughtfully engaged.    Tying your own leaders is one more adjustment you can make to further your success, but you don’t have to carry a leader wallet to make these adjustments. Several years ago, Gary Borger published an article about his latest leader design he called the Uni-Body Leader. I honestly don’t know why it took me a decade to screw around with it but two years ago I succumbed. Warning: it is unorthodox. Here is the formula. 48” — .020”     12” — .013”     48” — .010”  I made only two modifications to this formula. I substituted 20 lb Amnesia for the butt section and I attached a tippet ring at the end of the .010” material. You can tie the entire Uni-Body with whatever nylon you like; I used the amnesia because I like its visibility. The tippet ring allows you to modify the tippet without chopping up the Uni-Body. To fish a nymph or streamer you can add just a foot or so of tippet material of the appropriate diameter. To fish a dry fly or swing a wet fly you can add a couple feet of your favorite tippet material. You might be bewildered like I was at the radical nature of this design, but it turns over well and serves almost any function you can imagine.

Tying and Fishing the Goddard Caddis

by Jonathan Jacobs  Until recently I had not much employed the dry/dropper technique. Rigging these setups is challenging and fishing them effectively is a skill I’ve been slow to develop.  There are so many intriguing caddis emerger patterns out there, however, that it seemed prudent to figure out some way to use them. Trailing an emerger from twelve to eighteen inches behind a high-floating dry seemed worth a shot. The choice of an emergent pupa was easy; I wanted to try Charlie Craven’s Caddistrophic Caddis Pupa.  Choosing the dry proved tougher. I settled on the Goddard caddis. It’s both buoyant and visible. I like to fish with flies I’ve tied, so I set about learning to tie it. The process proved daunting.  I watched two YouTube videos, one by Tim Flagler and one by Charlie Craven., which proved invaluable and I strongly encourage you to watch both. Mr. Flagler produces fine instructional videos, but overall, I found Mr. Craven’s more helpful. Here are the tying instructions that I worked up for my own reference after gleaning all I could from the videos and tying several flies, followed by some additional musing:   ·       Hook: 3769 Tiemco, size 14 (Heavy wire nymph hook used to withstand         thread pressure)  ·       Thread: Semperfli Nano Silk, 50D black body, 8/0 Uni olive for dubbing and to         finish  the fly  ·       Body:  Select cow elk from Blue Ribbon Flies  ·       Hackle:  Brown, preferably slightly undersized  ·       Dubbing: Ice Dub olive brown  Start the Nano Silk two eye lengths back of the hook eye. Wrap to above the hook barb, forward to the starting point and back to the hook barb. Apply a very small amount of cyanoacrylate glue where the thread is hanging.  Bind down a cleaned, stacked and trimmed (hair tips removed bundle of cow elk with the tip ends forward.  Hold the hair until glue sets. Carefully wind the thread forward through individual hairs. This will cause the hair to stand up. Center the working thread over the uncovered portion of the base thread. Use a half hitch tool to push the leading edge of the hair vertically and take a few wraps of thread at that point. Clean, stack and trim another bundle of elk hair. Center the thread on the bundle and use a spinning technique. Once the hair is secure, take a few half hitches while using a half hitch tool to keep hair out of the way. Cut the tying thread. Remove the hook from the vise and while holding the fly by the hook eye with pliers, briefly run it through the steam jet from a tea kettle. This will cause the hair to “spring,” making it easier to trim. Go through the arduous process of trimming the elk hair with a fresh double edged razor blade. Grasp the fly between thumb and finger to trim the tail to length, using the arc of the thumb as a guide. Place the hook back in the vise and start the Uni thread. Tie in a hackle with the quill stripped back about a quarter inch. Dub the head, finishing with the thread at the hook eye. The hackle should be dull side forward. Take a turn or two of hackle through the tip of the body and then make tight turns through the dubbing, capture the hackle and tie off. The heavy-gauge hook, the Nano Silk and the cow elk are keys to tying this fly successfully.  Standard dry fly hooks bend under the pressure required to properly seat the hair. The Nano Silk thread is very fine which, as Mr. Craven points out (He uses 30 denier thread while I chose 50 denier), is easier to guide through the hair.  I tried using Primo Deer as Mr. Flagler suggested. It’s great for flies like the X-Caddis, but the strip I have had hair that seemed too fine for this application.  You’ll find that determining how much hair to use is literally a matter of cut and try.  If you use too little, the fly will be sparse and not sufficiently buoyant. If you use too much, you will encounter difficulty in locking down the spun portion of the body and are likely to cut through thread when trimming the fly.  A brand-new double-edged razor blade will get you through a few flies, but be prepared to replace it.  Lastly, do not add antennae, as is often suggested. It’s painful to do correctly and the stiff fibers inhibit hooking fish.   I fish this dry/dropper upstream in riffles to beneficial effect and have so far found the two flies equally effective. To date I have tied the tippet material for the pupa to the hook bend. That has worked well, but I am going to try tying the Goddard caddis to the main tippet while leaving a very long tag end on the knot, to which I will tie the pupa. That may produce a more natural looking drift for the dry fly.  Editors Note: If you want to learn more about caddis, Jonathan has an excellent video on his YouTube channel where he explains the life-cycle of the caddis and shows caddis fly patterns that imitate each stage of their cycle. I encourage you to check it out at the link below. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in3Lm6wSZPY

Views From My Side of the Vise:

By Paul Johnson If you do an internet search for Parachute Blue-Wing Olive (BWO) dry flies you will find pages upon pages of results. It is the same on YouTube. I am not sure if there is a fly pattern out there with more variations. A couple of these variations have earned a permanent place in my Driftless fly boxes. My main go-to baetis dry flies are the BWO Special (from a previous column), the Purple Haze Special (for a future column) and the subject of this article, the Parachute BWO. I guess the best way to describe my Parachute BWO creation process might be to take a bunch of the many available BWO patterns, toss them into a blender and see what comes out. Some of the features of this fly are the same as most others, but not all of them. Here are the components that I put together to make this fly.  1. I like to use an emerger-style hook in size 16 to 20. The emerger hook gives the fly a nice profile, leaning towards a Klinkhammer look. 2. On this fly, I prefer to use Mayfly Brown Zelon for the tail, aka the shuck. This material is the perfect color with just enough sparkle or sheen. 3. For the abdomen I use a stretchy floss. For the most part, I have been using Bug Legs from Fly Tyers Dungeon. However, there are lots of similar products available such as Span Flex that work just as well. I like this stretchy floss because it gives the abdomen a subtle segmented look like you would get with biots or quills, but is much easier to work with. 4. Pretty much any hydrophobic material works great for the parachute post. I like to use white, but you can use whatever color works best for you, i.e., is easiest to see on the water.  5. The thorax uses just a touch of BWO Superfine Dubbing to clean up around the parachute post. 6. The hackle collar is medium dun rooster hackle. I will oversize the hackle (measures larger on my hackle gauge than the hook size) and make 5 or 6 wraps of it. The extra turns of hackle really help to float this fly.During our local spring and fall baetis hatches I will typically start with my BWO Special. However, in faster water or poor light conditions I will switch to the Parachute BWO to make it a little easier for me to see the fly on the water.  Hook: Emerger hook, size 16 to 20  Thread: 14/0 Olive  Shuck: Mayfly Brown Improved Zelon  Abdomen: Olive Bug LegsParachute Post: Congo Hair  Thorax: BWO Superfine Dubbing  Collar: Medium Dun Rooster Hackle  Give this pattern a try this spring and let me know what you think! If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me. Paul Johnson  Waconia, Minnesota  Paulwaconia@gmail.com  Watch Paul tie this pattern on his YouTube Channel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3nXGyLRrE0

A Band Aid Approach

By Jonathan Jacobs   The paragraph below, with light editing, accompanied the photos in a post I made on social media.  Judging by the reactions it generated there, folks found it interesting.  The editor of RipRap thought its readers might enjoy it and asked me to send it along for publication. Writing it brought back fond memories for me but when I re-read it, I thought people might find it either interesting or incongruent that an Iowa farm kid somehow connected with fly tying and fly fishing or might wonder how Minnesota fit into the picture. The Iowa/Minnesota component is easy to explain: When I was young my family lived on a farm deep in the Corn Belt, miles from any kind of fishable water, but we rented a cabin for a week on a little lake in central Minnesota in late summer for several years before my parents sold the farm and bought a classic lakeside tavern/boat rental/cabin rental operation there. That’s where I did my fishing, but the roots of my interest in fly fishing are more complicated and are something I’ve had to think about. For one thing, in my time on the farm I had unfettered access to the outdoors before large scale, full-on industrial agriculture took over. There was a little creek on the property that ran through a sliver of abandoned pasture, low ground that hadn’t been fitted with drainage tile. There were only minnows in the creek, but interesting flora and fauna abounded and being “out there” inculcated in me an intense interest in the natural world. I think that being outdoors was the thing that my father liked best about farming, too.   My father had a brother, my Uncle Leonard, who with his wife, my treasured Aunt Luella, farmed just a few miles from my family and we spent a great deal of time with them. Like my father and me, Uncle Leonard loved to read. He subscribed to several magazines, including the old-fashioned “hook and bullet” magazines like Sports Afield, and some general interest magazines, too, and I had access to them.I read every word of those magazines, and I found articles about trout fishing in the outdoor magazines mesmerizing. Even the mass-market magazines occasionally had articles that would get me dreaming.  One of them, either Life or Look – I don’t know which – did multi-page pieces complete with glorious color photographs on trout fishing in the Catskills and on fly fishing for Atlantic salmon. One of those articles included a photograph of a Silver Doctor, an old-fashioned showy wet fly, and I recall thinking that someday I would tie my own Silver Doctor and use it to catch a fish. That hasn’t happened yet, but I continue to hang on to the dream.             Another member of the group recently posted a picture of their first fly tying vise. Here’s mine. It was part of a portable kit my father made for me at least sixty-five years ago after I saw an article about it in Boys’ Life magazine. It required a hardwood dowel, which we didn’t have out on the farm in Iowa where we lived at the time, so Dad cut the handle off one of my mother’s wooden cooking spoons, which pleased her not at all. To assemble the kit, you placed the short dowel, which was center drilled, into the band-aid tin in the appropriate position and passed a nail (The nail is long gone, the screw is a modern replacement) through the hole. You then placed the longer section of dowel, the one with the slot cut in it, atop that. The longer dowel had a slot cut down it and a screw and wing nut through it. Tightening the wing nut closed the “jaws.” It actually held moderate-sized hooks pretty well. Hooks came from the hardware store and materials were things I mostly scavenged with some of them coming from my mother’s sewing supplies.  Along with the vise components, the hooks and materials were stored in the Band Aid tin.  I tied some flies that, while crude, caught sunfish in a little lake in Minnesota. That little kit set me on quite a path.

Shakey Beeley

Shakey Beeley by Ken Hanson The Shakey Beeley was named after a Yellowstone National Park ranger that was known to fish the Madison in the park. A detailed story of this pattern can be found in “Fly Patterns of Yellowstone volume two” by Craig Matthews and John Juracek of Blue Ribbon Flies in West Yellowstone, MT.  The pattern as we know it today was created by Blue Ribbon guide Nick Nicklas. Nick tied the fly on a #12 DaiRiki 280 a curved hopper hook. A TMC 2312 or equivalent will work fine.  Like a lot of western flies I fish with, I’ve found the Shakey Beeley to work extremely well in our local waters. With the contrasting colors and flash, brook trout go nuts for it. I also tie it in purple.  Hook DaiRiki 280 hopper or TMC 2312 #12 Thread: Brown Tail: Dyed Mallard and Yellow Krystal Flash Body: Yellow Haretron or Awesome Possum  Rib: Brown Spandex Thorax: Orange Ostrich Herl Hackle: Hungarian Partridge and Yellow Krystal Flash A couple tricks: 1. When tying in the Krystal Flash for the tail, leave some facing forward to be used later to use as flash just behind the hackle. 2. Before tying in the partridge soft  hackle, stroke the forward facing Krystal Flash back and wrap a few turns of thread surrounding the hook with flash. 3. Tie the partridge feather in at the stem and utilize some of the webby barbules to add a little bulk. This is not a sparse fly. You can see Nick Nicklas tie this fly HERE. Tim Flagler does another nice version HERE.

Upcoming Events:

Upcoming Events: 1: Chapter Meeting, Tuesday, March 4th (weather permitting). Dinner at 6:00 pm, Dinner at 7:pm. Juniors Restaurant and Tap House, River Falls Wi. Presentation by Paul Jonas “What’s the deal with aquatic organism passage?” 2: Great Waters Fly Fishing Expo, March 21-23, Hamline University, Saint Paul Minnesota 3: Chapter Meeting, Tuesday, April 1. Dinner at 6:00 pm, Dinner at 7:pm. Juniors Restaurant and Tap House, River Falls Wi. Annual Business Meeting and selection of Board Members.  4:  Chapter Meeting, Tuesday, May 6th. Dinner at 6:00 pm, Dinner at 7:pm. Juniors Restaurant and Tap House, River Falls Wi. Presentation by Kasey Yallaly and Nate Anderson of the Wisconsin DNR

Rip Rap – Jan 2025

by Ed Constantini | Jan 4, 2025 | Latest News, Rip Rap

The Drift:

Now that we are in “tying season,” if you haven’t already, given John Gierach’s article in the latest issue of TROUT magazine, “A Quaint and Harmless Hobby”, a look. John writes when he first started to tie flies “The way I saw it, dabblers, dilettantes and the idle rich bought their flies over the counter, while serious and self-reliant fly fishers tied their own, and like all novices, I wanted to be one of the cool kids.”

As the year 2024 ends, I hope everyone has had a wonderful time celebrating the holiday season with family and friends or however you chose to celebrate during this time. Now that winter is setting in, we can take some solace in the fact that the winter catch and release trout season will begin on January 4th . My recent review of the long-range weather forecast, however, tells me that the first two weeks of the month are going to be bitterly cold so you hearty souls might have to exercise a bit of patience before wetting a line.

Firstly, I want to thank everyone for your volunteer hours and commitment to our goals and mission for stream and habitat restoration, stream monitoring and youth education programs. Following submission of the required Annual Activity Report to TU National, I received a call from Quentin Collins, Director of TU Volunteer Operations. Quentin relayed to me his thanks for all the great work our chapter has done over this past year. He commented that Kiap-TU-Wish bubbles to the top in many conversations at TU National.

Our Annual Holiday and Chapter Awards Banquet on December 3rd was a huge success and was attended by 70 members and spouses. Chris Silver provided entertainment for 2 hours and his music added much to the event and was enjoyed by all.  As a follow-up to the event we conducted a survey to get a sense of how the banquet was received by our members. The banquet committee has reviewed all survey responses, the majority of which were very positive. Any negative issues will be responded to during the planning of the 2025 banquet. I want to extend a special thank you to committee members Greg Olson, Mike Alwin, Matt Janquart, and Allison Jacobs.  

Thanks to some excellent writing and dedication by our chapter board members, the Kiap-TU-Wish Chapter was awarded an “Embrace A Stream (EAS)” grant from TU National in the amount of $7,500 for our stream restoration project on the South Fork Kinnickinnic River. We had the opportunity through this grant to raise additional funds and earn an added reward for our fundraising efforts. Our EAS Challenge campaign brought in $1,650 from our donors. TU National donated $1,250, for a grand total $10,400. Thanks to everyone.

Fund-raising efforts are currently in full swing with the Hap Lutter Memorial Fund. In late January/early February, we will be conducting an on-line auction coupled with a 3×100 chance offering that will feature a Norling 5wt bamboo rod, an original painting by Josh Cunningham, and a Sage fly rod. Ticket sales will start in January. Watch for an announcement kicking off these events.

Suzanne

Greenwood Elementary Volunteer Day

Kiap-tu-wish sends our thanks to those who helped cut brush and trees back in October and November to prep for our Greenwood Elementary 4th grade brush burn and, thanks to those volunteers who turned out on event day to supervise the burn and make sure that it went off without a hitch.

This marks the 5th year that we have partnered with Geenwood to provide them with a service learning opportunity for the kids. A big thanks to Greenwood teacher Steve Papp for his efforts to get this program up and running each year. The kids themselves exhibited their usual boundless energy as they picked up the brush and logs and moved them to one of three bonfires which we had going. Event volunteers pictured below are from left to right; John Skelton, myself, Tom Schnadt, Chipo Robinson, Pat Sexton, Mark Peerenboom, Tom Anderson, Trish Hannah, and Ron Reigle.  

Leaders and Nymphs

By Mike Alwin

Many of you are probably already looking forward to the early trout fishing season in Wisconsin. Some of you will be out on the first Saturday of January no matter the cold temperatures. Others of you will prudently wait for a day when the temperatures are moderate and the chill wind from the north is not a factor. Some of you will be happy to be out regardless of your anticipated success while a few of you will harbor visions of catching a significant fish on a tiny midge imitation or perhaps a Tiny Black Stonefly.

Let’s start with the premise that you dearly love dry fly fishing. You crave the artful presentation and the sight of a trout rising to your crafty floating fraud. But at this time of year if you catch anything at all it’s likely to be tiddlers. Reluctantly, you see the wisdom of switching to a nymph, after all it’s estimated that 90% of a trout’s meal ticket is subsurface fare. To save time you decide to continue fishing with the same leader, most likely a 9’ 5X with 20” of tippet attached, switching out the dry fly for a nymph and adding a strike indicator. That way, once a hatch beckons, you’ll only need to switch flies and remove the strike indicator to get back in the game. But after an hour or so of fruitless casting your enthusiasm wanes so you reel up and head for home.

While it’s possible to make that rig work for nymph fishing, there are other, better choices. The simplest method (Figure 1), is a 7&1/2’ 4X leader to which you add 20” of 5X tippet material. Tie on a nymph, any nymph, add split shot above the tippet knot and the strike indicator about half way up the leader. The obvious advantage of this rig is that the split shot can’t migrate past the knot. Oh, since it’s cold, straighten the leader before throwing your nymph in the water. Fish a deeper riffle or a run and the head of the pool. There might be trout feeding or holding in the deeper lies in the riffle, and if invertebrates are dislodged from the riffle trout might hold near the head of the pool to grab the aforementioned invertebrates.

Figure. 1



Here’s a modification that adds versatility to this basic rig (Figure 2). Start with the same 7&1/2’ 4X leader. About six or seven inches up from the end of the tippet, tie on your 20” of 4X or 5X tippet using a double overhand (surgeon’s) knot. When done correctly you should have a short tag, a stub, and the tippet. Trim the stub. The short tag is called the dropper and the tippet end is called the point. Tie a nymph on the dropper and another on the point. Place your shot above the knot and the indicator about half way up the leader. The advantages of this rig are that you can use smaller shot, the shot can’t migrate past the knot and you’ve doubled your chances by using two flies. The glaring disadvantage is that you are almost guaranteed to suffer increased tangles caused by these two flies. Cast smoothly, widen your loop and strike gently.

Figure. 2

If you can appreciate the efficacy of using two flies, this next rig is for you (Figure 3). Start with the same 7&1/2’ leader. Thread a nymph onto the tippet, then add your tippet material and another nymph. You can use split shot with this rig but it works better without it. Instead, if you thread a heavily weighted nymph onto the leader before adding tippet and another nymph, you can eschew the split shot. Put the strike indicator in the customary position. You’ll still have to be careful with your cast, your loop and your hook set. But, you’re now fishing two nymphs doubling your chances and doing so with fewer tangles. Isn’t that what you wanted?

Figure. 3

Open Tying at the Shop 

By Jonathan Jacobs 

In my forty-plus years as a fly angler, I have frequented three different fly shops in eight distinct locations in seven different buildings under the ownership of five different people. In that time, I’ve gone from neophyte to experienced angler to geezer. I tell you this to establish my bona fides as a “shop rat” (The term doesn’t mean “employee;” a less sentimental term might be “hanger on”). Every one of those shops helped me immeasurably along the way. My first shop was Tom Helgeson’s Bright Waters. There I took casting lessons, an aquatic entomology class and an on-the-stream flyfishing for trout class. Tom brought in guest speakers who exposed me to facets of the sport previously unknown to me. I spent so much time at Bob Mitchell’s Fly Shop that I was more of a fixture than a regular. I learned a great deal there, too, but more importantly, I treasure to this day close the friendships with wildly disparate personality types that blossomed there. 

My current home away from home is Lund’s Fly Shop. Housed in a soulful multi-story brick building dating back to 1881 on Main Street in River Falls, WI, this emporium nails the image of what a fly shop ought to look like. Mounts of tarpon, billfish and an incongruous elk gracing the high interior walls stand watch over an extensive array of waders, clothing, tackle, fly tying materials, accessories, and fly bins, with all of that seeming to float over the vintage hardwood floor.  Staffed by friendly and knowledgeable folks, it’s a place that warms the soul. 

One of the prominent features of the building is the mezzanine that overlooks the shop. There is angling art displayed on the walls. There are a few long tables up there that are ideal for group fly tying sessions. The shop hosts two of these sessions per month, one on a Saturday and another on a Tuesday. You can find the shop’s specific schedule at its website, https://www.lundsflyshop.com/.  I’ve attended two sessions thus far and have had a wonderful time at both.  At the first one, someone asked as soon as I’d sat down if I needed anything to drink.  I said, “No, thanks, I’m good.”  The response to that was, “Ice or neat?”  Sensing that further resistance was futile, I replied, “Uh, ice.”  A glass with ice and Irish whiskey appeared in front of me. I’m not saying this is a regular occurrence, but it looks like there’s a zeitgeist that suggests that you’re welcome to bring food and beverages to share. There’s some slight remnant boys’ club attitude, but it’s a welcoming place. I’ve seen a fellow who just stopped by to chat stay to help a boy of about ten who’d come with his non-tying father. The fellow stayed long enough to get the youngster through a couple of basic patterns that employed the basics of tying.   Another man helped a young woman wearing a Green Bay Packers stocking cap master the use of a whip finishing tool. I saw my friend Sarah, an accomplished tyer, tie her first two pike/muskie Bufords. A fellow two generations younger than me reached out to me to show me the elegant soft hackles he was tying. Even among all the experienced tyers, there’s something for everyone to learn. We often come to think of ourselves as trout fly tyers or warmwater tyers or whatever, but the thing is, there’s a whole spectrum of flies that cross borders or involve techniques that can be applied anywhere. In one night, I’ve seen tied, among other things: Steelhead intruder flies, billfish flies, jig streamers, soft hackles, midges, and a CK baitfish, which, with its die-cut synthetic tail and flashy trimmed body would have been heresy just a few years ago. 

Given the combination of camaraderie, bonhomie, the learning opportunities, you can’t go wrong. Of course, Lund’s is not the only fly shop in the area and you might be a regular at one of them or are looking for a reason to become one. Those shops likely have open tying sessions, too, ones that might provide you with as much fun as I’m having at Lund’s.  Be sure to look them up. Having a fly shop to call your home is an essential part of not being merely an informed angler, but a happy one.  

Editor’s Note: Open tying sessions are also available at Mendprovisions Fly Shop located in Saint Paul , Minnesota (mend provisions.com) and the Cabela’s store in Rogers (Link). 
Photo provided by Brian Smolinski

Views From My Side of the Vise:

By Paul Johnson

The Elk Hair Caddis (EHC) would have to be considered to be one of the most popular flies and can be found in just about every fly box. That is because it is so effective at catching fish. The fly was created in 1957 by Al Troth. At that time, Al was living and working in Pennsylvania and wanted a caddis dry fly to fish some of the broken water on his local trout stream. In the 1970s Al relocated to Montana and started guiding. The fly pattern was “discovered” at that time when Bud Lily’s Flyshop in West Yellowstone started to sell the fly.

As good as the EHC is at catching fish, it is somewhat surprising that it is such a simple fly. It really only has 3 materials: dubbing, hackle and elk hair. You could also add a wire rib if you want. Also somewhat surprising is that the EHC is a very easy and quick fly to tie. Well, until you start to tie them anyway. The biggest issue when tying this fly is that you have a big clump of elk hair that you need to keep on top of the hook. When you apply enough thread tension to keep the hair in place, that tension will want to pull the clump of hair around the far side of the hook shank. No amount of glue or head cement will hold that clump of hair in place, so don’t try that! Fortunately, your fly tying sensei (that’s me) is here to share his secret EHC tying tips. The number and length of the tips is an indication of how many EHCs I’ve tied (and screwed up). So here are the keys to attaining EHC perfection. After a few hundred repetitions this will all become second nature.

• 1. Use the smallest size thread you can make work (yes, it takes some experimentation to figure this out). My go-to thread is 8/0 Uni. I have found that the smaller thread actually helps me to get tighter thread wraps as described in Tip #3.
• 2. Take care when you are preparing the clump of elk hair to comb or pick out all of theunder fur. I also like to remove the really long and short ones so all the hair is about the same length before I stack it.
• 3. When I have the elk hair wing all set to tie in, I start with 2 loose thread wraps and then pull tight. I then add 4 or 5 additional thread wraps at that same tie-in point. Next, to keep the hair from spinning around the hook I lift about ¼ of the butt ends of the hair and get a tight thread wrap in that spot. I repeat this 3 more times before returning my thread to the original tie-in location. From there I will make a couple more tight thread wraps, lift up the butt ends and make several wraps of thread around the hook before I whip finish.
• 4. For the wing, I like to use cow elk hair. I have found it to be a little softer than bull elk.This allows me to get tighter wraps with my thread.
• 5. When tying hair wing flies during the winter, I keep a dryer sheet available that I will keep on the patch of hair to reduce some of the static.
• 6. One last tip. I like to undersize my hackle on this fly. For example, if I am tying a size 16 fly, I will size my hackle down to a size 18. I just think it looks better and allows the fly to float a little better.Hook: 1xl Dry Fly Hook, Size 14 to 20.
   
• Thread: 8/0 Uni
• Abdomen: Superfine dubbing
• Rib: Dry fly hackle
• Wing: Elk Hair

I hope that these tips will help you with your tying. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me.

Paul Johnson
Waconia, Minnesota
Paulwaconia@gmail.com

Watch Paul tie this pattern on his YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w84IAqAnMNE

The Picket Pin

by Ken Hanson

The Picket Pin is a pattern from the old west that gets its name from ground squirrels that were nicknamed “picket pins” by cowboys as they resembled the short stakes used to tie off horses. The original fly, developed by Jack Boeme, was tied with tail and body hair from these western ground squirrels. More modern recipes utilize fox squirrel and grey squirrel. 

I tied some Picket Pins to try out in the smaller streams in Yellowstone and later realized they were a great pattern for brook trout around home. It’s a wet fly that you can drift or strip just under the surface. You can swing it towards root wads and brushy areas and strip it back just in time to avoid trouble. It often draws a chase from aggressive brookies. It’s white squirrel tail wing provides a good contrast to the body and allows you to focus on the fly and watch for fish. The only trick is to stay calm enough for them to take the fly before you strike. 

• Hook: 2XL Nymph hook size 10 or 12
• Thread: Black
• Tail: Fox squirrel tail fibers
• Rib: Small copper wire
• Body: Peacock herl
• Hackle: Brown
• Head: More peacock herl

After wrapping the body, add and palmer the hackle back towards the tail and secure by wrapping the wire forward woolly bugger style. A good example of this is covered by Tim Flagler’s tightlinevideo on YouTube 

https://youtu.be/9VK5BXuYPec?si=O4Et6Grp3k26GvVu

Skip’s Loose Threads: A heretical utterance concerning dry fly hackle

by Layton “Skip” James

When I began fly tying at the age of eleven, there weren’t many fly tying books around. A book by J. Edson Leonard entitled Flies was available, and soon after I started the Family Circle Guide to Trout Flies came out. Schwiebert’s Matching the Hatch was four years away and Atherton’s The Fly and the Fish came out the year I got my first fly rod, but it was printed only in a limited edition for the Angler’s Club of New York. That same year, Bus Grove’s The Lure and Lore of Trout Fishing appeared, with a chapter on tying, and the imprint of my rubber stamp inside the cover has my New Jersey address on it. My bible in those days was Bergman’s Trout, a copy of which I received as a Christmas present in 1950, when I was nine. I had read the library’s copy almost into decrepitude and nagged my dad shamelessly for months before the holiday for one of my own. Those were the years when the arrival of the Heddon catalog, and the Payne catalog, the Abercrombie and Fitch catalog and the Sears Roebuck catalog were the highlights of a boy’s dreary, wet winter, and a sure harbinger of Spring, and the opening of trout season in the Poconos.

All these books suggested that good hackle was hard to get, and the best hackle for tying dry flies was the longest, stiffest, most web free feathers available. Of course, dry flies in those days meant Catskill style, basically copies of Halford’s British designs with stiffer tails to float on our more rambunctious streams. Stiff hackle was necessary to support the fly ‘on its toes’ as LaBranche used to say. Nowadays, of course, we have no-hackle flies, soft hackle flies, parachutes, thorax ties, upwings, downwings, palmers, all of which seem to float pretty well without the help of seriously steely hackle fibers.

But the stiff hackle dictum seems to still govern feather selection, particularly among beginning tiers. Of course, most are taught to tie Catskill style first, with an Adams, a Cahill, or a BWO. The proportions of dry flies still reflect the Catskill school of the Dettes and Art Flick. The most expensive hackle available at fly shops is, of course, extremely stiff, long and web-free. Lots of fisher folk use the classic ties and they work well, particularly on free stone streams. But our current, enlarged repertoire of floating imitations that don’t depend upon hackle for flotation should cause us to pause a moment and reexamine the knee-jerk mantra that dry fly hackle must always be stiff.

Stiff but resilient hackle was needed to float lightly dressed Catskill patterns. The old legends of fly fishing wanted their casts to ‘cock’ the fly on the water, suspended between the tips of the hackle and the tips of the tail fibers. Having fished with many a Catskill tie, I am usually able to achieve this proper attitude only once or twice with a fresh, well-dressed fly before it settles lugubriously into prone position. In my experience, the fish don’t seem to mind much either way. Often, and particularly with Variant patterns, I had trouble hooking trout. I believe the stiff, oversized hackle pushed the hook away from any point of connection with solid fish flesh. Patterns such as the Usual, Haystack, Comparadun and No-Hackle use buoyant dubbing to float the fly in the film. Split tails act as outriggers to reinforce a natural upright stance caused by the weight of the bend of the hook. Parachute flies float just as well with soft hackle as with stiff.

Is there a benefit to substituting floppy, webby hackle for the stiff stuff in dry flies? For years, fishing writers have insisted that the mobility of hackle fibers and soft dubbings are triggers to trout especially in nymphs and wets. Can these same qualities be exploited in dry flies? I can personally attest to the efficacy of soft hackle flies fished over fussy trout in glassy, slow moving water. The webby breast feathers used in these flies are tapered from stem to tip, like real insect legs. When wet, they move with every vagary of the current. I have recently started putting a clump wing of poly yarn or loop wing of Antron on these simple flies. That solves the visibility problem of soft hackles. The wing becomes a focal point for the angler and allows the fly to be fished in fast water as well as slow. Add a soft tail, perhaps a few pheasant fibers, or even a bit of Marabou to represent a trailing shuck. Do the flies float? You bet! Does the hackle obstruct the hook point?

Never! Does the cost of hackle go way down? Yep! ……*

I enjoy tying and fishing classic Catskill patterns. They look beautiful and continue to catch lots of trout. But I think it’s time we rethink the function of hackle in dry flies and experiment with more mobile, less severely stiff feathers. There is nothing turgid about a Mayfly dun. On the contrary, all the body parts are loosely joined and have independent motion. Stiff hackle doesn’t guarantee flotation. Furthermore, flies tied with stiff hackle, both Catskill and parachute, have an annoying tendency to twist leader tippets. The most compelling reason to incorporate soft hackle into dry flies, however, is it’s lifelike movement. Let the trout be the final judge…but at least give them a chance to choose! Tie up some dry flies with soft hackle this Winter, and reevaluate your personal criteria for hackle quality in the light of 1990’s fly fishing research rather than relying on the questionable assumptions of the 1950’s.

Editor’s Note: The Christmas season is a busy one for Skip and he was unable to provide his mindful prose for this issue. So, being that tying season is upon us, I decided to comb the RipRap archives looking for one of his past articles that might be appropriate for the upcoming tying season. Darned if I didn’t find one. The article is from the November, 1997 RipRap and in my mind many of his thoughts are still applicable to our modern day tying dynamics. I hope you agree! The fly pictured above is the”Jingler” an all purpose fly, very popular in the UK incorporating both rooster and partridge hackles.

Rocky Branch Elementary 

By Ben Toppel

Students at Rocky Branch Elementary have been excited about raising brown trout.  They patiently watched as the orange eggs hatched into alevin last October.  Since then, the alevin have grown into strong swimmers or “fry” and learned to eat.

The 5th Grade students are the primary caretakers and are responsible for three different jobs:  Wildlife Artists, Trout Researchers, or Water Quality Testers.
Over 50 students signed up to participate in this year’s “Trout in the Classroom” program.

If all goes well, the trout will be released into the WIllow River (at Willow River State Park) this coming spring. This activity is in cooperation with the WI DNR and Kiap-TU-Wish, our local chapter of Trout Unlimited. 

Upcoming Events:

1: Chapter Meeting, Tuesday January 7th. Dinner at 6:00 pm, Presentation “Symposium on Warm Water Fly Fishing” at 7:00 pm. Juniors Restaurant and Tap House, River Falls Wi. 

2. Upcoming virtual auction and 3 x 100 chance offering, be watching for start dates.

 2025 Kiap-TU-Wish Chapter of Trout Unlimited. All rights reserved. 

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Kiap-TU-Wish Chapter of Trout Unlimited
P.O. Box 483
Hudson, Wisconsin 54016

www.kiaptuwish.org