Bonefish Fly Patterns: Tying, Selecting, and Fishing All the Best Bonefish Flies from Today's Best Tiers - Softcover

Brown, Dick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1493071068 ISBN 13: 9781493071067

Publisher: Lyons Press, 2023

Synopsis

This edition of Bonefish Fly Patterns is the most comprehensive collection of bonefish flies ever published, displaying fly designs from such world-class flats anglers and guides as Winston Moore, Jim Orthwein (four-time bonefish world record holder), Steve Huff, Harry Spear, Rick Ruoff, Del Brown, John Goddard, Barry and Cathy Beck, Lou Tabory, Tim Borski, Bob Clouser, Lefty Kreh, Tom McGuane, Yvon Chouinard, Craig Mathews, Vic Gaspeny, Dave Skok, Eric Peterson, Patrick Dorsey, Aaron Adams, and many, many more.

The book includes 197 full-color photographs—one for each featured pattern, some published here for the first time. Each fly profile is listed with its creator's authentic recipe and tying tips. Also included are tying sequences for important patterns, a discussion of design trends, a materials glossary, and a list of sources for materials, custom flies, and off-the-shelf patterns. Additionally, Dick Brown describes fly selection for various destinations, habitats, and conditions, and advises anglers on how to present flies and what prey they portray.

About this title

About the Author

Dick Brown began chasing bonefish with a fly rod on his first trip to the Bahamas in the late 1970s. Two decades later—after stalking his favorite quarry on saltwater flats around the world—he wrote Fly Fishing for Bonefish, published by Nick Lyons in 1992. The book was immediately dubbed the bible on all things bonefish and hailed by reviewers and angling experts alike for its encyclopedic coverage of this great game fish. A new, all-color, fully revised edition was later released, complete with the latest prey and behavior research, angling techniques, fly patterns, flats destinations, and equipment.

His second book, Bonefish Fly Patterns, features detailed profiles, pattern recipes, and color photos of the best 197 bonefish flies ever created. The first edition of this pattern book became something of a flats fishing and fly-tying cult classic for its comprehensive profiles that showed not only how to tie each fly but how and where to fish them. And the second edition includes 47 more flats flies! The book’s colorful array of fly contributors—which includes some of the world's most experienced flats guides, anglers, and bonefish world record holders—makes it worth reading for their insightful anecdotes alone. These include anglers, guides, and tiers such as Adams, Baine, Bevans, Borski, Boyle, Brewster, Chocklett, Clouser, Cowen, Dorsy, Ebanks, Gaspeny, Glinton, Hall, Haselau, Lambot, Peterson, Simonsen, Skok, Tomchin, Trodella, and Roselione-Valadez.

Today, Dick writes for many fishing, fly-fishing, and outdoor magazines and gives slideshows, tying demonstrations, and how-to clinics at fly-fishing exhibitions, fishing clubs, and fly-fishing retailer events. He lives in Lancaster, MA.

From the Back Cover

This second edition of Bonefish Fly Patterns is the most comprehensive collection of bonefish flies ever published, describing 197 of the best bonefish patterns being tied and fished in the world today—with a full-color photograph for each.

The patterns in these pages are from such world-class flats anglers and guides as Winston Moore, Jim Orthwein (four-time bonefish world record holder), Steve Huff, Harry Spear, Rick Ruoff, Del Brown, Barry and Cathy Beck, Lou Tabory, Tim Borski, Bob Clouser, Lefty Kreh, Tom McGuane, Yvon Chouinard, Craig Mathews, Vic Gaspeny, Dave Skok, Eric Peterson, Patrick Dorsy, and Aaron Adams.

Each fly profile is listed with its creator’s authentic recipe and tying tips. Also included are tying sequences for important patterns, a discussion of design trends, a materials glossary, and a list of sources for materials, custom flies, and off-the-shelf patterns. Above all, though, this book is a practical guide—not only on how to tie flies but also on how to fish them. Author and expert angler Dick Brown describes fly selection for various destinations, habitats, and conditions, and advises anglers on how to present flies and what prey they imitate.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

(from the Foreword)

This revised edition of Bonefish Fly Patterns contains forty-seven new flies that were not in the original 1996 edition. Some are recent patterns created by new flats anglers with fresh, inquisitive eyes―like Victor Trodella's killer Ghost tailing fly and Omeko Glinton's Meko Special. Others like Eric Peterson's Spawning Shrimp, Vic Gaspeny's Threadhead, Rick Simonsen's Simram, and Patrick Dorsy's Kwan and Bone Slappa are creations of skilled flats veterans willing to pass along the exact recipes of go-to favorites they've relied on for winning tournaments. Still others are well-known classics that I simply could not get into the original book for one reason or another―like the Horror and the Mini-Puff, which have produced on flats around the world for decades. A few new creations, like the Toad and the Slinky Toad, were developed in response to the significant findings of recent bonefish feeding studies that have established the importance of newly discovered prey forms in the diet of Florida and Bahamian bonefish―especially the gulf toadfish. Four―the Bastard Crab, Big Ugly, Merkwan, and Bunny Crab―come from Bonefish & Tarpon Trust's Aaron Adams, who is both a marine research scientist and an avid angler. Finally, several new entries, like the Skok/Boyle Reverend Laing fly, the Bevin's Bully Special, and Trodella's Ghost, were driven by new tying materials and new uses of existing materials, which have enabled tiers to find novel solutions to old bonefish challenges like flash intensity and splash impact.

In addition, I've updated the suggested flies for different destinations, the fly pattern and materials sources in chapter 7, and the materials glossary. And I virtually rewrote the chapter on design alternatives and trends to capture the profusion of exciting new techniques and discoveries that tiers have explored to better induce that magic moment when a bonefish strikes, including: development of soft-landing, reverse-splayed carapaces of wool and hair to enable crabs to land quietly and sink fast; use of trailing-leg designs for better imitation of the paddling movements of swimming crabs; exploration of rear-facing postures in patterns to suggest the defensive stances of attacked prey; improved balancing of weight versus mass to refine control of splashdown and sink rate; creative use of new reflective materials to increase control of flash in patterns; implementation of novel dubbing techniques to soften splash profiles and better display prey translucency; and―perhaps most exciting of all―the cascade of incredibly innovative methods for incorporating better triggering elements in fly patterns to improve hook-up rates on the water.

I hope you enjoy this new edition and the fly designs of the innovative tiers who contributed to it. This is, in the end, but a showcase for their creativity. Good fishing!

Edition details

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Publication date: 2023
• ISBN 10: 1493071068
• ISBN 13: 9781493071067
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 304