BIG SALE TODAY Half Price Flies!!

TODAY and TODAY ONLY Half Price Fly Sale. Yes, true…Customer Appreciation Sale @ Headhunters Fly Shop.

BBQ this afternoon too. Just the normal fare, starting about4pm.

Music at Izaak’s late afternoon, about 6 pm is the word. Double Bill too…

We will see you all later, before or after the fishing day.

Remember, you, the customer, RULE…and we appreciate you. Thanks.

SOL's Dad does not care about inclement weather...NO!

Common weather trends…if you go back ten years, previous to the drought years. SOL’s 2nd year guiding, snow over the Labor Day Weekend.

Not this year. Knock on Wood my friends.

Headhunters hosting our 3rd Annual Labor Day Weekend BBQ. This year, unfortunately, no Bikini Boat Wash. I know, shitty. Took the life right out of ya. Me too.

We will whip up some BBQ items, dogs, sausages, sauerkraut, beans, some sort of mystery meats as well. How about Sunday afternoon post lunch? Sounds good to me, Wiffle Ball too. A little casting, and maybe even an ad-hoc contest. I’m a gamer. You?

Mouth watering smells, sights, sounds...tasty too

How about a Customer Appreciation Labor Day Half Price Fly Sale? That’s right. Let’s party, and buy a grocery bag full of flies. Dry flies, nymphs will be flying out the door @ $1. Hoppers and big dries will be priced @ $1.25 with Streamers @ $1.50-2.00…Refill those fly boxes for the fall. Get yer BWO’s, various permutations of PT’s, and dam midges. Stock for next year and your favorite Hopper patterns, i.e. Morrish’s, and pack your streamer bin full of double bunny’s Skiddish Smolts and R2R’s. Fly Sale Sunday during the BBQ at Headhunters Fly Shop from 12pm til 8pm.

“And by the way…when is the last time a fly shop showed you their appreciation? Hmmm. Think about it. Discounted flies? Yes indeed. A no holds barred fly free for all!!”

Also on sale at Headhunters this weekend…SIMMS Flats boots, Guide boots, Pursuit Sandals, Felt Headwaters wading boots, ECHO 2 fly rods, and selected shorts and pants.

While in the store be sure to notice our NEW HH HOODY’s in Brown and Indigo…and the Kovich HH Signature TShirts in both long and short sleeve, or choose the Sport-Tek version.

Whoop it up this Sunday @ Izaak'

Izaak’s has  two really great performers on The Log Jam. Downtown Craig’s finest outdoor music venue. They will start rockin’  Sunday, September 5 beginning about 6 pm John Floridis will open for Tom Catmull and The Clerics.

So, in conjunction with the BBQ, a Half Price Fly Sale, the fabulous fishing, the coolest people on earth, the kick-ass fly shop row in the Central Business District…hang out and enjoy the autumn afternoon in the world’s finest trout town.

Headhunters Fly Shop and Guide Service…sponsoring the greatest events on the Missouri River.

…maybe.

Searching for the "Magic Fly"

Headhunters has the most comprehensive fly selection on the Missouri. Do we have the most flies? No. Do we, and our staff, fish every waking moment, and derive our knowledge and fly selection from daily fishing experiences.

This time of year our Midge Selection shines. We do have all the techy, new school flies. And, of course, the old school too.

It does not stop at the midges. Our mayfly area can be measured in acres. Our dry flies in hectares, our…

Two-Striped Grasshopper | Melanoplus bivittatus | Grasshopper Order

Are they everywhere? No. Are they consuming all of the green mass around the river? No. Do the fish eat them at every opportunity they get? No.

Is hopper fishing and the eats associated with them out of this world? Damn Straight.

This feller came the other day while fishing north of town, well north. Fishing was average, about 2 takes a mile. Not bad, if you are into that kind of thing. The 2 takes are predatory fish, that are generally brown in flavor.

Cap’n Carp snapped this fella on the infamous Hadhunters porch. Right next to the legendary YETI.

Some of the HH gang has been fishing the big pink Morrish. Big fly, big fish theory sometimes prevails.

There are a bunch of hoppers on the banks, littering the shorline. Not many in the water. Odd? Maybe. Ask the Hopper god, on he knows.

Trico's hatch on the Mo

Ephemeroptera Tricorythodes allectus 0r minutus | White winged black or commonly known as the Trico

Lots of these damn little bugs around the Missouri this month, and for that matter next month too. The fish really used to enjoy themselves indulging on this tasty morsel in the surface film, pods of them, the fish that is. But, alas, no more.

The last line makes me sound like a romance writer…Alas…cheesy shit for a Monday. Standard.

I used to tell clients when asked if they bite…

“Well yes, and don’t let them swarm about your head and face, my last client was inundated by them and we had to whisk her off to the hospital for a poison control,blood transfusions, and the like…”

I also used to attempt to put the fear of god in them by explaining it was either my first day guiding, or that I had a pretty good idea of where the put in was, but wasn’t really clear on how to find the take out. Can you imagine how long a new guide has to lie about his length of employment? It is truly terrifying those first few days on the water, with folks you do not know, who you a trying to do right by…scary shit. You may say, and why would that fishy lad tell a fib? Well, it’s pretty hard to instill confidence in your guests if you are heading into uncharted waters…literally.

A good scene at the Craig Bridge in August

Trico’s are an insect that do not appeal to all fishermen. It is so small, the fish are finicky whilst sipping them, and most of them will eat a caddis anyway. But for the Hatch Matchers, there is no finer quarry than the Trico fishing and all that it entails. As I mentioned above, and for those of you who were so very fortunate blessed mofo’s to enjoy the deceadent fishing of the 80’s, 90’s. and til 2001ish…then the fish boycotted pod feeding behaviors on the oil slicks of Trico spinners. You could set your watch by…

Trico’s are multibrooded meaning several generations will hatch during the year. They last about 2 months. The black male hatches at dusk and well into the darkness while the olive female comes off in the morning. They meet in mating swarms that appear to us the angler along the shorleline in columns reaching 50 feet in height. Big giant mating orgy. Then the females oviposite over the water and the both of them spin towards the water and the fish eat them. Or used to.

I’m not stating that our fish do not eat them anymore, because they do indeed eat Trico’s daily. Larval, pupal, emergent, dun, and finally the spinner. Then why are they so hard to catch when they are keying in on this impossible insect? Hell, I don’t know. I’ve never been able to communicate with those damn hard of hearing trout. Even shouted expletives do not seem to awaken them?

Bins of Trico flies at Headhunters

If you still wish to fish this hatch, as I do, as most of us…the hardheaded trout fisher dudes do…come out to the Missouri in the coming month. They will be here, in droves. The best day to catch these fellas when the fish become fond of the topwater bite…is…an overcast warm, calm, no pressure day. It is game on. Maybe this above average water will bring back the surface rise? Who knows, Mother Nature will certainly dictate the future. She nearly always does. If the last bigger water years are any sort of indication, and I think it may be, our fish will once again gorge themselves on this tiny tasty bug.I had a fellow once ask, “Why would such a large trout eat such a minute insect?”

I answered back, “How many sunflower seeds, M & M’s, pieces of popcorn… can you eat during a sitting? Countless…

Ubiquitous on the Mo this time of year...

Boreal Bluet | Enallagma boreale | Dragonfly Order

1 1/4″ Damselfly. Male brilliant blue, with black markings on head and abdomen. Female, lighter with more black on abdomen. Wings clear.

Did you notice the PMD, Ephemerella infrequens, dangling precariously from his mandible? I do too, although I suspect it will not escape. Saw this damsel snatch this fly from the surface of the water, from the clutches of freedom. Can you imagine spending the last 12 months growing, molting, emerging through the terrifying trout frenzy and struggling through the surface tension just to get lifted off the water by this blue damsel. Tough way to go. The life cycle of the ecosystem we love, the living river system we enjoy daily.