Articles With the Tag . . . dry flies

With all the right tools of rod, line, and leader, with all the knowledge about casting options, and with serious dedication to line speed, you need just one more thing.

Guts. Courage. Fortitude.

A willingness to fail.

Take your shots. That’s the only way toward a real education on small streams. Make the casts you think you can’t make. Eventually, instinct takes over and the fly goes into tighter targets than you ever thought possible . . .

This small stream leader provides the control to cast through the brush yet still achieve good dead drifts on the dry fly. It’s tailor made for precision dry fly fishing in the brush, but it’s versatile enough to fish other styles. For me, this is the perfect small stream leader, and it’s been with me for a very long time.

That kind of control is exactly what is needed on small streams with cover. You can do magic tricks with the fly, twisting around corners and dipping it just inches under the next tree branch. Sure the cast matters most, but a leader that’s built for the job goes hand in hand, completing a system built for the challenges of small trout streams.

The Perfect Parachute Ant is so effective and so versatile for me, that it’s the only terrestrial I carry in my box, most days . . .

The George Harvey Dry Fly leader is a slackline leader built for dead drifting. With intentional casting, with the right stroke, the Harvey lands with slack in all the right places, with curves and swirls through the entire leader and not just in the tippet section. The Harvey is a masterful tool built for the art of presenting a dry fly on a dead drift. But success begins by understanding how the Harvey is different, and why it works.