New! search fly patterns on any keyword including color, species, size, material etc...
New! search fly patterns on any keyword including color, species, size, material etc...
The opinions expressed on this site may or may not be mine depending on mood, current political climate and duration of how long the wet winters in Oregon are.
Ever since I was young a young boy, I had a deep fascination with the world living within the confines of moving water. It is amazing to me that so much life and diversity of life can be held within the ribbons of water that move across the landscape. As I have grown older and more aware of the natural world and our relationship with nature, I have become even more fascinated to learn that life outside of the confines of a river also depend heavily on that river as part of its natural cycles. I bore witness to this in action one summer while doing a stream survey for the Forrest Service. I watched several Jays congregate on the banks of the Upper Deschutes River near Mt Bachelor swoop in and captured newly emerged Green Drake mayfly's. Soon those birds would be fertilizing the forest floor with their droppings. Next, a wildflower will grow in that spot where the Jays visited. A native red back bee will come along and pollinate that flower and take nectar back to the hive. That pollinated flower will go to seed and a squirrel will eat that seed. A hawk will eat that squirrel and the cycle goes on and on. Although for me, the most important thing about a Green Drake is that it is fish food, it is also important that is also feeds the birds, bees, squirrel, hawks.
Fly fishing is the perfect interface between our terrestrial world and the aquatic world that I just mentioned. Fly Fishing is an active interface that has allowed me to study fish and the bugs that they eat, hydrology and geology that dictates the liquid domain of the aquatic environment. The riparian botany that shades and protects our streams, and sadly, the devastating effects that man is having on this world.
Fly fishing is a lifelong passion. It is the only thing in life that has kept me intrigued for so long, I have been fly fishing for 33 years. I feel a deep responsibility to share fly fishing passion with others that also feel the same fascination or curiosity for the watery world of a trout stream.
This website is not only for sharing my avocation for the art of fly tying and trout foolery with fur and feather. It is also a sandbox for me to hand code some html, php and other web based scripting tools. I am a retired web developer with over 15 years behind the scenes experience. Putzing around under the hood of a web server or delving into the depths of some AJAX scripts helps keep me from losing that skill when I am not doing fisheries biology homework. I am a semi-pro, mostly hobbyist, photographer. My photography has been published internationally and has graced many fashion and editorial spreads. I like to get out a take hikes, visit strange and exotic landscapes and take pictures. Be sure to check out my photography portfolio on this site.
John P. Newbury
A lifelong fly fishing addict, signature fly tyer for Umpqua Feather Merchants and student of fisheries and aquatic entomology.
All content on this site is original material tied, written, photographed, coded and developed by John Newbury. Credit to all outside sources are clearly attributed whenever possible. The opinions expressed on this site may or may not be mine depending on mood, current political climate and duration of how long the wet winters in Oregon are.