Wildfish Studios

Last Fall I had the pleasure or meeting Miguel Morejohn at one of the Federation of Fly Fisher's fly tying events in Portland, Oregon. For years I have seen pictures of many of Miguel's creative steelhead flies on Spey Pages and after doing a little research have found that he is not only a great fly tier but also photographer, film producer and illustrator. His creative work can be seen throughout the interwebs, but primarily found at Wildfish Studio.

For those of you that enjoy the work seen in Brian O'Keffe and Tom Moen's Catch magazine, you saw Miguel in the May 2009 edition. This edition had Miguel's Phantoms of the Rainforest video. This inspiring video portrays the winter speyfisher on the Oregon Coast with the use of guides Chris O'Donell and Jeff Hickman. His Homewaters video for the Native Fish Society also shows the beauty and magnificence of the waters of the Pacific Northwest and the native fish that we fish for and fight to keep.

Miguel's inspiring portrayal of winter steelheading and the beauty of the Oregon Coast illustrate all the reasons why I and many other steelheaders spend week's often wet and freezing, fishing around beautiful scenery and for this precious resource. With the heat of summer and low water upon us, I often find my mind wandering to the thoughts of dark and dreary days of winter, smells of mold and mildew on my waders and jacket after weeks in the rain and the lush green landscape of the rainforest.

For those of you that want to check out some of Miguel's flies, you can find them at Wildfish Studios as well as in the Idylwilde catalog. For those of you who are interested in tying intruders, here is a link to an instructional video Miguel made.

Here are a couple of Miguel's flies that are effective year round. Both these flies are light weight and easy to cast. The Bantam in my eyes is a low water intruder variant. In my experience, flies with profile and movement such as this have a way of pulling the most aggressive fish in the bunch to move to a fly. It also helps when traditional patterns are not working, especially during the heat of the day and when non aggressive hatchery fish are in the equation.











































Miguel showing off the success of the Bantum.

The Scorpion Stinger is a strung out hariwing pattern. This fly brings the traditional qualities of the hairwing pattern and adds a stinger hook. This stinger adds the advantage of a trailing hook that helps to eliminate short strikes and increase hookups found with traditional steelhead hooks. My favorite is the Peacock Scorpion because it looks like the all purpose and effective Steelhead Coachman.