Michael Brucato will be our November speaker.
Michael Brucato
He’ll be doing a presentation on soft hackles
While my family and I currently reside in Massachusetts, I grew up trout fishing with my father at a young age in both New Jersey and Rhode Island. As far back as I can recall I have always been fascinated with fishing and chasing trout. Like many young fisherman who began fishing with bait and a bobber, I later moved on to spin fishing until I learned to share my father’s love for fly-fishing for trout in my teens and early twenties. My father remains the most talented all around fly-fisherman and caster I know and I consider myself fortunate to still enjoy many regular fly-fishing adventures with him and his fishing buddies who have grown greatly in number now that he has retired. Both my father and I are avid readers and together we have amassed a good sized collection of books on the subject of fly-fishing that I can regularly turn to in order to further my own education and love of our sport. During the long Winter months, I very much enjoy reading and rereading certain chapters in fishing books in order to fully understand various tactics and methods of trout fishing as practiced by masters of our sport such as the late Sylvester Nemes or the prolific authors and wet fly experts Dave Hughes and Roger Fogg to name but a few.
Together with my father and a core group of fishing partners we regularly fish throughout New England for trout in waters such as Red Brook in MA for sea run trout as well as smaller intimate rivers in Rhode Island such as the Wood River for the large trout that inhabit that body of water. We also regularly fish the Salmon and Farmington Rivers in CT as well as many lesser well-known bodies of water throughout New England. Over the years we have also made fishing excursions to NY State, New Jersey, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Wyoming and British Columbia in Canada to trout fish as well.
During my many fishing adventures in various locations I have learned from experience just how productive and enjoyable soft-hackle wet flies are when trout fishing. I consider the late Sylvester Nemes to be my role model and while I never met him personally, I have read all of his books cover to cover many times over and I have been inspired to recreate his most successful soft-hackle wet fly patterns which will now be available to fly-fishermen everywhere via the website MyFlies. That way, you too can enjoy fishing an expertly tied soft-hackle wet fly in the Sylvester Nemes style just as he would have done along with other popular soft-hackle wet fly patterns that have proven to be top producers of trout throughout the season. Please be sure to check out the 2 articles that I have written on the topic of fishing soft-hackle wet flies so, that you can better understand how and why to fish these trout flies that are so often overlooked. The first article is entitled “Why Use a Soft-hackle Wet Fly” while the second article is entitled “Matching Spring Hatches with Wet Flies” and was co-written with Allen McGee, who is one of the premier soft-hackle wet fly experts of our generation who is currently hard at work on his 2nd book on the subject. Both articles will soon be posted to the website MyFlies so, be sure to view them before your next trout fishing adventure.
I very much enjoy fly-fishing for freshwater bass from both canoe and kayak. I have been blessed to have the opportunity to regularly fly-fish for striped bass and bluefish with good company in the salt-water along the New England coast; which is often nothing short of spectacular at the height of the Spring and Fall seasons when the big fish come in close to shore to feed.
As a part-time trout fishing guide, I am also an active member of two different fishing clubs/organizations: Trout Unlimited and Crossroads Anglers. All three afford me the opportunity to further my love of the sport. I regularly tie my soft-hackle wet flies at regional fly-fishing shows such as the Bear’s Den Fly-fishing show each Winter and I also enjoy teaching others how to tie and fish my flies. I must admit, that I never get tired of seeing the expression on people’s faces or hearing the stories of how one of my hand tied soft-hackle flies helped a fisherman to fool a trout.
--Michael Brucato from his website http://www.myflies.com/Bio-Michael-Brucato.aspx