I'm not one of those creative fly tiers who can sit down at the vise and solve fishing problems with fur, feathers, and flashes of genius.  I pretty much depend on the work of others, usually following patterns as closely as my poor skills allow, occasionally tinkering a bit but not really inventing anything new.  

Having spent most of my fishing life out West, my move to Maine a few years ago has been one revelation after another.  I do most of my fishing now for smallmouth bass and stripers.  Both of them are great game fish but there are also brook trout, rainbows, browns, largemouths, northern pike, chain pickerel, salmon, stripers, mackerel, bluefish, and various sunfishes and perch available within convenient driving distance, most within minutes.   

I've been learning traditional New England featherwing streamers and big saltwater bucktails, and I've also been spending more of my trout-fishing time with old-fashioned winged wet flies and conventionally hackled dry flies than ever before.   I have an interest in the history of the sport and tie a lot of older patterns, especially the British flies that provide the basis for so many American patterns. 

Photo taken June 1999 by Jeff Grossman on the Passagassawaukeag ("Passy") River at Belfast, Maine.