05/27/2026
There should still be several feet of snow here at 11,000 feet, and the high alpine lake full of brookies and cutthroat frozen over.
Instead, my son and I were there, hiking up the creek, dropping a Royal Coachman or Parachute Adams in the small pools, and catching fish on the first casts.
The fish didn’t seem to recognize humans and didn’t spook easily. We could stand over them and watch them slurp bugs off the water before dropping in one of our own to trick them.
It’s a day I won’t long forget, just as fun as catching the big ones in the Ark or South Platte.
05/25/2026
I wrote the name of this fly as Pop wrote it, the Quill Ginger, but it’s more commonly known as the Ginger Quill. I’m fairly certain that he named it this way so that it fit alphabetically with the other Quill flies. He did the same thing with the four Cahill flies that he drew
This is another fly that appears in both books that I have of Pop’s, Family Circle’s Guide to Trout Flies and How to Tie Them, and Fly-tying by William Bayard Sturgis. The way he wrote this recipe doesn’t match either of the book’s recipes. I think he wrote the shorthand version the way he tied it.
In Pop’s collection, it appears on page 24 of his little black notebook, and it’s card number 51 in his alphabetized stack of notecards. These two treasures were projects that kept him busy in his retirement in the 1960s.
Pop, aka Harry K. Cameron (1894-1973), was born in Chillicothe, MO, and moved to Colorado Springs, CO, in 1900, where he lived the rest of his life. He tied flies at a little bench in the back of his modest home and fished the Arkansas and South Platte Rivers.
05/08/2026
When I saw the first page of Pop’s notebook, I thought, “This is interesting.” When I saw this, the second page, with a drawing of a fly and all its parts labeled, I thought, “This is incredible!”
I had no idea what was ahead, in the notebook, nor on this journey.
I distinctly remember thinking before I moved on from these first couple of pages, “Why would my great-grandpa, a great fly fisherman and fly tyer, write down these most basic details?” I continued my inner dialogue, “Did he do this for me?”
I wasn’t thinking me, like, just me, but me as a part of his family, who he wanted to leave something behind for.
Legacy.
The word comes up over and over when I talk and write about Pop’s flies. It comes up in the things people say and write back to me.
My dad, Pop’s grandson, knew him really well. They spent a lot of time together when my dad was a child and stayed close throughout Pop’s life. My dad says Pop was a tinkerer and did a lot of things in his retirement in the 1960s to keep himself busy.
He left behind some whirligigs made out of beer cans, a wooden frame that he made that features 10 flies that he tied, a mobile fly tying cabinet, and several other things, including…
A little black notebook that on the first two pages has a drawing of a blank hook and a drawing of a fly with all its parts, both of them labeled as if he were teaching the basics to a new fly tyer.
My dad gave me Pop’s notebook a couple of months after I started tying flies, and through it, Pop has taught me and inspired me. Pop died in 1972 when I was two years old, so I didn’t really get a chance to meet him. But I feel like I know him.
Legacy. It can start with the simplest of things.
Pop, aka Harry K. Cameron (1894-1973), Colorado Springs, Colorado.
04/28/2026
Hackle Brown (fly and photo credit: IG )
Dustin has tied several flies from Pop's journal since we connected in 2022. Check out IG for some great photos, materials, and flies.
Here's from his March post of the Hackle Brown:
"Haven’t done a in a while, was scrolling and found this hackle brown, tried some smaller ones, but really like this size. 12 feels like it should be in the size range of terrestrials and should fish great anywhere stimulators would."
Hook: Size 12 Dry fly hook
Tag: Red thread with a drop of UV
Thread: Nano Silk in black
Body: Natural peacock
Hackle: Skilton hackle
UV: bone dry plus"
Pop, aka Harry K. Cameron (1894-1973), kept a little black notebook and a stack of index cards with 99 different hand-drawn fly patterns and their recipes. He tied these flies and fished them on the Arkansas and South Platte Rivers west of Colorado Springs, CO.
04/28/2026
“When learning to tie flies, finish a fly if you start it, even though it doesn’t look like you expected, you will have finished what you started, also you learned something.” -source unknown
This quote is written on the last page of Pop’s little black notebook in which he hand-drew flies with their recipes in the 1960s. The book contains over 90 different patterns and their recipes. The fly with this quote is Pop’s drawing of a male Adams.
Harry K. Cameron, a.k.a. Pop, was born in Chillicothe, MO, and moved to Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1900. He lived there until he died in 1973. He fished the Arkansas and South Platte Rivers with the flies he drew and tied and fooled many a fish, bringing home his limit and feeding his family.
04/28/2026