Jeff Samsel Fishing

As I suspect is prone to happen occasionally in homes where children reside, someone at my house recently decided that a Barbie doll neede...

One of my favorite ways to fish from late spring through fall is to rig a Rebel Micro Pop-R or Crickhopper with a fly a couple of feet ben...

I've mentioned Kenneth Bugs a few times in past blogs. They are hair jigs tied from the fur of our black dog Kenneth.   I tied th...

Trout do like tend to like dark days, but it has rained enough over the past few days that I think the streams might have gotten a bit out...

I've just returned from  Rend Lake Resort in Illinois, where I spent three fun and productive days catching crappie and taking photos...

A big part of me really wishes I'd brought my tying vice on this rip. Punisher Craft Hair has a tremendous amount of movement in the w...

Asher's first fish of the morning, this brook trout, took an Ugly Bug I had tied with fur from a stuffed dog named "Shad Fly....

The little white long-haired dog on the stuffed animal rack at the Goodwill store immediately caught my eye, and I knew her name, "Sh...

Ugly Runners. I guess that's what you'd call 'em. Ugly Bugs tied on Road Runner heads. Whatever you want to call them, I have ...

Dark skies, an incoming front and oddly mild temperatures for the first half of September have brown trout begging me to come and play. I kn...

When my 19 year-old daughter Sarah sees peacock feathers, she sees pretty skirts for cornhusk angels. To my 7-year-old daughter Autumn the...

I sometimes say that I like to fish for everything that swims, but I have to admit that I have fish in mind when I make that statement. ...

Kenneth sheds. In fact, he sheds a lot. So when he got a bath yesterday, I got a big pile of black dog hair. If it turns out to be good ji...

When we arrived at Orman Reservoir, it was almost hard to believe we'd traveled less than an hour from Deadwood , which sits deep in t...

I knew the tying bug had bitten me, but I'm not sure I knew how bad the bite was. Beyond the draw of the vice at home, the attraction ...

Well, I guess need to work on my tying mechanics. The fish made pretty quick work of an Ugly Bug yesterday. The good news is that the dam...

"Pretty!" Holly said, as soon as I pulled my new brown and orange marabou boa from the Walmart bag. That much we agreed on. I...

No one would accuse my Ugly Bugs of being pretty, and I know my tying techniques don't follow the book. I do think I'm gaining bet...

The primary purpose of today's pond visit was to slide out in the canoe and grab a few jigs and bobbers we left hanging in trees and b...

It might have been a stretch to visit the pond yesterday afternoon. Nathaniel and I probably convinced ourselves that it had warmed more t...