With three months to go until northeastern Pennsylvania once again becomes a welcoming outdoors paradise, why not dispel the inevitable cabin fever by preparing for the spring fly-fishing season by learning to tie your own flies.

The time is right and the price is right. Rivers Outdoor Adventures is offering a series of free fly-tying at its New Ringgold outfitting shop. Rivers Outdoor Adventures, formerly The Wilderness Trekker, operates a fly-fishing shop and a professional guide service. The classes begin Saturday Jan. 19 and are currently scheduled to run on most Saturdays until March 1.

The course is open to families including children age six and older. “Women pick up fly-tying a lot quicker than men do,” said instructor Tim Skoraszewski. “Probably because they listen to directions better and are good with their hands doing the intricate motions involved in fly-tying.”

Tim begins his course by introducing the tools used to tie flies, then starts with his favorite fly, the woolly bugger—a streamer type fly that is both easy to make and catches fish.

“No matter how you tie a wooly bugger, it’s going to work—no matter what it looks like,” said Tim. “I can remember the first wooly bugger I tied. It was horrible. I thought, if a fish takes this fly, he must be really hard-up for something to eat.”

In the fall, he fished the Little Schuylkill near the Rivers Outdoor Adventures shop. “I threw it out and within ten casts, I caught a nice brown trout. I thought that if I could catch a fish with this fly, when I learn how to tie flies for real, I’ll be able to catch a bunch of fish with it.”

Fly-tying is a process of binding materials to a hook with thread used to catch fish by fly-fishing. There are dry flies that float on the surface of the water imitating recently hatched insects and there are dry flies that sink to imitate aquatic bugs and minnows.

The woolly bugger is a type of wet fly called a streamer. Underwater, it elongates into a long-tailed shape that moves as if alive in the water.

Here is the recipe for a woolly bugger. Place a brass bead over a size 8 hook and place the hook into a vise so that the jaws close around the bend in the hook.

Using a bobbin, wrap several turns of nylon thread around the shank of the hook. Take a prepared turkey feather, called marabou, strip off the required material and attach as a streamer tail to the hook by winding with the thread. Attach a part of a chicken feather to create a hackled surface on the shank using the thread.

Lastly, tie-in a piece of synthetic chenille to form the main body of the fly. Wrap forward to the bead. Trim the excess.

“Making flies are one of the fun things about fly fishing,” Tim said. “It’s almost like playing chess. You have to really think about what you are doing. You need to observe nature to discover what’s going on and try to pick you best trick to fool the fish.”

Rivers Outdoor Adventures operates guided fly-fishing trips on the Lehigh, Delaware and Susquehanna Rivers and sponsors trips to Montana, Alaska and South America.

They especially like the Lehigh River. Besides being close, it offers everything from big whitewater in the Lehigh Gorge above Rockport, to riffles and ledges above Walnutport.

“The Lehigh River has a lot of character,” Tim noted. “It has fast water and rapids with an unlimited number of targets. It is beautiful and it’s a neat place to fish.”

For details, times, and directions: see: www.riversflyfishing.com, email: info@riversflyfishing.com, or call: 570-943-3151.