Explore the rich history of the Bloody Butcher fly and how it became a symbol of friendship and legacy between Pop, Leonard, and the art of fly fishing.

The Brookie’s Meat fly pattern is a story of friendship from the mid-1900s. This pattern would have been lost if it weren’t for Pop’s little black notebook.

This is the little black notebook of hand-drawn flies and their recipes that Pop kept in the 1960s.

It is 56 pages long and contains 90 flies. All of the flies are drawn with colored pencil with their recipe in Pop’s handwriting.

116 cards make up Pop’s index of trout fly patterns and recipes, hand-drawn and tied at his home in Colorado Springs in the 1950s-60s and fished in the rivers and streams of Colorado.

For five minutes, I felt like the best fly fisherman in the world.

I was on a mission to recreate a 70-year-old photograph of my great-grandpa.

He was on the bank of the Arkansas River at a time before it was the tailwaters of Pueblo Reservoir. Pipe in mouth, arm outstretched with a net, reaching for a fish. Trees in the background, thick with leaves, just beyond a long-gone wooden railroad bridge, now replaced by a larger steel one. An island full of shrubs in the middle of the flow.

A lot of things needed to line up.