After a long day in the office I came home yesterday to a few packages of materials…almost like an early Christmas! The first was my standard order of bucktail, schlappen, marabou, holo flash and various other goodies from
Hareline Dubbin Inc. As I am sure you are aware Hareline is one of the largest wholesale fly tying material distributors in the country, so it is extremely likely that your local shop works with them. Nearly every material that I use on my production flies are Hareline products, and they have been a fantastic company to work with.
This time though it was the second package I was excited to open... full of stuff for my personal and experimental fly boxes. The package containing possum, stripped quills, synthetic quill body, Glo-Brite, dub blends, flash blends, Fly DK products, Hends products, Sybai products, Dohiku barbless hooks, wild Czech CDC, Camou French leader…the package from Kevin Compton of
Performance Flies, full of items I can’t get from the larger US distributors.
Kevin is a very accomplished tyer that found a niche for himself supplying standby and innovative new patterns to world competition teams. His pre-competition research, both remote and onsite, for the comp locations around the world opened up different suppliers, materials, and material uses from across the pond that we do not commonly see stateside. He realized that there was a market for these products and started importing certain items that until now have had limited or zero availability in the US market. Now, through
Performance Flies, Kevin is able to offer these different products to tyers here in the US that are looking for a little something different to add to their fly arsenal. Kevin is a great guy that is happy to share his knowledge and passion for the sport of fly fishing with his customers. He has built his business around quality product lines at the right price and top level customer service.
Check out
Performance Flies and see what you think!
Now I am off to finish up packing for this weekend. I will be tying Saturday along with a ton of other talented tiers from the area, at the Great Lakes Council FFF Expo held at Holt High School in Holt Michigan. I hope to see some of you there!
-mike schmidt
http://www.anglerschoiceflies.com/
Christmas day was spent tying at the kitchen table, eating at the kitchen table, then tying again until it was time to hit the sack. The flies of the day were some Scandis to complete an order for a great customer Rob. Hopefully these pretty little flies will do the trick for him...would love to see them hanging from some Canadian chrome!
Here is a wider shot of that batch.
I could not help myself...had to tie up a few for myself at the end of the night. They are a lot of fun to tie and not to tough. Actually may tie these at a few shows this year as they are a good example of a few different techniques and not too long at the vise.
The obligatory fish porn shot comes from ACF friend Craig; proudly displaying some Michigan chrome with his ACF deeked out riversled as the backdrop. Cool shot Craig!
Set up in the hallways of Holt High School we had plenty of space to accomodate the attendees. The show started off a little slower than the lst few years, but not long after this picture there was a rush of people to come through that kept us busy for the rest of the show.
