Zach Matthews
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I’ve never been happy about the way MSRP is handled in the fly fishing industry; it’s blatantly anti-competitive and it props up bad distributors as well as good ones.
The article I am writing is primarily on how flies are sourced and what the various grades are. Jesse was very helpful in that regard. I am still organizing my thoughts on this side of the industry into something cohesive, but you should know the following things:
Flies come in quality grades which are not displayed on store shelves. Often times the bins at your local fly shop will contain a mix of various grades of fly. These grades are typically associated with where they are being tied. Grade A would be Thai and U.S. flies and some Sri Lankan flies. Not coincidentally those are tied by the “name brand” companies like Umpqua, Montana Fly, Rainy’s and Solitude. They are seeking to brand these things with their names partly so they can explain the quality differences and justify the price of $2-3 per fly.
Grade B would be from places like China, the Phillipines, and possibly Mexico.
Grade C would be from Kenya, Chad and some of the more terrible tyers in China.
The only way to tell these things apart without inspecting them is by price. Grade A flies cost $2 and up. Grade B flies typically cost $1-2. Grade C flies cost under $1.
But, once you get them in hand, there are a lot of differences. High end flies have properly sized hackle, head cement, the correct number of wraps and proportions, as well as high quality hooks. Low quality flies might have fewer wraps, no cement, bad technique, mis-sized or weak hackle, and hooks with too much carbon (brittle) or too little carbon (bendable).
Most of the Grade C wholesalers will blatantly lie about the quality of the material they are using, so you can’t take their word for it. One of my sources noted that he was told by a Kenyan distributor that they used “only Whiting hackle.” He then called Whiting and learned that Whiting had never sold to anyone in that country.
At Umpqua, at least, the appropriate way to tie a fly is broken down into a very very detailed word document with pictures and instructions for each step; far more steps than we get in a tying magazine but similar to those articles. Each tyer, typically a lady, is expected not only to tie perfect flies, but to use the exact same number of wraps, etc. Some of those ladies become so good at certain flies, like the Copper John, for instance, that they essentially are the world experts in that particular pattern. One of my sources said John Barr himself would not even be in the same ballpark as the Sri Lankan lady tying John’s fly for production. Those ladies also get bonuses for hitting quality and number benchmarks, and they have something of a competition among themselves for who can be the best tyer.
The takeaway from the article is that you’re going to get what you pay for if you’re ordering online.
Tim –
He is incredibly straight up about that in the book, and it is one of the things he says he admires about Alaskans.