Who comes to mind when you think of fly tying celebs?

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Some years ago, late 1970s, Mike Monroe came to Sacramento from the Bay Area to run the old Fly Hutch at El Camino and Fulton Avenues.

He was a protege of Andy Puyans so he could really tie nice flies. He had years of great fly tying classes which levitated the quality of tiers in Sacramento.

Rod Grey was a student of Mike Monroe's who had become an extremely good tier as well. I pursued Rod to teach classes at my shop.

Then we had Chris Mallory teach classes for us and I think he was a student of Mike's. He could tie you 12 flies that were 100% identical and smoken' good looking too.

Finally we had Alan Barnard working at our shop who was a world class artist, musician, photographer and an unbelievable fly tier too. Alan Barnard is one of those people who can do everything better than most of us.

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[Baja Fly Fisher]

Carrnazzo and I fished together when we lived in Salinas. He was an attorney and then got a good job in Sac and moved from Salinas. The next time I saw Bill was at the Sacramento ISE show. He was a great friend

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

We have had lots of local commercial tier too.

Old Joe Shirshac is a retired Sacramento fire fighter who painted houses on the side and tied thousands of Shad flies for sporting goods store in the 1960s.

Dave Hudson came in my shop and was just learning to tie flies. His first flies were Shad flies. They looked pretty good so I asked him if he would tie me some for the shop. Well, that started out a monster of a commercial fly tier. He tied me over 500,000 flies in about 3 years. He ties special pattern for The Fly Shop in Redding, CA.

We bought flies form Jay Murakoshi. His very nice Seaducer streamers and Surf Perch flies too.

Lincoln and Lance Gray had a commercial fly business which was custom flies, mostly salt water, for shops and guides.

Today we get lots of nice flies from big Bob Scheidt in Fresno, CA. Woolley Buggers and salt water flies and Shad flies.

Carl Blackledge in Santa Rosa ties lots of super nice Shad flies for us. He also ties us nice salt water patterns he developed over about 30 years of fly fishing Baja.

Neil Pultz ties us some nice bass poppers and has a big commercial business doing that now.

The late Bob Quigley use to tie flies for us. Bob would just tie us up a lot of nice small hot spring creek dries and we had them in a special big box of his own.

The late Gary McConnell tied us lots of nice half-pounder Steelhead flies and some of our first custom shop Striper streamers too.

In the 1970s we had Ed Hauss Steelhead flies in our shop that were so nice most bought them to put up in shadow boxes on the wall.

We had beautiful balsa wood bass popper from Leo Gutterres many years ago....

Lastly, Galen Geller (Oregon Salmon) who grew up at my shop, probably tied the longest for us, all they way up in Seaside, Oregon.

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[Baja Fly Fisher]

I use to tie flies for Mike at The Fly Hutch and also Neil Bohannan in Los Gatos. Tie up many AP nymphs for Andy's Creative Sports. My list goes on and on. People like Brad Jackson and Mike Mickalak @ The Fly Shop, Bob Marriott's fly shop in LA, San Jose Fly Shop, Orleans Market on the Trinity, Herb and Pat Burton shop, Lefty Kreh, Trey Combs, Bill Kiene, and many more.

In my fly tying prime, I was tying around 2,400 dozen a year - and they were all trout flies, except for Lefty and Trey.

Some good memories.

Can't forget Bob Quigley and Bob Brinks in Burney.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

When I worked in three different sporting goods stores for over 10 years we bought our flies from Dan Baileys in Livingston, Montana and from Cortland Line Company who had factory in Kenya, Africa.

Then it seem like Umpqua came on the scene. They are still the world's largest fly company.

There has been dozens of fly companies come and go....

Right now we get our super sexy Steelhead flies from Doug Brutocao of AquaFlies in the wine country.

If you want to know anything about commercially tied flies today, Terry Thomas, at the shop is the fly department manager.

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[mike borba]

Like a lot of, I was lucky enough to see Andre Puyans tie. How about Darwin Atkin? His spun deer hair flies are flawless.

[Darian]

who is relatively new on the scene is Mike Henle. Mike stacks hair so tight you'd think it's a balsa body. Great looking frog pattern.

[DLJeff]

Two tiers I meant to include are Bob Popovics and Jay Murakoshi. Jay and 'Pops' have done as much as anyone to create new and improve existing salt water flies (in my opinion).

Bill's original question was about "celeb(rity)" fly tiers. Some of the most well known fly tiers are better at marketing than they are at fly tying. I think most of the best tiers I have met are not well known.

[Bill Kiene semi-retired]

Two tiers I meant to include are Bob Popovics and Jay Murakoshi. Jay and 'Pops' have done as much as anyone to create new and improve existing salt water flies (in my opinion).

Bill's original question was about "celeb(rity)" fly tiers. Some of the most well known fly tiers are better at marketing than they are at fly tying. I think most of the best tiers I have met are not well known.

A lot of truth in that one DLJ........thanks.

Being in a video or writing a book helps to make people famous.

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[DLJeff]

A lot of truth in that one DLJ........thanks.
Being in a video or writing a book helps to make people famous.

Yeah, and I think the same goes for fishermen. I often think about the "World Flyfishing Championships" (whatever that is) and the "One Fly Contests" and other tournaments. The people who often end up on teams are those who are well known and / or wh can afford the cost and the time. I know that if I absolutely, life or death had to catch a fish, there are a dozen guides I'd choose before I'd choose most of the people in those tournaments.