My favorite thing about fly fishing and fly tying is slowing down. To become a successful fly angler and tyer you must slow down and maintain a certain degree of childlike curiosity. Every trip I take to a river, big or small, new to me or familiar, I learn something new. I am fascinated by the subtle intricacies of aquatic insects that trout depend on. Typically, I carry this curiosity home and the only way to get it out is at my tying desk. I am always improving existing patterns and developing new ones based on what I learn on the water.

My fly design varies from being strictly imitative of insects to attractor style patterns that I take with me wherever I go. I always tie with the capabilities of the material in question in mind and ask myself: “how will this make a better fly?” As a midwesterner, I did not grow up with great trout fishing too close to home. Once moving out West, the fly fishing bug got me bad. All of the public land and options in the Northwest has me like a kid in a candy shop. My home waters are in the Willamette Valley in Oregon, but I fish all over the state whenever I can. I frequent other areas in the Northwest like Northern California and Washington. The other place I hold very close to my heart is the Midwest’s seemingly endless limestone spring creeks that meander through the Driftless.