When I picked up fly fishing three years ago, I burned through flies faster than I could afford to replace them. That's what pushed me into fly tying kits for beginners in the first place, and after testing dozens of setups at my bench, I can tell you exactly which kits are worth your money […]

I still remember my first attempt at tying a Woolly Bugger on a kitchen table with a pair of household scissors and some yarn. The fly came out looking more like a dust bunny than a baitfish, and the experience taught me what every beginner eventually learns: the right fly tying material kit changes everything. […]

I tied my first woolly bugger on a TV tray with hooks rolling under the couch, feathers migrating to corners I did not know existed, and a bobbin held in place with a soup can. That mess is why a proper fly tying desk exists. After spending the last 90 days rotating through 12 fly […]

I have spent the last decade hunched over a fly tying vise in a basement workshop that started with one weak desk lamp and a stack of feathers. When I finally upgraded to proper fly tying lamps, the difference was almost embarrassing: suddenly I could see the true color of every thread, dubbing, and biot. […]

I have packed a fly tying vise into more rental cars, overhead bins, and backpack pockets than I care to count. After three seasons of chasing trout from Montana hotel rooms to the salt flats of Belize with my tying kit riding shotgun, I learned the hard way that a great fly tying travel kit […]

I have built fishing rods for more than 15 years, from my first battered spinning rod glued on a kitchen counter to a full custom rod shop that turns out a dozen blanks a month. Through all of that, the single piece of gear that changed my workflow was a good rod building wrapper. The […]

Choosing the best rod blanks for building your own custom fishing rod is the single most important decision you'll make on the entire build. I learned this the hard way my first year of rod building, when I picked a flashy graphite blank without checking its action and ended up with a rod that couldn't […]

I built my first spinnerbait in my garage eight years ago, and I've been hooked on DIY lure making ever since. After testing dozens of kits on my local bass and walleye waters and watching our team assemble hundreds of lures across multiple seasons, I can tell you that not all spinnerbait making kits are […]

When I started building rods fifteen years ago, I picked the cheapest reel seat on the shelf and lost a trout reel on the third outing. That moment taught me what experienced rod builders already knew: the best reel seats for rod building are not the priciest or the prettiest, they are the ones that […]

I've been building custom rods for over a decade, and the first time I tried rotating a freshly epoxied rod by hand for six straight hours, I promised myself I'd never skip the best rod drying motors again. A quality drying motor takes the worst part of rod building (waiting while epoxy cures) and turns […]