Went to the 2009 International Fly Tying Symposium today (awesome show!), and finally met Ron from Hook & Hackle in person. It was great to put a face with the voice on the other end of the phone. And yes, he's as nice as he sounds on the phone.

The H&H booth was a busy one - seems the tying world has figured out it's a great place to buy from. What really surprised me was the quality of their new tying materials. What they had there was the very top of the line of all the retailers. Bought a couple of very large bags of cdc feathers - best I've ever seen. The Petitjean stuff can't hold a candle to it, and you get what looks like 10 times as much from H&H, for a better price.

There were a bunch of two color tinsels (like the typical gold on one side, silver on the other) in some pretty neat color combos. Really neat micro tinsels too. He had deer hair, and bucktails (really nice) for dirt cheap - and again, nicest I've seen.

The best thing he had though was the new premium capes - unbelievable! They looked better than the name brand $90 capes for about half the price.

H&H has gone up-scale in quality, big time, without the big time prices. For those of us with champagne tastes, but beer budgets, things are lookin' good from one of our great sponsors of FAOL.

Atta boy, Ron!