Rick makes the point in his feature that he advised the land owner that a lot of the flies he uses are not available commercially.
This brings up a question, you would think that there would be a fairly good market for good selections of warm water panfish flies, but they are hard to find, why?
Are there just not that many of us (fly panfishermen) out there, (I.E.: no real market for the flies?) or is there a good market and suppliers just don’t know that the market exists?
I have a good market for panfish flies. That is about all I tie. I supply several bait & tackle shops with local patterns that are not available anywhere else. I stay pretty busy with the fly tying and the bamboo rod making. When I do play hookey and go fishing I usually have to spend a couple evenings burning the midnight oil to catch up. I am working on next springs flies right now.
The panfish fly market, and to a lesser extent the bass fly market, is VERY localized. While there have been some success nationally, (Bett’s comes to mind quickly), most panfish specific flies are either home made or tied locally.
One tyer can make flies for a couple of shops and stay busy if he ties the ‘local favorites’. Problem is, panfish really aren’t all that picky, but the angler’s ARE (you may thing trout fishermen are fly picky until you talk to a bluegill guy…). Word of mouth between anglers is the ‘gold standard’ as far as fly pattern acceptance goes, but it’s very slow and takes years to develope for each fly. Anglers become set in their ways quickly, and tend to fish with their favorites. And, since panfish aren’t all that fly picky, their favorites generally work so they see no reason for a different pattern.
So, if you were to begin a national company to supply flies solely for panfish, you’d have to either sell specific flies for each area, or do a huge amount of promotion and advertising to make the anglers want the flies you had. That gets expensive.
The options for most non tying panflish angler’s are to either fish with available flies(trout patterns mostly, but they do work okay), find a local shop that has some ‘panfish’ patterns that work in their area, or find a friend that ties them and is generous enough to share (or a local tyer that will sell direct).
It’s not impossible to sell panfish flies, but I doubt that you could do so successfully on a national level from a company like Umpqua.
I could be wrong, though. No reason someone with the skill, passion, and financial resources to risk shouldn’t try it…
I think the assumption has always been that panfish will take most trout flies and bass aren’t that picky so a large variety is not necessary for them. Both those suppositions are basically true, but not in every specific case. The industry is starting to realize the potential of the warmwater market (the other assumption was that most people who fly fish do it for trout) however, and are bringing out a larger variety of warmwater flies, especially for bass and carp, every year as they become more publicized and popular targets for flyfishers.
I think you hit a lot of the points really well. I am strictly warmwater, and I can catch pans on everything I tie, and in almost every size. That said, I always hope a smallie beats them to the punch, or fly in this case.
I know i originally started flyfishing for trout in our mountains and bought 3 and 4 weights,started using beadhead nymths and thought damn i can outfish crickets with these things!Until recently i bought a five weight to play around with pond bass with clousers and popping bugs and have found to a size 6 it will work,like on my plastic worm thread i will try them in the spring.As for the flies i have found good patterns from feather-craft and ed is a real nice guy to deal with.
I have a fairly good market for panfish flies.I supply locally and do decent selling on Ebay.Not alot of trout streams around me so panfish and crappie flies are most of what i tie.When you can tie them and know they catch fish there should be no problem selling them.I dont sell anything that i have not tried that style for myself and caught fish with.
Part of an old rant is to notice how many rods, lines and reels are made for panfish.
You will see panfish listed 2nd or thrid but not first in most cases.
Since gills will take trout flies many places do not seem interested in taking the space to put in flies for warmwater.
The biggest reason “Warmwater Fly Fisher” magazine folded was the loss of sponsors.
Warmwater folks just don’t buy equipment, was they reason at the time.
It’s too bad that the “warmwater fly fisher” magazine went under. Friend Kevin bought a number of the back copies, and I have some of his in my book case. It was an outstanding magazine.