Fellow Flyfishermen,

With the International Fly Tackle Dealer Show (IFTD), now only three months away (September 9-11), I thought I would take a moment to encourage all of you to attend. Why? Because attending will help you, it will help your business, and it will help the flyfishing industry as a whole. While not perfect, the IFTD is still the best option out there by far.

The American Fly Fishing Trade Association has taken a lot of criticism in recent years—some of it deserved, some not. I have taken a few shots myself, in The Drake and elsewhere (mock story about the show being held in Rock Springs, etc.), because, at times, our trade organization was just begging to be made fun of.

Nevertheless, every industry needs a trade group, and AFFTA took the necessary steps last fall and winter to put together a show that WE in the flyfishing industry actually own. And if you make the effort to go this September, you will see that this is NOT the same show that has taken place in the past.

Let me share just two examples. While the date (September) and location (Denver) are sometimes listed as reasons for not attending, cost is often the biggest deterrent.

Gig Harbor, Washington

Most people with a shred of business sense would question 31-year-old Blake Merwin’s motivation to open the Gig Harbor Fly Shop in March of 2009, right in the midst of America’s largest financial collapse since the Great Depression. The established flyshop of twenty years, and barely ten miles down the road, had just been forced to close. And Merwin had been successfully running an online flyfishing catalog for five years out of his home, with minimal overheard and operating expenses. He was now shifting operations to a retail storefront in a town of 7,000, in what some would call a backward—and definitely more expensive—move.

Fayetteville, Arkansas

We all know what a proper flyshop is supposed to look like. You park where a gas station burned down in the Sixties, walk by a nice place to get a drink, cross over the rickety old porch and then flap through the screen door, stepping into a converted general store built before the crops all dried up and blew away. At least, that’s the theory....

If, as the classic narrative goes, there are more than 8 million stories in the naked city, Urban Angler flyshop, for the past 20 years, has been intertwined in the yarn. From links to the Madoffs (indirect at best, says Bernie) to recent American Express TV ads, this Manhattan retailer maintains its spot as the Big City stop for a community of hardcore fly fishers.

What would motivate a person to open a fly shop in the midst of the Great Recession? I asked this question to David D’Beaupre, who opened The Sierra Trout Magnet and Guide Service in Bishop, California, in August 2009. With small, independent fly shops closing left and right in recent years, I figured he had to be worried.