I had the good fortune to grow up within a fly fishing family. My father was an avid angler, as was his, as was my great grandfather who was born the son of emigrant hard-rock gold miners on the banks of California’s Yuba River. My father taught me how to fish and tie when I was young, and as soon as I could tie a brindle bug better than he could (around age 10) he stopped tying and started placing informal orders. I have spent my entire adult life working within the fly fishing space, first as guide in Alaska and Northern California, then moving into retail and instruction, then into rod building, and then back into retail, guiding and instruction before starting Fly Water Travel in 1999 with my business partner Brian Gies. Creating physical things that are both beautiful and functional has always provided me with a type of fulfilment that my day jobs cannot. I have endless ideas for engineering new more effective flies with the time and discipline to manifest those ideas into meaningful prototypes proving the most challenging part of the process. I like making new things and once I have refined a fly to what will be its final version, I dread tying the super-consistent samples. I wish I could farm that out and get on with the important creative work of solving everyday angling challenges.