One Fly

A very curious strategy for flyfishing. They say everyone to his own but I have a story about a guy who not only wants to be to his own, but very much alone as well.

Terry Ring is the owner of Silver Creek outfitters up in Sun Valley. He has been there for a very long time and garnished quite a reputation as an expert. Terry contends that Silver Creek’s mission is taking the difficulty out of fly fishing and serving customers in any way necessary. “We know it is intimidating. Learning anything new is intimidating. We try to break down that intimidation factor, it can be simple to sophisticated. We have one customer that we have had for many years, he would come in with his rod, he would have us tie on a new leader in the spring, he would have us tie a single fly on it and he would go out the door with a single fly, he did not have a backup fly in his box. That is the way that he wanted to approach flyfishing. He would drive out to one of the small streams in the area and he would fish. If he would lose his fly or it became frayed he would come back to the store, have us tie another fly on, and he would go back out. This was a guy who was a very avid fisherman. He finished a lot but he didn’t want to be bothered by some of the complexity of it. We tried to help him in any way we can and we sold him 3 flies per year and one leader.”