“Tonight we ride.” - Tom Russell

A 2023 wild steelhead that ate a Phoebe’s Muddler.

Rainy Creek Fly Co. is live.  I’ve been threatening this for years, somewhere between 8 and 10 of them, if I’m not mistaken. I began selling flies in 2008, when I gifted some to friends who were embarking to guide a Middle Fork trip (I wasn’t there yet, still guiding the Stanley day stretch). They returned a week or so later, and called me up requesting more. Apparently the handful of early Stone Creek prototypes I’d handed off, and a few Slate Ck ants as well, had “saved the trip”. I objectively don’t believe in the power of a couple flies to do this, especially when fishing for Westslope cutthroat which will eat basically anything. Most likely they tied on a few of my bugs just as the weather and water temps lined up legendarily. But it was all the encouragement I needed to consider my own original patterns, which I’d been tying and developing since age 12, as worthy of other anglers’ attention and use.

I sold for a handful of years through the now-defunct MyFlies.com , which I’d found in a Fly Tyer Magazine sidebar. I registered as a sole proprietorship with the state and federal government, got an EIN# to make it legal (and so I could purchase from Hareline as a dealer!).

When MyFlies folded, I started selling flies to past river guests, word-of-mouth referrals, and other guides and outfitters on the Middle Fork. And now, this.

I’ll still disappear when guiding on the Middle Fork/Selway/etc for the summer. This might mean orders are suspended, we’ll have to see - I’m not a dedicated production tyer, so my inventory grows slowly. So bear with me. I’m just one guy, tying all the flies, while working a year’s worth of hours in four summer months, and juggling ski guiding and carpentry gigs in the winter and steelhead guiding in the fall.

If you like what you see, order, fish with, please spread the word. I’d love to break even on this.

Thanks for being here, thanks for being fisherfolk.  Please take care of your river systems.

Cheers. MM