By Kirk Deeter

Please read the rest of what I have to say here before you rush to answer this question. This post isn’t meant to instigate an opinion poll and I’m not trying to trigger an impromptu website debate on semantics.   

I just want to tell you a story about how fishing with a young man named Joey Maxim and his father Joe on Montana's Blackfoot River has forever changed my own perceptions of fly fishing.

By Kirk Deeter

Now that Tim Romano has given away a pair of the new Cabela's Guidewear BOA Wading Boots, I'm going to tell you how they work.

They're great. If you like the Boa lacing system.

BOA laces are wire, and they can be wound on a circular dial knob. Crank the dial and the laces come tight. Pull the knob out and the system loosens up, and you slide your feet right out. The lingo from everyone who markets boots with BOA laces is that the easy-on, easy-off advantages are especially valuable when it's muddy, or icy, and so forth. But let's be really honest. Boa laces work really great for people who have a spare tire around their middle, and don't like squishing themselves when they tie their laces. (I have a friend who told me this.)

By Kirk Deeter

The other day I got a phone call from my credit card company asking for feedback on customer service. Thing is, it was an automated call, as in "press 1 if you are happy with our customer service." I'm not kidding, although at the time I thought, "you must be joking," and simply hung up. I don't think it takes an MBA to figure out that having customers talk to a recording is probably not the best way to assess customer service satisfaction, but I may be wrong.

I don't think I'm wrong, however, when I say that customer service is the key to a successful fly shop.  I've been covering the business of fly fishing for many years now, and during that time I've seen a number of fly shops close their doors throughout the country.

By Kirk Deeter

There are reasons why some fly patterns sell by the thousands of dozens every year. The Copper John, arguably the most popular nymph pattern on the planet, simply sinks better, faster, and is just flashy enough to grab a trout's attention. You can turn over a million rocks in rivers and never see anything that looks like a Copper John, but the fly is brilliant. The Parachute Adams is equally remarkable for its drab simplicity. Developed in northern Michigan nearly a century ago, the Adams proves to me over and over that trout care more about profile and presentation than they do about exact colors and detailed body accents.

Thing of it is, I have also come to believe that familiarity breeds contempt, at least in the context of trout and the dry flies they see every day.