This is in reference to the “What’s your Beef” story (March issue, Angling Trade). FlyMasters started going to the Fly Fishing Show in 1991. Jon went down for a day to New Orleans last year, and that was okay. We have no interest in making the show better; our interest is making our business better and the fly fishing show does not assist in that manner.
We started attending ICAST the last time it was held in Orlando, and have been back each year, it is like the Fly Fishing Show used to be in respect to finding new gadgets etc to use in fly fishing. We have added conventional tackle (to our store) since most of our customers use both. They enjoy buying it from us. Shimano/Loomis is one of our top 3 vendors. That has happened in four years. And we sell giant Canadian night crawlers, redworms, and beemoth. We turn away no angler. We publish our own magazine each year, which can be found on the homepage of www.flymasters.com. It has articles about our philosophy, etc.
People who already fish are more likely to pick up a fly rod and we do everything we can to encourage that curiosity. We tell our larger vendors to have us out to their location for a couple of days to talk business and look at product. It would be cheaper for them and more effective in communication between retailer and vendor. So we have no beef with AFFTA or the show, we do not need them to do our business.
Big boxes are farm teams for new customers. We have two within a half mile of our store, their employees send us customers all the time. This is feedback from a retail store in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Derrick Filkins
FlyMasters of Indianapolis
