Coming Soon… Flylab

Unfiltered, no BS, no payola, credible, consumer-facing reviews and commentary on fly fishing products from the world-traveled editors of Angling Trade (and our carefully-selected partners).

Many of you have known that we’ve been up to something. Well, here’s a quick overview of what that is. This Angling Trade  newsletter is 100% focused on explaining Flylab: Why we’re launching, how it’s going to work, what that means (opportunities) for retailers and what that means (opportunities) for product manufacturers. We’ll also tell you what all this means for the future of Angling Trade.

We’ve been working hard for the past year to design something where everyone in the business of fly fishing wins—especially consumers. We think we’ve landed on a good launchpad, but we’re going to tweak things and evolve as we go. As always, we’re with those of you who make fly fishing happen, we welcome your input and gratefully appreciate your support as this unfolds.

So let’s get into the weeds…

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Why are we creating Flylab?

It boils down to two reasons, really.

First, we’ve done our research, in addition to the 18 years we’ve been making the industry trade magazine. Recently, we conducted a survey of @800 dedicated angling consumers, and learned that nearly half of them don’t really trust the gear reviews they read (or watch in video form). Fly anglers are, by and large, pretty damn savvy. They know how the bread gets buttered with magazines, websites, blogs, etc., and they know nobody is going to talk negatively about an advertiser. They also know that when a glowing product review concludes with a “click here to buy” tab, that’s basically an infomercial. They know that an “influencer” is, by definition, tasked with steering consumers in a certain direction. And, no offense, but consumers also know a fly shop person is going to tell them all the good things about the products their shop carries (as you should!). But consumers want more.

We’re going to give that to them.

As editors of Angling Trade, we’ve literally seen every product in fly fishing come and go over the past 18 years. We know what succeeded and why, and we know what flopped and why.  Moreover, as editors, writers, photographers, etc., we’ve been cranking out product reviews, other stories and editing copy for Field&Stream, MidCurrent, The Flyfish Journal and TROUT magazine. And beyond that, we’ve been writing and offering opinions on fly fishing and its products outside of the “base” at places like Wired, USA Today, The New York Times and elsewhere. When the media world wants to know where things stand in fly fishing, more often than not, they come to us.

So we had an itch that needed scratching, and we’re going to scratch that.

Reason two is that we’re genuine connoisseurs of fly gear, we care about this as a topic more than we probably should and we want to have fun. We’ve fished stuff all over the planet—we’re willing to stack our bona fides against others—and we’ve formed some hard-earned opinions, which we feel like sharing.

It’s as simple as that.

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What will the Flylab launch mean for Angling Trade?

Angling Trade is sticking around as the only media forum in the world exclusively focused on the business of fly fishing. It’s where we will continue to tackle the issues (like trade shows, conservation news, and legal cases), as well as people news, trends, commentary and so forth. If you have press releases, that’s where they’ll end up. We’re going to continue our schedule of bi-weekly newsletters, and you can find advertising information at anglingtrade.com.

If you’re looking to hire, or looking for a job, go to flyfishingjobs.com, and in-depth product reviews will soon be live at Flylab.