The Best Websites To Buy Online Flies
Words by Sam Wike
Nothing replaces a strong local fly shop. If you live close to one, at least for your local fishing needs, that's always Option #1
That’s because it’s difficult to replace the sense of community, local knowledge, and relationships you form at a local fly shop (or even a strong department store with local anglers working in the department).
BUT! That’s not an option for lots of people in many parts of the country. So we’ve developed a list of websites or “online fly shops” that are doing their fly sales best.
We based our opinions on the quality of product photos, pricing and shipping, selection, variety of species the site is knowledgeable in, and information about the flies. Of course, we are biased, so we saved comments about ourselves until the end. Throughout this exercise we discovered lots of ways we should try to get better.
Fly Fish Food
Of course, these guys are the “Dream Team” from Utah. They’ve got Cheech, Curtis, Egan and an incredibly fishy staff. They are focused heavily on trout and have carved out a niche especially on Euro flies and stillwater patterns. They are known for their full selection of Lance Egan flies and their signature patterns from the FFF owners, Cheech and Curtis. They appear to be much more focused on education than pricing, and their images are clean and easy to see. Some flies have descriptions, but not all, and most of those descriptions appear to be supplied by the vendor. However, FFF does have a significant number of reviews on product pages, which gives the customer further insight on those flies. Overall, these guys are great online retailers, especially if you are looking to dial in your stillwater and Euro games.
Yellowdog Fly Fishing
Not going to lie: for not being in the retail side of the business very long the crew at Yellowdog is impressing us with the amount of work they have done to their online website. Yellowdog has carved out a niche as one of the leaders, if not the clear leader, in fly fishing travel, and more recently it purchased a fly shop in 4 Corners just outside of Bozeman, Montana. Yellowdog’s travel experience has translated into their retail site with an extensive list of options for nearly every species you have on your bucket list. We appreciate easily shopping by species, and YD has done a nice job putting together legitimate fly assortments for the destinations they send their travel clients to. Overall, pricing was about average, fly quality was high, and the site offered descriptions to go along with the flies. Some of those descriptions appeared to be custom. The number of images per fly, as well as the selection, will no doubt continue to improve as they continue to grow.
Trident Fly Fishing
We’ve always heard about Trident, but being mostly from the West I guess we just didn’t pay enough attention. These guys have a big selection for nearly every species and have a strong travel presence. Two cool things about the site are the descriptions and background stories told about many of the fly patterns. Secondly, we loved the “Locally Tied” selection. I think I saw a simple looking pattern called “Maple Syrup”, and I love that name, plus it probably smokes fish. We also found categories specifically for pacific salmon, golden dorado, and peacock bass, which probably indicates where some of their passions lie. Overall, this is a solid site for variety of categories. We thought the navigation was a little funky, the pricing to be fair but not the least expensive, and we liked that they had multiple images of each fly.
Madison River Fishing Company
We had no idea honestly. These guys are crushing it. We were impressed with their wide variety of fresh and saltwater patterns, including a large variety, and up to date tarpon and permit selections. I’m sure the tarpon and permit crowds will notice holes in the selection, but it’s solid for the name “Madison River Fishing Co”. Of course, MRF has a solid selection of regional trout patterns as well. We love that they take their own images and those photos are very high quality.
Space Coast Flies
All salt, and these guys are niche, but if you’re looking for cutting-edge saltwater flies you must check these guys out. They do a great job integrating unique fly patterns from commercial companies and small batch fly tyers, including their favorite patterns. We highly commend them for taking their own high-resolution images. We like that they give props to the small tyers as well as promoting those tiers’ Instagram handles. They don’t appear to be worried about customers going directly to the tyer, which has always been something we wrestle with. Check these guys out for unique patterns for your next saltwater trip, especially if your trip is to Florida or the Gulf Coast where, naturally, Space Coast is especially dialed in.
Last but not least… drum roll please.
House of Fly
I’ve been honest about our thoughts on the aforementioned sites, so I’ll be honest about us as well. We are extremely passionate about fly patterns, their history, and what they mean to the sport. We don’t feel you are fully participating in the sport of fly fishing without learning who created a fly and why that pattern works. Knowing those things makes the experience more rewarding. So, here’s a list of things we have done and continue to work on.
American Small Batch
We offer a small batch selection on our site, tied by individuals who specialize in certain styles of flies. This is one of our favorite programs and we want to continue to build it.
https://houseoffly.com/shop/flies/collections/american-small-batch
For every pattern we carry, we try to use the tyers full name so that you can learn more about who developed it, why they developed it, and how it was intended to be fished.
Signature Tyers
When commercial signature fly tyers have a pattern with a fly-tying company they get paid a royalty. We try to make sure we only purchase patterns from the original company that tied that pattern so the fly tyer gets full credit. We also try to add nearly all the patterns from each of the signature tyers we support. If we like some of their patterns, we generally like most of them.
We painstakingly take all our own images and try to have a “hover image” so you can quickly get a second angle without clicking into the product page. And we try to keep the resolution as high as possible so you can zoom in and see every important detail.
We have a large selection for trout, steelhead, bass, carp, redfish, bonefish, tarpon, permit, roosterfish, and most other species, and we are adding lot of killer patterns all the time. I think I drive our team crazy every week finding new patterns we really should have on the site.
We started The Fly Project in 2015, mostly with our own custom flies. We now have many of those patterns on the site, which you can find under the names Fred Telleen, Sam Wike, and Calvin Fuller. We continue to add new customs every year.
Overall, we believe we have strong pricing (perhaps the best in the industry) and a unique selection. Many of our flies are custom tied for us, or they are from boutique fly companies. We are adding key patterns all the time. We have a strong passion to honor the history and share the stories behind the fly patterns. We have a long way to go to describe all the tyers and patterns but we are burning the candle to do so. To sum it up, we are a never ending “Work in Progress”. We are happy to hear how we can improve and what you would like to learn from our project at House of Fly.
Lastly, we would like to say this is not an exhaustive list. There are a lot of fly shops doing great work out there and if you see one you think we should take a look at please send us a note at support@houseoffly.com.
The point of this article is to say that many of us in the fly fishing retail space are doing things very well. That’s why anglers, us included, like stopping in every fly shop we see. Each one has a little different character and online fly shops are no different. Once you check them out you’ll notice the niche categories they run best. And that will also tell you where their interests are.