A true native to the land of spring creeks, spotted cows, and corn stalks. I grew up In La Crosse, WI, just a few miles North of what I consider to be the absolute Valhalla of spring creek fly fishing between Coon Valley and Viroqua, Wisconsin. I started fishing the local spring creeks at age 5 with my father, drowning worms and throwing spinners. After a several year Hiatus to fish the Mississippi for bass with my dad – who eventually became a semi professional bass fisherman – I came back to the spring creeks and my first love in the early 1990s. I soon was asked to start guiding to help out my good friend and mentor, Dennis Graupe, who owned a fly shop, and haven’t looked back since. In the past 15 years, I’ve fished a veritable plethora of water from the Smokies to Alaska to the Atlantic coast for Jacks. I spent the last half dozen years guiding for Kelly Galloup at the Slide Inn on the Madison River and Beaverhead rivers in Montana, and have also guided for Pat Straub’s Flywater on the Missouri river. While I love Montana and will likely continue to fish and guide there on a more limited basis, I miss the intimacy of the spring creeks of the Midwest, which is why flyworks came to be. There’s just nothing like home. Have you ever caught a fish out west that was missing its parts…a missing eyeball? a torn maxillary? That just doesn’t seem to happen much here.
