One More Pull

A beauty James Reid landed on his Winter Run Bamboo, Doublehand 

The morning sun rises,

reflecting orange and pink skies.

One more session; before we have to leave.

Scurry to put on waders; 

forget the morning coffee buzz, just gotta get in the water. 

One last cast, 

one more pull, one more landed; 

it's never enough.

Hello October Steelhead

Made in Montana, hooked in Oregon. Photo by Jess Gibson

With the lack of time to tie flies, I'm thrilled when friends gives me a few of their patterns to fish, especially when the flies are tyed by the person that cuts my waders. A few weeks ago I was gifted this red and black fly by Clay Krull, perfect for Deschutes summer steelhead and it paid off.   Clay is Simms' lead fabric cutter, he lays out Locke's blueprints on his 16-yard-long cutting table. Wearing a metal mesh glove, he guides a fabric saw through various thicknesses of the fabric, cutting along razor-thin lines all designed to minimize waste.

Simms-Made in the USA
photo by Brian Grossenbacher’s

"I think I've cut the patterns for 99.9 percent of the waders we've made over the last seven years," Krull says.

The patterns that Locke prints out and Krull cuts are filled with lines that come within a fraction of an inch of each other. Any waste, which is generally thin strips of fabric, is collected for recycling in a bin simply marked "Gore."