Craft stores

[Woolybugger]

It's really a shame that almost all of the flyshops are closing. I used to love stopping at them.

But!! They usually didn't have what I wanted and way more expensive.

Besides it's so easy to shop online. The huge shops, like Cabelas, will send anything you want and for the cheapest price...... just a mouse-click away .... $5 shipping? it cost way more than that to drive to a fly shop. $3 a gallon for gas and they won't have what you want anyway!

And craft stores, you can purchase almost everything for tying except the hooks! The foam sheets, like mentioned above, are so cheap and it's fun to cut the foam and make any style fly you like. Why would you spend ten times as much just to get a silly looking spider body? I can make my own creations for almost nothing.

The world has changed. Having said all this, I still stop a flyshops and spend some money there........ they never have what I want, but I like to stop anyway.

Big ticket items? how can a flyshop ever compete with Cabelas? Cabelas has thousands of "factory fresh" rods of every type and weight that are available. And the combos! How can a flyshop ever match the price of a big chain store? It used to be that in a flyshop you could test the rods........ not anymore. The flyshops only have a couple outdated rods and never the ones I was looking for. This past spring, I went to Cabelas in Hamburg, PA and the salesman in the flyshop let me cast whatever I wanted!!

I purchased a Sage Fli 5wt from Cabelas. The two flyshops I went to before didn't even have a 5wt Sage in stock!!! And the combo price was way lower with "factory fresh" line and reels. I wanted to purchase from a flyshop, but all they had were old outfits at a inflated price.

Scuze me, while I tie some craft store flies

 

WOWZERS, Woolybugger!!
You, obviously, must visit some REALLY BAD fly shops, wherever it is, you go!?!

True, I like craft stores, too but I'll always support my fly shop, first and foremost. Like, I said, "I don't know, where YOU have run into such understocked and poor service-giving, fly shops", but the one I use, (River City Fly Shop, in Tigard Or.), not ONLY has over 12,000 sq.feet of space, that's overflowing with goods....but if it's not in his shop, he'll run you a mile away and allow you to paw through one of his, 3, large rental storage garages, chocked full of stuff.

Next to his shop, is a large lawn area, where you can try out any reel-rod/rod-reel combo, your heart desires.

Add, to those things, the free info on local waters, (which places like Cabela's cannot give you), the fact that anything and everything that I want to look at it "hands on" before I buy it..........all make a local fly shop a much better deal, than any large "Box Store".