Fly Field Guides

What We Do

The "Field Guide" part hasn't always been literal around here. We used to joke that business cards and back-of-magazine listings (yes, we've done this a while) would be a lot easier if there was a vocation called "Field Guide" that covered hunting, fishing, backcountry trips, and outfitting assistance.

The Field Guide that forced us to build this site and product line was accidental, and it took a 10-year old to make it happen. One of us meets a lot of out-of-town folks on his home streams and, because we are all outdoor advocates first, would spend a lot of time talking to them. Sometimes even giving up an after-dinner hour fishing to give a casting lesson and hand over a box of flies. Most of the meetings involved pulling out his notebook for that stream and sharing years of hard-earned knowledge.

One late night hike back to the trailhead, the kid said, "We'd do a lot more fishing if you just made copies of that book to give to people."

Yep. That simple.

The Field Guide books and maps aren't copies of our guiding notes. They are primers with good maps to help those folks we always meet on the water.

There's a huge retail customer segment that refuses to use a guide but wants some basic information to get started when they visit a new area. The Field Guide books and maps have become popular with our retail partners because it can provide a store-exclusive solution to increase consumer engagement and promotion.

How we do it

The guides don't exist without input from our retail partners. Starting with the basic formats, we tailor the product to their needs and their expert voice.

It's a good mix. Our retail partners bring the local knowledge and connection to their customers and we supply everything else.

That customization is because we are efficient. Everything is produced by the people our retail partners work with. Our illustrator illustrates, our copywriter writes, our GIS nerd creates the maps, and our designer puts it together. All of them have a part to play on the production side, too. We get to focus on our retail partners because we are part of a larger operation that has licensing, IP, and business-side expertise.

Those folks do a lot of other stuff, too. The Field Guides were spun off from the individualized solutions they provide. If your small business needs assistance with insights-type intelligence, comms, marketing, or anything else let us know. We will get you in touch with the right person in that group.

Who We Are

We are guides of a different sort. We prefer to be on a trout stream, in a walleye boat, lugging gear to an alpine lake, or wondering where all the turkeys went. We spend a lot of time in other places, guiding our clients and partners through business solutions. That's the downside of a rust-belt work ethic.

We're big on sharing and conserving knowledge and wild places. The more knowledgeable an outdoor enthusiast is, the more conservation-aware they become. The easiest conduit to capture those folks is the family-operated, local retailer and guiding service.

The Field Guide books and maps are a small peice of that.

What to know

Earlier we said our Field Guides are meant to be primers. That includes the maps. We use vetted public-domain data sources and trace and position data gathered by us or our retail partners. High-end data and design platforms allow us to create the most authentic information possible but the maps are not intended for vital or necessary use. They are an illustrative tool to help plan and record fishing trips.

Some folks have asked why the Field Guide maps lack the grid lines, notations, and other detailed wayfinding information they've seen in the notebooks we carry into the field. It is simply because the Field Guide maps are meant to be illustrative in nature and a foundation on which to build outdoors experience. Our personal maps are a similar reference but also a component in the safety system we each use. That information is only useful if you understand how to apply the small part it plays in our personal methods of staying safe and found.

Any time you venture into the field ensure you have the proper equipment to keep you safe. For wayfinding, navigation, safety, rescue, or simply staying found carry up-to-date official maps and know how to use them.