About and credits

michfly is a reference for Michigan fly patterns: who tied them, where, for which hatch, and what the record actually says about their origins. It is designed and built by an Ann Arbor-based web design studio, Neue Tiger.

How patterns are researched

Each origin story is checked against published sources, which are listed at the bottom of every pattern page. Every pattern carries one of four labels:

• Solid: two or more independent sources agree.
• Likely: sources agree on the tyer but differ on details or the date.
• Disputed: credible sources name different originators.
• Unverified: the pattern comes from a single archive record, usually Tom Deschaine's Michigan Dry Flies archive, and no independent source has confirmed it yet. These pages say so, and we update them as sources turn up.

If you know something a page gets wrong, especially from family records or first-hand memory, please send a correction. If you know a Michigan pattern that isn't here yet, suggest it.

Where to fish

Rivers named on michfly are major public waters. The site doesn't publish private spots or pins.

Photos

Photos are on the way, a few at a time. Every one will be a fly tied and photographed for michfly. There are good pictures of many of these patterns online, but they belong to the people who took them, so michfly doesn't borrow them. If there's a fly you'd like to see first, let us know.

Shops and money

michfly has no ads and no affiliate links. Pattern pages point to Michigan fly shops that sell tying materials online, because Michigan's flies started in shops like them. Those are plain links, and michfly earns nothing from them.

Tom Deschaine

Much of what anyone knows about Michigan's dry flies was gathered by Tom Deschaine. He built Michigan Dry Flies, an archive of roughly two hundred Michigan patterns, classic and modern, and wrote about the people behind them in his Fly of the Week and Just Old Flies columns for Fly Anglers Online. He also kept a list of flies and tyers he suspected were Michigan's own but hadn't yet pinned down.

Tom has passed away, and his archive is no longer being updated. michfly picks up where he left off. Every pattern from his archive is being written up here in our own words, checked against other sources where they exist, and joined by new patterns he never got to. Every page drawn from his archive credits it, and his original recipe cards are still at michigandryflies.net.