Some people tie flies with Utilitarian goals in mind.  The fly becomes a useful tool intended to dupe a fish into eating a piece of steel that will allow the angler to bring the fish to hand.  For others, the paths woven with fur and feathers are the highways to their souls.  Their personal manifesto scribed through the windings of thread.  These works of art may never see the water.   Then there are the rest of us………

I think the best fly tiers were most likely those kids in your 3rd grade class who ate paste and pissed on the playground whenever they felt like it.  Popular?  Nope.  Misunderstood?  Maybe a little.  Creative?  Definitely.  Countless numbers of people spend immeasurable hours copying patterns from books, videos, and websites.  Does this make them fly tiers?  Don’t misunderstand my point.  These are valuable tools that serve a good purpose.  But, somewhere in time, the fly tier lost his/her touch with the water.  If you were sitting in a fly shop, surrounded by a full array of materials, and someone handed you a glass jar, the contents of which was a small, un-named baitfish, could you copy it?  Where would you start?

The Hatchless community is an open book.  No, scratch that.  More like a journal.  A place for those neo-creative paste eaters to share their ideas.  With a name like Hatchless, we may be showing our colors a bit.  The founding fathers of this site are streamer fanatics.  But we are anglers, and more importantly, conservationists one and all.  It’s time to put the thread to the hook.  Get out the cameras……. create………. share………and go fishing.