Your FATC had the privilege of participating in the Tri-Lakes Fly Tying Expo in Clinton, MO this past weekend. Four FATC fly tiers, Kenny Klimes, Dan Staggenborg, Steve Baker, and Brett “Gabby” Heath went to Clinton, MO for this expo. This was our first time here since Covid prevented us from going in years past. The group that put on this expo are the Tri-Lakes Fly Fishers association. And I’ll have to say they did an excellent job.

There were about 40 fly tiers, and many other organizations and vendors present. Of course, this gave us the opportunity to “smooze” a little as we discussed possibilities of working together with several other organizations such as the Missouri Mayfly Project, the Bennett Spring hatchery manager, RiverRun Outfitters, the Southwest Missouri Fly Fishers, Frontline Fly Fishing, and more.

Steve, Dan, Gabby and Kenny tied several flies from tiny ones to large ones for this demo. We arrived in Clinton on Friday afternoon and checked into our rooms for that night. Our dinner was at, what we were told is the best place for dinner in the town – Mallard’s Roadhouse. We all went to dinner and had an awesome time of fellowship. A big thank you to the FATC for picking up our rooms and meal. On Saturday, we were up early, had breakfast and headed to the Benson Convention Center for the expo. We met a lot of great people throughout the day. The expo started at 9am and ran to 4pm. They had raffles and auctions throughout the day – some pretty nice stuff too.

We all departed at 4pm with Steve, Dan and Gabby headed to fish Bennett on Sunday and Monday and Kenny headed to Springfield, MO to teach a casting class. I haven’t heard any fishing reports yet on the Bennett excursion but talking with the hatchery manager at the expo he said they really “loaded” up the fish this winter and that’s why everyone was having high fish counts this catch and release season. Got to love it.

There will be another fly-tying expo in Branson, MO at the end of July. If you would like to go and tie, please let us know!!