S2, Ep 22: Mike Hogue of Badger Creek Fly Tying

EPISODE SUMMARY

Guest: Mike Hogue - Owner at Badger Creek Fly Tying (Ithaca, New York area)

In this episode: Commercial tier and outdoor writer Mike Hogue shares insights on building the oldest online fly shop, commercial fly tying techniques and starting a fly fishing business on a $200 budget. Topics include commercial tying methods, e-commerce evolution, outdoor writing craft, fly tying material sourcing and the business side of the fly fishing industry.

Key fishing techniques covered: • Commercial fly tying production methods (batch processing and step reduction) • Bass fishing with ultralight rods (zero weight tactics) • Panfish fly pattern development • Spring creek trout fishing in the Driftless region • Smallmouth fishing in Arkansas Ozarks

Location focus: Driftless region (southern Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois), White River system and Ozarks (Arkansas), Ithaca area (New York)

Target species: Trout (spring creek), smallmouth bass, panfish, largemouth bass

Equipment discussed: Various vises (J-vise from South Africa, Marc Petitjean MP travel vise, Partridge tying station), Sage zero weight rods, fly patterns (Yellow Sally, Mrs. Simpson, Woolly Buggers with yarn tails, Cricket Nymph, Pheasant Tail, furry foam crawdads), Minnesota pocket gopher fur, various tying materials

Key questions answered: • How to start a commercial fly tying business • What techniques make commercial tying efficient and profitable • How to break into outdoor writing • How to build an online fly shop from scratch • Where to source exotic tying materials

Best for: All levels of anglers interested in fly tying business, commercial tying techniques, outdoor writing, fly shop entrepreneurship and fly fishing industry history

**Marvin Cash (00:04):**
Hey folks, it's Marvin Cash, the host of The Articulate Fly, and on this episode I'm joined by Mike Hogue. Mike is an accomplished commercial tier, outdoor writer and the owner of Badger Creek Fly Tying. He started Badger Creek with a $200 tax refund, and it's the oldest online fly shop on the internet. He was online before the word e-commerce even existed.

Before we move on to the interview though, a couple of housekeeping items. I want to thank all of our listeners. If you like the podcast, please do us a favor and share it with a friend and leave us a review in the podcatcher of your choice. And I want to give a shout out to this episode's sponsor, our friends at the Texas Fly Fishing and Brew Festival. This year, the event's going to be held March 21st and 22nd in Plano, Texas. And if you go to www.txflyfishingfestival.org or our events page, you can get all the latest information on speakers, vendors and classes. Now on to the interview.

Well, Mike, welcome to The Articulate Fly.

**Mike Hogue (01:02):**
Well, thanks for having me on your show. This is pretty exciting. And I'm sure there'll be a lot of interesting things we can discuss today for you.

**Marvin Cash (01:14):**
Absolutely. I'm looking forward to it. And we have a tradition on The Articulate Fly. I always ask all of my guests to share their earliest fishing memory.

**Mike Hogue (01:24):**
Earliest fishing memory, years ago I grew up in Iowa City, Iowa, and my father was a fisherman. And I was maybe four years old and we were fishing down below a little dam in town, it was a little electric dam, and there was a little kind of a sluice. And my dad said, "Well, you have to put your bobber out there." I had a cane pole, and "You have to get it out there quite a ways, and that's where the fish are." And I said, "Well, dad, what about this one over here?" And he goes, "Well, I don't know. I think that one's dead." And I said, "Well, let me try." And I dropped it in there, and of course then I caught a fish.

So then I was showing up my dad, the master angler, and that might have been one of the few times I was actually able to do that. So that's probably the earliest fishing memory I think, maybe four or five years old.

**Marvin Cash (02:12):**
And when did you make the move to the dark side of fly fishing?

**Mike Hogue (02:18):**
Well, I had a fishing buddy when I was in college, and he and I used to go out together because we didn't have a lot of money then. You know, we were both students, and it was an excuse to get away and get out of the house and, of course, drink beer. That was like, you know, the second part of the thing. And then my friend moved away, and so I didn't really have anybody to fish with.

And my dad had always fly fished. And so I said, "Well, I'd like to start fly fishing." And so he put together a ridiculously bad rig for me. It was an old fiberglass Wright & McGill rod that the top was like a hula hoop and the bottom was like a broomstick. And then I used to get flies at Kmart for, I think, five of them were like six bucks. And there was one yellow one in there, which I later found out was a Yellow Sally that caught all the fish. And I'd go out to the lake and fish and catch fish.

And eventually I happened to meet some other people. So I was very fortunate when I started fly fishing. I met one of the Powells from California. Ed Powell was a professor at Iowa State University, and he taught fly fishing. He taught fly tying, and he was also a director of a local chapter of a FFI club. It's called the Hawkeye Fly Fishing Club.

And through Ed, I started tying flies, and then I also joined the clubs, and then I also took other classes. So as Ed described it, he's ruined many people because he started them fly fishing. So I had no idea that he was really from a very famous West Coast family, being in the Midwest. And there's quite a heritage. His great-grandfather was a founder of the Powell Rod Company and made cane rods. And then his mom, which was the spouse for Walt Powell, they used to tie the flies on the kitchen table at Chico, California, in their house.

And then Ed was one of the youngest winners of the Golden Gate Casting Club in San Francisco. I believe he was the youngest person until this new teenage gal came out that won the Golden Gate casting for his age group. So quite a lot of heritage there, and I was just very lucky to meet him. And he taught me a lot.

**Marvin Cash (04:57):**
Yeah, who are some other folks that kind of mentored you along your fly fishing journey?

**Mike Hogue (05:02):**
Well, I had a friend who was from Hawaii and who was a member of the Hawaiian Fly Fishing Association, Larry Young. And Larry and I started tying flies about the same time. And he and I learned a lot of things together and we fished together and had a lot of fun together. And I met him more or less through the club.

And then I met some other friends. One of my early friends was a fellow named Ron Ewenhop that was a commercial tier, and he was from Waterloo, Iowa. He had a contract to tie stoneflies for L.L. Bean at one time, and he had to do like, oh, my goodness, it was some ridiculous number, like 150 gross dozen was the order. And he had made those things in his sleep to the point that he was really tired of doing that. But he had kind of retired from commercial tying.

I had met him, and then he and I became great friends. And then he had kind of mentored me into doing commercial tying and getting my fly tying business started. And we spent a lot of time fishing in the Driftless region of southern Minnesota, which is outside of Rochester, Minnesota. And we also fished in northern Iowa.

The Driftless region is an area that's a limestone area in the tri-state area of Wisconsin, part of Illinois, actually, and then Minnesota and Iowa. And that has all trout regulations and trout rules, and they're all spring creeks up there. But we spent quite a little time fishing on the Minnesota side because it was actually closer than the northern Iowa part. So I spent a lot of time there.

And then my father retired when I was in college and moved to Arkansas. And at the time, I thought that they were kind of moving to a third-world country. It was pretty strange because I didn't know anything about Arkansas. But I later come to find out that it was quite a fishing mecca and a fly fishing mecca with the White River system and the smallmouth fishing down there and then the lake system where they lived. And so I spent quite a bit of time fishing in the Ozarks. So I kind of jumped back and forth between Arkansas and northern Iowa, southern Minnesota, a lot of my fishing when I started.

**Marvin Cash (08:27):**
Very neat. How did you get the fly tying bug?

**Mike Hogue (08:31):**
What happened was there was really no place to buy flies. They're just, you had to order stuff. This is pre-internet, and you got an Orvis catalog once a year and then you place your order, or you got them from L.L. Bean. They were really about the two big mail order outfits. And there was simply no place to buy flies.

And then we were having problems because the flies were either tied wrong, they were too big, they didn't match the conditions. And then we also started getting into bass fishing, and then we were trying to make things either ridiculously large or ridiculously small. And then of course, part of the equation was local fishing was a lot of pan fishing, and there really were no panfish flies at the time. I mean, you had a lot of kind of pseudo wet flies that were designed more or less for freestone trout, and they just really didn't work well.

So I was trying to dial in what worked, what sizes, what shapes and what colors. And that's kind of how I got involved in all this, is trying to make things work for my situation rather than what was appropriate for other places.

**Marvin Cash (08:50):**
Got it. Do you remember your first vise and the first fly you tied on it?

**Mike Hogue (08:55):**
Oh, yes. I had this really awful AA vise my father bought for me from his fly tying club. He was a member of the Bella Vista Fly Tiers in Bella Vista, Arkansas, and they had club vises and things you could buy through the club. And he bought me a little fly tying set. It was a Sunrise AA vise, and it was really a horrendous thing. It was pretty awful. The jaws were soft, it was hard to adjust, you couldn't really hold hooks that well with it.

And I knew absolutely nothing about doing that. And so I had an Orvis pattern guide, and then I also checked out an international fly tying guide from Taft Price out of the Des Moines Public Library. And of course, there were things in there that were actually totally impractical, like, you know, different flies for fishing in Europe and whatnot that were obviously not going to work.

But there were some cool things, like I had friends that shot pheasants, so I made a bunch of New Zealand Mrs. Simpsons. And then I had some orange chenille, and I made these red suttlers and unbelievable things. You know, something from New Zealand would catch smallmouth in a stream in central Iowa. So that was pretty interesting.

But yeah, it was really hard to find stuff pre-internet then. You know, hard to find materials, hard to find good quality things, the books, patterns, magazines, stories and so on. I mean, everything was precious because it was so hard to find. So, and then you meet other people through clubs and whatnot, and they actually knew how to do that. That was just, you know, I was in fat dog heaven when I got to see three or four of the people tie flies that actually were doing it or doing patterns that were practical and useful for where we were fishing.

**Marvin Cash (10:53):**
Yeah, that's pretty neat. What do you tie on today?

**Mike Hogue (10:58):**
I am kind of spoiled because I have a lot of vises. I have a customer that passed away, and I inherited his J-vise, which is made in South Africa, and I tie him back at home. I can't really sell those vises, but it's handmade, and it's a pretty nice vise. It's got a lot of open space to it, and it has a large jaw, and it holds hooks really well.

I also use a travel vise from Mark Petterjean. I have an old MP vise that folds into one little box. And unfortunately, they quit making that. Everybody looks at that and they go, "Well, that's really cool." And I go, "Yeah, and it's kind of old now." But Mark's vise is a little complicated. It's got a lot of parts. And to be quite honest, I can't really remember what most of them do. But I do have one box that's kind of one size fits all.

And then I have this giant Partridge station that I have filled up. It's probably got enough stuff for about four armies in there, and people are amazed. I just pull stuff out of it, and they're like, "Whoa, what's in the bottom of there?" Well, here's some more. Let's look at this. This is kind of cool.

So I'm a member of a local club, the Cornell Fly Fishers, and we try to get together once a week. And when I'm home and not traveling, I'll try to go to that, and then we get together and tell stories and tie flies and share ideas and talk about fishing, and that's pretty fun when I can go.

**Marvin Cash (12:31):**
It sounds like a good time. Who are some of the folks that helped you work on your skills as a fly tier?

**Mike Hogue (12:40):**
Well, I would say Ed probably got me going initially very well. And then he was quite friends with Bob Lake, who was a minister at the church where we used to meet with our fishing group, the Central Iowa Fly Fishers. And Bob, we called him, I always called him Reverend Bob, but it's actually Mike Lake. But Reverend Bob, he used to bring things to sell.

Like they had a friend that was a fellow that was a taxidermist, and he'd cut up pieces of different stuff, you know, like buffalo and elk and deer. And then we'd sell that as a club to keep our club functioning. And then at the time we were making furry foam crawdads.

And this is a story I've told for many years that Reverend Bob didn't appreciate. I had created what I called the Reverend Bob Crawdadfly, and I had accused him of hanging out with Jimmy Swaggart, who was kind of a colorful televangelist at the time, and that he had acquired that from Jimmy from some of his adventures, and he didn't really think that was very funny. But that was kind of one of our standing jokes about the Reverend Bob.

But I ran into Reverend Bob a while ago. He's moved to Connecticut. His daughter lives over there, and I saw him at a show, actually. So I ran into him from time to time, and that was kind of cool to see him. So he was quite a help. He encouraged me a lot.

**Marvin Cash (14:14):**
Yeah, and time for yourself wasn't enough, so you decided that you had to become a commercial tier. How did that happen?

**Mike Hogue (14:21):**
Well, what happened is I started doing demo time, and I would be at shows, and then people would ask me, "How did you make this?" and then "Could you write down what stuff is involved?" and then "Where do I get this from?" And then they asked me, "Could I buy the flies?" And I was kind of shocked that anybody would actually want to buy something I made.

And so I started putting two and two together. At the time I was working as a warehouseman. I was a teamster in Des Moines, Iowa, and I had a shift where I worked four days on and three days off. So I fished a lot, and it rained like Tuesday and Wednesday that year, practically every week. So I had like Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday where it was nice and I went fishing.

Well, to make a long story short, I was subject to layoffs because the business would jump up and down. They'd lose some accounts or something. And the way the unemployment rules read in Iowa was that I could have self-employed income. So I started the idea and I started actually in Arkansas selling things at a craft show.

Now, that sounds a little strange, but in Northwest Arkansas, they have craft fairs that have around 250,000 people attend these things. It's in a six or seven county area. And the people come in hordes, they actually come in busloads from Nebraska, Oklahoma, Kansas, surrounding states, and they come to shop at these different outdoor tent events, if you will.

Well, my mother told me about this for a long, long time. And she said, "Well, why don't you make some of your shadow boxes up and we'll try to sell those." And I brought the flies loose just as, I thought, "Well, I could maybe sell a few flies if they don't want the boxes."

I think the first day they bought out all my flies, every single one I had. So I had to stay up and make some more for the next day. And they virtually didn't buy any of the shadow boxes. So I ended up taking the boxes apart and pulling the flies back out of them and selling those. And that's kind of how I started doing that.

Eventually, I had commercial accounts where I used to tie for Dale Fulton at Mountain Home, Arkansas. He was one of my accounts. I tied for some bait shops and tackle shops. I had a tackle shop in southern Wisconsin. I did their orders every spring.

And then I did commercial orders from customers through the club. And I had an executive that ran the largest department store in Iowa. It was called Younkers. It would be something like kind of a Macy's kind of thing maybe. It was like I think they were bought out by Carson Pirie Scott, but the CEO of Younkers used to send me orders, and his secretary would give me the order. And then I sent the invoice to his paying service. One of his, I don't know, butler guys or something used to send me the checks and everything. It was really a little over the top.

But Tom Gould was a pretty cool customer. So I got lucky. I just happened to meet people like that and people that encouraged me, and they'd want this and that or they'd have a trip and they'd ask me to make things. And then off I'd go, or I'd meet somebody, and for a while I tied flies for Dwayne Hada when he was running a shop at Fort Smith, Arkansas. He's an artist and a fisherman, and I tied some of Dwayne's flies for a while.

And so you just meet folks, and that's kind of how that all started happening. But again, it was kind of a deal where I could do this part-time when I was working at my other job or when I got laid off and had some time available where I could do some commercial orders.

**Marvin Cash (18:38):**
Yeah, that's really neat. What's the biggest difference between tying for yourself and tying commercially?

**Mike Hogue (18:44):**
Well, tying commercially, the first thing you have to do is you have to be very consistent. And you have to do things in stages. And you also have to try to reduce down steps. Because if you don't, you're not going to make money. Essentially, it's piecework.

And so you have to be very quick, and you have to have them all look alike. Everyone needs to look entirely alike. And the hardest thing to teach anybody is how to sort materials. And until you develop an eye to distinguish between what's a usable thing and a bad thing, and what happens is you have some stuff, especially with imported products, like the strung hackles and things like that. They have bad stems or the feathers are twisted and turned or they're hard to work with.

And as a commercial tier, you also have to try to utilize everything that you can. You can't waste stuff. So it forces you to get better to make something work that's really not as workable as you'd like or you find a use for it. The problem is then you get addicted to something or you get a big order.

And you might have, like, say, you know, a pound of Kelly Green Hackle, which I had because I was making a lot of frogs. And then what do you do with Kelly Green Hackle after you make frogs? Well, maybe you make a few damsels, but pretty much you own a lot of Kelly Green Hackle.

So then you have to find ways to get things cheaper and at a lower cost. And, again, it was pre-Internet, so your resources were very limited. Your sources that you found, you got very protective of because you didn't want to tell anybody where you got something at a good price. There was no eBay. There was no Amazon. You got mail catalogs, and then you had to order a sample to see if it was any good, and then you order a large quantity of something.

So that's kind of how I got started with commercially. The big thing is consistency, making things look alike, reducing steps. That's the most important thing to do when you're making commercial flies. And the average tier doesn't understand that until you come in and try to do it.

So you would, like a dry fly, you tie in all the tails, you'd put in maybe a wing post, then you do the body, then you set the hackle, and then you finish off the heads. And you try to reduce the steps so that you can do it faster. And then you try to make the materials consistent and all the same. And that's the challenge, is not so much of doing it because after you do a couple then you kind of get the hang of how to do it faster. So that's the thing. If you're trying to make it commercial, try to reduce the steps, try to sort your materials better, try to source your materials at cheaper prices and also try to do things quicker than what you anticipate.

**Marvin Cash (21:51):**
Got it. And a lot of folks that know you from Badger Creek or maybe know you from up in the Catskills don't realize that you're also a published author. Can you share with us your first published article and if it was the first one that you got paid for, if that or if that came later?

**Mike Hogue (22:02):**
Well, the first one I actually published was for the FFI magazine. I wrote a story, and that is also how I got to know Dave Whitlock really well. He had written a story and mentioned a fly very vaguely that I got to really like. It was the Cricket Nymph, and he had a Cricket Nymph in Fisherman story about panfishing that I really liked. And I'd never really seen his fly, never saw the pattern or anything. And so I just kind of evolved it based on his drawing.

And so then I wrote a story about that and I met the fellow that did the warmwater journal part of the FFI. And Dennis, oh goodness, it's slipping me now. He's a fellow from Missouri. Dennis had asked me to write that story for him. He liked the pattern. And so I wrote Dave and asked him if I could use part of his artwork for that. And he agreed, and I wrote that story. It was one of the first things published nationally. That was a really long time ago. I think actually that might be still floating around on the Internet. There's a guy out in Nebraska, I think, that published that, republished that story. But that was the first story I ever published.

The first one I ever got paid for was a story that I wrote for Fly Fishing and Fly Tying Journal. At the time, I was fishing around a golf course, and I had gotten one of the demo rods from Sage, one of the first zero weights, and I was bass fishing with that. And I had to redesign all the flies to fish with the zero weight, and I was catching like three or four pound bass on the zero weight.

And Jerry Simon called me and he goes, "What do you think of that rod?" I said, "Well, it gets a little wimpy after 60 feet." And he goes, "Well, you're only supposed to cast 30." And he goes, "What are you doing with that rod?" I said, "Bass fishing." And he goes, "Well, you're supposed to catch trout with that. It's a small rod."

I said, "Yeah, but it's really a hoot for bass fishing." And then he was really interested in how I got it to work because I had to redesign the leaders, the flies, everything to get them to turn over. And the crux of it was I started using plastic beads, and I used yarn for tails to make Woolly Buggers to really reduce the mass, and I changed the weight of the flies and how they fished. And then people were very interested in that, and I wrote a story about that, and Dave Hughes published that.

So that was, I think, the first time I ever got paid. There's quite a story about that. I wrote about six or eight drafts of that. And my wife is an academic, and she's edited many professional journals, and she agreed to edit my story. And the first time I write the story, I'm like the guy from Karate Kid. You know, I hand her my story. She takes a red marker and just slashes through it, circles, scribbles all over it, stuffs it in my face, and goes, "Need some work." I go, "What did you do to my story?" She goes, "Go. You need some work. Go on."

Well, we did this about six, seven, eight times. And finally, we get to the last draft. And she looked at it. She said, "Did you change everything?" I go, "Yes." And she goes, "Redo it, type it up and mail it." I said, "You're not going to read it?" And she goes, "No. We've read this many times. I'm sure it'll be fine."

Well, and then they published it. And I got my check. I was like, I couldn't believe it. I was actually an author. I had really published a story. And I got paid for it. Boy, that was big stuff.

**Marvin Cash (25:50):**
Yeah, that's awesome. And I know, I've seen your work in Fly Tyer. What are some of the other publications that you've appeared in over the years?

**Mike Hogue (26:00):**
I've been in Fly Fisherman. I've been in the model on Fly Fisherman and Fly Tying Journal. I was in the Fly Dresser over in England. I published for the FFI, and I was in Adirondack Life. That's a regional magazine that's kind of unusual to have a fly tying story in there. Adirondack Life is a story that's a lifestyle magazine, like maybe Southern Life down in North Carolina.

And I had met the publishers, and I was really pleased to be in that one because she was a graduate of the Yale Art School. And so that was really foofy to be in there, that I got to be in that around that life. The Fly Dresser was over in England. I met the editor of that, and I published in that one a couple of times.

And I'm trying to think of some of the other ones. I've been in a bunch of books. And I also had a book manuscript that never got published. I'd written a whole entire book that was completely edited and ready to publish, and the publisher ran out of money. And so I peeled out stories out of that one and resold the stories out of most of that.

But yeah, I don't know. I think there's maybe eight or nine different magazines I've been in now, something like that. There's some I've never published in. I've never been in the Drake. I've never been in Angler. And I've never been in Schmookler's The Art of the Angler. I wasn't in that one either. But most of the other ones at one time or another I published in. And I did a feature for the Northeast Fly Fishing Journal, which was, and then I used to do one for the local one that came out all the time. So there's quite a few that I've actually been in.

**Marvin Cash (28:11):**
Very neat. Where do your article ideas come from?

**Mike Hogue (28:17):**
I like to tell stories. So I start with the idea of a story, and then I pretend that I'm telling you a story. So if you were sitting next to me, what would I want to tell you?

Now, writing articles is a lot like commercial tying because you have to be able to describe the things and you have to be able to do it well, but with a very minimalist kind of stuff. You can't just say, you know, throw a whip finish in there. I mean, you have to make it so it's usable for the customer or for the reader.

So I pretend you know nothing, but then it's also kind of a challenge because like if I write a fly tying story, I want to give you as an experienced person a reason to read this story. Okay, why would you want to read another story about maybe a Pheasant Tail? Well, now if I told you how to take a Pheasant Tail and turn it into four of the flies, that might appeal to you. Even if you were a beginner, you would still want to learn about the Pheasant Tail part, right?

So I'm really big on taking three things and combining something together. You know, if you can take two old ideas and add them together into one thing, that creates a new idea, right? I don't really think there's anything that's completely original. I think everything's been done once. But a lot of things have not been explained properly, maybe.

So that's kind of where I get some of the ideas. The other ideas I have are sometimes about trying to teach folks about certain things or trying to create things that are unique. For example, I published an article on the Global Fly Fisher about Hornbeck canoes and brook trout pond fishing in the Adirondacks. And to the best of my knowledge, there was nobody that had written about either of those topics or combined those topics together. So, again, take a couple other things, put them together, and then what kind of twist can we have that's a little bit unusual?

**Marvin Cash (30:21):**
Yeah, that's neat. How do you like to write? I mean, do you write a little bit every day at the same time, or do you kind of bunch your writing together and kind of write in spurts during the offseason or other downtime?

**Mike Hogue (30:33):**
Well, I'm kind of focused on doing that when it's slow, because what I'll do is group about six or seven things together. And then I'll pitch those to the publishers and see, you know, "Do you want this?" And "Is this something that appeals to you?" And then if they don't like it, then I might find another place to publish it where it might be a club thing or something like that. Or maybe on my own website, I used to publish a lot of stuff.

And that's kind of how my website got started, is what I did was I had all these articles that weren't being published or couldn't republish somewhere else. And I kind of grouped them together, and I gave you free info how to make a pattern, and then I sold the stuff that went along with that. So I probably am going to go back to that because I have a pretty big backlog of stuff that I've written that hasn't gotten published, and some of it's pretty useful and pretty unique and pretty interesting, and I think people would enjoy reading it.

**Marvin Cash (31:32):**
Yeah, that's neat. And what piece of advice do you have for an aspiring writer that wants to break into the outdoor writing business?

**Mike Hogue (31:42):**
Well, first of all, you're not going to get rich doing this. You know, if somebody says they're a full-time commercial outdoor writer, they probably have some type of estate or trust or very rich wife or something because you get paid very modestly. I mean, to the point that you could flip hamburgers and make more money than you do writing stories.

The other thing is find your voice. Find out who you are and what your tastes are. And be a good writer. Craft your stuff well. You know, when I read some stuff John Gierach wrote, you know, that was the thing that he stressed, is that first of all, he was a writer and then he was a fisherman.

Well, I kind of came to this as a backdoor way to express myself, and I found that I really liked it. I was a terrible writer in college, and oh my word, I had a really struggle doing it. And it's something that I enjoy doing when I have the time, and I like telling stories. I like telling people how to do something and sharing my ideas.

And I still think that there is a really good audience for that. We've become so Internet-oriented with our phones and the pictures and the videos and the Facebook that I don't think that people forgot how enjoyable it is to just read something rather than be overwhelmed with, you know, commercials, you know, things to buy this or do this or go here or do this or have this thing. Sometimes I think we've forgotten how enjoyable it is to read.

So, you know, years ago, I had a newsletter that I put out every month, and I had a lot of stories in there, and I forced you to read it. There was actually no pictures in it. And I had an unbelievable following doing that. I think I had around 5,000 to 6,000 people on my newsletter list. And I got tech waylaid with that. The local Internet provider reduced down the number of emails I could do it that day.

So eventually I'm going to resurrect that and I'll put that back out, but it might be a little bit because I've got some other projects to do first. So that's another way to publish is to publish yourself. And there's some avenues now that are really good that I haven't really explored. You know, you can get into the Apple and Amazon systems and publish your own media through them, and you don't need a publisher. And this is a way a small person could break out and a small person could talk about what they want to do, and then they can promote that through those channels, through their contacts and their friends and certainly their groups they're involved with.

So that would be the best advice. Find your own voice. Find a way to publish. Find places to publish. And then keep writing. Write all the time. You know, if you don't practice at something, you don't get better at it. And if you don't stay with it, it's just like tying flies. If you don't tie, you're going to get rusty after a bit.

**Marvin Cash (34:54):**
That's good advice. And, you know, I guess the next thing I wanted to talk about, and this is how I met you many years ago, was that you own a fly shop called Badger Creek Fly Tying. Can you share with our listeners how that came to be?

**Mike Hogue (35:09):**
Well, I told about the commercial tying, how I started. And I started working literally out of my closet. I had $200 from my tax refund check that I started with to buy some stuff to make commercial flies with. And I worked out of my closet. That was literally where my store was.

I was one of the first internet retailers, and I think I'm the oldest continuous running internet fly shop. And I had combined publishing articles with the ability to buy things, and then I sold commercial flies beside that. And then I did that in conjunction with doing shows.

And many, many years ago, Apple Computer profiled me. And they wrote a story about me and how I used their software. And I was between the rock group Supertramp and Tom Clancy in their profile of me. And the pictures were actually kind of hideous. I looked like Jack Nicholson from The Shining. I don't know if people remember The Shining where he's very haunted and has that haunting image.

I was holding all this stuff, and it was supposed to be kind of a spin on Dick Talleur on the back jacket of one of his things. He's holding all this stuff, and I was holding all of it, and I was about ready to drop it. My friend took the picture and had this kind of shocked look with, you know, 20 pheasant tails stuffed in my arm and a cape and a bunch of bucktails and a couple of foxtails and stuff like that, and I was about ready to drop it. So that was actually in the story. It was very funny.

After Apple did a story for me, then I was in Yahoo. Yahoo was the first index that created stuff that Google was actually based on. Google bought their index from Yahoo. And I was in all the Yahoo indexes. And then before there was Facebook, we had boards. So you'd go into a board, you'd log into a board, and then there'd be questions that people would have. And then that's how you met people on the Internet was through boards. And they had all the different boards that you were plugged into, and then people would email you questions, and then it just kind of cascaded from there. It was pretty crazy how quickly that took off.

**Marvin Cash (37:30):**
How did that work in the days before PayPal? I mean, I'm sitting back thinking this is probably what, kind of like the mid-90s, mid to late 90s?

**Mike Hogue (37:38):**
Before that, actually, early 90s. Actually, there was no PayPal. And to do credit cards was virtually impossible, and you had to be an approved business. So actually what I did was you would send me an order. I'd mail you the order, and then you'd mail me a check. And so I trusted people that they would pay me and actually never got burned.

But then it was pretty simple. If you didn't send your check, then I cut you off. So people didn't want to lose their sources and things like that. So, but initially, I didn't take PayPal. I didn't take credit cards. You either paid me cash or you sent me a check. And then you sent me a check and I sent your stuff off. So sometimes I'd wait for the checks to come if I didn't know you or if I was uncertain.

You know, then there were always a lot of very interesting things. So one of the very shocking things was I got a check in the mail for $7,500 with the ominous note that the guy said he'd like hooks. Didn't specify the brand, size, shape, color. He just wanted $7,000 worth of hooks.

So I presented the check to the bank. The bank looked at that and he goes, "Let's see your envelope." Well, it had been Federal Express from Atlanta to London back to me. And then the check was written on another bank. So it was all very kind of dodgy.

Well, I ended up doing some research. I called the bank that issued the check. I called the company that supposedly represented that. And I found out it was a wash check. So somebody copied the check, put my name in it pencil. I hope that they'd send off the goods before the check bounced. And then he wanted all this stuff overnight and then he needed it immediately.

Well, I sent the customer an email and I said, "Well, there seemed to be a problem with your check." He said, "Well, what kind of check would you like?" And I said, "Well, preferably one that wouldn't bounce. I've informed the FBI that you are sending me nefarious documents and I hope they'll be in touch with you shortly." I never heard from him again.

But sometimes you have to be a little careful in what you're doing. And that was, you know, before all these pre-scam things, you know, where once a week you get this thing from a foreign prince that he wanted you to help him resolve his will by opening bank accounts and stuff. Well, you know, I certainly had enough of those too. So there've been some interesting ones over the years.

**Marvin Cash (40:14):**
Yeah. And speaking about that, you know, how have you seen e-commerce change over the last 20 years? What's the biggest thing that's impacted your business?

**Mike Hogue (40:24):**
Well, I think there's just been an explosion of competition, number one, and there's been an explosion of images. And people have gotten really tuned into buying things from strangers. Before, it was really unheard of. You really wanted to be very careful before you mailed your money off to some guy in the middle of nowhere.

And I think number one is the trust. Number two is the explosion of stuff. And then number three is the amount of images and the videos and stuff. I mean, there's so much stuff for people to choose from now that I think that's a little overwhelming for people.

The other thing I think is people see stuff and there's a big fad or a big trend that explodes and then just immediately stops. As soon as the music unplugged or the video's done its little circuit, then the interest in that item pretty much disappears. And it's really interesting how those things happen. There's been some tools or different products or different things where there's tremendous interest, and then it just peaks and kind of tapers off.

So I would say the amount of choices we have now, the amount of sources you have now, the amount of competition that you have now, none of that existed before. And that certainly impacted a lot of traditional retailers to the point a lot of those folks are now gone.

So, you know, as a retailer, I'm always trying to think about how do I stay ahead of that curve? Well, I don't think you really ever have to. You just have to try to do what you do and do it well. And that's maybe what separates me from other folks is I don't get too wound up about some of this. I try to have nice things. I try to have things at good prices. And I try to pay attention and listen to what people say. And if something's not right, I try to make it right.

And that seems to be an alien concept to people is taking care of your customers, being nice to people and selling things at a good price. And when did that ever not work? Well, it's always worked. That's a tradition in business is you sell the best stuff at the best prices and that's always what I try to do.

**Marvin Cash (42:46):**
Yeah. Is that what you think is sort of the secret sauce for being successful in the fly shop game? Because it looks like so many people really struggle to make a go at it.

**Mike Hogue (42:51):**
Well, years ago I was in business school, and then when I was in graduate school, I bought Sam Walton's book about how I created Walmart. And that was a kind of a Bible that I listened to about how Walton really did his stuff. That guy was obsessed with beating Kmart. He walked in every single Kmart in America three or four times. And he wanted to beat Kmart, and he did.

And the secret to his thing was good prices, listening to customers and doing things well. Now, that doesn't have to do with how big you are, how small you are, anything. If you do something well, people are going to give you attention. If you have good prices, people are going to give you attention. And if you do things, execute things well, you're going to receive a reputation for that.

And those are things that I've always prided myself on is doing things well and doing what I know well. So the key to doing this is to do something that you're really good at and to pay attention to that.

**Marvin Cash (44:06):**
Got it. And kind of coming back a little bit to the shop, you know, when I see your booth at shows, I mean, you've got all sorts of stuff, you know, whether it's tools or vises or tackle. But on the tying material side, you know, what's the most exotic tying material that you stock?

**Mike Hogue (44:30):**
One of the most unusual things I ever sold was Minnesota pocket gophers. I had customers asking me for a Scottish shrew. I had no idea what a Scottish shrew is. I have no idea where to get one. I'm not from Scotland and didn't know anybody. And so as a joke, I asked one of my fur guys and he goes, "Well, I don't have any shrews, but I got pocket gophers."

Well, in the Midwest, there's these little critters that stand out in the middle of the road and they call them grannies. And the joy was just to try to run down the road as fast as you can in a truck or a car and smack them and then flatten them out because they explode. And they're harder than dickens to do this. And then they stand there and kind of wiggle their feet at you and fingers and stuff.

So the joke was, is if you could get one, you know, maybe that'd have some good fur to it. Well, this guy actually does trap those things because they're annoying and they're a pest. Well, I showed them to people and they're like a giant moleskin, but they're the size of a little, like a pan pizza thing, and they were like, "Whoa, you got a pan pizza mole? That's cool."

Well, there you go. That was the pocket gopher. So that's a pretty interesting thing I sold. I don't know. I've sold so many things over the years, but that one strikes me as being absolutely hilarious. That was one of the funner things I've sold because it's got a good story to it. And I still have those. Probably after this I'll have none of them, but I can probably get some more.

I don't know what other things I've sold. Oh, my word. I've sold deer faces. I've sold exotic salmon materials. I've sold jungle cocks. I've sold tools that I've designed, threads, glues, hooks, all kinds of things. And usually people, they say, "How do you inventory this stuff?" I don't really inventory it. I just buy some stuff and then when it sells out then I'll get some more. And if it didn't sell then I'll mark it down, get rid of it and get something else. And that's pretty much how I do things. I think if it's interesting or different or something that you can't find other places, that's the kind of stuff I might like to try.

**Marvin Cash (46:48):**
Yeah, and kind of in a similar vein, can you share, you've got some great stories about orders you've had, can you share with us maybe one of your most unusual or memorable orders?

**Mike Hogue (47:02):**
I used to sell things to a technician that was based in Antarctica. That was probably my most unusual customer I've ever had. And this was really kind of exciting because here's a young guy. He has no house payment, no car payment, doesn't need to buy food, doesn't pay rent, and he's paid an absolute ton of money. And because he's working like 16 hours a day, because if this fellow goes to sleep, many, many bad things can happen.

So his job was to stay up all night and be sure that all these lights and machines and various things and the institution were all on. He's got nothing to do, so he ties flies. And guess what? He's got satellite TV, which at the time was really cool. So he was watching Russian TV, Japanese TV, Chinese TV, because he's up and the rest of the world might be asleep, but might be somebody's awake in Russia.

Well, they also had the Internet there because it's a scientific research center. So he started tying flies because he worked six months and then he had six months off. So he'd go fishing for six months, and it didn't matter when he got his six months off because guess what, somewhere in the world it's summer. So he'd go to Chile, he'd go to Argentina, he'd go to Montana, he'd spend the summer in California, you know, wherever it was nice. And then he'd camp and fish and he made flies.

Well, to get something to Antarctica, it's not like there's a UPS or FedEx truck that's going to back right up and, you know, toss the box out the back of the truck and land it right in Antarctica. So I had to send it to his mother and then she packaged it in cookies and it went on an air military flight. And so that was really pretty cool customer. That was certainly a memorable one.

And then I had a Russian oil executive that was one of my customers for a long time. And his partner was apparently some trader, banker, broker, guy, something like that down in New York City. And the guy would drive up from New York City to see me and just load up the car. It was insane how much stuff this guy bought.

And I kept telling him, I said, "Well, you're in New York City. I can pack that up and ship it to you." It's like, "Oh, no, this needs to be selected by hand. I have to come get here." That was the instruction. And I was like, "Really?" And he goes, "Just fill up the suitcase, just jam that sucker full." And I was like, "Okay, do you have a limit or a budget?" "No, no, just anything you think you might like." Which was really pretty cool. So that was pretty nice ticket.

Out of the blue I had a customer call me and he represented a company that did promotions for a trade group, and he liked the saltwater pliers I had for sale. They were like five, six bucks, and he wondered if he could acquire a large quantity. And I was thinking, you know, maybe 20, and he goes, "No, I actually want 19,000 pairs." And I was like, "What?" And he goes, "No, really, I need 19,000 pairs of pliers."

Well, I contacted the plier manufacturer to make a long story short. I became a plier importer and I sold 19,000 pairs of pliers. So that was one of the biggest orders I've ever had. So there was quite a lot of stories about learning how to import and then dealing with that. But it was pretty memorable, and it was quite an adventure, but I did do pretty well, and that enabled me to put new siding and a new roof on my building. So that was a pretty good ticket.

**Marvin Cash (50:56):**
So, Mike, I even understand that you've actually sold prints that have appeared in a recent Brad Pitt movie.

**Mike Hogue (51:03):**
Yes, I recently sold some artwork to the Ad Astra movie that Brad Pitt was in. And there's quite an adventuresome story. This involves a local artist. His name was Bob Witzel.

Now, one of the things that's interesting about movies is that movies have this royalty business. So if they use something, for example, like a picture of Elvis, then they have to pay the Elvis people every time this image is used. So every time the movie shows, every time the DVD shows, every time the Blu-ray shows, they have to pay royalties.

So they're trying to find unencumbered property that they own intellectual rights to. So I was approached by the movie company, and the movie company said, "Well, we want to buy all these prints." And I said, "Well, that was an archive in the back of my website, and the artist has passed away. He's deceased." And she said, "Well, do you have any of them?" And I said, "Well, I think I have one that's my personal print that Bob made."

Well, Bob Witzel was a local artist, and he was an artist that worked for the WPA. He made murals in Buffalo, New York. And then he also was a commercial artist, and he represented companies like Kellogg's doing artwork for some of their packaging and boxes and things like that. I think he worked for U.S. Gypsum and a bunch of just other companies where he did their advertising and their logos and things of that nature.

Well, Bob was a local fellow, and he and his wife used to go fishing every summer. His wife was the secretary at the local high school, and they had a camper. And they'd pack the camper up, and then off they'd go on an adventure. So they'd spend the whole summer in Montana, or they'd spend part of the late fall in British Columbia, or they'd go to Florida. Well, everywhere Bob went, he painted. And so he was a watercolor artist, and he had all of these pictures of fishing from all over the place that he'd been.

And he approached me many years ago and asked me to help him sell those. So I took some of his pictures, digitalized the images, and then I put them on the website. And lo and behold, the movie company wanted to buy all this stuff.

Well, I ended up, I found his wife, Marie, and Marie was still around with us. And Marie happened to have around 30 pictures left. And so I said to Marie, she goes, "You think this is real?" And I said, "Well, sounds like a real company, but I had no idea it was the Brad Pitt movie and all of that. It was just a working title for the movie." And I said, "Let's try this and we'll see what happens."

So I created digital images of the original artwork. And when I talked to the movie company, I said, "Well, if I mail this stuff to you, it's very fragile. Some of it's pretty old. It could get damaged and it would get ruined and that's all there is." And so I approached them with the idea of selling a digital image and I said, "Well, this is a science fiction movie." And they go, "Yeah." And I said, "Well, you've got CG folks going in." She goes, "Yeah." And I said, "Well, your graphics department can take a raw image and just blow it up into anything you want to." She goes, "Pretty much." She goes, "Let's just create digital images."

So I shot them digital images, giant 24 megabyte photos, and then I left it for them to crop. And I sold them the digital rights, which allowed them to use this unencumbered in the movie because it was a royalty unencumbered product so that they could use that in their sets.

So they bought four pictures, used it in the set, and Marie was ecstatic that her husband's artwork was done in a Brad Pitt movie. So quite a story, and it just happened that they called me out of the blue. So I was really surprised when that happened, but it's in the show and they used it and I got paid. So that was a nice check.

**Marvin Cash (55:35):**
Yeah, there you go. That's a pretty neat story.

**Mike Hogue (55:40):**
Yeah, so you just never know what can happen with folks. A lot of times with our fishing and some of our artwork and our writing, we don't believe that there's a lot of larger audience that might be interested in this, but there certainly is. I've known people that have worked with agencies. I've known people that worked with different companies and models and so on and so forth.

So that certainly can happen. Maybe if you just have stuff out there and people can take advantage of it, you never know. So that's certainly one of the most unusual things I ever sold with digital rights to a deceased artist's property.

**Marvin Cash (56:28):**
Very neat. You know, folks that know you from the show circuit know that you spend a lot of time on the road in the first part of each year. How many shows do you do in a normal show season?

**Mike Hogue (56:37):**
Well, I think normally we are about, I'm going to say about 11 or 12 events. Now, some of them are smaller, some of them are bigger. We do about, say, eight larger shows a year, and then we do some smaller things that are more local. At one time I did 18, and I think another year I did 22, and that was just a little over the top. That was too much traveling. So we do about six, eight big shows and then some smaller things that I can fit in here and there. It depends upon the year and who's got what and my schedule and things like that.

**Marvin Cash (57:13):**
Yeah. How do you keep all those show appearances from disrupting the day-to-day operation of Badger Creek?

**Mike Hogue (57:20):**
Well, the local guys, I tell them this. I say, "Okay, I'm open when I'm home." And also, I tell them, "The store is usually a mess. It's pretty chaotic in the winter. And I tell them I'm not going to apologize for being successful."

And I said, "If you guys want to come shopping, the store is here. It's shoppable. It's a mess. You know, there's stuff everywhere. I'm running shows, and I'm home when I'm home." And the local guys seem to appreciate that and understand that. And nobody's ever complained that the store has been dirty other than my wife.

You know, I mean, I've got shopping bags on the floor, there's empty boxes, tags everywhere, Ziploc bags just kind of random chaos. But you know, we get through it. And that's the way the business can operate locally, is because I bring in revenue from other places and other sources. So that's certainly been a big help to us.

**Marvin Cash (58:22):**
Yeah. Got it. And what's one of the biggest misconceptions you think folks have about the life of a fly shop owner?

**Mike Hogue (58:29):**
I don't know. For some reason, they think that we're like super rich or something. I mean, this is still retailing, and I'm selling packs of marabou that are four bucks a pack. You know, this is a difficult way to make some money. It really, truly is. And if I had to do it again, I seriously don't know if I would invest the time or money into doing this. You have to like it, and you have to like the sport.

That's the downside. The upside is the people are unbelievable. I've met people all over the world. I've met really nice folks. And as I say to this many, many times, you may not like someone's personality in this industry, but they're good people. You know, it's not like you're dealing with someone who's truly nasty and difficult and stuff like that. I mean, the customers are there because they like fishing, they want to do this, it's their hobby, it's their passion. And you want to try to bring out that passion. So you're helping them fulfill their dreams and make their dreams come true.

The other thing is that this is kind of a really small family. I've been with some of these folks with some of the shows for close to 20 years. I know their kids, I know their wives, I know their daughters. It's a small family. And we know who gets sick and we know stories. And of course, there's all the rumors and stuff like that. But it really is a pretty tight knit group. And for some folks outside of that, that might be difficult to kind of break into. But it is a little group and a little kind of family because a lot of us travel and show up together all the time.

So mall industry. The largest employer in this maybe is Wapsi. I think they maybe have 50 employees. Maybe they have more. I don't know. But I mean, you've got box stores in your hometown that have more employees than some of the larger employers do in the fly fishing industry. They're really small, tiny mom and pop companies. They're run by people that really like the sport. And a lot of this stuff is truly handmade or one of a kind or a lot of handwork to it or things that have a high attention to detail that would not happen in other industries. That I'm absolutely certain of.

So think about that, you know, support your friends, support your people that you enjoy being around, support people you like rather than trying to support some nefarious box or institution that you're not acquainted with. Because it really, this really is family business. It's really small business and it's really entrepreneurship. It's not some giant industry.

**Marvin Cash (01:01:28):**
Yeah, I always encourage people to support, you know, it doesn't necessarily have to be their local fly shop, but kind of people like you that they have a relationship with because there's so much information that's shared in that community that if we don't support it, you know, 10, 15, 20 years down the road, there won't be people around to tell us where things came from or how to do things.

**Mike Hogue (01:01:50):**
Yeah, exactly. And I learned from somebody else. And so I have a problem with this kind of secret thing, you know, fishing on public land. "So this is a secret fishing hole," or "This is a secret fly." Well, I saw a secret fly that somebody gave me that was loosely based on Stuart's spider, which is 400 years old. He put a colored bead in front of it, and now it's a new contemporary pattern. No, it's a 400-year-old fly with a bead on it. That's nothing new. Was that original? Hardly. Stuart's spider? Yeah, that was original because he created that.

So sometimes we get too protective and we get too wound up in a situation to really think about, you know, are we good stewards of this place? Are we taking care of this place? Are we treating our fishery right? Are we taking care of our home and our environment and our friends? And what about the farms that you fish on? I mean, those are people's livelihoods. I grew up in a rural place, so I know what farming is about and agriculture is about, and I respect those people.

But do other folks do that? Eh, not so much. You know, they think it's just some there or some Disneyland or a park or something that they can utilize or take advantage of right now. So I have a kind of a different belief about that, but also I'm a small-town guy. I live in a small-town place, and I don't like cities. So I live in a rural place because I can and I want to.

And I think that there's a misconnection sometimes between rural people and people in cities. And trying to appreciate that and respect that, that's a big step. So think about that next time you're on somebody's farm and it's a great fishing place. Talk to the farmer. Bring him a case of beer once in a while. You know, I used to trade shotgun shells with guys that shoot birds for me. I can't really do that now, but I did stuff like that. So take care of folks. That's always a good advice.

**Marvin Cash (01:04:08):**
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, show season is probably about two-thirds of the way through. You know, what's on the Badger Creek calendar for the rest of the show season, Mike?

**Mike Hogue (01:04:20):**
We have two more events. We're going to be at the Lancaster show in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. That's one of the fly fishing shows through the Ferenczi family. That's a great show for people that's in the Washington, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia area. It's a few hours drive, but it's also a few hours drive from New York.

Then we're also going to be at the Midwest Fly Fishing Expo. That's at Warren, Michigan, which is essentially suburban Detroit. And in suburban Detroit, that's the oldest fly fishing show in the United States. I think it's in the 35th year now. And that's a great show. The club runs that out there, and they do a fantastic job. They're very friendly guys and girls, very friendly folks, really very Midwestern, big hearts, very easy to get along with. So if you're out by Warren, Michigan, and actually you're close to Canada too, that's Detroit is adjacent to Canada.

Then we'll be at the Ithaca Fly Fishing Day, the Ithaca Fishing Day. And then there's the Taiwan On Festival up at Syracuse. I'm going to be at that. And then after that, we'll be home finally. So those are the next shows we're going to have.

**Marvin Cash (01:05:36):**
Well, that's great. Well, I'll drop links to all of those in the show notes. And before I let you go, Mike, why don't you let folks know where they can find you on the Internet and shop with you?

**Mike Hogue (01:05:44):**
My website's really old. It's now in our 25th year. So bear with me. I'm creating a new one. I have a new developer, but it's eflytire.com, www.eflytire.com. And then I'm also on Etsy and you log on to Etsy.com, which is a crafter site. And my store name is eflytire on Etsy. And also you can call me. I'm here most of the times in the afternoon.

And then we have a little store here outside of Ithaca, New York. So we're about an hour from Syracuse and 45 minutes from Binghamton. So sometimes folks head up to the Salmon River. I'm out in the country, but give me a call. We can probably get together some way or another.

**Marvin Cash (01:06:36):**
Well, that sounds good. Well, I really appreciate you carving out some time to chat with me this afternoon.

**Mike Hogue (01:06:41):**
Okay. All right. Well, this has been a great talk, and I hope some folks learned a few things today.

**Marvin Cash (01:06:49):**
Absolutely. Thanks so much, Mike.

**Mike Hogue (01:06:52):**
Okay. Thanks a lot. Bye-bye.

**Marvin Cash (01:06:55):**
Well, folks, I hope you enjoyed that interview as much as we enjoyed bringing it to you. Again, a shout-out to this episode's sponsor, the Texas Fly Fishing and Brew Festival. Remember, that event's going to be March 21st and 22nd in Plano, Texas. And if you visit www.txflyfishingfestival.org, you can get all the details. Tight lines, everybody.