From Trouttown to the Great Lakes: Inside America's Best Fly Shops

Trout Towns, Steel Dreams, and the Soul of the Fly Shop

There is a particular kind of magic that happens when you walk into a great fly shop. It has nothing to do with the price tags on the rods lining the walls or the sheer volume of fly patterns organized in their little compartments. It is something far less tangible — a feeling that you have arrived somewhere that matters, somewhere built by people who genuinely love what they do. That feeling is exactly what the crew at Flylords set out to capture in the fifth episode of their third season of Fly Shop Tour, a journey that took them from the trout-statue-lined streets of Roscoe, New York, all the way to the wild, steel-gray waters of the Salmon River in the Oswego County region of upstate New York.

What unfolded over several days of fishing, driving, and storytelling was more than a fishing trip. It was a love letter to fly fishing culture itself — its communities, its keepers, and the shops that hold it all together.

Welcome to Trouttown, USA: Roscoe, New York

The team's first destination needs little introduction to anyone who has spent time chasing trout in the Northeast. Roscoe, New York — proudly nicknamed Trouttown, USA — announces itself boldly and without apology. Trout statues dot the streets. The air feels different here, heavier with possibility and heritage, as though the rivers themselves have shaped the character of the town above their banks.

It is, as host Wills put it plainly, "an angler's true paradise."

The crew's first stop was the legendary Beaverkill Angler, a corner shop that embodies everything a regional fly shop should be. Owner Evan welcomed the team warmly, and what followed was the kind of shop tour that reminds you why brick-and-mortar retail still matters in an era of overnight shipping and algorithm-driven recommendations.

Beaverkill Angler: Organized Chaos and Hard-Won Knowledge

Walking through Beaverkill Angler is a study in purposeful disorder. Flies are organized by loose categories — a logical framework applied to an inherently illogical art form. Evan was refreshingly candid about the philosophy behind the layout.

"Nothing is — there's no perfect fly for any perfect condition. So we try to organize it so that it makes sense from some degree of logic, although it is a little chaotic given the nature of flies — as it should be."

The fly tying section is a particular point of pride, stocked with an impressive array of hackle that speaks directly to the Beaverkill region's identity as a dry fly fishery of historic significance. On the wall nearby, a mounted fish named Henry — a gift from the second husband of the legendary Joan Wulff — keeps quiet watch over the proceedings, a piece of living history that gets more than its fair share of comments from visitors passing through.

The rod and reel selection skews heavily toward trout applications, as you might expect, though the shop also acknowledges the area's surprisingly strong bass fishing. Evan's approach to sales is disarmingly simple: meet the angler where they are, respect their budget, and get them set up right.

"Everybody has a budget and we're fine with whatever that budget is. As long as they buy the rod from me, I really don't care what they buy."

It is the kind of honest, unpretentious attitude that keeps locals coming back for decades. As Wills observed after the tour, "There was nothing you could ever say to convince me that he was doing that for anything besides his passion for the sport."

On the Beaverkill: Caddis Hatches and a Local Legend

Geared up and energized, the crew hit the river alongside a man who would prove to be one of the episode's most quietly compelling figures: Irwin, a local angler who has completed a marathon on every continent — including Antarctica — and who approaches fly fishing with the same understated competence he apparently applies to everything else in his life.

They started with nymphs, working the pools methodically with guide Robert calling the shots. The technique required discipline — high sticking, maintaining a precise drift through the current seam, keeping the fly working downstream without letting it swing unnaturally. Robert had barely flinched before calling out a take that the rest of the group had completely missed.

"Robert didn't move. And he's like, 'Yeah, that was a fish.'"

After working the nymphs through several runs without further action, Irwin made the call to move. He had somewhere in mind — a deep pool set against a massive stone wall, roughly a century old, on a different stretch of water. It turned out to be exactly the right decision.

The Caddis Hatch That Made the Evening

As the light dropped and evening settled over the river, a caddis hatch erupted. The water began to boil with rising fish, and the crew switched to dry flies — specifically deer hair caddis patterns — with immediate results. Browns came up freely, and a particularly pretty little rainbow made an appearance that drew genuine admiration from everyone on the bank.

"I mean, tell me what's more American than fishing a deer hair caddis in New York."

The fishing was, by any measure, exceptional. Browns, rainbows, rising fish, and the kind of evening hatch that most dry fly anglers wait entire seasons to experience. When one member of the group generously stepped aside to let another take a cast at a productive lie, he stepped back in two casts later with the best fish of the day — a beautiful brown that earned a round of genuinely impressed reactions from the whole group. It was the sort of evening that reminds you why you started fishing in the first place.

North to Oswego County: Tailwater Lodge and the Salmon River

With the Catskills behind them and memories of rising trout still fresh, the crew packed up the following morning and pointed the trucks north — toward Pulaski, New York, and the legendary Salmon River. This is big-water country, where Great Lakes tributaries carry Chinook salmon and steelhead of staggering proportions, and where the fishing culture has a rougher, more elemental edge than the tailored dry fly traditions of the Beaverkill.

Home base for this leg of the journey was Tailwater Lodge in Oswego County, a property that has become something of a pilgrimage site for serious anglers heading to the region. Owner Tom Fernandez has long been a supporter of the Flylords community, and the lodge lives up to its reputation as the finest base of operations in the area.

Joining the crew for this stretch was Max Ericson, a familiar face behind the Flylords camera who stepped in front of it for his first official outing as co-host. As someone who has watched countless Great Lakes steelhead trips unfold through a viewfinder, Max had both excitement and tempered expectations in equal measure.

"Wills hasn't been here for salmon season, so we're going to give them the real show. We're going to start up in the upper fly section and try to catch a couple salmon. After this, we're going to go down to the lower end of the river. There's some fresh fish coming in and hopefully we can swing up a steelhead."

Tough Conditions and an Unexpected Rainbow

The conditions, to put it diplomatically, were not ideal. Water levels were low, temperatures had been running unseasonably warm, the salmon run was delayed, and the steelhead hadn't pushed up in force yet. The window between seasons — that awkward in-between time when the salmon are fading and the steelhead haven't fully committed — can be a humbling stretch of river to fish.

Against that backdrop, landing anything at all felt like a genuine achievement. And so when a feisty little rainbow trout — chrome-bellied and wild-eyed — came to hand on the Salmon River, where salmon outnumber everything else in the system, it was cause for real celebration.

"Against all odds and in the salmon river where there's salmon everywhere, we have found ourselves a very feisty rainbow trout. That's actually really, really cool for this river. Now he's going to go back to go become a giant chromed-up guy."

It was a small fish by Salmon River standards, but it carried enormous symbolic weight — a preview of the chrome giants that might, with enough persistence and a little luck, eventually come to the net.

Melinda's Fly Shop: Where the Community Ties Its Flies

Before the final push for steelhead, there was one more essential stop on the itinerary — a visit to Melinda's Fly Shop, a place the Flylords crew describes, without exaggeration, as one of their favorite places on Earth. It is easy to understand why.

Melinda's is not a conventional fly shop. It is, at its heart, a fly tying shop — one that stocks materials with a depth and breadth that would make a commercial tyer envious. But it is also something harder to define: a gathering place, a classroom, a community center organized around the shared language of thread, feather, and hook.

When the crew arrived, tyers were already at the benches, working through materials as the conversation flowed. Melinda herself was characteristically warm and generous, and her explanation of why fly tying holds such a central place in her shop's identity was one of the episode's most quietly powerful moments.

"When you tie flies, it allows you a level that you can't always do if you don't have the physical ability or just the ability at all to go fishing. You can still tie flies. It's very therapeutic. And so, for me, it's a gift that I can give to others."

Melinda also spoke candidly about the evolution of the fishery itself — about a time when snagging was common practice on these waters, and about her conviction that every living creature, fish included, deserves better than that.

"Any creature that's alive, I think, deserves more than just getting snagged in the back."

It is a philosophy that extends well beyond technique. It speaks to a fundamental respect for the resource that defines the best of fly fishing culture — and the best of the shops that serve it. As Wills summed it up, "It's the community. It's the aggregation of people. It's the exchanging of knowledge. And it's this unique thing that only exists in fly shops."

The DSR: Chasing Giants in the Dark

The final chapter of the trip was the one the crew had been building toward all along — steelhead on the DSR, a private pay-to-play stretch of the Salmon River closest to the lake, where fresh fish push in first and the fishing, when it's right, can be extraordinary.

Guide and longtime friend Matt Ersinger was on hand to put them on fish, and his local knowledge was immediately apparent. The plan was classic Salmon River strategy: swing through the pools first, then pivot to indicator fishing if the swinging didn't produce, and work toward an evening swing in the meadow section near the mouth. A leaf hatch — the inevitable autumn nuisance of debris floating downstream — added a wrinkle to proceedings, but the crew adapted.

Day one, despite genuine effort and careful execution, produced nothing. The doldrum between salmon and steelhead is a real and merciless phenomenon, and the combination of high sun, 80-degree temperatures, and low water made it nearly impossible to coax a fish into cooperating.

The Alarm That Didn't Go Off

Day two began with the kind of comedy of errors that, in retrospect, makes for great storytelling. The plan had been to arrive at the DSR at first light — critical on a river where early access to prime lies is the difference between fish and frustration. The wake-up call was set for 3:30 a.m. Wills overslept. Max's phone had died overnight, eliminating his backup alarm. By the time they arrived, their first-choice water was gone.

"Part of the problem with fishing the Salmon River is you got to move fast and you got to be the first one there."

They fished hard anyway, working secondary water with the focus of people who know they're running out of time. Matt had to leave mid-day for other commitments, and the afternoon took on the particular quality of a fishing trip operating on faith alone. But even then, the river wasn't entirely quiet. A brief, electric connection with what felt like a very large fish — a take that bent the hook out before the fight could even begin — left the crew breathless and momentarily gutted.

"I guess that's part of the game, but honestly, if that's all we get, that was worth it. That was crazy."

A late-season Chinook also made an appearance — a big, powerful fish that wasn't the target but was a reminder of just how impressive this system is when it's firing on all cylinders.

Last Light on the Salmon River: The Chrome That Made It All Worthwhile

On the final morning — their absolute last shot — the crew was up at 3:30 without incident. They arrived early enough to claim a productive piece of water, one where they had seen fish moving the day before. The mood was focused, almost ceremonial. This was the last cast, the final chapter, the fish they had driven hundreds of miles and lost hours of sleep to find.

In the early quiet of a Salmon River morning, with birds beginning to call and mist sitting low over the current, the bobber did something almost imperceptible — a small, decisive dink below the surface.

"I just saw that bobber do a little dink. Are you tight? Let's go."

What happened next was chaotic and exhilarating in equal measure. A massive steelhead — chrome-bright, Great Lakes-fat, and furious — erupted from the pool. The fish came unpinned. Hearts sank. But the river wasn't finished with them yet. Minutes later, another fish was on, and this one stayed buttoned. The fight was everything the trip had promised: powerful, surging runs, the rod bent deep, and at the end of it all, a truly stunning steelhead brought to hand in the golden light of an autumn morning.

"This fish was one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. I realized like why these fish are so special. It is seriously an adventure that I don't think I will ever forget."

It was the kind of moment that validates every early alarm, every fishless hour, every cold wade through low water. The kind of moment that fly fishing, at its best, exists to deliver.

Why the Fly Shop Still Matters

In the days of infinite online retail and algorithm-curated gear recommendations, it would be easy to dismiss the local fly shop as a charming anachronism — a relic of a time before free shipping and next-day delivery. The Fly Shop Tour series exists, in large part, to argue the opposite case, and this episode makes that argument with quiet conviction.

From the historic hackle displays at Beaverkill Angler to the tying benches at Melinda's, the shops visited in this episode are not merely retail establishments. They are living repositories of local knowledge, community gathering places, and — perhaps most importantly — the front door through which new anglers enter a culture that is richer and more welcoming than it sometimes appears from the outside.

"What Fly Shop Tour means to me is a chance to travel to places unknown and get to experience different versions and pockets of fly fishing culture that I might personally have never even known about. And for all of us to be able to use ourselves as mouthpieces for fly shops and that shop's community is an opportunity that I think very few people will ever get in their lives."

That spirit — of breaking down barriers, of telling the stories of the people who have built this culture with their hands and their passion and their decades of accumulated knowledge — is what makes the series worth watching and worth celebrating. Whether you are a seasoned steelheader or someone who has never held a fly rod, the message is the same: find your local fly shop. Walk in. Ask questions. The world you discover on the other side of that door might just change your life.

As for the Flylords crew, they capped the episode in the only appropriate way — with a plunge of shame into the frigid waters of the Frying Pan River back home, honoring a promise made in episode one. Cold water, big laughs, and a season's worth of memories. That, in the end, is what all of this is really about.