A bit about myself

I often forget that a lot of my customer base has never met me. My name is Kurt Shaffer. I’m a lifelong resident of Western Pennsylvania and a lifelong fisherman. I started off as most others do, I caught my first trout on a spinning rod at age 4, and my first Great Lakes steelhead at age 5. Through the years I went from spin fishing bait, to artificial lures, then to a bait caster, then to a fly rod. I’ve always enjoyed art and I’ve always had a creative side. I remember when I was a young kid looking at fishing lures and thinking that someday I’ll make those. Well, things turned out a bit different. An encounter with a fly fishing guide at steelhead camp got me interested in fly fishing. He’s still a friend and critiques my work from time to time, and those criticisms are taken to heart and taken care of immediately. I got interested in all of the different kinds of flies, and got myself a vise and a few tools. I learned as many patterns as I could, but had the most fun coming up with my own. In 2017 someone had turned me to Lively Legz, and this opened up a whole new opportunity to explore patterns and techniques. I came up with the PGH Black Stoner and began catching a ton of fish with them. I refined it over and over to its final form that’s for sale today. After that I developed quite a few other patterns. Some worked really well, and some did not. In the winter of 2023, I decided to start selling flies online. I started off selling popular patterns like pheasant tails, hares ears, white death streamers and others. I noticed that almost every order was for one of my specific patterns. So, I decided to focus on that. There’s a million Kenyan tyers and discount fly shops on the internet, I really didn’t want to be just another tyer putting in countless hours to sell other peoples patterns. You can do a simple google search and get the same patterns over and over again. The world of commercial $1 flies is not for me. Instead, I’d rather give you something that came out of research, experimentation, and hours of trial and error. For every 10 tyers regurgitating the same old stuff, there’s one of me out there getting weird with it. There’s something about brushing my pet rabbits coats, separating the guard hairs, cleaning it, dying it, sealing it, and cleaning it again that’s just plain fun. There’s something about staring deep into a book about bugs and trying to figure out how to translate it to a pattern. There’s something about taking different materials and blending them together to make a dubbing. I’m really trying to give you a product that uniquely mine. If it doesn’t out fish in nets, I won’t sell it to you. I’m happy you’re along for the journey with me.