Anniversary Edition

The largest selection of flies ever assembled under one roof in Wolf Creek Montana – photo by Stefan McLeod

57 degrees on this 11th day of December in Wolf Creek Montana. We’re not setting any sales records by any means but there’s a little more traffic in the shop and on the river today…we’ll take it. Now if we could just get on the other side of this daylight to darkness thing I think temps in the 40’s 50’s will begin to bring them in droves!
It’s hard to believe it’s been an entire year since Sheila and Fred and I took the leap and started Wolf Creek Angler. We all learned a lot this first season which will hopefully make things that much better in the coming seasons.

It seems like yesterday but it was a whole year ago we were running Wolf Creek Angler out of our dining room in Helena through the winter months before we started work on the shop remodel. It was an exciting and nerve-racking time. We were taking calls and booking rooms and trips and just imagining what that first season was going to be like all the while thinking about the major project awaiting us at 515 Recreation Road in Wolf Creek. Once Fred arrived in February things really got crazy as we dug into the project and ended up doing way more to the shop than we had ever imagined or intended. We made our deadline (barely) and opened the doors on April 1st and now here we are – heading into round two.

The season was a blur of selling flies, meeting guides, booking trips,figuring out a good product mix for the shop, running guide trips, mowing grass, barbecuing, drinking beers with guides and guests behind the shop, meeting all kinds of people, visiting with repeat customers from the MRO days, R & D trips down the MO on Monday and Thursday afternoons, wings, nachos and brisket sandwiches at Izaaks, ordering more green machines, taking lots of pictures, tweeting, blogging, posting, drinking more beers behind the shop, wondering where the season had gone, doing pre-season orders, watching Fred pack up and drive away headed back to MI, wondering why we decided to try to keep summer cabins open in the winter, cleaning rooms, doing laundry, shoveling snow, realizing it’s not as much fun to drink beer behind the shop when there’s nobody here and finally anticipating the start of season number two in 2015.

A lot happened in 2014. The changes continue with new developments happening daily. We had an awesome season. The next one will be even better.