Thank You, Happy New Year, A Toast to 2012

While we may be just at the beginning of an exciting year of streamers, it's been more than a year in the making. I've been making preparations, gathering streamers (lots and lots of streamers), meeting some very talented tyers, buying books and collecting hooks mostly over the past 12 months. My original vision was to get a few tyers together to create a little book of patterns, but this quickly grew into a larger project, influenced by my interest in Jeff Kennedy's Drawing Flies 365 project from a couple years back(Still has some great ongoing projects). It was a lot of fun to follow the blog and see each post over the year. It's a big commitment, but I have quite a number of talented tyers and family to help me along.

First, a big thank you to my wife and son for putting up with all the late nights of tying, photographing, emailing, writing and researching. They have been great support in the project and I thank them both for letting me chase this little dream.

Thank you to Chris Del Plato for consulting on the project with advise and helping to put together some of the text used to explain the history of some of the patterns. He is a great wealth of knowledge and I'm quite thankful to be able to bounce ideas off of him.

Thank you to Scott Bernard, Pep Dieppa, Alan Grombacher, Charlie Mann, Don Ordes, Glenn Peckel, Bob Petti, Mark J. Romero, Monte Smith and Jim Warner for their contributions to the hook profiles. Without their generous offerings, the small library of hooks would be much smaller. I hope that everyone interested in the long hooks can find it as a useful resource.

Thank you Glenn Peckel for your great support, enthusiasm, and suggestions for tyers.

Thank you David Mac for the awesome support of the project and helping to spread the word about the project, introducing it to many tyers and anglers.

Thank you Don Bastian for all the advise, insight and long conversations about streamers.

Thank you (in no particular order) to Alan (Al) Grombacher, Alan Petrucci, Allen M. Landheer, Barry Phillips, Bill Chandler, Bob (Robert) Frandsen, Bob Petti, Bryant Freeman, Charlie Mann, Chris Del Plato, Damian Lee Welsh, Dan Despres, David Mac, Don Bastian, Don Ordes, Don Soar, Duane Vigue, Dwayne Miller, Gary Tanner, Glenn Peckel, Harri Lehtonen, Jamie (Mutt) Webb, Jim Warner, Joel Stansbury, Jon Harrang, Kelly Lovelady, Ken Craigue, Jr, Mark J. Romero, Mike Boyer, Mike Martinek Jr., Monte Smith, Peggy Brenner, Jeff Smith, Peter Simonson, Robbie Hiltz, Robert Galante, Ron McKusick, Ryan Houston, Scott Bernard, Seline Dumaine, Steve Labrecque, Steve Silverio, Steven Wascher, Ted Patlen, Gary Fraser, Tony Smith and Loretta Parent for the truly wonderful streamers you have generously contributed to the project. Without your generous contributions, we would just be looking at a few of my beat-up streamers. It has been an honor and pleasure to get to know each of you and to have you all take part in the little project.

One aspect that I am really enjoying about the project is the broad range of tyer styles and experience. I'm really pleased to have tyers from all over Canada and the United states as well as Australia, Finland and the UK. Whether they have been tying streamers for 60+ years or just getting started, it would be impossible to take on this project without them.

Here is to a great year for the streamer! Happy 2012

Darren MacEachern