The International Fly Tying Symposium

Co-arranger of the whole event

The International Fly Tying Symposium in an international fly tying show, which takes place annually in New Jersey. The show is known for its great display of internationally acclaimed fly tyers and booths, which can tempt even the most cold hearted fly tyer.
This year the show takes place November the 17th and 18th, 2001 in the Doubletree Hotel, Somerset, NJ, USA.
Call Chuck Furimsky for details.

Prizes: Cooperation in the arrangement.
Marketing and publicity.
Booth at the International Fly Tyeing Show

Neal Hall, rodmaker, The Custom Rod Builder's Guild

Grand prize - custom built rod

Bio for Neal Hall President of The Custom Rod Builders Guild Inc.
Neal is a Western Kansas farm boy who found his way to the big city (Wichita) and made good in the aircraft and missile industry at Raytheon Aircraft Co. (formerly Beech Aircraft). He retired from Raytheon in June after a 39-year carrier as an electronics and instrumentation engineer.
He started building fly rods in 1989 when he began to get serious about fly-fishing. He wanted a nice fly rod but didn't want to pay the high prices ask by the commercial community. Neal has always been handy and has his own woodworking equipment and a nice shop area so he thought, "why not build my own rod." With a couple of rod building books from the library and a Cabala's catalog he ordered the components and put together a respectable fly rod.
The windings were not prefect and it wasn't balanced right but the rod served its purpose. With the help of a local builder and the benchmark of Charlie Reading, Neal's work has improved significantly.
In 1999 Neal felt that he had progressed far enough with his rod building that he could start his own custom fishing rod building business. So his company Classic Destiny was born. The name implies that some day his rods will be good enough to be considered classics.
Neal Joined the Custom Rod Builders Guild in July 1999 and became active in the organization. He attended the first Conclave in 2000 and was astounded by all of the rod building knowledge and experience represented by the people who were there. In 2000 Neal volunteered to be the education director and put together the very successful rod building class that taught 17 people to build fishing rods at the 2001 conclave. Since then he has applied those techniques to classes in Wichita and has worked to get Guild sponsored rod-building classes started at the Bass Pro Shop stores.
When the New organization came about, Neal, who was the Vice President, agreed to be the interim President. With his organizational skills learned in industry, he has put together a workable, member owned, not for profit corporation that has 10 volunteer officers and directors who are responsible for the day-to-day operation of the Guild. Each has an important job to do and each has an equal voice on the board of directors. Without their dedicated assistance the President could do nothing for the Guild.
With the assistance of the board, Neal is trying to set up and operate a Guild that is true to the mission as stated in the by-laws. To accomplish that task it will take a commitment from all of the members of the Guild to become involved. Help when asked and offer assistance freely.

Prizes: Grand prize: A custom rod built by professional rodmaker Neal
Hall, president of The Custom Rod Builder's Guild.

Lamiglas

Prize sponsor

Co-sponsor of our grand prize is Lamiglas, Inc., who's fabulous line of fly rod blanks will be used to construct the rod.
Prizes: A rod blank chosen by the winner to be built by Neal Hall. At the conclusion of the contest, the winner and Mr. Hall will discuss which of Lamiglas' fine blanks will meet the winner's requirements.

Robert Venneri

Reel seat

Robert Venneri creates fine hand crafted reel seats made from the finest materials of wood and metal artistically constructed bringing together precision and beauty in the Catskill tradition.
Prizes: Reel seat for the grand prize custom rod selected from a long range of traditional style designs with beautiful wooden inserts and nickel silver fittings.

Reel seat for the custom built 2wt, 2pc Rainshadow rod built by GFF partner Steve Schweitzer.

Coch-y-Bonddu Books

Paul sponsors books for early entrants

The welsh books store with all the great titles. Paul Morgan's store is well known in the fishing and outdoors communities, and Paul often appears with a booth at European fly shows.
Prizes: 20 copies of the book "Chauncey Liveley's Flybox"

Frank Amato Books

Category 3rd prize sponsor

Frank Amato Books is one of the best known and most productive fly fishing book publishers in the market today, known for its high volume of quality litterature on the subject.
Prizes: Frank Amato sponsors book prizes for the 3rd places in all categories.

Partridge of Redditch

Sponsor of goodie bags

The world famous hook maker located in Redditch in England. Well know for its large assortment of hand made hooks.
Partridge has a huge selection of traditional and modern hooks for any fly you can imagine.
Prizes: Goodie bags with hook and material samples for all contestants

Rooney Tube Works

Sponsor of category prizes

Ronney Tube Works offers handmade, hand-polished brass tubes and plastic tubes for the discriminating fly tier. They are flared at one end to eliminate thread slippage when finishing the head of the fly and hand-polished, which guarantee them to be free from leader-fraying burrs.
Prizes: Four generous packages of tubes - brass and plastic. Enough to last a busy fly tier a long time.

Fishing Creek Angler

Sponsors category prizes

Nestled among the beautiful mountains of northeastern PA, you will find the Fishing Creek Angler. Located just west of Wilkes Barre, PA in Northern Columbia County.
Fishing Creek Angler is prepared to accommodate every angler, from the beginner to the serious enthusiast, with complete lines of Sage, Winston, Simms, Hardy, Tibor, Ross Reels, Teton, Galvan, Scientific Angler, Ex Officio, Filson and Columbia. Stop by to see what the area has to offer, and fish our uncrowded waters

Prizes: Tying material, flies, leaders and leader material

Fly-2000

Sponsors fly pattern software

Fly-2000 is a Danish company who has programmed and marketed the new Fly-2000 pattern database - the heir to the old FlyLab program.

Fly-2000 has sponsored six copies of the software package Fly-2000 -- a comprehensive database with a thousand fly patterns and the option to import new ones from the web and add your own.

The program now also contains a catch report function.

Prizes: Six copies of the software package Fly-2000 -- a comprehensive pattern database.

Salmon Fly

Sponsors salmon fly posters

A Danish fly shop with Scandinavia's largest selection in fly tying materials, high end rods, reels and lines.
Fly tying materials is our core business, and we do have almost any material that any fly tyer could wish for. We specialize in natural materials: feathers and hair, but also have a very large selection of synthetics.
Our materials are of the highest quality. We hand select everything and we clean, bleach and dye in the shop, but still maintain some very reasonable prices.
We have a lot of rare materials carry an almost complete selection of materials for classical salmon flies. Everything is fully legal with Cites certificates.

Prizes: A dozen posters with full dressed Major Traherne salmon flies.

Global FlyFisher

Arrangement and prizes

The prime force behind this contest and one of the World's foremost web sites on fly tying and fly fishing
Prizes: GFF supplies all the logistics and the web work for the contest plus a diploma and a free fly box with the GFF logo for each contestant.