Paul Rossman

I had been tying trout flies while in graduate school and salmon flies shortly thereafter. After working my way through the classics for a couple of years, still painting at the time, I began to recognize a potential for creativity through salmon flies. Painting began to take a back seat to the salmon fly tying and eventually was supplanted all together. It seemed a new language was emerging again.

It’s forever challenging to work forward and keep things fresh and exciting. While working closely with Paul Schmookler and Ingrid Sils on their projects, I began to realize that there could be more to tying salmon flies than just using some feathers from a certain bird in order to illustrate their use. I wanted more. What if I challenged myself and only use feathers from one single bird to tie a fly (except for Golden Pheasant crests and Ostrich herl). I began to think about my graduate thesis again and the schema concept.