When I think of Charlie Craven the following phrases leap to mind: "incredible talent", "serious skill", "phenomenally clean", "effortless execution", "perfection", and "beautiful flies". You'll notice that one word that didn't come up was "traditional". Charlie is on the cutting edge of fly tying, creating new patterns and devising new techniques and approaches to tying, very much in the vanguard of "what's happening now" and what is the latest and greatest. I've never thought of his spending a whole lot of time thinking about old flies, and I seriously doubt that he does. So I was just amazed when Charlie agreed to be on a site featuring traditional flies, and even more amazed by the way he threw himself into this project. The results are some stunning flies, flies that even now I'm hard pressed to label "traditional", though they certainly fill that bill, flies that go well beyond that narrow definition. Charlie, as usual, has really pushed the envelope here, and I just love the results. I'm sure you will too.

If you are as interested as I am in techniques, shortcuts, easy ways of doing things, best approaches to a fly, and ways to tie flies that haven't even occurred to you yet, you owe it to yourself to check out Charlie's tutorials at: Tutorials. Just read through them, you don't even have to tie the patterns. Everyone can learn something from Charlie.

~EA