Fly tiers in the United States

[Greg Stine 0]

Does anybody have a good guess on how many people tie flies in the United States?

 

Ill thank everyone for your feedback.

[Flicted 0]

742,937

[ct.custom 0]

I will just say... it is not a small number... we just keep to our own because not many people in society understand the passion we have for creating these little bugs... people don't understand what it does for us so we don't talk about it without being in a fly shop... just my opinion

 

That being said, I would say in North Carolina there is probably between 25,000 and 50,000 tiers with a total population of 10.3 million. Just a guess...

 

CT

[flytire 0]

98,476

[FishnPhil 0]

8,675,309

 

Here is the data to back my claim:

[mikechell 0]

This site has 54,714 members. A good number of them are from other Countries, so it's not a good example. According to an estimate posted in 2011, there were approximately 33 million licensed anglers in the U.S. That is close to 10% of the population.

If 10% of licensed anglers are fly anglers (3.3 million) and 10% of those tie their own flies ... then there were 33,000 fly tiers in 2011.

I would guesstimate the number to be higher than that, as I believe more than half (1.65 million) of all fly tiers tie SOME of their own flies.

 

All I DO know is, there are enough fly anglers and tiers to keep White River (BPS) and many online and smaller businesses going.

[tjm 0]

A wild guess is all anyone could do, how do you count people that don't buy things directly sold as "fly tying materials or tools"? How do you count people that don't join clubs? How do you estimate the number of people that bought a lifetime supply of materials and tools 30,40 or 50 years ago?

statista.com says 6.8 million fly fishing participants in USA in 2017, anglingtrade.com "number of fly anglers is estimated (based on U.S. Fish & Wildlife data) at 3.83 million"
my guess from stream side conversation is ~20% of those tie flies at some level. So, in round numbers- somewhere between several and 'a good many' thousands. flicted and flytire are in the ballpark
https://www.anglingtrade.com/2012/08/17/affta-releases-fly-fishing-industry-data/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/315900/number-of-fly-fishing-participants-us/
This touches on the subject; http://www.flytyingforum.com/index.php?showtopic=86388&page=1
This touches on the unreliability of the numbers; https://www.fieldandstream.com/blogs/flytalk/whats-the-real-number-of-fly-anglers-in-the-united-states

[CasualAngler 0]

A whole bunch, I gather. However, lately I've been tying a lot of flies out of yarn, so maybe I'm not the gear example of a "fly tyer"...

[flytire 0]

how many stars in the sky?

[redietz 0]

I believe more than half (1.65 million) of all fly tiers tie SOME of their own flies.

I dare say.

 

How many tiers don't tie their own flies? (i'll bet there are some.)

[mikechell 0]

Go to a fly FISHING site and ask that question. The few I've been in had a lot of people asking for flies or where to buy flies.

[whatfly 0]

Astounding. Someone new to the board asks a simple question and only 3 out of 8 responses actually even attempt to address what is a perfectly valid inquiry. My, my the signal to noise ratio on this board is starting to go down hill fast.

 

TJM probably has the best approach with the numbers available. Difficult number to even guess considering the estimated total number of fly anglers varies from 3.8 million (USFWS) to 10 million in some cases. According to one industry report (https://outdoorindustry.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2018-Special-Report-on-Fishing_FINAL.pdf), about 50 million people went fishing last year, and about 15% of those are fly fishers, which is twice the number USFW estimated (although USFW did find in 2016 that about 17% of anglers are fly fishers, so there is some agreement on the percentage, just not population size).

 

So we would be talking about a pretty broad margin of error even if you had an accurate estimate of the percentage of fly fishers who tie (and you of course have to define what a fly tier is, and how frequently one must tie to qualify). Obviously the total number of tiers cannot exceed the number of total number of fly anglers (yes, I'm aware there are tiers who do not fish, but not many I'll assume). If 10% of the fly anglers tie, the estimate could range from 380k to 1000k. Double those numbers if you think 2 out of 10 anglers are tiers, etc.

 

If you have to guess, I'd favor the USFWS numbers because their methodology is more transparent than the industry numbers, and they are not as strongly motivated to inflate the number for economic reasons. Consider also that fly angling is a very small market. The estimate for total annual expenditures on fly fishing is around $750 million. Sounds like a lot, but consider that Americans spent about $3.7 billion on bowling alone last year.

[Charlie P. (NY) 0]

Trout Unlimited has around 300,000 members. Not all tie flies (not all are even fly fishermen), but I would say that is probably a ballpark number of the Fly Tyers in the USA.

 

BUT, I'd then add in the saltwater Tyers and likely double that.

 

So: 600,000 . . . ish

[redietz 0]

Go to a fly FISHING site and ask that question. The few I've been in had a lot of people asking for flies or where to buy flies.

Of course, but read what you actually wrote ("fly tiers") vs. what you meant ("fly fishers"). It got me wondering how many people tie but don't fish.

 

I think your estimate is pretty spot on.

[Poopdeck 0]

I view every post as a legitimate answer to an impossible question to even ballpark let come up with a number even remotely close to whatever it could actually be. 13 out of 15 people were able to say I have no clue in less then 4 paragraphs without a backhand slap to anybody.

 

Anybody care to guess the number of fly tiers in the U.K. Next?