Challenging Traditional Fishing Norms with Flyoming's Ty Morton

[00:00:00] Welcome to The Ugly Bug Podcast, a production of The Ugly Bug Fly Shop and Crazy Rainbow Fly Fishing. Welcome to The Ugly Bug Podcast. On today's episode we have Ty Morton with a clothing company Flyoming. Flyomings are unique company based here out of Wyoming with Wyoming values

[00:00:27] before we jump into the podcast. Let's take a word from our sponsors. The Ugly Bug Podcast is proudly sponsored by Flyoming. Wyoming rooted fly fishing apparel and accessories, challenging the traditional mode, designed by English or English. Ty, how are you, man? Good, how are you, man?

[00:00:50] Good, good to see you. Thanks for coming in. Yeah, no problem, man. You've been out fishing much? A little bit, a little bit of alpine stuff, small creeks and the still water stuff. So yeah, it's starting to dry fly fish a little bit.

[00:01:07] We'll finally go over the runoff hump on the small streams or you still see an high water. Oh, the high water is still there and you're seeing the hatches but you know, if you're trying to head on its tough, your prospect and yeah, these hatch ones.

[00:01:22] Kind of a weird deer here, natural winter and then so much rain. It's kind of been an odd one. Really weird year, early weird year which is finding me fishing for different species that I normally don't just do in different things, which is fun. Yeah.

[00:01:38] What weird species you've been actually? We're off the out of the normal beaten path of Wyoming. Well not doing the Wyoming trout thing. Got to target some e-socks doing the northern pike thing. Cool. Which was really cool. Pretty hooked on that. Want to do more of that. Yeah.

[00:01:58] And bass, bass and pan fish. Large mouth or small mouth? Um, both. A little bit of local large mouth and then you know, kind of same fishery where I targeted the northerns. I went after the small mouth and then just manned the local pans for the local

[00:02:15] pots for pan fish. Yeah. I think people sleep on that too much. Super underrated with the right rod. It's a lot of fun. Right. Take an eight-weight pharmaceutical too much. Right. Yeah. I mean baby rod, little flies and I mean they'll just crash it.

[00:02:29] And if you throw two dry flies, you can kind of let that first fish dangle for a little bit. Next thing you know, you might have to open one. Yeah. Great way to teach kids, significant others to fish too. Yeah. Even getting the kids out there nice. Yeah.

[00:02:45] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Super cool. I think, you know, a lot of people get stuck on, especially a place like this. People were blessed to have kind of classic Western trout fishing where people travel to it. Right.

[00:03:05] You kind of lose sight of like all the other fun, cool opportunities that you know, our little abnormal for Wyoming but probably the primary species for a lot of other places. Right. Yeah. For sure.

[00:03:19] Well, and you know when then some of it is we know how it is. We get the peak season of folks coming into fish and sometimes that's people complain about that at times, but that's the time to run away and go do these other things. Yes.

[00:03:32] You know, honestly. Yeah. So yeah, you can get away from some people and do a little bit of hiking. Oh, yeah. And then you know, there's the old saying like trout live in pretty places right? So that's for sure. Time to go experience those pretty places. Yeah.

[00:03:50] Do you, uh, do you can't much with a family? Yeah. We do. But it's glamping. Yeah. It's glamping. Sure. We, we have access to some private property where we the whole family, we circle

[00:04:04] the wagons and we can park up there and it's near a lot of free stone stuff, small creeks, bigger free stone streams and then you know the mountain lakes and blessed to live or not live but being near the private reservoir. Yeah.

[00:04:23] And so, um, there it's not prolific fish in there but they're fish that are uneducated. Yeah. So you just, you can take the kids poorly present a dry fly that makes no sense and give bit perfect. Yeah. Perfect.

[00:04:40] So for those who don't know obviously you're the owner founder of Fly Oming, a cool kind of Wyoming base, obviously Wyoming base company. But some kind of different designs, cool, incorporation of you know, Wyoming wording logos.

[00:04:59] You're kind of all over the map on on different spins of it but yeah. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about some of the products you guys offer or you offer obviously

[00:05:08] you know ball caps like the one you got on super cool that logo is one of my favorites that logo with the steamboat thing and it's all awesome really cool. But hats t-shirts and then you do all kinds of stickers and different odds and instances as well. Yeah.

[00:05:24] Um, yeah. And then we've done some buffs. You know, we did cozys at first, played around with some of the accessories things but mostly stick into the apparel side with with hats shirts and sweat shirts and sun hoodies. Yeah. That was part. Yeah.

[00:05:44] It's kind of the bread and butter there. Yes. Yeah, very cool. Or the, I mean, to most of your hats, well like the one you got on it's kind of a cool new trend with the cork stuff. Yeah.

[00:05:55] Are you looking to do more of that in the future or is it, you know, how you find like sales versus kind of the new trendy stuff versus the old classics? Well, soon they still each have their benefit. Yeah.

[00:06:09] And I, and I struggle with the trends, you know, there's, there's a newer age of fly fisher that's kind of out there fishing now and wearing a little bit different style than I wear. Uh-huh. Even this, these flat bill seven panels like this.

[00:06:29] First time I ever owned one of my first put on is like, I don't like this. Then I got used to it now. I love it. But I was kind of the more traditional regular six panel per bill guy and it was hard

[00:06:41] to get me to offer these other styles. I still do, I'm still kind of stuck in my own world on it but the beauty of being the sole person behind this company, I get to do it how I want. Sure.

[00:06:54] And I stick to that and always done it that way. But I do try to keep an open mind about things kind of the biggest thing or where I see myself going is reducing some of it, a little more small batch runs, a few of things.

[00:07:13] And incorporating art into it, um, custom art by other artists. Um, you know, we, I did a raffle back when COVID first hit and Ty Hallick did the art on that for it. And that was really cool and awesome.

[00:07:28] And so I'm gonna do some more of that stuff. I'll be kind of like if you buy this hat, there's going to be no other hat like it. Yeah. The hard part about that is art. So the artist is going to charge me. Sure.

[00:07:42] Higher price cost but it'll be a unique hat. Yeah. These are things we'll do. Yeah, if you do a limited run, I assume it can overcome that. If you, you know, whatever the unit number needs to be right, I'm shocked like me or

[00:07:54] gonna order every bit of it that I can get my hands on usually. Yeah. So even if it's a run per se, so let's say limited runs, six to 12 hats. But each one of those hats is going to be unique to the other 11, right?

[00:08:09] Each one will be unique. It'll be hand painted. Yeah. Very cool. Just make I think makes it cool. Yeah. Very cool. And you know, with fly-ooming, it's always the way I've done it.

[00:08:20] If I haven't been able to do it myself, whoever I reach out to to help me or produce print whatever they have to be Wyoming based. So every artist that I've worked with, Wyoming based, every company, you know, the

[00:08:34] leather patch ones that I did, Wyoming based company that did that for me. So it's kind of what I'm all about. I feel like with a name like fly-ooming, that's how it has to be. Yeah. We just need to really get hat manufacturer to move down. Oh, man.

[00:08:50] That's the part, you know, if these guys, you know, the blanks or whatever we're getting, if they go outside of the state or nation, that's on them. But my direct costs are going to support Wyoming businesses and, you know, super cool. Yeah, super cool.

[00:09:07] Is it the easy way to go about it? No. Is it the lucrative way to go about it? No. But I feel good about it and it's the best way. You know, it's revenue back into our home state and our home communities. That means a little to me.

[00:09:23] I forget the old adage, but I think it's like 3.2 times, you know, $1 circulates 3.2 times around the state before it leaves. Yeah. Right? So you start doing the multiplier on, you know, and it will Wyoming, Wyoming person, spending money in Wyoming, right?

[00:09:42] It definitely changes hands multiple times and keeps supporting the state in a big way. And then if you think about it, you know, that's so you get sales tax that comes in with all that money back into the community, you know, for cool things, new cars, right?

[00:09:58] Stuff like that. And to me, that's where it all comes 10 fold and makes sense. Sure. Sure. Not not to sit here and talk about just smack, but what is, you know, Bayes O's doing further state of Wyoming?

[00:10:13] You know, what does Amazon do for the state of Wyoming, nothing? No. You know, any dollar generated out of a local fly shop is sales tax back into the community. Sure. So full. Yeah. It's always been a pet peeve of mine, right?

[00:10:27] Being a small business owner, you kind of, especially in like a lot of fly fishing products, it's the same price through me as it is online or through someone else, right? It's all, it's all minimum pricing and you're not going to spend anymore money with me, right?

[00:10:42] It's just that you're spending it locally versus ordinary somewhere else, luckily a lot of the fly fishing market. Amazon hasn't quite cut on yet. Right. I'm sure it's coming at some point. But and where it has, you kind of have to be leery of what you're getting.

[00:10:59] Oh, yeah. There's a lot of knock off stuff out. Yeah, most of the good companies won't even allow it as right now and hopefully it stays that way. Right. Yeah. And if you're finding some of that stuff, there's a good chance. It's not new. It's not a jet.

[00:11:12] Pretty loved. Pretty loved or mocked. Some sort of scam or mock, yeah, for sure, for sure. So the t-shirt you got on, that's a good classic. I love that one. Yeah. Who did that artwork for you? What did you do at yourself?

[00:11:30] So Chris, Chris divine, if I butcher that last time, I'm sorry. He did the art. Well, I did half of it submitted it to him. He put it all together and with wild print and Tyler Lampbert, you know, I'd be out here familiar with him.

[00:11:52] They put it all together for me. And the backstory on it, which is kind of funny, I like to challenge the traditional purist fly fisher if you will. And if I offend anyone with that, I'm sorry. It's just how I am.

[00:12:09] So I just always thought, man, it would be funny to be on the water in the boat and get around a bunch of those type of anglers and different boats. And if I was just wearing some ignorant slayer, slipknot, shirt of some sorts and just

[00:12:24] torch fish in front of me, you know, just, yeah. And I don't know why. I just, I thought it was funny. I was like, well, you know what? I'm going to go to hot topic in the mall.

[00:12:33] But I'm going to go buy a slayer, slipknot shirt and do this. And then I thought, well, I own an apparel company. Why don't I just make my own? Right. And then it's still fishy, you know, and here it is how it was born.

[00:12:46] So it was a selfish thing of mine. And I remember when I initially got it out, I just brought it out and it was received rather well by a lot of people.

[00:12:58] And I mean, when it went to market in a couple of stores, I mean, it was disappeared. Yeah. So I probably need to do another run of it. Actually, how did you, if we take a step back like when you started it?

[00:13:13] I mean, was it kind of years in your brain before you started the company or was it a pretty quick transition once you had the initial idea and then how did that idea come about? It honestly was a really fast idea.

[00:13:27] If you go all the way to the very beginning, which at that time I didn't know was the beginning. A couple of friends and I used to do an annual trip out to the mile kind of that fall annual trip right.

[00:13:41] And I did a shirt back then that was just kind of for all of us that went on at just a fun momento. And it's the doing real shit shirt. I know you've seen that. Right. I think the ugly bug sold a few axiots. Yeah, we did.

[00:13:55] That was the very first shirt I ever did. And just got it was six of us that did the trip. Made six of them and that was it. And I had a couple of people say you should make that and sell those, I thought whatever, I don't care.

[00:14:10] And then for the hell of it, I just was going to do another one for a couple of friends. And I, the original fly-homing shirt was born, the flagship logo with the fly and the buffalo and then flying above.

[00:14:25] So I drew it all up, had it pretty close and then I leaned on Mr. Lampard again. I said hey man, will you color this up just a little bit? Make it look real cool. Slap it on a shirt for me.

[00:14:37] And then he sent me the mocks and it just blew me away like, I was like, well, I think this is something. Right. And at the time, I thought, you know what, maybe let's just play with this run with it a little bit.

[00:14:49] At the time, I didn't want to handcuff myself necessarily to fly fishing. I thought about making it more outdoorsy whatever. But I couldn't. I just thought man, fly-homing. How is that not a company already? Did my research? Wasn't a company already. Okay, here we go.

[00:15:11] And then it was born and then it's just gone from there. I mean, it was kind of, I wouldn't say zero to 60 real fast but it was pretty quick. Yeah, yeah, it's super cool.

[00:15:21] Is the original logos still kind of the best selling or is the steamboat one overtaking it or? The steamboat version I would say oversells the Buffalo one. The state flag is what I refer to it at. But that one I'm still partial to.

[00:15:39] I love steamboat, you know, the cowboy, the buck and horse. But I just have always been partial to the state flag and I don't think a lot of people capitalize on that. So I've just been partial to that. Yeah, that version. But steamboat does.

[00:15:56] Steamboat does traditionally outperform and I understand why. Yeah, well, I think part of it too, just the color scheme of the Brown and Gold. Well, yeah, and honestly before the steamboat version existed, it was just a Brown and Gold fly with nothing in there.

[00:16:15] And then so I had to jump through the hoops to get, you know, grace with the University of Wyoming made that happen. Then put it out to market and, you know, there she goes. The new collab we did together from Diggin' big time. Right.

[00:16:32] Our Ethioglybug kind of logo drop on the shoulder and he's been well received. I don't know if you saw the new fixture we put together down on the shop today. But I have to go look. Yeah, hopefully we'll showcase some of the t-shirts and different odds and ends.

[00:16:46] We got a little more. So yeah, there was another one that I also liked really well but we put it together and then next thing we know, stock just disappeared. Which that's been one of the tough parts of this, especially doing it the way that I do

[00:17:03] a lot of people don't realize. But I mean, this is I don't have corporate investors or anything like that. It's been 100% me all my own hard earned money. So whatever money that that fly on me generates, it goes back into the business and buys the next products. Sure.

[00:17:22] I mean, I can't really say that I sit here and live off of by any means or really take a paycheck. It all goes back into building what it is. It's tough. He's tough to do it that way. But it's fun and I feel good about it. Yeah.

[00:17:37] Well, on back to the sourcing sort of thing too. I mean, through COVID and since trying to get materials and production schedules, that's all a challenge. Yeah, I know there's obviously you saw that on your end, right? Yeah, big time. Yeah.

[00:17:55] And it was so wild because when it hit, no one knew what was going to happen, right? Yeah. And we should have saw the explosion we were going to see in the outdoor industry but we didn't. We thought we were going to get locked down.

[00:18:08] And the next thing we know, it went zero to 100. Yeah. Right now. And then next thing we know, talking to some of these blank manufacturers such as Richardson and stuff. That's what they want a lot of folks use. I lean on them a lot. They had no idea.

[00:18:27] I mean, yeah. They ran out of everything. Right. So yeah. It's been tough. I think we're leveled out now a little bit, but you still run into it. No, yeah. They're still random. Think a lot of it now. Still shipping. Yeah.

[00:18:43] From some of those companies trying to get the product here is. Well, get a portion of it here. Yeah. And I think folks kind of are just lean on it as a crutch. No, totally. They underperform. They just blame. You know what I mean? Yeah. For sure.

[00:18:58] For sure. Are there fishing plans for the summer? You kind of staying close to home. You got any planned big plans? Not real big plans. I think in the fall, I kind of want to try to do the e-sox thing again. I'm going to lie.

[00:19:17] I want to get to kind of the western part of the state and go do some cut throat stuff over there. I love free stone fishing. I love pocket water fishing. So I kind of want to go do some of that stuff.

[00:19:33] It's just pretty some of those places. Oh, yeah. And then I really want to try to knock out that ultimate angler thing that say to Wyoming does. I only got four species left to go. There's a couple trout species. I can hit to get there.

[00:19:50] I need a little bit of help on the bass and the e-sox end to get there. But I just want to get around and see some more of the state and just fish them different water. But nothing's sent in stone. Yeah.

[00:20:02] Do, so does the state treat that program much like the cut slam? Like, re-simit pictures of, yeah, yeah. Yeah. You see how does it go? So you catch it. You don't even, it's different from the cut slam because the cut slam matters the

[00:20:19] drainage that you catch it, right? You have to say where you caught it but it doesn't really matter. I can catch a bonaville cut, you know, over here. And then that just counts towards my cut, my cut throat.

[00:20:34] Which, that's what I did, that's how I got my cut throat. But it doesn't really matter native drainage. It just matters. You do have to say where you caught it and submit a picture. Okay.

[00:20:46] And they ask that it, you know, if you can put a tape next to it great but if not have something nearby, that they can use for scale. It's like a fly rod works great, right? Sure.

[00:20:57] So that's what I've done and I don't know if too many people have got all 10 on a fly rod only but that's how I'm going about it. I just want to be able to say I've done that. Very cool. Do suckers count towards the ultimate?

[00:21:12] No, no, because I'm pretty damn sure I've gotten that state record. I just didn't know they even tracked that. So does the sumids have to be game species? And I think that's considered suckers and cart gas species. Has to be a game fish.

[00:21:27] So I don't know why we tracked state record size for the sucker fish if we're not going to count it. But yeah, I don't know that one either. Yeah. And I mean same thing with Carp right?

[00:21:37] I don't understand why that doesn't get tracked because that fish is way, you know, I'm sure you can educate me on that but there is some art fish and they're tough to get after. Very much.

[00:21:48] Whenever whenever I've seen them in the water and cast that them, we know how that works. You don't throw a bottle of rig out there and torture car. No, not at all. I've got them by by catch on accident.

[00:22:00] But yeah, it happens some time to time but not too often. What's next for flaming? What do you see in the future or you got anything kind of on the burner coming up? On the burner coming up, I just actually came out with a new hat today.

[00:22:15] How kind of start getting that out? Got a new kind of logo fun sticker shirt thing that's going to come out. Just a little hit, I'm going to make fun of an old school bubble gum company. Huh? That's your hint on that.

[00:22:37] Aspirations, doing some hard good stuff, I've been wanting to get there, you know, like a year ago. It's just tough like I said with doing the business of the way that I do. So we could do some flyboxes and some other things.

[00:22:51] Would really like to figure out how to do some repurposed stuff, you know, upcycling things. But it's just tough. But yeah, some more designs coming down the pipe, bamboo shirts are good. Nice. So I've kind of found that out. Super comfy. Yeah, super comfy.

[00:23:14] The comfyest terrible from mosquitoes. I can tell you that. They've been, they don't. They don't. They don't. Same with the kind of whole look at the normal no seems, but they're usually not tight enough for on the cuffs to keep the no seems from just crawling up it.

[00:23:30] So yeah. Very cool. Why appreciate joining us social media where people can find you? You know, talk candle. I don't do. Yeah, I don't do tick talk. Instagram, um, flyoming fly fishing and then on Facebook flyoming. I got a personal one but the flyoming one's probably way cooler.

[00:23:59] So if you look hard enough on the on the flyoming one, you'll get your meow and find me out. Then a few little specialty fly shops as well kind of carrying it. Obviously, you're a T. So you see the ugly bug fly shop.

[00:24:13] Ben here since day one so yeah, appreciate you. Thanks for that. You guys have been great. Easy to work with too. You guys are awesome. And then the cut throat fly shop over in two boys Wyoming. Okay.

[00:24:27] So and kind of, you know, back to that Wyoming thing I'm only going to be in Wyoming fly shops for the foreseeable future. Yeah, so he's not going to do a color. How do you know how you heard that? No, Colorado. I don't want to. Yeah.

[00:24:43] You know, funny story on that. I had a guy hit me up. He says you need to get in Amazon. Do an Amazon store. And he said I don't want to.

[00:24:56] He says, we I think you really should and I can show you how to do that long story short. He was trying to get me in his store, right? Yeah. And I finally, I mean, I kind of had to get Western with them and tell them some

[00:25:07] choice words, but long story short I said this is my business and I'll run it however I want. I like it. There we are. Hell yeah. Good one day in Don. Thanks Ty. Appreciate it. Thank you for listening to the ugly bug podcast.

[00:25:23] If you've enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review on Apple podcasts and Spotify. If you have questions or feedback, reach out to us via email at info at uglybugpodcast.com or leave a comment on our social networks.