Living in St. Louis, Missouri we are accustomed to the finer things in life. Great beer (Schafly Brewing Co.), great basebal (St. Louis Cardinals), great strip clubs (thank you Metro East area), but one thing that often gets overlooked is the great fly shop that sits near down town St. Louis (a mere 100 miles from the nearest trout stream).
Feather-Craft Fly Fishing is located on Manchester Road, in the municipality of Brentwood, Missouri. It is a fairly easy to get to shop (assuming you know your way around St. Louis…..which isn’t that hard) filled with good people. From Ted in the front of the shop manning the retail side to Evan, John, and Bob in the back making sure the catalog orders and web site orders get filled, to all the support staff. What people don’t realize is that if it is fly-fishing related, and feather-craft doesn’t have it in stock, they can get it easily. I always seem to walk in looking for something off the wall (tiny black thingamabobbers) and have found they always seem to have what I am looking for and if it isn’t out on the racks, they will get it from the back.
I bought my first fly rod there about 8 years ago from Joel and Ted, one day when i was skipping out of graduate school classes. Ever since, I have had the pleasure of hanging out with a ton of the peoople that have worked there over the years. Hella good fisherman, some of them are, and those that aren’t are just damn cool to hang out with anyway. What you may not know is they have won the prestigeous Fly Fishing Retailers Fly Shop of the Year award in the past and are certain to win it again in the future. We are spoiled in Missouri to be home to a fly shop of this caliber. The place is just full of fun people, and tradition. A guy can walk-in, bull shit with Ted up front and go sit down at the back table and tye up some flies while talking to the other employees or guys that are in there hanging out and shopping.
I try to avoid the blatant commercials for products and what not, but we often take the time in life to bitch about things when something is F’d up and hardly ever seem to take the time to say “job well done.” So I figured it was time to tell the guys at Feather-Craft thank you for a job well done.
It is a great shop Matt. It’s bigger than it looks from the inside. The first time I saw it I was impressed. Especially in the back area.
Jimmy T.