May 06, 2025
By Fly Fisherman Staff
Tim Cammisa has been a guide on the Delaware River, a professional fly tier for 30 years, and his hundreds and hundreds of videos on YouTube and other social media platforms have reached around the globe with more than 17 million views and counting. His background as a school teacher makes him one of the most popular presenters and instructors in person at Fly Fishing Shows, on-line, and on the printed page. Tim’s latest book is Tying Euro Nymphs and Other Competition Favorites, and Tim sits down with us in this episode of Loop to Loop to find out how who he talked to in assembling this compendium of competition flies, and how your average trout fishermen can learn from them.
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Truncated transcript:
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00:00:03.460 --> 00:00:46.960: Hi, I'm Ross Purnell, editor and publisher of Fly Fisherman magazine. Welcome to the Loop to Loop podcast, where we make deeper connections with the people behind the magazine. We are sponsored today by G. Loomis, American-made fly rods manufactured in Woodland, Washington. We are also sponsored by our friends at Patagonia. Check out their new line of Swift Current Waders, the Traverse and Expedition. They are PFAS free to keep our waterways clear of forever chemicals.
00:00:46.960 --> 00:01:29.080: Today we are joined by fly tier extraordinaire, YouTube personality and book author Tim Cammisa. Welcome. Thank you, Ross. It's an honor to be in the hallowed offices of Fly Fisherman magazine. It's good to have you here. We you're just on your way to the Lancaster Fly Fishing Show. I thought it would be a great opportunity to get you in the studio. Sometimes people don't understand how big of a state Pennsylvania is. It is a big state. So getting in this corner of the state, it was good to take advantage of your knowledge and expertise and have your you're one of the first people in this studio. This is only our third podcast.
00:01:29.080 --> 00:01:53.800: Big shout out to Dennis. He did an awesome job. We spoke with him just a little bit ago and I said to him, when you're ready to come to Western Pennsylvania and set this studio up in my room, you're more than welcome to. Dennis did a great job here. He did the design of the studio and he's the creative director of the magazine. He makes everything look good. Makes everything better. We all need somebody like that in our lives. Yeah, he's a good person to have.
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00:01:53.800 --> 00:02:12.120: So we're going to talk about your books, your YouTube channel, fly tying. But one of the main goals of this podcast is to like learn a little more about the background of people and, you know, little known stuff that we wouldn't put in the magazine.
00:02:12.120 --> 00:02:54.000: So let's get started on how you became a fly tier. Like how did you get started in fly tying? Yeah, that's a good question, Ross. I guess my backstory is a little different than others because it seems like in fly fishing for so many fly fishing came first. But for me, it was actually fly tying. My parents signed me up for a an after school fly tying class when I was 10 years old. I was a fourth grader and there was this opportunity where my school offered maybe six or eight different classes after school once a week. And my parents thought fly tying would be a really neat one for me. I didn't know what it was. It just seemed like a craft or something. You know, I showed up and, you know, there's a bunch of us sitting in the room and all of a sudden these gentlemen walked in.
00:02:54.000 --> 00:03:06.040: The gentlemen, the kinds with beards, they reeked of mothballs, they carry these weird glues and varnishes with them. And I was engaged from like the first moment they walked into the room…
