Gift guide
A fly fishing gift for someone who already owns everything
You are not going to out-guess an angler on gear. They have opinions about tippet. What they almost certainly do not have is fifty-four hand-drawn flies on a deck of real playing cards, each one telling you what it imitates — the sort of thing that gets opened, turned over, and then shown to somebody else.
$19.95 a deck · Made in the USA · free shipping on two or more
No size to get wrong, no rod weight to match, nothing to check against what they already own. One deck is $19.95 plus $6.95 postage; from two up we pay the postage, which is worth knowing if you fancy keeping one yourself.
Why it lands
The rare gift you can buy for an expert without knowing anything
Nothing to size, match or guess
No rod weight. No reel that has to balance. No waders that have to fit. A deck of cards is one of the very few things in this sport where there is no wrong answer to buy.
It is genuinely useful on the water
Every card says what that fly imitates, in plain language. It settles the "what do I tie on" question at the truck. Useful beats decorative, every time, with people who actually do the thing.
It is a real object
Genuine Bicycle / USPCC stock with the patented Air-Cushion finish, on FSC-certified paper with vegetable-based inks. Not a laminated card set in a shrink-wrapped sleeve.
It gives them something to say
Fifty-four original illustrations and a portion of every deck going to Trout Unlimited. It comes with a story attached, which is most of what a good gift is doing.
Occasions
When people buy this
Different reasons, same problem: the angler in your life is impossible to shop for and you have about eleven minutes to solve it.
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Father’s Day
The dad who says he does not want anything and then spends the afternoon reading the cards out loud. Costs less than the fly box he does not need and gets opened more often.
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Christmas and stockings
Flat, light, wraps in ten seconds, fits a stocking, and does not require you to have remembered what brand of anything they use. The classic hard-to-shop-for solve.
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Birthdays
Under thirty dollars, unmistakably personal, and specific to the thing they will not stop talking about. It reads as though you were paying attention, because you were.
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Groomsmen and bachelor trips
Five or six of these beats five or six engraved flasks nobody drinks from. Cards get used on the trip itself, which is a rare property in a groomsman gift.
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Retirement
For the person whose entire plan is "fish more". Fifty-four flies is a decent map of what to do with the next twenty years, and it fits in a card.
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Guide tips and thank-yous
Guides get a lot of cash and very little that is theirs to keep. A deck alongside the tip is remembered next season, when you want the good day on the calendar.
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Someone just starting out
A beginner does not need more gear, they need to know what any of it is for. This is the cheapest useful thing you can hand a new angler.
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Clubs, chapters and raffles
Trout Unlimited chapters, casting clubs, banquet raffle tables. A dozen decks is a table prize that costs less than one auction item and clears every time.
Buy more than one
Nobody ever buys exactly one of these
The pattern is consistent enough that we designed the pricing around it: someone buys a deck as a gift, keeps it, then buys two more. If there is a fishing group, a boat, a wedding party or a chapter meeting in your life, the math stops being close.
Every deck is $19.95, however many you buy — we could not invent an honest quantity discount, because the second deck costs us exactly what the first one did. What does change is the postage: one deck carries $6.95 and two or more carry none.
Before you decide
The five things gift-buyers ask us
Will they already have one?
Almost certainly not. There are fly-fishing card sets on the market — they are photo-printed reference cards, sold mostly through shops, and very few anglers own one.
This deck has not been printed yet, so nobody has it. If you get in early you are giving something that did not exist last year, which is exactly the opposite of the problem you have with another net or another pair of nippers.
I do not know anything about fly fishing. Can I still pick this?
Yes, and that is rather the point. You do not have to guess a hook size, a rod weight, a line taper, or a reel that matches the one they already own.
Fifty-four classic flies with what each one imitates is useful to a beginner and interesting to somebody who has fished for thirty years. There is no size to get wrong and nothing to check for compatibility. If you want to sound like you knew what you were doing, read a few entries in our Fly-brary first — it is free and it takes five minutes.
Is this a real gift or a gag gift?
A real one. It is a full 54-card poker deck printed on genuine Bicycle / USPCC stock with the patented Air-Cushion finish, on FSC-certified paper with vegetable-based inks, and every fly on it was drawn by hand.
It is priced at $19.95 because it is made like something a person keeps, not like a novelty tin from a checkout counter. If it were a gag gift we would have printed it on the cheap board and charged nine dollars.
Will it arrive in time for Christmas or a birthday?
Usually, yes. The decks are printed and ordering is open. One posts for $6.95; two or more ship free.
If your date is inside a week, write to us before you order. We would rather tell you honestly that it is tight than let you find that out from a tracking number.
What if they do not like it?
It is a deck of cards. Worst case it lives in a boat bag and gets played with on a rained-out afternoon. That is a much softer landing than a rod they have to pretend to like.
Low downside is the entire reason a deck is one of the few genuinely safe things to buy for an expert.
Ordering
Tell us when you need it by
Decks are shipping, so for most dates you can simply order one. If your date is tight, or you need more than a few, send this and we will tell you straight away whether it will land in time.