About Us

Hey everyone, I am Patrick Schmutzer, the fly tier, taper, the graphics guy and the janitor here at Fire Flies!

I have learned the trade through recreational and tournament fishing Lake Michigan for the past 17 years. Learning Fly Tying from many of the great tiers before us, I have been able to take the old ways and create a new version of the quality flies that were originally produced in the 70's.

I enjoy recreational fishing with my family and friends, but also enjoy tournament fishing with other Professionals on the lake.  I have been tournament fishing since 2012.

Along with my Pro Staff I am a speaker on proven tactics and techniques that I have learned over the years. The opportunity to speak lets me keep learning from all the other great fishermen and women in our seminars. Meeting our customers helps puts a face to the name.

Outside of fishing, I am involved in Coaching shooting sports, my oldest daughter has just signed to shoot as a collegiate athlete, talk about proud!!!!

I am an avid outdoorsman, hunting in spring and fall for birds and big game.

Most of all I am a proud Father of 3 humans and 1 Chocolate boy named Thor!!!

No gimmicks, no tricks, no "watch me pull a rabbit out of my hat" junk to entice you. Just straight forward proven patterns!

We are always looking for ways to make our products better, engineering is in our blood. If we feel we can make our products better we strive to do so, the proof is in our products!

We also adhere to a strict quality control process and attention to details...before the flies leave the shop, if it does not meet the standards it doesn't leave the shop, it is as simple as that.

Not a single fly enters our line before extensive testing by our Pro Staff team of Captains and Tournament fishermen. We want to put out quality flies that produce. We would rather limit our total fly pattern numbers then make a ton of patterns and hope they catch fish. 

• Do you want to buy Coho flies from someone who doesn't coho fish? And NO they don't get caught on bubble gum, we tried that! . Our Coho line is THE BEST all year coho fly, since 2013 we continue to prove this!
• Do you want to buy flies someone who only fishes kings in 1 port and claims their flies work in any port? Our Prostaff covers all the ports from Southern Illinois to the UP of Michigan. We don't guess, we design, we test, and we are able to provide the data for the ports we cover!
• Do you want to buy Lake Trout flies from someone that guesses how to catch big ones? All I have to say is have you met JAWZ? Taken from the old school MOE Fly (Horse hair) and recreated with Mylar. JAWZ is unstoppable!