Outdoorsmen Adventures.com

It was the demise of a magazine that started Ward Bean thinking of developing a website.

“A lot of guys at the fly fishing shows I was attending lamented the fact that “Warm Water Fly Fishing” magazine had gone out of business after 40 years of publication,” Bean says. “So, I thought I would put up a Web site for warm water fly tyers.”

The site went “live” in 2004 and today the Council Bluffs, Iowa, resident gets about 10,000 visitors each week.

Bean, a college educator, took an early retirement buyout in late 1999.

He began freelance writing and soon articles about his fly patterns, tying tips and fly fishing features began showing up in magazines such as Fly Tyer Magazine, Warmwater Fly Fishing and the Fly Fishing and Tying Journal.

But it is the website that is his real connection with fellow fly fishermen. And because of the website, that connection is international.

“I get a lot of email from all over the world from people who have visited the website and they often attach photographs of fish they have caught on flies from the website whose names I can’t even pronounce,” he says.

One of the reasons for www.warmwaterfly tyer.com’s success is that it is designed more for beginning tyers than for intermediate or advanced tyers.

“I get a lot of email from beginning tyers who say they are able to tie the fly using the pictures and instruction on the site,” Bean says. “That’s what makes it worthwhile to me.”

Ward considers the site to be “a work in progress” and adds pages as new things come along. He also features other tyer’s work on his site. He calls that page “Featured Tyers.”

“The fly tyers who are on that page are tyers I’ve met during fly fishing conclaves and all are friends that I have made over the years,” he says. “They are good tyers and have been recognized in their own way for their contributions.”

Ward attends several fly fishing shows and conclaves each year and doesn’t miss his two favorites: the Northwest Arkansas Fly Fishers Sow Bug Roundup each spring and the Federation of Fly Fisher’s Southern Council Conclave in the fall.

He often serves as a guest tyer at these meetings, sharing his patterns and tying instructions.

He is also a Whiting Farms Pro Team member. The Pro Team is a group of fly tiers who test and promote Whiting Hackle products. Some of his fly patterns featuring Whiting fly tying feathers appear on WhitingFarms.com and also are on the back cover of the current Whiting American Hackle Catalog. He is also a pro staff member of Dr. Slick Co., which provides “surgical quality” instruments for anglers. Some of these include fly tying scissors, fly tying tools, hook files, reels and nippers and other accessories.

While Ward pursues a number of warm water gamefish species, perhaps his favorite is smallmouth bass and his favorite place to fish for them is in the streams in northeastern Iowa.

“From mid June until late October, I’m in eastern Iowa three out of four weekends fishing smallmouth streams and, sometimes, I’ll fish trout there as well,” he says.

My favorite patterns for smallmouths in those streams are the Red-Faced Wobbler, a great minnow imitation which was featured in Fly Tyer Magazine, a crawfish imitation which was designed by my friend Mike Jacobs of Montecello, Iowa. He calls it the Bronze Goddess and this fly is a killer, an absolute killer. We also use a leech pattern which is basically a wooly bugger and topwater popers.

All of Ward’s favorite flies and tying directions are found on his website. If you are a fly tyer, visit it.