But that's not why I'm writing.
There's a thing that happens, every so often, in a business like ours. You look up from a screen full of spreadsheets and supplier emails at 10 o'clock at night and realise you've been doing this for ten years.
Ten years of emails. Ten years of product launches. Ten years of grayling seasons and river reports and long-form articles, books & almanacs - all written because I couldn't sleep and had something to say about indicator nymphing.
And you think: I wonder where all of that went.
Well. I can tell you now. It went somewhere.
But first - while we were building all of this, we quietly crossed 10,000 5-Star reviews. Which, as far as we can tell, makes us the most independently reviewed specialist fly fishing company in Europe (if not the world) - I’ll come back to that.
The story is what's sitting at the heart of our new site.
We've built something we're calling The Barbless Flies Learning Centre. Inside it, you'll find every long-form article we've written over the last decade. Tactics, techniques, seasonal guides, gear deep-dives.
All of it free. All of it in one place:
But the part I'm most proud of - and a little nervous about, if I'm honest - is this:
It's called Ask Richard - You can ask it anything.
- "Which nymph for a cold March morning on a northern limestone river?"
- "How to fish a point fly below a dry on flat, clear water."
- "What is the difference between a North Country Spider and a Soft Hackle, and whether it matters?"
It will answer in the way I'd answer - because it's learned from ten years of me answering exactly those kinds of questions.
You can access it wherever you see my ugly mug on either the Learning Centre or our NEW Website (just click on me):
and this will appear:
You can type anything (within reason) into here and I will answer it - keep it clean!
But Ask Richard isn't the only new thing I'm quietly proud of.
I've also built something called the Fly Selector - yes, I have been busy in the off-season!
On the surface, it's simple. It asks you a few questions - what water conditions, what type of water, any fish behaviour, etc - and then suggests which flies to use.
Straightforward enough:
Under the surface, it's anything but.
What it's actually doing is drawing on ten years of Barbless Flies articles, correspondence, and customer buying patterns to work out what anglers like you have actually bought, and actually caught fish on, in conditions like yours.
It isn't guessing. It isn't generic. It's the accumulated evidence of a decade's worth of real fishing, run through some genuinely sophisticated AI that I'll confess took more than a few favours to build properly.
I spent thirty years as an IT consultant before any of this. I know some people. I called them.
The result, I believe, is the most technically advanced website in the fly fishing industry. Which is a slightly absurd sentence to find yourself writing at ten o'clock on a Friday evening - but there it is.
Go and try the Fly Selector. Tell me if it suggests something you wouldn't have thought of. I genuinely want to know.
Quick Website Tip: The search function on our NEW website is really clever. If you want to find a fly (or fly style) just click on the search icon (it's the Magnifying Glass) and start typing, the flies will magically appear.
Which brings me to the 10,000
While we were building the new site, we crossed a milestone. Ten thousand 5-Star reviews. I've been reading through them - properly reading them - and the same three things keep coming up:
- The quality of our service.
- The quality of our products.
- The quality of the information we provide.
That third one is what The Barbless Flies Learning Centre is about. We've always tried to be more than a fly shop. The new site is the clearest expression of that we've ever managed.
I'll let one of our customers say it better than I can:
Right, now you can go and have a look.
And if you feel it's warranted, a review on reviews.co.uk would mean a great deal. Not because we need the number. We've got 10,000 of those now. But because every review tells the next angler this is a place worth their time.
There will be flies in the next email, I promise.
Tight lines
P.S. It's taken me 9-months to build all of this underlying architecture, there are thousands of moving parts behind the scenes, and I'm sure there are bits I may have missed. If you see anything on the site that doesn't look right, please either give me a call or drop me an email to let me know!
