Fifty years ago, I visited a northern Michigan fly shop in early June. Ignorant about basic aquatic entomology and the concept of "matching the hatch",  I naively asked the shop owner, "What's hatching?". The other two customers, whose conversation I had interrupted, turned to hear the shop owner's answer. "The Howdie",  was his reply. The look on my face must have said it all. A smirk appeared on the lips of all three. OK, I thought. I'm the rookie that hasn't a clue. I'll bite. "What's a Howdy?", I shot back. "The white-gloves. The iso's. Isonychia bicolor.", he added. Oh, that clarified it. "Thanks", I said. Thoroughly embarrassed, I blindly went about picking a few flies that probably had no relation to the isonychia bicolor hatch I was going to encounter on the river that evening. It was that moment that I swore that if I ever owned a fly shop I would gladly try to share as much fly fishing knowledge as I could. And I have tried to do that for 27 years.

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