Fly Fishing Insider Podcast
Purest on the Fly is an anonymous Instagram account that publicly calls out anglers, guides and brands for mishandling fish - tailing gloves on native steelhead, long hero-shot sessions, wardrobe changes with a trout in the net. The stated goal is behavior change, on the argument that most anglers will never read a fish-mortality study.
The guest is the anonymous 25-year-old behind the Purest on the Fly Instagram account, an Idaho angler who works a normal nine-to-five outside the fly fishing industry.
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How did the Purest on the Fly account start?
Purest on the Fly began as a joke between two friends during the pandemic, when Idaho had shut down or heavily restricted guided trips and one of them - a working guide - was bored. The plan was memes about influencers and things seen on the river, with no expectation the account would grow. When guiding restarted the guide stepped back and the second founder, who works a normal job, took over day-to-day posting. What kept it going was the volume of poor fish handling followers were sending in.
Why call anglers out instead of just sharing the research?
The argument is that positive awareness campaigns and university mortality studies reach only the people already inclined to read them, and that a study on mortality rates by glove material is not interesting reading for most anglers. A public callout is a shove rather than a nudge, and it produces messages the account gets daily from people saying they did not know a practice was harmful and will not repeat it. Roughly half the people called out respond that way; the other half insist nothing is wrong because their family has done it for generations.
What is the problem with tailing gloves?
Tailing gloves are the account's signature issue. In Idaho, wild steelhead returns have been at or near record lows for years, and a glove used to grip a native steelhead for a photograph removes protective slime and opens the fish to infection - a real cost paid for a picture. The account's position is a hard standard rather than an absolute: if ten studies appeared showing tailing gloves cause no harm, he says he would say so publicly. The stated preference is that anglers who see a friend using one raise it gently and point them to the keep-fish-wet research rather than shouting.
How do brands react when their photos get called out?
Most brands respond well. A major rod maker posted a glove photo, got hit from several directions, and pulled it within about two hours; a large conservation organization did the same with a tailing glove image and took it down immediately once the message it was sending became clear. The exception described on air was a line company that posted a photo of an influencer holding a dark, spent Great Lakes salmon in a tailing glove, replied unprofessionally when messaged about it, deleted the critical comments, pinned the supportive ones and then paid to promote the post - before eventually deleting it. Most of the friction, he says, comes not from established brands but from newer companies trying to leap from startup to serious player.
Why is influencer culture a problem in fly fishing?
Fly fishing has almost no affiliate-link economy - the major rod, reel and line brands protect their shops rather than issuing discount codes - so influencers looking to monetize an audience reach outside the sport for CBD, beer and seltzer sponsorships. The audience for many of those accounts skews roughly 15 to 23 years old, which means products being promoted to viewers who cannot legally buy them. The deeper complaint is what it replaces: the expectation used to be ten years guiding or working in a shop or developing a pattern good enough to earn royalties, and it is now the fastest route to attention that can be sold.
Are direct-to-consumer fly rods and monthly financing worth it?
The critique is not that rods made in Korea and China are bad - the account's own house favorite is a sub-$100 Echo Base, an 8-weight built in Korea that is stiff, heavy, indestructible and outperforms far more expensive direct-to-consumer rods at half the price. The complaint is claim inflation: newer brands using older blank technology while marketing against $800 rods, buying 5,000 rods at a time while calling it small batch, and labeling rods 'assembled in the USA' when assembly means putting a finished blank in a sock and a tube. The financing offers are the sharper objection - a $49-a-month plan on a fly rod puts a beginner in debt for a purchase they could cover by saving two months and buying a good entry-level rod outright, and because these brands sell factory-direct the buyer never casts the rod first.
How does the account check a story before posting it?
The early approach was to take a submitted photo at face value and run with it, and the account has deleted posts it should not have made and messaged the subject to apologize once the fuller story emerged. The current process is to message the person first - most of the time that produces context and an acknowledgment - and to look at the profile before deciding whether a callout will help or simply provoke. Old photos get rejected: submissions from 2018 or 2019 are not posted, because a person who has since changed their handling is not the target. The account does not block anyone, on the reasoning that a closed comment section becomes an echo chamber.
Key takeaways
- Take the glove off before touching a fish - especially a wild steelhead in a system running at historic lows.
- The photo session is the mortality risk, not the catch: a trout held in the net through two wardrobe changes and a fly swap may not swim away.
- If you see a friend mishandling a fish, raise it privately and point them to keep-fish-wet research rather than confronting them publicly.
- A sub-$100 Echo Base outcasts much of what newer direct-to-consumer brands sell at two or three times the price.
- 'Assembled in the USA' generally means a finished overseas blank was packed into a sock and a tube domestically.
- Financing a $49-a-month fly rod costs more than saving for two months and buying a solid entry-level rod outright, and factory-direct sales mean you never cast it first.
