Amusing story in the Fall 2025 issue of the American Fly Fisher (publication of the American Museum of Fly Fishing): Wheatley was bought out by REC Components in Connecticut. REC had all the Wheatley metal press machines for stamping the aluminum shipped over, but... “the manual operation of the fly...

I have to wonder about beads also. In some configurations, they tend to give flies an unnatural profile. This seems especially true for bead-headed streamers. Heck, a bead-headed marabou streamer looks like some sort of aquatic macrocephalic oddity. However using a bead for the thorax seems like it ...