Tony DiPaolo
Hooked on Tying Flies
Interview by ChrisRWK (Robots Will Kill) Photos courtesy of Tony DiPaolo Learning that Tony tied these small intricate flies was amazing. Especially when you know his daytime job is working on bicycles. Sure bikes have small parts but for the most part it’s a mechanical job with things like grease, wrenches and rubber. So seeing these tiny flies and the attention to detail was inspirational. You can also tell by his interview his love of doing his side project. Can you tell me a little about what day job is? Hey Chris my day job is working in a bicycle shop in Jersey I’m the lead mechanic and I mostly do repairs in one of our locations. There are two shops and I bounce between both. I also do sales and fittings on higher end bikes. Did your day job start out as something you wanted to do or was it just a job? So how I got into working in a bike shop was
when I was in my early twenties I used to do a little racing and was really into cycling. I used to hang around a local shop and became friends with the owner. One day he had told me he was looking to open up another store and asked if I wanted to manage and wrench for him and been doing it to this day. On the side you tie flies for flyfishing? Tell us a little bit more about that. Even though cycling is a passion for me I also got into flyfishing about eight years ago. A friend’s father really got me jazzed about it when he would tell me about all the flies he would make and he would give me all these great books and magazines on tying and techniques of flyfishing. I got totally into it. Why do you do the side project? I guess I started doing it because I kept losing lots of flies so much from either snagging them on the bottom or losing them in a tree and I just didn’t want to wait to order more flies so I was like hey why not I’ll give it a try. I’ll see what I can make from watching 37