Jim Estes was born on January 21, 1944 in Sylva, North Carolina. He is a fifth-generation resident of Deep Creek in Bryson City North Carolina where he has lived for the better part of his lifetime there with his wife Karen. Jim is a life-long fly fisher who began casting a fly on the local streams around Bryson City as a very young boy. During the years while attending college, Jim was drafted and served in the Army 1965-67. He earned his B.S. in Geology from East Tennessee State University. He was an active Trout Unlimited member from 1970-1995. Jim lived in near-by Whittier for a time and overall had a 28-year career with the North Carolina Department of Transportation before retiring in 1998. He has two children, Brian and Kristi and two step-children Austin Lee and Christopher Lee (who participated on the USA Fly Fish Team). Jim’s hobby is restoring log cabins of which he has completed a good number over the years including his own cabin which consists of several smaller disassembled cabins and a barn, all combined from Madison, Cherokee and Swain Counties and then remolded into a fine homestead. He became a guide in 2000 for Rivers Edge Fly Shop in Cherokee, North Carolina. Out of the necessity of having a great trout catching fly while guiding, Jim created his “mop fly” in early-2000. The Estes Mop Fly is presented in articles in the London Times and the Wall Street Journal. As a life-long fly tyer and innovator, Jim has experimented with many synthetic materials beyond those normally found in the fly tying catalogs. Many of his fly fishing inventions are a concoction in the highest of tradition in the Southern Appalachians. As a fly fisher of solitude, Jim has many secret places to fly fish, many secrets about materials, fly tying techniques and fly patterns which are close to his heart and only shared with close fly fishing buddies. Yet, over time these secrets get out and the fly fishing world has become a better place as evidenced by the Estes Mop Fly. There are many, many versions of the mop fly sold on the fly pattern market today, all because of one of Jim’s secret flies. The “mop fly” has been a “go to” fly for over a decade and may well become a common fly in every angler fly box.
James Douglas “Jim” Estes – Inducted in the Crafts category as an amateur fly tier who is widely recognized for the creativity and wisdom in designing the mop fly. Orvis, Umpqua and many other fly pattern suppliers have all developed version of the Est Mop Fly.
