Scientific Anglers' Bruce Richards Retires

June 9, 2009 By: Marshall Cutchin

Fly line guru, master casting instructor and MidCurrent board member Bruce Richards turned a big page this week when he retired from Scientific Anglers after 33 years. While he will continue consulting for SA, he plans to move to Montana in the near future.
Richards has been behind many of the most important advances in fly line design using computer-aided technology and advanced materials, but he counts among of his major successes simply thinking differently about how fly lines should work. “An example of the latter, he said, was the long-standing belief that lines to be used on small streams should not only be delicate, but have a long taper. But on a small stream a cast often doesn’t even include all of the taper, meaning the caster isn’t using the weight built into the line to deliver the fly. The solution was a compound taper.” Steve Griffin writes about Richards in this morning’s Midland Daily News.