Getting FlyVault Found

Where we've been, where we're headed, and why every fly you add matters more than ever.

By Brent Jones · 2026-11-15

FlyVault has been here for a while now. If you're reading this, you found us. But most fly tyers haven't, and that's not because they don't want something like this. It's because they can't find it. Search Google for fly tying sites right now and we're nowhere near the top. Not even close.

That's about to change, and I want to tell you how.

It's taken about 22 months of building to get here, and if you've been around a while, you've seen the difference. It's a far cry from where we started. A lot of what we've done lately you can't see from the outside. It's the groundwork. And all of it points at one thing: getting FlyVault in front of the people who are out there looking for exactly what we have.

Before I get into that, thank you. Every piece of feedback you've sent, we've read. Some fixes are quick and we turn them around fast. Others we have to sit on, because one change can step on another piece we're building toward. So if you've asked for something and haven't seen it, it's not that we aren't listening. Sometimes it's waiting on something else to land first. Sometimes we've decided not to do it on purpose, because of where the whole thing is headed. Either way, keep it coming.

Here's the plan. We're about to start putting fly pages in front of Google on a steady schedule, a few at a time, every day. Google pays attention to sites that keep growing, and we intend to be one of them. Our goal is to have as close to 2,000 fly patterns in the vault as we can by January 1, 2027.

That's where you come in. Every fly you add makes the vault better for everybody. And when Google starts sending people our way, your flies go out with your name on them. That means more people seeing your work. Not buried in a feed for a day, but sitting there where someone searching for that pattern can find it next month and next year.

If you've got a pile of patterns sitting on your own website or in a folder somewhere, you won't have to type them in one at a time much longer. That brings me to MIDGE.

MIDGE stands for My Interactive Data Guided Experience, and we're building toward MIDGE 3.0. With 3.0, you'll be able to bring your own favourite AI into the vault and work through it: add your flies, keep your materials straight, run your bench. More on that soon.

We're also getting FlyVault ready to be a proper app, starting with Google Play. We'd love to be on the iPhone too, but we have to see how Apple's court fight shakes out first. In plain terms, Apple wants a cut of payments that don't even go through their App Store. That fight is headed to the Supreme Court, and how it ends changes what it would cost us to be there. So we're waiting to see where it lands.

So bear with us a little longer. We're close. Keep tying, keep adding, and let's get FlyVault found.

Brent