Savage Flies is a project with two simple missions:
1) encouraging as many people as possible to get into fly fishing and tying, and
2) help anyone who is already involved in the sport enjoy it more.
Right now the project is a YouTube channel and this simple website. Maybe it will be more someday. Who knows. Here are a few questions (that nobody has asked) and my answers that should tell you a little more about me and this project.
Who are you?
My name is Matt O’Neal. I grew up in the mountains of north Georgia in the 1980s, doing all the things kids from that era did. I worked a few part-time jobs, played a few sports and learned to fish in the ponds and rivers of Georgia and southeast Tennessee.
I went off to college in coastal South Carolina, a pretty long way from any good trout water, and then served in the Navy for ten years after college. Most Navy bases are also coastal, so my trout fishing in those years was sporadic. I might have made it into the mountains a few times a year but being stationed in New York City, Norfolk, VA and Monterey, CA didn’t make it too easy.
Fast forward a few years to when I’m out of the Navy, but working as a civilian scientist for the Navy in the Washington, DC area. By now it’s the early 2010s and I’ve got the time and a few good trout rivers in Maryland to explore. That’s when I dive back into the sport head first. Fishing as often as I could and tying when I needed to refill my boxes.
Then COVID came. With a lot of government workers having to telework, and my long commute into DC minimized, I found myself with a bit more spare time. By then I was watching plenty of tying videos and thought, I could do that. And it could be a fun way to give a little back to the fly fishing and tying community! So I started a tying channel on YouTube. Six years later and I’m still plugging along. Still growing, albeit slowly at times, but steady nonetheless.
Why the name “Savage Flies?”
Sometime in about 2018 the wife and I were exploring areas to buy a place for retiring. We looked in Virginia and West Virginia– all within a few hours of DC and where we were currently living in southern Maryland. Then one day, driving home from a family camping trip in Pennsylvania, I said, “Let’s drive through western Maryland and I’ll show you one of my favorite places to fish!”
The mountains of western Maryland are nothing like Washington, DC. I already loved the area and after seeing it my wife asked why we didn’t look for a place out there? So we did and in 2018 bought a farm near Cumberland, MD. For several years we just went out for holidays and long weekends but as we are both very close to retiring from our government jobs, we’ll be moving out there for good in 2026.
Oh yeah, why Savage Flies? Because lucky for me, I get to fish the Savage River when I’m at the farm, and it will be my new home water when we retire and move out there. There is nothing “savage” about my channel or my fly tying. The name is simply an homage to my favorite river.
You must make a ton of money with all those high-performing videos on YouTube!
Nope. Small-time content creators on YouTube don’t make much money at all. In a good month the ad revenue from all those annoying ads that everyone skips will be about $450-500. Now I realize that’s not insignificant, and it does help me keep well-stocked with tying materials and lets me afford to give out tools and books to the community. But doing the simple math of how many hours it takes to record and publish 8-10 videos a month, that’s probably not even the hourly minimum wage. So no, a small-time content creator on YouTube is not getting rich from it.
Well if you don’t make much money, why keep publishing videos?
The short answer is because it’s still fun. Researching old forgotten flies, or designing and fishing new patterns, then making a tying video of it is a great creative outlet. Sure, there are times when I should be making a video that I’d rather be sitting on the couch watching TV. But then I’ll read a comment from someone who tells me how much they appreciate my videos, and how they have helped renew their interest in tying and fishing. And that simple comment energizes me to keep going. And that’s why I have a channel and why I keep publishing videos.
What does the future of Savage Flies look like?
That’s a good question and one I ask myself often. And the truth is that I really don’t know. As long as it keeps being fun and I can keep helping people to enjoy the sport that has given so much to me, I’ll keep going. In the past year I’ve added more fishing content (alongside my tying tutorials and tool reviews). While fishing videos take a lot more time (and luck) to make, they can be a LOT of fun!
What is in the future for you, the guy behind this project?
My immediate plans are to retire out to the farm, go fishing more, tie more flies, and keep making videos about it all. But I also hope to begin my next phase soon – writing about tying and fishing. Here on this blog, maybe some magazine articles, and hopefully someday I’ll be able to publish a book. That’s my longer-term goal. But in the meantime, I plan to keep having fun with Savage Flies.